Although a Baha’i presence in Second Life will continue indefinitely due to the beauty and relationships we’ve built there, one reason for this website is to advance the effective use of virtual worlds in understanding our true spiritual nature, developing 3D art, and working with other souls in the advancement of culture and civilization.
This will all become even more directly like an extension of real life interactions, but with the ability to work with people real time anywhere on the planet, by the use of even better “virtual reality” or “telepresence” platforms that are in the works.
An important new platform to watch for is the next generation offering from Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life.
Some key things Linden Labs is mentioning about the new platform…
- Much higher quality graphics
- Much richer “rigging” and “physics” for avatars, so their movements and gestures will be more realistic
- Great mobile device support
- Support for 3D viewers
- Much easier for someone new to the platform to quickly enter and have an easy great experience, hence less of a “niche” experience — more people involved
- Much greater scalability — instead of a region being limited to about 100 avatars, you could have meetings of hundreds, or even thousands, e.g. for a lecture, presentation or concert
- Continuing development of support for people with disabilities
- A different economic model that makes it less expensive to have property
Here is a presentation and Q&A from March 18, 2015 with the CEO of Linden Lab, talking about what’s coming, and how it will be different from and in many ways better than what we have today. The talk and Q&A were given at the conference for Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education conference, which was hosted in-world in Second Life.
Here are some other older comments from Linden Lab.
And more here.