the vrla summer expo was big and full of gear that thousands of nerds salivated over on august 29th in the los angeles convention center.
does the fact that the huffington post and other media reported on the event mean vr has arrived in the mainstream or do we need palmer luckey on the cover of the new york times magazine?
you be the judge:
now read on:
- our guests jazmin cano
- and cosmo scharf [his company visionary vr is more secretive than the nsa]:
- inara pey on bright canopy’s future & the upcoming gateway program for sl
- drax’ first attempt to dominate sl streaming on youtube gaming channel:
- our musical guest oblee
- vrcade at vrla = shooting zombies [what else?]:
http://www.vrideo.com/embed/bbL4iz6W
- elementerra
- oculus wants social vr makers to make social vr?
- hot pockets in vr & ocean spray too.…
- inevitable sl deja vu = vw marketing in 2007 = lessons learned???
- sl origin story: cyberpiper
the drax files radio hour [with jo yardley] is a weekly production of basicdrax entertainment
the show is supported by maven homes, gizza creations, botanical, strawberry singh, abranimations, aeros avatars, ison, kahruvel design, humanoid animations, avacon, the cube republic, loki eliot, fatewear by damien fate, the avazines publication family, {what next}, bright canopy, dutchie furniture, landscapes unlimited, dwarfins, the den, fallen gods incorporated, feroshSL, Giant Snail Races every Saturday, kona STREAM and Death Row Designs
music by bd.
thumbnail by justin esparza.
contact the show via skype draxfiles, avatar draxfiles or email radio@draxfiles.com
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Reblogged this on Jo Yardley's Second Life.
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Thanks for the shout outs! :). However, in the interests of clarity, would like point out a couple of things via Bright Canopy.
The trivial item is that “Elastic Compute Cloud” (EC2) actually means you can expend or contract the number of servers you draw on from Amazon, not that the price can change. Amazon offer a number of fixed-price offerings for EC2; Spot Instance has (up until recently) simply been the most cost-effective and happens to be variable.
More particularly, I’d like to clarify that the the price increase referred to in the podcast ($0.25 to $0.80 per hour) wasn’t a change in price for the fixed-price EC2 offering as stated,
Rather, it was the difference between the upper price Bright Canopy has budgeted to pay when using the EC2 Spot Instance mechanism ($0.25), and the amount they automatically had to pay by shifting to the EC2 On Demand mechanism ($0.80).
Moving on, I’d like to offer a different viewpoint on SL Go, which is simply this: while there was much positive feedback from those running the service that it was heading towards a break even point (and even then, we should remember “break even” doesn’t equate to “profit”), as company owner Gary Lauder blogged, the reality was that none of the company’s services were showing any signs they’d ever generate the kind of revenue that would make them sustainable.
Hence why I think the Lab are wise to keep out of the arena. Setting-up a viable streaming service, as we’ve seen, isn’t actually that easy. Were they to partner with the likes of Amazon, there is no guarantee LL wouldn’t hit the same level of storm as struck Bright Canopy, or that they could offer the kind of price-point people would be willing to pay.
Nor is it simply a question of the Lab buying a few servers / re-purposing a few servers of their own. Streaming requires high-end graphics systems and a lot of underpinning infrastructure that’s going to inevitably mean up-front costs for the Lab if they are to offer a service themselves (either directly or with third-party assistance), and the use of a lot of additional specialised skills (either hired in or contracted out). And all that with a very big question mark hanging over it as to whether it really would, at the end of the day, be able to recoup the costs of that outlay or go on to generate the kind of revenue that makes it a viable service for them to operate.
Another point to remember here is when and how SL Go itself became popular. For more than half of its operational life, SL Go was actually less than marginal in terms of its use. It wasn’t until OnLive offered Firestorm as a viewer through the service that it really saw a lift in user numbers.
That, for the Lab, is problematic on a number of levels. For example, if they only offer their own viewer, then it is probable that use of any streaming service they supply is going to be limited. But if they seek to offer Firestorm as well, that creates a range of issues of its own.
So in short, there probably isn’t really that much around any proposition for the Lab to offer a streaming solution for SL that’s really that attractive to them (wishful thinking about a sudden plethora of You Tube videos notwithstanding). All any move in the direction of streaming is liable to do is further dilute the revenues the Lab are generating when said revenues are best poured back into SL or into Sansar.
I’m intrigued by the question of how narrative film will be done in VR.
One on hand, you could limit the viewer to the role of the camera — but then you’re not really leveraging the possibilities of VR that much.
At the other extreme, you could give the viewer full freedom to wander around and interact with the environment. Imagine being in a Hercule Poirot mystery and missing the denouement because you went to the bathroom.
I assume the answer lies somewhere in between,,, or maybe VR lends itself better to different types of stories? Technology certainly has shaped storytelling in the past: think classical theater vs. commercial-break-formatted tv shows.
It’ll be interesting to see how VR — assuming it does take off this time around — will affect how we tell and consume stories.
Interesting convos. it’s looking like the VR bet is wether or not the public will buy hardware more powerful than a PS4 in order to get the most out of Oculus?
Yep hence Oculus thinking everyone will custom build a gamer PC [which I am doing right now due to DEATH OF 2011 Machini-PC…sigh…my wallet…it HURTS!!!]