Project Sansar to be Delivered by the End of the Year?

[KarenMichelle Lane]

USA Today has a teaser article about Project Sansar. Nothing new that I saw in it but the hype is starting...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2016/07/06/second-lifes-creators-make-new-vr-world/86612922/

Comments?

[Nova Convair]

I see a big bubble of hot air that will burst soon. And then we'll see what remains. I'm not even excited - just interested.

LL hopes for the VR hype. Well atm you buy very expensive hardware and a clumsy device for your head. In return you get lower quality graphics (since you need to keep the fps high), some motion sickness for free, and quite a number of aaaahhhhhssss and oooohhhssss when you watch all the demo worlds. Nice but not enough yet. Another bubble of hot air where we'll see what comes out when it bursts.

For Sansar it's too early. Way too few people have VR and that will not change that quickly. We'll know more in 2 years maybe. I go and polish by crystal ball now.

 

[BlueTrianon]

 

I'm pretty excited about it, but I don't really expect it to be open to the general public until next year.

Based on the released information I'm expecting a sort of game engine/virtual world hybrid.  If LL successfully delivers on that I'll be very happy.  

I've liked that LL has been releasing some information about Sansar over time.  There is still some information that I'd really like to have, but hopefully that gets released around the time that the creator preview starts.  I haven't applied for it because right now I'm unsure whether I have enough time or the skill set to properly take advantage of the preview.  If applications were still open in about a month I would have had a better idea.   

I already have some ideas for experiences I'd like to create.  I need more information in order to narrow down which is the most feasible and then start creating assets.

[BrownBoxStudio]

Interesting. I wonder what kind of features, environments, games, or experiences that will already be a part of Sansar. Sansar still sounds like something similar to SL and will only be as good as what is either already included, for non-creators, and the incentives to create for Sansar for creators. I hope there not just expecting that people will create Sansar for them. 

[Darrius Gothly]

I loved this phrase in the very first sentence:

---

"Second Life, the community-building online fantasy whose popularity spiked a decade ago"

---

That's probably the best outsider description of SL that I've seen in a long time.

One thing that keeps slapping me in the face though is the impenetrable firewall that LL has built in the public perception between Second Life and Sansar. In the article the author points out that VR with a 3D twist is the real target of Sansar as well as the business ventures of many other top-flight companies.

It just strikes me as counter-productive to keep insisting "Sansar is nothing like SL" all while hoping to be a leader in the upcoming "hot niche" of 3DVR. Sure, SL's peak may have been a decade ago. But I challenge anyone to find a VR-based product anywhere that still holds on to customers like SL does.

It just makes more sense to me to start off with something like "Folks, the world of VR is getting ready to make a giant leap forward and we're the vanguard force to make it happen. Please jump in the boat with us and help us take our successes into the future." (or some similar rally the troops rhetoric)

I dunno what happens in the backrooms and boardrooms at LL. Maybe the investors are so disenchanted with the way SL has turned out that they forbade whispering the name anywhere near Sansar. But if so, I'm not so sure I'd trust the "investment sense" of those investors much.

Just my thoughts ...

[Phil Deakins]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

I loved this phrase in the very first sentence:

 

 

---

"Second Life, the community-building online fantasy whose popularity spiked a decade ago"

---

That's probably the best outsider description of SL that I've seen in a long time.

---

Except that it's totally false, of course

A decade ago I was still 6 months away from joining. During the year following my joining, LL internally voiced the concern that they might not get to 30k concurrent users, because it seemed like it was taking forever to get there. So "a decade ago", it hadn't even reached 30k. It almost certainly hadn't reached 20k.

Time moved on and they reached the 30k mark. That was less than "a decade ago", but it was only 30k. As the following years unfolded, concurrency rose to regularly being in the 80ks and occasionally over 90k, although quite a number of those were bots. Nevertheless, it means that the "popularity spike" was a lot more recent than "a decade ago".

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

I loved this phrase in the very first sentence:

 

 

---

"Second Life, the community-building online fantasy whose popularity spiked a decade ago"

---

That's probably the best outsider description of SL that I've seen in a long time.

One thing that keeps slapping me in the face though is the impenetrable firewall that LL has built in the public perception between Second Life and Sansar. In the article the author points out that VR with a 3D twist is the real target of Sansar as well as the business ventures of many other top-flight companies.

It just strikes me as counter-productive to keep insisting "Sansar is nothing like SL" all while hoping to be a leader in the upcoming "hot niche" of 3DVR. Sure, SL's peak may have been a decade ago. But I challenge anyone to find a VR-based product anywhere that still holds on to customers like SL does.

