Ciaran Laval has an article I saw this morning: The Project Sansar Media Train Is Still Going Full Steam Ahead. In it he talks about two articles about Project Sansar with some mention of Second Life™.
There is not much of anything new to learn, but a couple of points. Ciaran does a good job analyzing what the two articles may mean for Sansar and Second Life.
I thought it interesting that Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO, decided not to give the Quartz interviewer a preview of Project Sansar. I take this to be like the writer or artist that refuses to allow people to see their work before they are ready. I think that gives us some clue as to where Project Sansar is in its development.
While the Lab is going to be having testers in maybe this week and very likely this month, they are going to be builders. So, while we are past the ‘Let there be light…’ Big Bang the planets may have yet to coalesce out of the dust cloud. So, not something to show off.
We know Drax has been in the new world. (He is a fan and can be expected to over look the construction mess.) And is quoted as saying the graphics are impressive. I would guess you were expecting that. I am expecting Unreal Game Engine quality.
While Drax is a fan of SL and Sansar, he is not yet convinced Sansar will gain mass acceptance. I suspect a number of fans have similar thoughts. This is where I think Ebbe and the Lab are just keeping quite as to what they imagine will be Sansar’s growth path. In general users in SL are expecting Sansar to arrive in 2016… Telling us it will take longer is sort of a downer, so they don’t.
Ask yourself, when was the last time the Lab did even a major addition to SL in less than 3 years? Mesh? Fitted mesh? Experience Tools?
Then there is VR acceptance. How long will it take for VR headsets to become ubiquitous? How long did it take for cell phones to replace land lines? How long did it take to go from video tape to DVD?
We have to wait for millions of people to upgrade their hardware and learn how to use it. We still have more people on the planet that do NOT know how to use a computer than do. In 25 years we are just reaching the point where half the users on the Internet know how to use it.
As Ebbe is quoted as saying, “You could argue Second Life was started 10 years too early. Now is the real start of what’s going to be possible.”
Ten years…
I do hope they manage to create a world that is state of the art, leaning from their failures as well as their victories with Second Life. I also hope they take into account the things you mention and don’t set the bar too high, so it can be used as a social platform as well. I remember well Blue Mars, how great it looked, and how bummed I was that none of the Second Life people I knew couldn’t get into it cause their hardware didn’t support it.
I’m very curious what that world will be and even more so, how open it will be. The hard part will be to leave SL at the door when I enter and think of it as a new world and not just second life v2, which I think is important for everyone to do.
We have the same concerns.
What if we looked at Sansar as another Patterns? Most Sl users simply were not interested in Patterns, but by the time LL closed it down, it had it’s own dedicated community who all screamed and fell silent when LL flipped the switch off.
True. But, Blocksworld seems to be doing well.