As pointed out by ModemWorld, Linden Lab have officially suspended support for Oculus Rift CV1 in Second Life. Previously, you could enable the Oculus Rift one the Alternate Viewers page using the experimental Project Viewer.
Second Life (SL) is a popular massively multiplayer online social world for players of all types. It’s been around in some form since 2003, making it one of the longest-running still active virtual worlds. What makes Second Life so unique is that, as opposed to more traditional MMOs, it doesn’t get bogged down under the pressure of being “a game” and instead embraces the possibilities of a limitless virtual environment.
For all intents and purposes, you really can live a second life – no matter what that means to you. As a result, Second Life has quickly made a name for itself as one of the most empowering virtual worlds for social collaboration and creativity.
VR support for Second Life was never completely integrated or supported as a fully-functional way of enjoying the world, but it was possible previously. Now, in an official statement on the community forums, a Community Manager from Linden Lab broke the news about the suspension of Oculus Rift support:
By definition, Project Viewers aren’t ready for primetime. The purpose of these experimental Viewers is to share with you the earliest possible version of what we’re working on, so that you can see what we’re up to, help discover problems, and provide feedback. In this case, though, we’re not ready for that, as those of you who tried it have seen.
We can’t say at this point when or even if we may release another Project Viewer for experimenting with the Oculus Rift in SL.
We want to prioritize our development efforts around initiatives that we know will improve the virtual world and bring more value to SL Residents, and due to some inherent limitations with SL, it may well not be possible to achieve the performance needed for a good VR experience. (In fact, this is one reason why we’re creating Project Sansar a new, separate platform optimized for VR).
Worth noting, however, is that despite the fact that Project Sansar is also being created by Linden Lab, it does not appear to be in the vein of what a future Second Life 2 may resemble. It’s being designed as an entirely new experience.
The door is open for future VR support in Second Life again, but as of now, it looks uncertain. However, CtrlAltStudio has issued an update for the viewer they had been working on before Linden Lab officially supported the Oculus Rift. For those interested, it could be a passable interim solution.
