2020 Sansar Update

I’ve not spent much time following Sansar. I was disappointed to hear Linden Lab was laying off staff on the Sansar side. I wasn’t surprised. The VR hype is dying down and reality is setting in. This hype-to-real cycle seems to have moved slowly compared to other new tech cycles. Things are quiet.

Ebbe, Linden Lab CEO, is in this video talking about Sansar, as are other Lindens.

Jo Yardley posted about this video on her blog, which is where I found out about it.

This documentary does a good job of telling us where Sansar is. Some of the imagery from within Sansar is awesome. The chained economy is something we need in Second Life.

It looks like VR is not going to happen as the hype was claiming. It seems business adoption is driving VR, not gaming. Do you realize we are 10 years down the road from the Rift Kickstarter?

Continue reading

SL Celebs Make it to Forbes

As it happened a tech contributing reporter for Forbes, Charlie Fink, was talking with Jason Gohlston, Sansar Studio Head, and got set up for his second ever tour of Sansar. Charlie made his own video and Drax with Strawberry Singh also did a video on the HoverDerby: World Premier.

The resulting article is here: VR Action Sport Hoverderby Opens In Sansar. Including a video similar to Strawberry and Drax’s. Both Strawberry and Drax are mentioned and their Atlas Hopping events.

Congratulations Drax & Strawberry.

Sansar in the News 2017 w31

As you would expect, numerous articles are popping up about Sansar™.

What you learn from reading all that…

For VR HTC Vive or Rift are your options. Otherwise, it is a 2D PC thing. A viewer is needed.

Sansar

Sansar

2,000 people have been in the closed Beta.

At about 35-50 avatars the system instances the experience. If you have played in games with shards, you understand instancing. Drax and Maxwell were playing with instancing to see how it worked. I’m not sure they figured it out.

Drax had enough people coming into 114 Harvest, his experience, to likely have the experience instanced. Continue reading

Second Life and Sansar in the News

The Irish Times has an article by Marie Boran, Virtual reality is giving Second Life a second lease of life. (4/13) Marie was a participant in Second Life™ in 2010. In the first few words she reports the Trump-Swastikas at a Bernie Sanders meetup. That mention should clue people to the possibility of the reporting being shallow. I’ll try to push the Sansar news deeper and provide some perspective on Second Life..

The Blarneystone in Dublin, SL – 2017

Marie moves on to point out that while there is an ‘underbelly’ to SL, that is often reported on, there is also a surprising number of ‘ordinary’ folks in SL. The real world is pretty much that way… so…

Next Marie says her 2010 outfit and skin had expired… I went back and tried some of my 2008 outfits, well, we didn’t have “Outfits” in 2008. So, I had to find some stuff from then and make an outfit to see if things still worked. They did. I looked horrible. We can’t be sure what happened to Marie. I’ll take this as being another nail in ‘shallow’. But… Continue reading

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. Continue reading

Sansar in the News 2016 w45

We aren’t hearing much new about Sansar. But, Hamlet found and article by Joe Durbin published on UPLOAD, Preview: ‘Sansar’ Could Give Social VR Worlds a Second Life. I think Hamlet was responding to Dubin’s enthusiasm. I found the enthusiasm interesting.

Project Sansar: Mars landscape.

Project Sansar: Mars landscape.

Quoting Dubin:

Sanar is as hard to describe to the uninitiated as [is] Second Life. It is not a game, a film, a tech demo, or a specific social VR experience. Sansar is raw, limitless virtual potential that can truly be forged into the inter-connected digital world we’ve been dreaming about since Snow Crash.

That is my expectation of what Sansar is to be. I do believe that just as the Lab has used projects in Second Life to demonstrate its abilities so too will they have projects to show what can be done with Sansar.  Continue reading

Project Sansar – August 2016 & January 2017

Jo Yardley covers a recent Ebbe Altberg interview: Ebbe Altberg interview about SL & Sansar which is going public next January. The original is here: Episode 7, Ebbe Altberg, Virtual Reality Snowball Champion.

Jo Yardley - Interview Coverage

Jo Yardley – Interview Coverage

I found two interesting points. In the early testing they ran into problems with users getting dizzy. Recent testing shows they have eliminated that problem. I suspect as people are so different there will still be people that get dizzy or suffer simulator sickness. But, in general people will have a good experience. The author got to visit Sansar and thought very well of the experience.

The other is that there will be a group entering Sansar in August 2016, by invitation, from those that have signed up. Then Sansar will go public in January of 2017.

I suspect I’ll only make it into Sansar in January. But, that is only 5 months or so away.

Listening to the audio I found the interviewer thinks somewhat as I do that for sometime VR is going to be a bit primitive and rough around the edges. Its going to take some time for it all to come to gather.

Project Sansar: Hours to Build? Really!?!

Of all places I find Tom’s Hardware has new screen shots of Project Sansar out. See: Linden Lab Reveals First ‘Project Sansar’ Screenshots. But, apparently one image was released Friday 2/4 and another 2/10. Linden Lab CEO Tweeted out the images. May be I should pay more attention to Twitter.

I downloaded the full size image:

Project Sansar: Mars landscape.

Project Sansar: Mars landscape.

Quoting from Tom’s:

Linden Lab said building environments in Project Sansar is quick and easy, noting that, “In just a matter of hours this very realistic, multi-user Mars VR experience came to life.”

Ebbe’s comment that this was done in ‘just a few hours’ has drawn some dubious responses. Hamlet collected some of the blow back in: 3D Builders Seriously Skeptical of Project Sansar ScreenshotContinue reading