As a result, it has become “one of these weird things” that has unexpectedly taken off in the research community. Whereas virtual reality previously only existed in specialized, high-profile labs, now any lab with a few thousand dollars can build its own system for testing animals.

Read more: Why Scientists Are Fooling Animals With Virtual Reality – Popular Mechanics

The great thing about using Second Life to play out a furry, is the fact that you can actually waggle your tail, let out a convincing sounding growl and, twitch your ears to express your mood. So, enter brainactivity monitoring gadgets that can listen to your mood, and take all those expressions back into the physical world:

Using this technique it is going to be possible to do practise training of medical procedures while operating in a team. Would be interesting to see someone develop that one.

Alot of features have been added since the last demo I saw over christmas 2010. To test it I logged into Second Life (Instructions in ‘read more’ section) and managed to have instant messaging chats with friends. A number of interface icons dont seem to work, like friending nearby avs and muting, so keep in mind its a beta. Though its missing alot of the goodies we take for granted in an average Second Life or Open Simulator viewer, it has all the ingredients needed to become a great service for casual interaction with the online world.

I visited two sims, that are both pretty busy. One being a hub, the other sim with a dance venue with quite alot of avatars. Prims and basic colors rez pretty quickly, but dont count on avatar shapes, meshes or detailed clothing for the appearance in the webviewer. The experience of walking around is pretty good, even at these otherwise heavy locations. I found myself stuck in the water at some point, flying up got me out of that.

Besides offering the viewer they have also tagged on a service to setup a large area of sims in one go if you have your own open simulator server running. I have not tested it, though it seems like an application that should be a part of a management suite for a grid.

For the future I hope the interface gets a good upgrade, on the webpage and in the viewer window. As the viewer is rooted in Unity, it would be a nice step to see this service become available as a iPad app for couch surfing the metaverse.

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Instructions on how to use:

The Read Me file for BuiltBuy.Me is here

To connect to Second Life or a open simulator server, you need to go through the following steps. You will need to know the ‘Login URI’ for the grid or server you want to connect to. Most Open Simulator grids have it published on their FAQ’s, the login URI for Second Life is https://login.agni.lindenlab.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi

1. Generate a login URL  with the URL Generator
2. Visit the url, and click the ‘Generate Exception’ button before you do anything else
   (A new window will open producing an  error, or asking you to continue with a potentially unsafe action. This happens to trick Second Life into letting the viewer log in)
3. Log in with your existing Second Life account

What is supported in this current version of BuiltBuy.Me:

What is not supported

Tested browser:

PC: Chrome, IE and Firefox
MAC: Safari and Firefox: We have noticed some MAC’s have issues running Unity3d. If you have a MAC that is not able to load Unity3d at all please email us at macbrowser@builtbuy.me with your MAC details (Apple menu > About this MAC and tell us OS version) and we can get a handle on the version of MACs that are having issues.

After starting my world and logging in to my sim at Kitely, (which was very very easy), I ended up in the basic openVCE offering as a collaboration environment. The next movie is from 2009, but it explains pretty precisely what you can get out of open VCE. (The setup in Kitely looks like this too in the layout of the buildings).

Tho openVCE seems like an interesting offering and Kitely offers openVCE’s basic buildings, I am still missing the components in Kitely that make a collaboration environment interesting. At the landingpoint I have the choice out of 8 boxes ranging from textures to housing, but I would be better off in this situation with a powerpoint presenter and inworld note making tools. Also the absense of voice is paining, as collaboration and brainstorming runs alot smoother when spoken instead of typed on a keyboard.

I hope Kitely gets round soon to supplying users of any premade environments with the right content and tools to actually use it succesfully. If handled properly, they have a good case, expanding the premade options with other systems like RiversRunsRed’s collaborative environment or moodle for e-learning.

With 70% of iPad2 buyers being new to the iPad, and sales going through the roof, we are going to see an increasing shift from deskchair to sofa for our daily online content consumption. The iPad encrouches heavily on television time as it is now possible to be online, but not unsociably stuck up in the office room of the house. Pocket Metaverse has been around for a year or so and is downloadable from the iTunes store. It has a free and a premium version, the premium version ($4,99) allows you to connect to any open simulator grid, including your own.

we have had mobile apps before for virtual worlds, but being able to take and share a mobile virtual world into the social area of the real world home will continue blurring the lines between the on- and offline communities more.