Shared Media in Second Life Viewer 2

As promised yesterday, Linden Lab has released a more in-depth description of their new Shared Media feature in Second Life Viewer 2. Shared media allows content creators to place Web-based media onto the faces of objects in Second Life, providing for more interactivity with content in-world. The Second Life viewer is using the WebKit engine to make all this happen. Check out the videos below for a brief, two-part introduction and read more about Shared Media on the Second Life blog.

Something that I found rather interesting about Shared Media is that it can look different to each user. In other words, while two residents are always viewing the same Web page, each of them might see something different if the page is dynamic. However, sites that are designed to remain in sync for all users will retain that synchronization for users within Second Life. Linden Lab explains this further on their blog:

“Everyone’s instance of the Shared Media is always  presenting the same URL. However, not everything will stay in perfect sync unless the content is specially designed to do that…a simple Web browsing session will keep the pages synchronized, but not the position of the scroll bars. We may both be looking at the same Web page on the same inworld object, but I might be looking at the top portion, while you might be viewing what’s below the fold…sites that are specifically designed for synchronous collaboration…will stay in perfect sync.”

Part 1 – Entertainment & Videos

Part 2 – Gaming

[Via Second Life Blog]

Update: 24 Feb 2010 14:20

Here’s a new Shared Media demo and tutorial video from Torley Linden…