Daniel Voyager has an article about Project Sansar. Daniel has changed the look and feel of his blog. I thought my Feedly sent me to the wrong place… He points us to a couple of new bits out about Project Sansar®.
Nightfall Cities: Into the Wilds
Is the grass big or the mouse and book small?
Ebbe Altberg talked about Project Sansar at the 2015 Web Summit. An audience member, Janne Juntunen, got a video of a video shown at the event. There is a 30 second clip on Twitter. Continue reading
…or Project Sansar in the news. Geek Dad has posted an interview with Linden Lab CEO, Ebbe Altberg: Project Sansar: Giving Virtual Reality a Second Life. Now… isn’t that a catchy title?
Sansar Login Screen – Sept 2015
While there isn’t much new information, the author Derrick Schneider sees things differently than most. So, whether he asked different questions or just heard Ebbe’s talking points in new ways, I can’t be sure. But, I took some new thinking away from the article.
Quoting Ebbe:
“We do say that it’s [Sansar] in the spirit of [Second Life], but that’s where we stop. We don’t think of this as a 2.0. Sansar is its own thing. Some things will be similar, some will be completely different.”
…
“With Sansar, we explicitly said, the creator is king, and the creator is the customer.”
While we have repeatedly heard the creator is the primary target market for Project Sansar, how ‘creator’ is defined is likely different than we may be thinking. Ebbe gives us clear statements that ‘creators’ are not just those making 3D models with Maya or Blender. For Ebbe a person that furnishes a home is creating. While they didn’t necessarily build any of the things they bring into the home, they still built their living environment. So, to Ebbe such people are ‘creators’ too. It is this broader group of creative people that Ebbe is considering his target demographic. It is tools for them that he is building first. Continue reading
Halloween is coming. With that comes lots of events and photo contests. While no contest, Linden Lab is asking that people add Halloween images to their official Flickr page. The Lab says your image “…could be featured in an upcoming email or banner campaign.”
Halloween 2015
Inara and Ciaran are speculating on the real name the plans to use for Project Sansar. See Inara’s article and her speculations in: Possible contender for Project Sansar’s name?
Sansar Login Screen – Sept 2015
If you use a payment method other than PayPal or Skrill, the Lab is asking that you re-enter your card information. If, your card information was last entered before July 7, 2015. Continue reading
This is just a fun video showing what one person made in Blender.
I wonder about making a comparison between Blender and Project Sansar. It is obviously more technically complicated to make a yard, house, and environment in Blender than it is in Second Life™. The learning curve in SL is high but Blender has a much higher learning curve.
So, will Sansar be a Blender-like creative tool with an intuitive user interface and presets for worlds? We will have to wait to find out.
Did you notice how the facial expressions used? I expect this level of facial control in the Sansar avatars.
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
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. Continue reading
CNN Money has an article out titled: Company behind Second Life building virtual reality universe. They repeat much of what we already know. They have to catch their readers up on what they are talking about. But, there is an interesting item I found new.
inner thoughts..
Quoting:
Internally, Linden Lab employees are working on polishing the product [Sansar], 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.
I also saw in another place that the Lab is offering a VR workshop Sept. 18 at their offices.
Lindal Kidd posted about this article: FLASH! Sansar Makes the News. This is an article on Tom’s Hardware. This is a site I often visit to find out which video card or motherboard is best for a particular use. I am happy to see they took time to write about Sansar. I checked it out to see if there was anything new in the article. There was!
~ Sunburned Bridges ~
Quoting from :
Linden Lab is creating its own proprietary rendering engine to make this happen. I asked why the company took this direction rather than use existing options, and was told that the problems the company has run into over the years with Second Life made it clear that the company needed an engine designed from the ground up for this platform.
The company needed the ability to make the creator tools simple to use, a task for which the current available engines are not suitable. Project Sansar offers a whole package, including the underlying multi-user functionality, hosting, assets and tools. Additionally, Linden Lab is designing Project Sansar to be accessible through several different media.
For me this is news. Previously I think most of us thought the Lab was building on top of another game engine, Unreal, Cry, Unity… something. But, here we find out the Lab is building its own game engine. Wow. Continue reading
With Project Sansar in development at the Lab the inhabitants of Second Life™ are wondering what avatars will look like in the new world. I don’t know. But, a game just reaching its final Beta test may give a clue. It certainly shows what is possible. Check this video.
The game is Bless – Embers in the storm. An MMO. The Korean developers have been working on this game without much hype. The video shows an AWESOME character customization capability. You may have noticed it includes tattoos and even scares. You can tweak the eyelashes… (Note: Bless is just completing its 3rd closed beta and headed toward open beta. Bless news. And we have no idea when a US version will be available.) Continue reading