Look Ma, no controller!

What's the biggest problem with Second Life?

The more sarcastic among you may reply "pick one," but I can think of one major obstacle that's preventing Second Life from becoming a major application for the masses: the interface.

When I was a young boy, I played videogames with just a handful of buttons and very little choice in character movement. But during the mid-1990s the first-person shooter market took off with games such as Doom, Quake, Goldeneye 007 and Halo, and gamers had to adjust to three dimensions of movement. An infinitely more complex skill set was demanded of the player, but with a bit of practice and persistence, 3D movement became second nature for me.

But what about people who didn't spend their childhoods blowing their friends' heads off in a friendly game of Counter-Strike deathmatch? What about the older generations who had jobs, mortgages, kids to feed, lawns to mow? It's pretty fair to say that the amount of time required to master the skills videogames demanded wasn't worth it to most people.

That's why Second Life is taking a cue from Nintendo's Wii Fit and Sony's EyeToy (and the latest iteration for the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation Eye) by attempting to make the player's body the interface.

That's right - people will be able to "shake their moneymakers" through the Second Life metaverse.

I came across this article in the School Library Journal that mentions a new initiative undertaken by Mitch Kapor, chairperson of Linden Lab, to remove the keyboard and mouse barriers between users and their avatars. The Hands Free 3D project enables users to walk, run, jump and fly through Second Life based solely on physical gestures.



While it's a long way from being practical (one has to wonder how much a 3D camera like that costs!), the Hands Free 3D project may just be worth watching. Second Life is, to me, all about breaking down boundaries in how people interact online; breaking down those boundaries on the interface side seems like a very logical extension of that ideal.