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   One is guessing that ‘legacy 3D platforms’ includes OpenSim. Why OpenSim wasn’t considered in the first place is open to question, as I doubt that these ‘enterprise’ (read: closed source) 3D environments would offer much in terms of an improvement over OpenSim, and using OpenSim would represent a considerable financial saving, even if work needed to be done to fine tune the code. I can’t say that I’ve really been blown away by my experiences when trying out other 3D environments and comparing them to OpenSim. I tried High Fidelity recently, my curiosity was so great that I even loaded Windows onto one of my computers to try it out, (I was being lazy, and didn’t fancy going to the bother of compiling it for my usual Linux). I wasn’t blown away by the experience, and much of it seemed to me to be counter-intuitive, and I wasn’t all that impressed with the graphics – but then I was using it on sub-par hardware, in that I didn’t have the recommended Nvidia GTX 970, which currently retail at around £240 in the UK. Not the most expensive graphics card, to be sure, but more than a casual user would be prepared to part with for something that will most probably be a niche interest long term, and maybe a bit of a fad in the shorter term. I’m still sceptical that VR will be as big as is being hyped, and I believe that it will prove to be just another flash in the pan fad. I appreciate that it will have it’s enthusiasts and that it will prove extremely useful for some niche applications, but I can’t see that it will be more than that… Though perhaps this isn’t the place to spout such heresy!.

   I had to smile when I took a look at the ‘rival’ platform site, Protosphere. Being strictly Windows wasn’t a good start, but they could perhaps have not gone so overboard on showing the logos of all those corporate sponsors – I think that perhaps having Homeland Security proudly displayed as one of your corporate sponsors would be more than enough to give the platform the kiss of death. The fact that it runs on Windows, with a direct line to the CIA and by association to GCHQ (British Intelligence surveillance centre) would be enough to put people off, but adding Homeland Security would just ensure people stayed away in crowds. Also, I noticed that BP were corporate sponsors, which I found surprising in that I thought that BP were more or less pariahs in the USA after the Gulf of Mexico fiasco.

   I’m sure we’ll see many more 3D platforms aimed at the corporate market come and go, but I think that OpenSim will probably outlive most of them. I often wonder if the corporate world these kinds of things are aimed at will survive as a concept for that much longer, but then I may have overdosed a little on Noam Chomsky, but big corporations do seem to me to be somewhat like the large dinosaurs that dominated the planet until that meteorite struck.