Recently we have been exploring Altspace the VR social network. WE started by visiting the virtual world of Prime Falls to see the bears and wolves. You can see us (and a bear) in the picture below. I am the green robot Nibb and and Kit is the legalise figure to the right. In Altspace all the avatars look like plastic lego figures. We have joined a writing group led by a very loud and bossy American woman who looks like a lego schoolteacher. To be fair she needs to be bossy as legalise avatars can pop in and out some intent to mock or disrupt the class. The avatars also have the ability to fly which can be quite disruptive in a writing group. So discipline needs to be kept and the unruly quickly booted out. So far the technology cannot easily accommodate writing so most of the exercises are oral with everyone making suggestions or comments on some topic or other. Then we have each have five minutes to read our home work which had been set the week before. This is not always easy in a headset that is designed to switch off as soon as you remove it. So the text needs to be enlarged, the laptop needs to be balanced on one's legs and the headset raised just enough to be able to peek at the screen below. Not an ideal system but the technology is still very young and constantly being improved, There are usually just over a dozen at each meeting though not everyone contributes. It is strange, disturbing yet horrible fascinating experience and though I keep thinking I will drop out I still return.
I have been escaping from the world of lockdown into a world of VR. I bought an Oculus Go las year and then treated myself to the Oculus Quest for Christmas. I also gave Kit a GO so that we could meet in VR and he could show me around Berlin. Recently we have been exploring Altspace the VR social network. WE started by visiting the virtual world of Prime Falls to see the bears and wolves. You can see us (and a bear) in the picture below. I am the green robot Nibb and and Kit is the legalise figure to the right. In Altspace all the avatars look like plastic lego figures. We have joined a writing group led by a very loud and bossy American woman who looks like a lego schoolteacher. To be fair she needs to be bossy as legalise avatars can pop in and out some intent to mock or disrupt the class. The avatars also have the ability to fly which can be quite disruptive in a writing group. So discipline needs to be kept and the unruly quickly booted out. So far the technology cannot easily accommodate writing so most of the exercises are oral with everyone making suggestions or comments on some topic or other. Then we have each have five minutes to read our home work which had been set the week before. This is not always easy in a headset that is designed to switch off as soon as you remove it. So the text needs to be enlarged, the laptop needs to be balanced on one's legs and the headset raised just enough to be able to peek at the screen below. Not an ideal system but the technology is still very young and constantly being improved, There are usually just over a dozen at each meeting though not everyone contributes. It is strange, disturbing yet horrible fascinating experience and though I keep thinking I will drop out I still return. There is also the facility within Altspace to build VR worlds and that is what interests me most but sadly my laptop does not have the power to run the software needed to do it properly. Several times I have crashed the system and spent the rest of the day piecing things back together again. You can, however, built a world using ready made templates and I have build myself a small oasis on Mars. The Mars background is taken from one of the NASA lander photos and the lander can be seen by looking down into the water below the island.A very simple thing to do yet I'm rather proud of it.
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