2 Billion Dollar Deal: Facebook Buys Oculus

I was quite surprised yesterday when reading that Facebook actually bought the company behind the Oculus Rift VR Headset. For quite a steep price of 2 billion US$ - especially if you take into account that not long ago Oculus did rise 2 million US$ at Kickstarter. A not-really-subtle way of showing the importance virtual reality has for big players Google and Facebook.

They are actually in quite a buying "arms race" in the recent months, with huge deals every few weeks. Its quite obvious that they try to gain as much ground as possible on the develpement of future technologies. I really wonder if these huge amounts of cash they invest will actually pay off in the near future: Facebook just recently paid 19 billion US$ for Whatsapp. The 3 billion US$ Google paid for Nest (a company specialized for internet-compatible termostats and smoke detectors) seems to be quite a bargain compared to - but lets be serious: thats totally insane amounts of money!

So either they expect huge growth rates - perhaps in the scale of another digital revolution - or they simply try to best each other in a huge speculation bubble. Perhaps both actually. Ok, there is a legitime interest in companies which offer exclusively internet services to have products in their portfolio you can actually touch: Its expanding their range dramatically. Just think of the quite-religious-hardware-cult Steve Jobs was able to establish with Apple. Google is trying the same now with their Google-Glasses. The future will show us how this turns out.

For Linden Labs the purchase of Oculus can become a serious drawback in their ambitions of bringing Second Life to a mass-market. I am sure they were speculating of having SL as a avant-garde-product in the new virtual reality-hype, which is now quite doubtful.
Will Facebook continue supporting platforms like SL at or are they focusing on exploiting the Oculus Rift for their own products only? Perhaps with their own virtual world? A kind of Facebook 3D? Or will they even buy LL next?

Another big questionmark is simply Facebook's reputation of being the world largest commercial surveilliance company. Or as the Minecraft-creator Markus Persson said via Twitter when learning about Oculus being sold:

"We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."

Further reading:

Things to come in 2014 (background info to Oculus Rift)

High Fidelity appendix (more on VR)

LL's new CEO Introduces himself

Yay! Clear Roads!

I just read on this informative German blog that the annoying self-driving vehicles by AnnMarie Otoole, which lagged their way through SL for years are gone now!

If LL removed the vehicles or if she did take them by herself isn't quite clear. Fact is there has been a quite heated discussion about her vehicles for a while now. Things came to a head when the self-replicating vehicle rezzers she put on main land parcels where disabled by LL.

They were a common sight on mainland: Pretty laggy, quite dated looking and their AI behaving not too smart when unexpected things occured (everything else than a straight road for example), which made them going offroad and/or get stuck. Sometimes in odd situations like jumping up an down or continuously bumping against a building ;-)

And I just stopped for a photo opportunity :p

I actually began to hate them when doing my bike tours. You could reliably tell if one of these things was around because driving became notably laggier all sudden. Sim-crossings with them around was likely leading to crashes or at least a huge rubber band effect.
Also its just not nice to ride peacefully on the linden-roads just to be pushed off the track by a huge, prim-itive eyesore of a tank :p

Well, it seems that story is over by now and I hope the roads stay free of these lag-beasts by now

Eye-to-eye with the lag-monster!

Back from the 80s!

At least it felt like living in the 80s again... My video card broke down and it took loong, looooong time until a replacement arrived. I never actually did doubt that time is relative, but I didn't expect that time can get that slow!

Imagine a world with no Facebook - ah well, that doesn't sounds too bad actually :p

But imagine a world without SL - yuck!

Imagine a world without a excessively large music collection just a mouseclick away - oh no!


Yes, thats indeed pretty 80s, isn't it?

Well, it was not easy. I missed blender, I missed surfing on the net, chatting with friends etc etc. Most of all however I missed having my sweet partner Emma with me.


Anyway. I am back with a huge video card looking like something you usually find under the hood of a sports car ;-)


More news coming very soon!

New Hobby: The Daily Flotsam Pillock Memorial Blowup

Yarrrrr! Burrrrrn, Flotsam, burrrrrn!

One of the greatest virtues of this digital world called SL is that you have a lovely high degree of freedom. You can explore and find amazing works of creative people in abundance or you can create something by yourself - and learn and get better and better. You can express yourself through your avatar (want to see a blue-coloured fox flying a F 16? SL is the place for that!). You have countless ways to interact socially, go to art exhibits, visit clubs, listen to concerts - even do some RP (for example as blue fox!) - the limits are your imagination really!

However sometimes the fun ends. For example when people with obvious social deficiencies start acting like little SL-policemen and try to ruin your fun. As it happened lately in Flotsam.

Flotsam is a beautiful and fun place made by perhaps one of SL's most creative minds - Aley. A swimming pirate town full of lovely peculiarities. And with a special feature: you can blow it up! Its encouraged - and so I did.

And just as I was enjoying total mayhem (burning buildings crashing into the sea, flames leaping high into the sky - the usual stuff a Drow likes) I was IMed by a random "SL policeman" and was called a griefer!

You see I have of course understanding and respect for the various role-playing groups in SL. I have encountered loads of friendly people already this way: medieval vampires, wastelanders, prisoners and guards, space cadets, steampunks, slave-trader, damsels in distress, pirates, ponies, aviators - even dogs - simply all kinds of folks!

But when a single person belonging to these groups try to force their community-rules on the rest of the Grid or simply starts calling you names because they don't like the shoes you wear or the bombs you throw - at a place that doesn't even belong to their RP-community - then the fun ends for me.

Well, to get clearance I wrote a short inquiry about this issue to Aley. The answer was very clear: I got a cannon and the task to blow the city up at my "hearts content" ;-)

This I did, and I will do this every day now - and I invite everyone to do the same!

Come by to Flotsam, grab one of the free bomb-throwers, cannons, hand-guns or anything else which shoots objects called "CannonBall" and give the city a beating! Its so relieving! Its so much fun! And no worries you could do permanent damage: the city recovers fully in a very comfortably short time!

Go make SL a more fun place. It can endure a healthy amount of craziness and disorder!

Oh, but take a look at Aleymart! first and grab some handy freebies. They are great :-)