It just makes more sense to me to start off with something like "Folks, the world of VR is getting ready to make a giant leap forward and we're the vanguard force to make it happen. Please jump in the boat with us and help us take our successes into the future." (or some similar rally the troops rhetoric)

I dunno what happens in the backrooms and boardrooms at LL. Maybe the investors are so disenchanted with the way SL has turned out that they forbade whispering the name anywhere near Sansar. But if so, I'm not so sure I'd trust the "investment sense" of those investors much.

Just my thoughts ...

---

When Apple introduced the iPhone, did they say it was the next generation of the Newton?

 

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

When Apple introduced the iPhone, did they say it was the next generation of the Newton? 

---

No. Nor did they say "everything you know and love about Apple products is gone. This is a fresh start and nothing we've done in the past applies." But that's what LL has done.

BTW: If you're comparing the iPhone from Newton transition to the Sansar from SL transition, that's a really poor analogy to make. Sansar so far has touted one additional feature .. Oculus Rift (or similar VR headset). What the iPhone brought to the party was a Newton, plus a Mac, plus an iPod plus a mobile phone plus plus plus.

The defining features of Sansar are .. ummm .. oh yeah, nothing you have in SL will apply.

With that in mind, let me ask you this: Did Apple say "The iPhone 6 is so revolutionary that nothing you know about iPhone 5 will be useful"?

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

When Apple introduced the iPhone, did they say it was the next generation of the Newton? 

---

No. Nor did they say "everything you know and love about Apple products is gone. This is a fresh start and nothing we've done in the past applies." But that's what LL has done.

BTW: If you're comparing the iPhone from Newton transition to the Sansar from SL transition, that's a really poor analogy to make. Sansar so far has touted one additional feature .. Oculus Rift (or similar VR headset). What the iPhone brought to the party was a Newton, plus a Mac, plus an iPod plus a mobile phone plus plus plus.

The defining features of Sansar are .. ummm .. oh yeah, nothing you have in SL will apply.

With that in mind, let me ask you this: Did Apple say "The iPhone 6 is so revolutionary that nothing you know about iPhone 5 will be useful"?

---

The only connection the iPhone had to with anything else Apple made is that it had the same brand name, which had managed to claw its way back to being overrated after the Newton-generation malaise. Whatever you want to say about Second Life, it isn't overrated in the general public's eye right now. To be honest, from a technical standpoint Second Life is such a hot, unsustainable mess that being different and incompatible will be an improvement just through random chance.

I'm sure that Linden Lab realizes that Sansar will need the minds and talents of some of the people who are currently active in Second Life, but those people are the ones who are more in love with idea of what a virtual world could be than  what Second Life is. And those people don't seem to post on this forum much.

[Darrius Gothly]

And THERE it is ... what I was waiting for. The Elitism that so typifies Project Sansar.

"If we can just get rid of the riff-raff, this would be such a better place..."

What's odd about this sentiment is it's always the "other guy" (or gal or furry or dragon or mutant or .. whathaveyou) that is the problem. Completely ignoring the fact that it is the sheer depth of diversity that makes the world of Second Life an exciting interesting place.

When I go to the forest and stare off into the thickest copse of trees, I don't marvel at the uniformity of the leaves, wonder how they managed to grow all the trunks in such perfectly aligned rows, or even contemplate the delightful arrangement of the same shade of green everywhere. I stand aghast and in awe at the range of colors, the random scattering of Nature's most imaginative artistry and how it absolutely pins my eyes and my mind to the edges of reality.

Sure, a uniform brick wall has its points of interest .. for about 10 seconds. But then I'm off to the rolling hills of green grass, the way the clouds punctuate the sky with never-ending shapes of all kinds .. and the beauty of imagination as realized by every single soul that has wandered that way.

If Linden Lab wants Sansar to be the expressive, emotive, imaginative star of the next wave in VR ... they need to start by throwing open the gates and letting ALL forms of imagination in. To do otherwise will mean a uniform, vanilla puree blah landscape with all the interest quotient of another stretch of asphalt reaching into infinity.

[Phil Deakins]

From what I've gathered so far, and it may be completely wrong, but that doesn't really apply to Sansar. As far as I know, Sansar is going to be multiple worlds, each created by different people, and those people would be the management equivalent in their own worlds that LL is now with the SL world. Perhaps it's some of those people who need to allow users to create stuff in their own worlds, and not LL. Sansar itself will merely be the facilitator (host) for those worlds. Or have I got completely wrong?

