Tag Archives: Ebbe Altberg

Sansar and Blockchain? – Ebbe Altberg

by

0

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. Continue reading →

Linden Lab pours MILLIONS into Second Life

by

1

Ebbe Linden has posted in the SL Forum. The post is titled Celebrating 14 Years of SL with Investments in Its Future. In it, he says they have budgeted US$ Millions for the coming year, which is awesome.

Cerridwens Cauldron_007

Cerridwens Cauldron_007 (URL)

He tells us about some of the coming changes to Second Life. Some we know about, others are new news.

One change is moving SL to the cloud. I have heard no details. So, exactly what this means is currently speculation. My speculation is this should significantly drop the cost of running the system. I imagine an empty region could be spun down and then only spun up as needed. Would this reduce land cost? It might.  Continue reading →

Second Life and Sansar in the News

by

2

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 →

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Second Life – Sansar – VR – Hy-Fy – Liberals

by

9

Hamlet has an article about an article written by Rowland Manthorpe… respectively named; Gods & Devils: Wired UK’s Rowland Manthorpe on What He Learned by Writing About Sansar, High Fidelity… and Palmer Luckey’s Trump Support and Second Life was just the beginning. Philip Rosedale is back and he’s delving into VR.

La vie en rose

La vie en rose

The Rowland article is worth your time to read. It is interesting in several ways. If you are a post-Rosedale (SL founder) SL’er then you’ll get some idea of Second Life’s history and what Rosedale was doing and hopping to build.  Continue reading →

Lab Chat #3 Bits

by

1

Inara Pey has written a well done summary of the Lab Chat #3 meeting. See it here: Lab Chat #3 in 10-ish minutes. Inara touches on all the questions asked and answered.

While most of the initial questions and answers have to do with Project Bento there are plenty of general Second Life™ questions and answers in the middle. Discussion then moves to Sansar. I’ve touched on just a few of the interesting points I think needed more information and context.

Pirate Town

Pirate Town

In regard to adding photography tools to the Linden Viewer similar to Firestorm’s Photo Tools, the Linden answer is a bit of spin. But, very much in line with their policy of not commenting on coming features until just before release. Continue reading →

Ebbe Altberg at Collision Conference

by

0

This is an audio of Ebbe’s speech, with some still pictures, on VR at the conference and 11 minutes in some video. The TL:DR is VR is going to be BIG. By 2025 it should be generating US$80 billion. 15 minutes.

This is a good speech for those that have no idea what VR is or how it will be used. For those of us in SL and those that have followed Ebbe’s interviews, we already know pretty much everything said.

Ebbe does use a chart of the number of photos being taken from 1930 to today. With the introduction of cameras into phones the number has exploded. Thus turning the graph into a hockey stick. They expect use of VR to create the same up-turn in use of 3D media.

Ebbe reveals they have been working with the Sorbonne University, Insight Digital, and the Department of Antiquities of Egypt. They made a model of an Egyption tomb with 50 million polygons. The Lab reduced that to 40,000 polygons and made a usable VR experience of the tomb. You’ll see a glimpse in the video section.

About 11 minutes in we see what I think is the first video clicps from within Project Sansar.

Second Life: Drax & Ebbe Interview

by

0

The Drax Files Radio Hour w/Jo Yardley is covering SVVR 2016 (Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference and Expo). Their first part of the coverage is out: show #114. (28 minutes audio) Check out the pictures there.

The new stuff is:

Currently still 100% Maya for creation

  • By opening they will support Blender and other modeling programs.
  • More details on in-world building
  • Edit mode is currently a single person environment
  • Multi-user collaborative building is being – will be added
  • Long discussion on what is creation
  • Discussion on business-friendship relation between Philip Rosedale and Ebbe Altberg.
  • More on identity and anonymity
  • Targeting/tracking only for how Sansar is used, not marketing
  • More detail on financial model
  • This fall avatars and clothes will be very limited Avatar 1.0 then by 2017 Avatar 5.0

Lots to learn. Drax asked the questions to pull more details from Ebbe. Worth the 30 minutes to hear.