vol.1 Virtual Magazine issue2 | Page 27

Does Second Life as a virtual world game can be considered as a VR? Alhough Second Life meets the VR criteria such as interactive, computer created and explorable, Second Life doenst meet a very important one, as Chris mentions: Second LIfe dont fully immerse with you. For sure Second LIfe offers the idea of sharing an experience in a virtual reality with other people, often in real time, often bringing people closer. An experience that people are looking for and most likely to become an increasingly important feature of VR in future.

Brenda Jacotin mentiones on her article posted on September 28, 2015: By the end of 2013, Google Glass was on deck to be the leading user-¬friendly, consumer available, peripheral to introduce a relatively hassle-¬free and intuitive method of augmented reality. Someone may notice that I said “augmented” reality. There is a difference between augmented reality hardware and virtual reality hardware. According to Dictionary.com augment means to “make larger” but in this context it means to add on top of. What Google Glass did was add a digital interface layer over your standard non-¬augmented point¬ of ¬view (your eyeballs). Imagine Google Maps blue path line but on the ground actually in front of you. Picture being lost in a unfamiliar and foreign territory and being able to translate road signs on the fly. These were a couple of the capabilities of Google Glass and it seemed really cool. Of course it drew a healthy amount of retractors but what doesn’t that isn’t cutting ¬edge. But for some reason it... flopped. Now, one could argue it flopped because of the marketing and promotion strategy, the price tag (a hefty $1,500 plus tax), the fact that Google had promised to introduce a consumer model cheaper than the previously priced “Explorer” model and didn’t follow through on that or the fact that people made a very big fuss over being recorded without their permission. They are all extremely legitimate in their own rights but I don’t think any of them are responsible for the stake in the heart that was the Google Glass program. I have strong reason to believe it is a problem much simpler at its core. A person can be smart, but people can be stupid. People are not quite ready to have their bubble burst. Even though it is becoming less uncommon, there is still a healthy percentage of the populace that is uncomfortable with NSA monitoring, government run CC camera surveillance and even some who are unfamiliar with these things all together.