Sansar – What is a Product Meet Up like?

Here is your chance to find out. Friday, there were two of these Product meet ups. I checked them out. You can find the schedule for meetings here. Friday morning’s meeting started at 9:30 AM PT. Another meeting of some kind was scheduled at 3PM and another Product Meet Up at 4 PM.

The Product meetings cover the same material in general. But, different people and different questions. I was too burned out to last through the second meeting. This 2-hour 15-minute meeting was tiring and I left early.

There is lots of interesting news. Most of the meeting is in voice. There is some text chat going on. The meeting moderators didn’t seem to be paying much attention to text chat. So, if you want to get noticed, have voice working.

Most of the people there are NOT using VR. One facilitator was and one wasn’t. So, avoid being bashful if you don’t have VR. Jump in with your desktop system and its boring old monitor.

In the first 15+ minutes, I was figuring out the audio. It is obviously location sensitive. Close, loud. Far away, whisper. The location used for audio is the camera location. Pressing F4 frees the camera. There is no support for the SpaceNavigator. So, I am using a combination of mouse and keyboard. Mostly sucks.

Mouse Steering – I use mouse steering in Second Life™. I found it works in Sansar too. F3 clamps the camera to the avatar. Right-click and drag, swings the camera around the avatar. Pressing W or Up while right-click-dragging the mouse allows one to steer while walking. The avatar turns to face camera direction when you start walking. Draging the right-click steers.

INDEX

I started the video recording early. I had no idea whether the place would fill up or not. It did. I was glad I arrived early. Also, you’ll hear topics come up that have already been addressed. This happens with late arrivals and people not paying attention.

00:00-10:00 Premeeting rambling talk.

12:00 – Jenn talking about the ‘Accuracy’ game. See Ryan Shultz’s video of the Accuracy Training Module VR game.

13:30 – Meeting getting started.

16:30 – Seriously starting…

18:00 – Talking about the Accuracy Training Module game… the experience we were in.

19:20 – Sansar has had no major crashes in three weeks. This means since the opening of Beta there have been no crashes. Some new bugs were found. Hot fixes have been put out. Sansar has been remarkably stable.

22:45 – Björn begins telling us about the coming update to Sansar. At this point, I suspect most Sansar Updates, other than a bug fix, add a load of new features. A new update will arrive in about two weeks. At least that is the plan. Lots of NEW stuff in it.

Terrain Modeling is coming in the next release. For now, it sounds like it will be mostly for Desktop, no VR. This release will have 4 ground textures. The release after will allow users to upload their own and use VR.

Hight maps are coming. Björn wants to give users complete control of everything in Sansar.

27:45 – Voxel – Maxwell asking about what will be possible for voxels. Björn wants to get someone that is working on terrain at next Friday’s meeting.

29:45 – Trigger volumes – a way to have an interactive volume that is scriptable. No collision volume for a couple of weeks more. But, something to start working with.

32:00 – Attachment sizes are going to be limited. Some attachments are so big they are creating problems. This limit is temporary for now.

33:15 – Streaming is coming… streaming from within Sansar without using a third-party system. They are starting with one screen, think Shoutcast. It will have a User Interface (UI).  All baked into Sansar viewer.

34:45 – At this point, my experimenting tp’d me away from the group… oops.

Maxwell wants to set up a URL that anyone can click to watch the meetings. So, wherever the meeting is the URL will get them the right stream.

36:30 – Björn wants to get the concurrent population limit up to 100 avatars. Currently about 40. Similar to the SL limits. But, the lag in SL and the lack of lag in Sansar is VERY noticeably different. Sansar is amazing.

38:30 – Live stream 360… this is coming to Sansar.

Currently people can-do 3D 360 within Sansar. I think they mean like a theater thing. Well, the Lindens can… but users should see it in 2 weeks.

39:30 – New features for materials will be in the next release.

Sans-Store is to be updated.

They are working on inventory tools for sorting and folders.

