Second Life in the News Week 38

I found a couple of new articles about Project Sansar. I’m only going to point out the stuff in the articles I found interesting.

Second Life eyes second act as virtual reality matures – Financial Times (FT)

Jolie Birdy

Jolie Birdy

The FT says the Lab has magazine covers from 2005 that tell about Second Life™ being the next big thing hanging in their offices.

FT points to Project Sansar, High Fidelity, and AltspaceVR as the coming new Virtual Worlds (VW).

FT quotes Wagner James Au (Hamlet), New World Notes, as saying fashion designers are the likely second category of VW users that will make money from VW’s. Presumably the first is those needing to build VW’s for various reasons.

I sure it will thrill many that Hamlet says the third money making category is probably going to be porn. I agree with him. Porn was the early money maker when the Internet started. Hamlet also thinks many big businesses will make the same mistakes they made in Second Life. They will jump into VW’s to look cutting edge, high tech with little or no idea what they are doing and whether it will make them money. 

A comment from Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO, I haven’t heard before:

Quoting FT: While Mr Altberg says freedom and openness was what made Second Life a success, he concedes that it “didn’t do enough early enough to separate out certain types of content” — a delicate balance it is “still dealing with today”.

“That’s something we’ll sort out from the beginning in Sansar: to ensure certain kinds of content have metadata that can be sorted and filtered,”

Quoting Ebbe from FT’s article, “We are attempting to democratise the creation of virtual experiences. We do have an unfair advantage in what it takes to do these kinds of things . . . Through a lot of positives and through a lot of pain, we have learnt a tremendous amount.”

In a few years, we’ll be able to strap on virtual reality goggles and plunge into a sprawling and complex virtual universe. But first, someone has to actually built it. – Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

WSJ says, “Creating worlds will be more difficult in Project Sansar than Second Life, but Altberg said they’ve made a tool non-engineers can use.

I included this following quote in another article a day or two ago. “Internally, Linden Lab employees are working on polishing the product, building their own test worlds along the way. They’ve made a desert scene with crazy big machinery, weird futuristic lounges and a famous landmark. They’ve even created an exact replica of a conference room in Linden Lab’s San Francisco office, down to the objects on the desk.

Comment

A world is going to be harder to build… I’m not buying that. I do think it suggests that we will have more to consider when we start from scratch. In Second Life we start with a basic region, the same in OpenSim. I suspect there will be a basic ‘region’ or world in Sansar that we can start from. But, we will also likely have the ability to start from scratch, in which case it will be a more complex process than we have now.

I doubt it will be anywhere as near complex has setting up a self hosted region in OpenSim. Since the whole goal for Sansar is ‘better and easier’ taking what Ebbe said at face value just doesn’t make sense.

I am guessing it is going to be like setting up a web site or blog. It can be complex or simple depending on what you want to do. If you let WordPress host your blog, it is really easy. Think of that being like SL. If you want to host your own blog, it gets more complex. If you use a hosting company for WP it is still pretty simple. But, a fully customized blog is a significant technical challenge.

3 thoughts on “Second Life in the News Week 38

  1. You’re suggestion that building content in Sansar will be like WP interests me. I’ve created many sites over the last 20 years watching the evolution of content management blossom into sophisticated environments we just sort of take for granted today. Obviously an unimaginable amount of work was needed it get to this point. If the Lindens feel they can simply reboot SL and everyone will just jump on board, they will be disappointed. Success will require active user forums, solid documtation, hundreds or even thousand’s of tutorials on YouTube, huge presences on sites like Reddit,on and on, an entire ecosystem. All necessary but boring stuff. It’s not 2005 any more.Nobody thinks their environment will be especially clever. I’ll feel better about Sansar when I start seeing something other than pretty speeches.

    • I agree with you. I am confident that we will see Project Sansar roll out. My belief in how successful it will be… not so much. I too want to see what they have done.

      I believe Sansar will be an ever developing project, just as SL is. I expect mistakes and oversights. My expectation of successes and smart innovations is high. I think their competitors have to make many of the mistakes the Lab has already made. But, I worry the Lab’s memory is not that good.

  2. Pingback: Linden Lab Continue To Generate Publicity As VR Hype Cycle Gathers Pace » Ciaran Laval

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