[Darrius Gothly]

Based on what I've seen and read so far .. it seems the population of those "invited" into creating for Sansar has been limited to a very specific subset of Creators that meet certain quality standards. As someone who is very artistically challenged (the stuff I make looks like .. umm ... ugly stuff) this smacks of artificially filtering out those that don't match the personal likes and dislikes of an unknown and invisible Elite.

I've seen some absolutely horrid builds. And I've seen some absolutely horrible looking scenes that were designed with the ultimate in artistry and skill. I can look beneath that outside layer and, even though it may not appeal to my tastes, appreciate the effort and heart poured into the work. What I might call trash, others may find the most beautiful work ever seen.

To my way of thinking, that's where SL gets one of its most resilient appeals: catering to every like and every dislike all at once. Like a giant bowl of stew. Some may push aside the peas and carrots and eat only the meat. Others may eschew the meat and potatoes and gorge on the veggies.

But if you take any of those ingredients out to cater to one taste or another, it stops being a hearty stew and starts being something else. Something that caters to a subset of the whole and can never garner the interest or devotion of the whole.

[Rhonda Huntress]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

If Linden Lab wants Sansar to be the expressive, emotive, imaginative star of the next wave in VR ... they need to start by throwing open the gates and letting ALL forms of imagination in. To do otherwise will mean a uniform, vanilla puree blah landscape with all the interest quotient of another stretch of asphalt reaching into infinity.

---

I hate to be the devil's advocate but apply that same thinking to music.  While the depth you get from being expressive, emotive and imaginative yields better music, bubblegum pop sells more records..

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Rhonda Huntress wrote:

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

If Linden Lab wants Sansar to be the expressive, emotive, imaginative star of the next wave in VR ... they need to start by throwing open the gates and letting ALL forms of imagination in. To do otherwise will mean a uniform, vanilla puree blah landscape with all the interest quotient of another stretch of asphalt reaching into infinity.

---

I hate to be the devil's advocate but apply that same thinking to music.  While the depth you get from being expressive, emotive and imaginative yields better music, bubblegum pop sells more records..

---

No argument from me there. It also becomes the "thing" for about 10 seconds .. then vanishes. It's the age-old long vs. short term view of business (and life in general). If a business is designed and built around the short-term lifetime expectancy then it should be no surprise to investors when they don't get any return on their investment. It should also be no surprise to users when they spend money, time and effort only to watch it vanish in a week or two as the company uses up its full allotment of 10 seconds then disappears.

SL is a living .. STILL living thing. It doesn't have the Zam-POW of some phenom startups, nor does it spend a lot of its blood staying barely ahead of the Grim Reaper either. It's a steady income vehicle, and as Ebbe was quoted in the article cited in the OP .. it is still profitable.

It just seems counterproductive to throw away one of the fundamental assets of a decade-plus old venture to chase an income stream guaranteed to vanish in less than a year. When I think about any sort of business venture, I look for ways to include the Zam-POW without sacrificing the "doing it for 20 years straight" reliability.

PS: Anyone know the current sales of .. for example .. The Beatles White Album? Elvis Presley's estate worth .. or even Michael Jackson's?

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

If Linden Lab wants Sansar to be the expressive, emotive, imaginative star of the next wave in VR ... they need to start by throwing open the gates and letting ALL forms of imagination in. To do otherwise will mean a uniform, vanilla puree blah landscape with all the interest quotient of another stretch of asphalt reaching into infinity.

---

How wide can the gates be opened if they have to be compatible with things that are over a decade old?

Most of my creativity in Second Life is in making avatars, most of whom are the "extended family" of this account. Over time some of them have looked different as I changed aspects of them, not for the sake of changing but because the changes let me get them closer to the basic conception I had of them. Which, shockingly enough, didn't feature glitch pants and crotch flaps.

There are still people in Second Life who refuse to wear mesh clothing because they're enamored with a list of numbers in a shape file. If I'd been that stubborn I'd have a family that looked like a museum exhibit.

[Phil Deakins]

I'm going off on a a tangent here but you mentioned something that Ebbe said, and I remembered something else that he, or someone at LL, said, that doesn't seem to be quite what was claimed.

He said that they are going to produce the next generation of 3D worlds and, if they don't do it, someone else will. That was great, and I supported the idea whole-heartedly. It sounded like an SL2. But it doesn't now sound like it's going to happen. It now sounds like Sansar is a host (more than just a host, of course) for multiple user-created worlds, probably not altogether unlike SL itself. And, to me, that doesn't sound like "the next generation". It only sounds like the next generation, or the next step on, as far as LL is concerned.

