What you're watching above is a pretty cool hack of classic virtual world and new VR technology: Oculus Quest 2 running Second Life. While the venerable sandbox MMO wasn't originally architected to run in VR, its user community has created a number of unsupported viewers that are compatible with leading virtual reality platforms, while the world itself boasts tens of thousands of excellent locations to explore — not to mention as many users online 24/7.
Setting up your Quest 2 to run with Second Life, to be sure, does require some extra patience and tinkering. Fortunately, the Redditor who shot and sent me this demo video, "IDontUseAnimeAvatars", also sent me highly detailed instructions on doing just that; read those below. As with any unsupported third party software, user beware — and seeing as Second Life isn't optimized for VR, also beware vertigo:
"I highly encourage that you DO NOT try to walk around in first person," as they put it to me, "controlling your vision with your head and mouse is a first-class ticket to puke city."
Full tutorial after the break:
First you need to install the VR Firestorm viewer from here.
Then you need to connect your Quest 2 to your PC using a link cable. Alternatively, you could use the Virtual Desktop app to stream it wirelessly, that's what I did. Once connected you open up the VR viewer and log in like normal.
Once you have loaded into a [Second Life] sim, open up steam and click the VR icon in the upper-righthand corner of the Steam window, this will bring you into the SteamVR home environment.
At this point you want to put on your headset and get into a comfy position that you can stay put in. Taking off the headset is enough to discombobulate the camera position in SL, so you want your head to start in a good position.
Once [the] headset is on and a comfortable position has been found, press CTRL+TAB to start the connection to SteamVR, this should change the view inside the headset. Once you see a purple box that says "Firestorm-P3-VRMOD", simply press TAB once again and you should be in the game.
At this point you probably see one of two things, the first being a pretty cool view of your character and the world you're inhabiting.
The second might be a super close-up of a part of the screen that is almost impossible to look at or understand the first time you see it. You see, in order to control the many boxes and menus you need in SL VR, the developer has made it so moving your mouse around the edges of the screen will zoom into those areas making it easier to click on things. If you're not expecting it you can easily mistake it for some kind of glitch. All you need to do is keep your mouse pointer in the middle of the screen and vision will return to normal.
Now once you're in the world you can take a look around and it might look pretty wonky; part of the reason is we haven't set the IPD properly yet. To do this, with the headset on, press F5 to open up a VR settings menu. IPD will be the first thing selected and what you need to set it to depends on the IPD setting you use on your quest 2. F6 increases the value and F7 decreases. If your eye spacers are set to 1, put 58. If they are set to 2, put 63. If they're set to 3, 68.
Keep pressing F5 until the menu goes away once that has been done.
At this point you should be all ready to go and explore. I highly encourage that you DO NOT try to walk around in first person; controlling your vision with your head and mouse is a first-class ticket to puke city. I recommend walking around in third person and stopping to go into first person if you want to look around your environment.
Another note, you need a full boundary, not just the stationary one.
If you have a powerful PC or a monitor with a resolution greater than 1080p, here are some more tips:
By default, opening up SteamVR will put your desktop into 1080p resolution. If your monitor has a resolution greater than 1080p (mine is 1440p) right click on your desktop>Display Settings>display resolution and set it to the largest resolution. More pixels equal better graphics, just make sure you fullscreen the game after you do this. If your monitor is already 1080p then you cannot increase the resolution of the game as far as I know.
As you can guess, doing all of this is not for everyone. Its not a mind-blowing experience either, but if you're somebody who's always wanted to know what the world looked like through your avatar's eyes, this is it baby, this is the future.
Troubleshooting:
If everything is working but you aren't properly following your avatar (you press forward, avatar moves left etc.) open the camera control menu under Avatar>Camera Controls and press the two arrow buttons on the bottom of the window to rotate the camera position.
Also setting the view distance down really helps with framerate.
If your first person camera goes whack because you moved the mouse just exit first person and re-enter to reset it.
Via /SecondLife. Much thanks again to u/IDontUseAnimeAvatars for the video and detailed instructions.
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