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, Graham Mills (who creates simulations of railways systems), makes a fascinating historical analogy to the current buzz over virtual reality:Back in 1830 George Stephenson, a taciturn engineer from outside the establishment, built a railway from Liverpool to Manchester. It worked so well that it ignited a period of over-excited investment in what came to be called Railwaymania.
On the upside there was continuous refinement of engines and track and, based on the Liverpool & Manchester experience, guidance for others on the best way to operate a railway safely. On the downside, track was put down without a decent business case, there was duplication of effort, dubious business practice, massive waste of capital. It was definitively not the most efficient way to establish a railway network.
Moreover, initially it was only the wealthy who could afford to travel and the companies did their best to ensure that people would want to pay for a premium experience by making life miserable for those in second class carriages. Ultimately the government stepped in and forced the companies to run a decent service for the average worker.
Anyway, the one thing that outlasted George was standard gauge, the gap between the two rails. Arguably it wasn't optimal but the scale of adoption and need for interoperability between all these little railways ultimately won the day.
Fast forward 186 years and we have VRmania. Lots of small pieces of expensive kit and content, largely isolated in terms of their tech and support for different operating systems, massive duplication of effort, prospect of mergers/acquisitions/closures, standards as optional, premium content closely sequestered, failure to reach potential, disillusionment down the line.
The hardware is one thing (Oculus, Vive, Daydream, Sulon Q, HoloLens, Magic Leap...) but the software is another.
Let's change hats and imagine I'm an educator running a virtual lab. Maybe I bought a nice package that I use as a pre-class simulation. It uses a pipetting device to transfer liquid from one place to another. But times change and we now use a different device in-class not supported in the original package that can't be updated (maybe the vendor went bust and the sim is closed source). I can't change it for a device from another vendor because the objects and avatars don't play together. In reality fingers and thumbs are pretty much a standard (I appreciate that's not always a given) and liquids "know" how to flow under normal gravity.
The solution, he suggests, may lie not in Unity or other high-end premium platforms, but the one very few in VR think about lately:
One thought I do have though (as mentioned earlier) is that maybe OpenSim should evolve into the "good enough" workman's train of VR software and be proud of it. Just as with reality it shouldn't be necessary to take megacorp's shilling to use VR nor should it be necessary to rush out and buy the latest hardware to run it. Instead OpenSim should emphasize support for diverse platforms and pilot interoperability just as it does now with the hypergrid. The "train" may arrive a little later and the seats may be a little firmer but the outcome will be the same.
Definitely a place for OpenSim to thrive across new VR platforms as a pokey but free and open alternative to the shiny but pricier and restrictive software systems.
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