Sansar: Opening to ALL — soon…

Ben Lang at Road to VR has written: ‘Sansar’ Will Open to All in First Half of 2017 with a New Approach to Virtual Worlds.

Ben repeats the Lab’s emphasis that Sansar is NOT Second Life 2. Ben explains the Second Life (SL) was a single large persistent world. He never mentions that SL was originally intended to be a virtual world platform for game prototyping. Users changed that idea.

Sansar on Road to VR

Sansar is explained as being a platform more than a virtual world. Sound familiar? Go back and read some of the 2004 to 2008 promotional information.

Ebbe Altberg, CEO Linden Lab and director of Sansar, says the Lab never decided if SL was for developers or users. That has changed in Sansar. It is for developers and developers will deal with attracting users… right.

Rather than a single large world, Sansar will be like the Internet where people hop from page to page… So, we will hop from world to world… or game to game… experience to experience… something.

This new structure is supposed to save people from the problem of discovery. In the SL blogosphere, what I call travel sites, are popular because finding things is difficult. The Destination Guide hasn’t solved the problem. Probably because people fail to find it. So, solving the problem of finding things within Sansar is moving out to Google and developers.

The solution is like the one used by YouTube. If you search Google on how to make textures, models, or repair something then you get a list of possible articles and a few applicable videos. Now we will be able get Google/Bing result lists with virtual worlds within Sansar included.

If one searched for 1920’s Berlin, the Sansar version would show up as the VR model of Berlin.

Developers will have various ways to make money. Just as some regions in SL require membership in a group to gain access to a region or to gain full use of things in the region, so too will Sansar developers be able to charge for access or for the use of things in their ‘experiences’ (world).

Creators/developers were starting with Sansar in 2015. To date 1,000 have been admitted, 10,000 have signed up for access.

In regard to VR, Ben found the ability to move things was marred by the system sluggishly following his hands in attempts to pick up and throw things. But, things could be picked up and thrown.

The hype about VR is dying down. We are still likely to see VR gain popularity as the cost of headsets comes down. VR adoption probably won’t be as fast as many thought. So, it is again hard to predict how Sansar will do with its VR capability.

That leaves us to wonder how well it will do with it’s 2D-screen 3D? Will SL people move over?

Remember that Longevity study done in SL? The main thing that brought people back was the interaction with other people. At this point the huge world of SL is working against it. People are too spread out, less interaction, less retention.

How is retention going to work if we have lots of separate rooms with few or no people in them? We have a catch 22. Developers are going to have to figure out how to get search position for their world/experience/game. Not easy. We can see the Destination Guide with region pages seldom lands any in search results. Will the Lab do a better job with Sansar? We’ll have to see.

But, people surprise us and do odd things we never thought they would do. Only time will tell.

9 thoughts on “Sansar: Opening to ALL — soon…

  1. I think retention can work fine in Sansar or to name it High Fidelity. Not decidecd wich one is the best until i have seen both.

    The problem to keep retention is how people can communicate with each other. If there’s no inworld chat/IM and group system. example based on web system viewed on web entity would be possible.If it’s not available. Creating communities is going to be harder and retention going to be harder and mabye fail. Especially notices and groups in secondlife are the way you get a reminder there’s something happen. But in Headset text chat is a problem.

    How is that going to be done in sansar ?
    How much did the implement ? If there’s any of it.

    And what is open soon :O I really want to see the grass from the neighborn to know if it’s really greener.

    • We are thinking along the same lines. I give more concern to the dividing of the users. But, Microsoft built a platform and their users are not a community. So… But, will those building the experiences build popular experiences? I suppose the WordPress analogy is likely a good one. But, I’m not sure…

      Group notices could be moved from the ‘viewer’ to be an email thing.

      Voice and sound… some are building speakers/earphones into headsets. They will add microphones. A third party microphone can work. Google Home, Echo, WAM, and other ‘smart assistants’ are showing voice activation works. So, I’m not concerned about that area as much as you.

      Still, I agree it is an I’ll wait see scenario.

  2. If you are a creator in Sansar or simply you have a friend there, you perfectly know that Sansar is very complicated and far to open to all.

  3. I’m honestly having a hard time envisioning how Sansar will work and based on what they’re saying, it really seems very different from Second Life. If you keep using their wordpress analogy, then how will communication work across different virtual sites? Will LL come out with a standard IM program so you can stay connected with your friends or is this up to each individual virtual site? I mean, the main reason why people stay in second life is because they have friends there. Maybe they will launch their own social platform at the same time which will allow you to stay in contact with your friends? I haven’t been in Second Life within the last 6 months (and before that it was years ago) but used to be rather active at one point especially from a development standpoint. I would love to give it another try with Sansar but am still waiting on getting approved.

    • Many of us can’t quite decide what Sansar will be like. In many ways it is like trying to imagine what people would do with WordPress before it was out there. However, WP is VERY popular.

      I think communities will likely be per experience. It will be up to the experience owner to handle a community. I think of Blue Mars and Cloud Party in that respect. I think both of those were fatally flawed. Yes WP doesn’t really have a WP community, in the sense we do in SL. Yet, WP has millions of people, if not billions, using WP in some way everyday.

      I’ll try Sansar. I too am waiting to get in.

  4. Comparing World Press and YouTube to SL is like comparing World Press and YouTube to Unite States. Not sure what Sansar is until I try it.

  5. Calling SL as a creative platform is just like calling it as a RP game. One-sided perspective! It’s a social and integrated platform that can even match with a small country. So I said comparing WorldPress to SL is like comparing YouTube to Unite States. Yes, sure, SL and WorldPress are both Internet, but very different things. Sansar is actually made as VR version Second Life 2. But VR world doesn’t need recorded animations which are replaced by tracking the body movements of the user because it’s strange when your head entries into a digital environment with a avatar body felt to belong to others because it moves out of your control. Many VR worlds like High Fidelity and AltspaceVR are all abandoning of custom animations. For this reason VR world needs to be redesigned and many virtual goods also need to be remade for VR. That gives a reason to create Sansar. Sansar would be professionally for VR players while Second Life goes on with monitor players. There are totally two different ways to handle virtual world.
    If Sansar has a high-end (AAA) graphics, I guess building contents should be downloaded in advance to client anti lag for a better mainstream user experience, like World of Warcraft did. And Creators will upload contents to another cloud space, arrange there, and finally release to all the audiences when completion.

    • You seem to have missed the point. It isn’t about what SL is. Its about what the Lab intended it to be and how they are repeating that move with Sansar.

  6. Pingback: Sansar – Coming soon – Because of Fluff

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