41:00 – Updating a product… people want a way to update a product they have put in Sans-Store (the new name for Marketplace.)

42:00 – Flying may not be part of Sansar. Running is coming in 2 weeks.

42:30 – PayPal is coming.

Current avatar is to be replaced for the fashion market in 2 or 3 months. New mesh… This gets fuzzy. After listening to the video a couple of times, I’m still not clear whether the base avatar files available for Sansar are going to be replaced.

44:30 – Cloth physics – Björn says a nice new solution is coming. If you listen to Strawberry’s Live Stream video you’ll hear Maxwell Graf explaining what he understands is coming. He is excited.

45:00 – VR movement of the avatar will change with the avatar replacement. No more arms passing through the body. Shape sliders are coming… but these changes are big programming deals. Sansar avatar has hundreds of bones in face.

49:00 – Björn in explaining design plans reveals his philosophy to avoid requiring hardware accessories to play in Sansar, think controllers and motion detectors for headsets. Talking about Microsoft light weight headset, prices coming down, software and hardware improving to better handle VR.

51:00 – One participant talks about their 5-year old laptop running Sansar well in desktop mode.

52:00 – Avatars changing. Björn seemed to contradict this point… so I’m not sure if the base model is or isn’t to be discarded and replaced.

53:00 – Björn has video of the coming avatars and cloth physics. Avatar putting on dress, the dress goes on like a RL dress would, over the head…

56:45 – Inventory sorting and folders are coming within 2 to 3 months.

57:00 – There is a secret code to control which instance of an experience you enter… for now that is a Linden secret. But, some hacker…

59:00 – Question asking about what is coming in scripting. Björn and Jenn are going to plan to get someone form that part of the project to speak at a future Meet Up.

1:00:00 – Will fashion and cloth physics come in separately? No. Altogether. Planning a fashion market to come online about January 2018. But, Björn will put out some videos before then to show what is coming.

1:01:30 – Animation, can animate object now? I’ll have to go back and look to see how that works. Everything that moves now is done by the Lab in Maya.

1:03:00 – Occlusion is thought to be coming in next release (2 weeks).

1:04:00 – Any new shaders? Yes, 3D something is coming in.

1:05:00 – Will people have ability to block media channels like SL? Yes. A PREFERENCE menu is coming. Björn and other Sansers think the SL UI is clunky. So, Björn is spending more time working to get a better UI.

1:08:15 – Talking about plan to get terrain and scripting people into a Product Meet Up.

1:09:00 – Volume slider… an interesting reveal of design strategy.

1:10:00 – Jenn talking about scouting places to have the meetings. Her big problem is finding places quite enough to have a discussion.

1:10:30 – Animation and pathfinding… coming in two weeks.

1:12:30 – Global illumination – As it is now an experience has to be re-baked to change it. Björn wants that changed for a number of aspects of the build, like volume of background music. I suppose something more like our SL Windlight.

1:10:30 – Script editor, the current process is way too tedious. The answer to what is coming is awaiting a meeting with a member of the scripting team in attendance.

1:14:00 – SpaceNavigator, 3D mice. Björn does know what they are. For now, he is focusing on the large use groups. So, if you are using SN, get to the form and ask for  SN support.

1:15:00 – Collaborative building coming. It is a big project. Thought is going into licensing and ownership issues of collaboratively built things.

1:16:00 – Volumetric touch, when? Not known… (Talked about earlier).

1:17:00 – Feature requests are pouring in. They say 9 of 10 are being worked on. More camera control, object manipulation, and better interactions for desktop are coming soon.

1:18:00 – In Sansar you will be able to click an avatar and buy the item they are wearing… No it doesn’t rip it off them. Your NEW whatever is delivered from the Sans-Store.

1:19:15 – Maxwell’s Sansar T-shirt… probably not legal.

1:19:48 – Better documentation… possibility of user generated… no answer. There is a forum section on documentation.

