A Lab Chat meeting with Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO, was yesterdays (1/21) big event. We learned new things about Second Life™ and Project Sansar. We are starting to see reaction from a few to the new information.
Lab Chat – 2016-01-21
I am paraphrasing what I heard on the audio and I’ve shortened it. For some questions the answers were repeating what was said earlier. So, I’ve included time marks to you can easily find the actual statements in the audio stream. I have also expanded on what Ebbe says from what I believe is implied. Take that with however much salt you feel is appropriate.
Annie Gaus, a reporter for the San Francisco Business Times has written In virtual reality, Second Life prepares for its second act. Annie interviews Ebbe Altberg. Starting with Second Life as a virtual world and moving into talk about Project Sansar.
Nothing new here to those following Sansar in the SL Blogosphere. But, it is a nice article.
First, I don’t know. Second, AFAIK no one has said anything to give us a substantial clue. But, I am curious. So, when I see Massively Overpowered writing about character creation I check it out. Following is a video showing the state of character creation in Black Desert as of September 2015.
You don’t start to see the creation tool until about TM 4:00.
I can speculate that some of the adjustment tools could be similar for Project Sansar. But, I wonder about whether we will have that much control over hair and make up. We have quite an industry making hair and make up. If all that is moved to the character editor, it will definitely change the fashion industry in Sansar.
One thing I think would be great to add to the character creation tool is the ability to play animations as they do toward the end of the video. I doubt that how animations are used in Black Desert and Sansar will be similar.
Black Desert is allowed more freedom as they only dealing with a limited set of appearance parameters in that they are dealing with humanoid forms. As Bento is showing us people are far more creative. There is a desire to have wildly bizarre characters. Have you thought what Halloween 2016 will be like after Bento is completed?
SL Press has an article up about the rumor that Project Sansar will be built using the Unity3D game engine. See: Project Sansar to run on Unity3d. The title makes it sound like a fact. While they give good reasons for saying it is Unity3D, it is still a ways from a conclusive confirmation. It also is a bit misleading to my way of thinking.
PS: 9:50 AM PST: Note Pete Linden’s comment at the end.
Unity3D – June 28, 2010
The latest information I can find where Ebbe Altberg says anything about voxels is to say they are experimenting with them. Early on there was more talk about using voxels. Voxels were a big thing for High Fidelity too. But, recently we haven’t heard much about voxels from either project.
Hamlet pointed us toward the Lab Chat thread: Lab Chat Returns January 21st, 2016 with Linden Lab CEO – Ebbe Altberg. The thread is about 5 pages long as I write this, if you use the linear layout. (The setting for that is in My Settings->Preferences->Display.) There are the repeated questions everyone asks over and over, the totally uninformed ones (What is Sansar?), and some interesting new ones. I’ll look at some of the ones I find interesting.
Arctic Leopard
Several people are wanting more information on what basic beginner building tools will be like. I suspect these questions will continue until they can experience the process. Painting a word picture is likely to be too imprecise to satisfy most people.
Hamlet thinks there is a ‘massive’ controversy about whether Sansar will cannibalize Second Life. I suppose there is some controversy. I suspect nearly everyone has an opinion. I do hear people voice the fear. But, I’m not seeing the clouds of doom or marching protesters.
