Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, has announced features to support and fully integrate the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. With the use of the new Project Viewer players will be able to experience Second Life through the eyes of their avatar, allowing for a more immersive and unique experience to explore the virtual world around them.

According to Linden Lab, early beta testers of the integration provided valuable feedback, and suggestions to improve the overall experience of using the Oculus Rift with Second Life.

The Project Viewer features:

• Full Oculus Rift Hardware Support – includes automatic hardware detection and display calibration for quick and easy setup.
• Full UI Support – users can access the entire Second Life UI and HUDs while in Oculus Rift mode, so there are no limitations on what a user can do inworld while using the headset.
• Customizable UI – users can tailor the settings for Oculus Rift mode that work best for their needs.
• Avatar Head Motion – Oculus Rift head-tracking data is mapped to the avatar, so users’ avatars look where they do.
• New First-Person View – allows users to enjoy the immersion previously available with mouselook mode, but thanks to the Oculus Rift, the mouse is free again to control the cursor, allowing for interaction with the UI and objects inworld.
• “Align to Look” –  allows users to quickly start moving the direction they are looking.
• “Action Key” – interact with objects by pressing a key, works great in mouselook mode.

Below is a video released by Linden Lab to help players set up the Oculus Rift to work with Second Life:

This is the first major step toward becoming a part of the default Second Life Viewer. While the UI still requires some optimization for Oculus Rift users, Linden Lab went on to say in a blog post, “Like our initial beta release, this Project Viewer is more about making it easy to get started using the Oculus Rift to view Second Life than it is about optimizing the UI for headset users,”…“We’ve made some minor adjustments to the regular Second Life UI in order to present it in head-mounted display (HMD) mode, but the UI headset users will experience with this project Viewer is still essentially the same as you’d see without an Oculus Rift.”

Hopefully, the developers at  Linden Lab will continue to provide frequent updates and integrate additional features that take advantage of what the Oculus Rift VR headset has to offer.

If you’re a fan of Second Life and have an Oculus Rift you can download the Project Viewer here for Windows, Mac, or Linux.