Back when it was announced, I really looked forward to it. Now I don't. I couldn't care one way or the other.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

If Linden Lab wants Sansar to be the expressive, emotive, imaginative star of the next wave in VR ... they need to start by throwing open the gates and letting ALL forms of imagination in. To do otherwise will mean a uniform, vanilla puree blah landscape with all the interest quotient of another stretch of asphalt reaching into infinity.

---

How wide can the gates be opened if they have to be compatible with things that are over a decade old?

---

Hmm .. last I checked, I can still buy shoes that fit my feet and the feet of many others. Seems to me they're a pretty old concept too.

I can still open TXT files in Windows 10 or Ubuntu or on a smartphone.

Does it take some extra thought and some extra work? Absolutely Yes. But it also yields a much larger audience that is comfortable moving to the next "New Thing" than what can be achieved by allowing only "New Stuff" and expressly disincluding everything "Old".

IMO: The rush to New all too often results in throwing away the lessons of the past in favor of re-inventing everything. It is quite possible, though not always easy, to bring the customer base with you. I believe rather strongly that discarding the past will always yield a subset of the possible base and never outgrow the predeccesor's boundaries.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

... looked like a museum exhibit.

---

*blows the dust off his shoulders*

HEY! What's wrong with this stuff? It fit me 5 years ago and by golly it STILL fits. LOL (which btw is when I last changed clothes)

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

If Linden Lab wants Sansar to be the expressive, emotive, imaginative star of the next wave in VR ... they need to start by throwing open the gates and letting ALL forms of imagination in. To do otherwise will mean a uniform, vanilla puree blah landscape with all the interest quotient of another stretch of asphalt reaching into infinity.

---

How wide can the gates be opened if they have to be compatible with things that are over a decade old?

---

Hmm .. last I checked, I can still buy shoes that fit my feet and the feet of many others. Seems to me they're a pretty old concept too.

I can still open TXT files in Windows 10 or Ubuntu or on a smartphone.

Does it take some extra thought and some extra work? Absolutely Yes. But it also yields a much larger audience that is comfortable moving to the next "New Thing" than what can be achieved by allowing only "New Stuff" and expressly disincluding everything "Old".

IMO: The rush to New all too often results in throwing away the lessons of the past in favor of re-inventing everything. It is quite possible, though not always easy, to bring the customer base with you. I believe rather strongly that discarding the past will always yield a subset of the possible base and never outgrow the predeccesor's boundaries.

---

Can they open WordStar files? One of the reasons to go in a new direction is to use more commonly used formats instead of Second Life's proprietary ones. There's a reason that sculpted prims are only used in Second Life and its clones.

 

 

One of my favorite SL stores has this motto - "Because you are not your f-----g prims!" The people who made those prims are who made Second Life what it is. If there's going to be a follow-up or even a continuation of Second Life it'll be those people, and new ones, who do it.

 

 

[Parhelion Palou]

That article was definitely nothing new. I'm surprised LL hasn't come up with anything better than the Mars and Egyptian experiences.

Some comments:

Don't think of Sansar as much like SL. It will be a virtual world hosting service for individuals and corporations. I'm sure LL would love to have companies using Sansar to create VR experiences ... though I suspect most will be done as advertising for fast food places and such. Per LL, you don't have to use VR to take part in Sansar experiences. The high hardware requirements are due to the Rift & the Vive. Don't use VR and odds are most machines that run SL could run Sansar.

The creators in the Sansar alpha haven't been creating Sansar; they've been creating things for LL to use to test the graphics engine. Some might offer what they've done on the Marketplace, but there's plenty of time once the public beta starts for others to create better things. After all, what was built in alpha wasn't done with all the features in place. Better yet, if companies do use Sansar to create their own worlds, there will be a nice market for groups of creators (mesh builders, scripters, etc.) to do the work for them.

From what I've read so far, things that won't be in Sansar are mainland, parcels, land barons, perhaps not even communities as we know them in SL. Experiences aren't modified on the fly ... someone edits the experience, it gets optimized, then it gets published. In SL people can rent land or rent a home and decorate it inside & out. Someone asked in Ebbe's talk at SL13B how it would work in Sansar -- in Sansar they won't be able to modify the outside (if it's part of a larger experience). Ebbe's suggestion for modifying the inside would be to have the renter transfer to their own experience that would contain the inside of the home. Sort of like teleporting when you enter the door. You'd definitely have privacy though.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Can they open WordStar files? One of the reasons to go in a new direction is to use more commonly used formats instead of Second Life's proprietary ones. There's a

reason

that sculpted prims are only used in Second Life and its clones.

