Sansar and Blockchain? – Ebbe Altberg

The site The Next Web has an article about how blockchain currency is democratizing the virtual world, VR, and real life. The Sansar Project gets into it because Ebbe Altberg is quoted. Not because Sansar will use a cryptocurrency.

First, do you know what a blockchain currency is? I barely do. Quoting:

A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized public ledger of cryptocurrency transactions. Essentially each ‘block’ is like an individual bank statement. Completed ‘blocks’ (the most recent transactions) are added in chronological order allowing market participants to keep track of the transactions without the need for central record keeping. Just as Bitcoin eliminates the need for a third party to process or store payments, and isn’t regulated by a central authority, users in any blockchain structure are responsible for validating transactions whenever one party pays another for goods or services.

That explanation isn’t all that helpful. If you think of a cryptocurrency as a paper dollar that you print but yet cannot be forged and shows who paid for it and printed it… you sort of get an idea. This is extreme free market stuff and requires a good grounding in free-market economics to make sense.

Dollars
Dollars

Blockchain currencies and other cryptocurrencies depend on complex encryption processes requiring huge amounts of computer time.  No one seems to think about how quantum computing may change the game. So, for now, these new currencies are the hot thing. Hot as in one currency project raised US$25 million in less than a minute.

I suppose it is the freedom from the control of centralized governments where politicians try to control us that makes them so valuable.

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GearVR & LEAP Motion

Here is a tutorial from Riftcat for using LEAP to simulate a Vive Controller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hgBNBvxytM Obviously, you must have Riftcat. I’ll have to unpack my LEAP and see how this works. As it is hooking into the Steam software, this may well work with Sansar. But, that is another experiment.

Sansar Did What?

They published the general development roadmap (sort of): Coming Soon to Sansar – Upcoming Releases.

A development roadmap lists those things that the developers actually plan to develop. The ‘map’ part denotes the order in which they will develop them. The Lindens did include that information. But, there isn’t much.

Sansar 2017 – Time & Space

Development Road Maps generally extend beyond the next two updates. I don’t really see that in this ‘map’. So, it is a short highway. One doesn’t go far before hitting the ‘under construction’ signs and finds the road closed.

The ‘Discovery’ update will include;

  • A searchable Atlas
  • Improved desktop-mode features, like being able to pick things up

Following Discovery will be a ‘Friends’ update, sounds like a cross between SL’s What’s Hot, Events, better Help, and people search.

Then they say… ‘more to come’. Well Duh! 

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Sansar Meetings

This week’s Product Meetups will be held on Friday 09/22/2017 at 9:30 – 10:30 am (PT) and 4:00 to 5:00 pm (PT) Location: Zen Garden The Casual Meetups are at oYo Galaxy Time Gate – 2pm – 3 pm (PT) Monday thru Friday! These meetings are hard to get into. Be early. Also, pre-cache the Experiences … Read more

Second Life to Kill OpenSim?

Hypergrid Business has an article about what Linden Lab’s® move to the cloud may mean for OpenSim grids. By knowing what may happen to OpenSim we can infer what is likely to happen to Second Life.

David Kariuki thinks moving to the cloud will allow Linden Lab to run on demand regions. Meaning if no one is in the region, the region would spin down and drop out of the servers, go offline. When someone is on the grid next door or TP’s there, the region loads into a server and spins up.

Brand New Colony (Sept. 2017)
Brand New Colony (Sept. 2017)

The result is fewer servers would be needed, a huge cost saving in hardware and electricity.

It sounds to me like this could be a performance problem. Would we have to wait while the region spins up? Or can a region load fast enough we wouldn’t notice? We don’t know.

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