1:20:45 – Best way to reach Björn, contact Jenn… The Lindens will work something out. For now ping Björn in-world.

1:22:00 – Big bunch of T-shirts to come in in the next couple of weeks.

1:23:15 – Will there something like SL Appliers in Sansar? Also, current avatar has dead eyes… Eyes will be animated in the future. There is a Kinect thing for eyes. Belief is the next gen headsets will all have eye tracking in headset.

1:25:00 – Name tag discussion. There won’t be SL type name tags. Something more elegant. Display names? It is hard to build those, but they will have something eventually.

1:29:00 – About Sansar social… Causal Meet Ups every day… Jenn tries to make it to those. Posts in Sansar blog/forum and social media. See 1:31:30.

1:30:30 – Discord Server… the short-term solution. The Discord peeps are adding video…

1:31:30 – Where are meetups posted? On the Sansar blog (what they call a blog) and Jenn tries to get them on the social channels… Facebook, Twitter, no Plurk, and others. And there is the forum

1:34:00 – Things coming, moderator controls and secret Linden codes, the God Mode Powers. Gore and violence ratings and being published. Also, no SEX until they can control it… The Lab does not want another pedophile scandal. Seems the Lindens learn faster than the Catholic leadership.

1:35:00 – Best place for feedback… forum.

1:37:00 – Jargon discussion. Example, in SL we way in-world. The Linden Sansar people say in-Sansar. Right… One has to remember most Linden offices are in PC RL communities…

1:39:00 – Discussion on the differences between the Casual meet ups and Product meet ups.

1:40:00 – When will the information on REWARDS be published? Subscription rewards… how they may work. More information on the reward categories…

1:44:15 – Halloween… possible contest…

1:47:00 – Binary space building…

1:50:00 – Do new users not know… very annoying…

1:51:30 – Safe space…

Afraid people will try to get into a meeting and fall off into the second instance and not be able to hear the meeting… So, the Lab has not been publishing a lot of meeting promotional stuff. Waiting for better concurrency levels.

Thinking about streaming, but worried people won’t like being streamed… !?! A public meeting is to be secret…

1:54:00 – Griefing

1:57:00 – Sansar is like a new baby sister… to SL Users. At least that is how Sansar peeps see SL users. The is probably accurate for a large number of SL peeps.

1:58:00 – Sansar not set up for desktop user… that keeps people out. Discussion. The Lab is building the complex 3D interfaces first, then moving to the 2D interface. But, better desktop support is in the next release. It will continue to improve. You do not need VR to enjoy Sansar.

2:04:00 – No VR for Mac. Thanks, Apple. Apple is working on VR. Linux group is VERY small. So, not likely to see FR support for a  l o n g  time.

2:08:00 – Lindens have all left the meeting…

2:16:00 – End video

Summary

The meeting was interesting, mostly free form. I find the SL Lindens have learned how to better handle a crowd. That comes with experience.

Sansar is obviously early beta. There is still so much it needs for a comfortable experience. For instance, those drums, I pushed the audio tools in Premiere to tone them down. So, the voice is distorted, but understandable. I might have done better in Audition, may be even eliminated them. All that effort was required because users and the creator could not change the volume. The creator would have to re-bake the experience to change the volume. That, of course, will change with time.

To re-bake and publish an experience does not toss people out of the experience. They don’t see the new version popup. They remain in the old version. People just coming in arrive in the new version. So, we would have had to ‘re-log’ and may not have gotten back into the prime instance, which would mean missing the meeting.

Also, the camera controls are awkward. Once I go Freecam the arrow and WASD keys are crude. I’ve since learned I can change their speed. In the video, I was using the default speed for keys and using the mouse to move the camera. Made for a jerky video.

4 thoughts on “Sansar – What is a Product Meet Up like?

  1. Since there is no Mac viewer, it changes nothing that there is no VR for the moment. I also guess that with a 2017 Imac and a Windows bootcamp partition you should be able to get VR headset working. No?

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