One of my favorite SL stores has this motto - "

Because you are not your f-----g prims!

" The

people who made

those prims are who made Second Life what it is. If there's going to be a follow-up or even a continuation of Second Life it'll be those people, and new ones, who do it. 

---

Yes, actually I can open WordStar files. It does require an extra downloadable translator, but it can be done. But more to the point is that LL is throwing away not just old file formats, but old and very valuable imaginations, creations and customers.

Tomorrow you wake up and discover that your entire closet is empty, all of your clothes are gone and you must purchase all new clothes in order to dress and go outside. Just how likely are you to suffer that indignity with happiness? I'd bet, not very likely. Considering the years you've put into crafting a certain look, your "style" and your private selection of comfy stuff .. you'd more than likely stay at home naked and happy.

I get the idea of moving forward. I celebrate growth and progress. I live and have great passion for an industry that thrives on new stuff. But I see no logic in throwing away everything "old" just to provide something "new". It unneccesarily raises the barriers to adoption by customers. Sure, you attract a new flock that won't be upset at losing a month or two worth of inventory. But what about the 100's of thousands that have years worth?

New and shiny is kewl .. I get that. But that does not mean that old and well-understood, well-used and well-loved are automatically worthless. In my particular case, I have many years worth of LSL code that might or might not be applicable to Sansar.

But if it means I have to start over from scratch, discard every hour I spent writing and debugging all that code? Yeah, I'm gonna stay right here on SL and let the "kids" go spend their $25 on Sansar before they lose interest and go find the next "Neat new thing".

[Gavin Hird]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

It just strikes me as counter-productive to keep insisting "Sansar is nothing like SL"

---

There are probalby very good leagal reasons for calling it "nothing like SL". They don't want it to be an upgrade with all the implications that has on continuing the user base (that LL really don't like), portability of content, minimum age of entry and what have you. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

---

Tomorrow you wake up and discover that your entire closet is empty, all of your clothes are gone and you must purchase all new clothes in order to dress and go outside. Just how likely are you to suffer that indignity with happiness? I'd bet, not very likely. Considering the years you've put into crafting a certain look, your "style" and your private selection of comfy stuff .. you'd more than likely stay at home naked and happy.

---

I came to Second Life from the Sims. I had a huge (for the Sims 1) neighborhood with many families and numerous expansion packs (which I paid for, mind you), and then The Sims 2 came out which was completely incompatible and extremely stripped down compared to where The Sims 1 was at release for The Sims 2 and required an entirely different approach to play.

However, I quickly discovered that the engine of The Sims 2 allowed me to go much deeper into story telling so I re-created my town from scratch using the same characters and eventually had a town spread with hundreds of residents spread over several sub-neighborhoods.

Because it wasn't the stuff i had, it was the ideas I had.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Gavin Hird wrote:

---

Darrius Gothly wrote: 

It just strikes me as counter-productive to keep insisting "Sansar is nothing like SL"

---

There are probalby very good leagal reasons for calling it "nothing like SL". They don't want it to be an upgrade with all the implications that has on continuing the user base (that LL really don't like), portability of content, minimum age of entry and what have you. 

---

Calling it the next generation of SL, or even "SL v2", implies no legal liability whatsoever. If that were the case Apple would have never released the iPhone 2.

[Gavin Hird]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

---

Gavin Hird wrote:

---

Darrius Gothly wrote: 

It just strikes me as counter-productive to keep insisting "Sansar is nothing like SL"

---

There are probalby very good leagal reasons for calling it "nothing like SL". They don't want it to be an upgrade with all the implications that has on continuing the user base (that LL really don't like), portability of content, minimum age of entry and what have you. 

---

Calling it the next generation of SL, or even "SL v2", implies no legal liability whatsoever. If that were the case Apple would have never released the iPhone 2.

---

Oh, it absolutely does.  For the content developers there is a huge difference. My content is only licenced for use in "the service" SecondLife, and not in Sansar. 

From a consumer legislations standpoint it also does. If it is a completely new product, they can reset the terms as they are not remotely related (except provided by the same legal entity.) This includes who can be a customer or not.  

For an upgrade, you drag with you all the legalese from the previous version, which in the example of Apple is exactly what they want – extend the terms from a version 1 to a version 2 of the phone.