A new interview. No new information. Found on Plurk.
Ebbe Altberg
Lab Chat #3 Bits
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.
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.
Ebbe Altberg at Collision Conference
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
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.
Ebbe on VR
Bloomberg Business talked about Virtual Reality (VR) a few days ago. In the show was a few minutes with Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO. The discussion of VR starts about 10:30m in.
My take away is that gaming adoption of VR is going to be slow. Mostly because of cost. Other uses of VR are likely to lead the adoption race. Medical and military use seem to be the leading fields for VR adoption.
In other news, the Oculus Rift is already behind the tech curve. Seems Sony is adding features to their Playstation implementation of the headset that Oculus don’t yet support. Wouldn’t that be an upset?
Also, Unreal has added in world modeling. You can build your game/world inside the world. Very Second-Life-ish. So, does that put them ahead of Linden Lab? I doubt it. I still give the edge to the Lab based on their experience with virtual worlds and economies.
Ebbe’s Speech Shaking Things
Linden Lab’s CEO Ebbe Altberg spoke at VWBPE 2016, Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education. There are some interesting points made in the speech. Some are changes and others are just making it more clear what the Lab is planning with Project Sansar®.
For about 12 minutes Ebbe was talking about Second Life™ and Project Sansar. Then the question and Answer part starts. The moderators were doing an excellent job of focusing questions. That got lots of ground covered.
I’ve done my summary style index. Paraphrasing. And I’ve added links into the video for those things I think have impact.
The most impactful thing I took away from this Q&A is how often Ebbe implies and says Project Sansar and the final resulting product will not be a replacement for Second Life. He provides way more information on why not. If you’re an educator, you may well be keeping your projects in SL with… I’ll say… links to very focused experiences in Sansar.