Second Life – Third-Party Dev News 2017 w30

Some new news this week. Some of it BIG!

Viewers

The Maintenance RC Version Viewer updated. The update includes a couple of important crash fixes. Oz Linden is requesting third party developers include one of them as soon as possible.

This past week was a perfect storm for the Lab. A backhoe literally cut a network cable. This cut off a significant number of people, dropped connection disconnects. Of course, for them, it was WTH! They then tried to log in again. The Internet being redundant, as it is figured out a new connection path suddenly thousands of users started trying to log in.

The login servers peaked and started to lag. Low-level code in the viewer’s login process started timing out and retrying the login. The code was very aggressive and thousands of users began unknowingly hammering the login servers. The storm of logins created what was essentially a Denial of Service attack. The result was more and more people were blocked from logging in which resulted in more hammering. A Catch-22.  Continue reading

Sansar Perception – How?

Sansar™ is something people are having a problem getting their heads around. Depending on how you use the web and virtual worlds and reality, you’ll likely perceive Sansar differently. You’ll also likely run into problems understanding how others see it and why. So, we still ask, what is Sansar?

Inara has a good analysis up on her blog, SANSAR: Preview 4 And Thoughts On A Wider Reach.

She makes a good point in regard to who is posting about and making videos of their experience in Sansar. For now, it is mostly Second Life creators like Blueberry and Maxwell Graf posting and making the videos.

It is natural these people would make videos showing what they consider important and pertinent. But, they tend to use Sansar just as they use Second Life™. Also, few of these people are web developers. So, the complexities and possibilities of how Sansar will be used mostly elude them.

Consider the web. Initially, most web sites were custom made sites built from scratch. The basic technology was HTML with primitive formatting. Paraphrasing:

[Title – top level – Font: Arial – Style: Bold – Color: Red]Free Sex[end]

Next formatting was improved and simplified… well, the simplified can be debated. This was and is the era of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). 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

New Sansar Video

Jo Yardley posted about a new Sansar video released by Linden Lab: Official Sansar publicity video released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tdkW64u3YA

Well done. Makes it look interesting.

I take this as part of the promotional run up to general release this ‘Spring’.

There is a lot of chatter about Project Sansar on the web. Looking at just the past 30 days, there are pages and pages of Google search results on Sansar.

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: What’s Different? Has Linden Lab Learned Anything from Second Life?

Stephanie Condon wrote Second Life™ Lessons: What Linden Lab is doing differently with its new VR platform for ZDNet’s Between the Lines, a sort of technology meets society section of the site.

Let's party

Let’s party

Stephanie points out that Second Life (SL) was thought to be the tech revolution to take over the web, way back in 2006-2007 when an Internet in 3D was imagined. But… it didn’t happen. SL has remained profitable. It just didn’t catch on as people expected.  Continue reading