Will Sansar replace Second Life ?

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

 

And Linden Lab

doesn't feel the need to charge anything

for the inventories of all the hundreds of thousands of free accounts out there.

 

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Even though I am not and have never been premium, I probably have paid more in fees to LL than most premium members.  I've owned a number of private sims over the years, even a large estate at one time, pay for uploads, marketplace fees, to say nothing of Lindex fees.  I am not alone in this.

Most residents who don't own sims or aren't creators pay fees to LL too in one form or another.  

Server space is cheap now days. It is only in SL's and therefore in LL's best interest not to charge for inventory storage. If people were charged for their inventories, you could say good bye to most members buying anything or even sticking around.  Where would SL be then?

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Vivienne was taking about "storage" as the expense. Storage is cheap compared with the resources needed to run a simulation. It's needing to run all the simulations that makes Second Life expensive, and a new platform can run them much less expensively than Second Life does because the way Second Life was originally built is very inefficient for the way the world evolved.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Eh? How come that my avi can outpace everything availabe in SL easily just by using an adequate scriptie? Speed isn´t limited by something related to the havok engine. There are no fixed "physical" speeds for avis in SL.

 Oh, can you please paste the routine you mentioned? Maybe you can prove me wrong.

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http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Voluntary_Movement_Speeds

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Basic-movement-controls/ta-p/700033

Your scriptie is just changing the value of the fixed flight speed. You can't accelerate or decelerate like a real-world vehicle does.

[Parhelion Palou]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Parhelion Palou wrote:

The vehicle was just one possibility ... the bigger issue is whether it will be possible for a user to add *anything* to an experience. If everything that can be in the experience has to be part of the experience's content when optimized off-line, then a renter couldn't decorate a house with their own things. 

I was using rez/mount because we rez things in SL but apparently in Sansar we'll mount them.

Region crossings aren't an issue in Sansar because there aren't any regions.

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Everything I've heard has been pretty clear that you'll be able to add new things like furniture, plants, etc. to

your

experience in world, only they won't show up to anyone else until the experience is "baked."

As far as renting, it shouldn't be necessary. For instance, there could be a public area and then a variety of separate experiences linked to it. The ability to link your house to the surrounding land might have to be paid for but it wouldn't be "someone else's land" you're building on.   It should be possible for someone to have complete control over their house and have it in the middle of "land" owned by someone else that they could interact with but not change. It would be similar to how The Sims 4 sets up neighborhoods.

Here's a simple example - a developer builds a city neighborhood with parks, stores, events, etc. They also build some multi-story apartment buildings. If a visitor likes the city, they could buy an "apartment" - actually a separate experience. The "tenant" would step into an "elevator" in the building in the main city and step out into their own separate place which they have complete control over. When the tenant wants to experience the city they just step back into the elevator. A "five story brownstone" could have a

thousand

apartments like this linked to it and the city owner wouldn't have any expenses related to them and they wouldn't use any of the "city's" resources. A nominal "rent" for connection rights would be all the city owner would need to turn a profit on the apartments as time went on. Meanwhile, since the apartments are small experiences for few people, the tenants and the Lab would have very low recurring expenses for the apartments themselves. If there was a disagreement between the "city" owner and the tenant the city owner could ban the resident from the "city" but the banned resident could still be able to keep the "apartment."

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Yes, you can edit your own experience, and Ebbe spoke about using a separate experience for the interior of an apartment or building. The door would load the experience so you show up inside. It's pretty much the same as having the door teleport you to a skybox and just as unsatisfactory. I haven't seen anything indicating whether you'll be able to see from one experience into another. Since doing so could affect the framerate in an unpredictable manner, my guess is LL won't do it. So now you're in a building ... and you can't see the exterior through the windows.

In the case of a house you'd be able to edit the interior but not the exterior, or you could put the entire house in your own experience and the community would be roads with a lot of portals into people's experiences. As I said earlier, why bother to connect your experience to any other in that case? Get your own experience and landscape it as you like. You could still go to the community experience when you wished. That's not a good setup for a land baron, which was what I was referring to previously.

Sansar's model doesn't work well at all for communities like Nonprofit Commons. We have two regions with parcels controlled by various nonprofits. The structures tend to be open so people walking or flying by can see in, so having each be its own experience wouldn't work. Each tenant would have to give the administrators an idea what they want their office to look like, then one of us would build it ... then they'd ask for changes, we'd make them, etc. Very inefficient.

 

 

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Parhelion Palou wrote:

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Yes, you can edit your own experience, and Ebbe spoke about using a separate experience for the interior of an apartment or building. The door would load the experience so you show up inside. It's pretty much the same as having the door teleport you to a skybox and just as unsatisfactory. I haven't seen anything indicating whether you'll be able to see from one experience into another. Since doing

so could affect the framerate in an unpredictable manner,

my guess is LL won't do it. So now you're in a building ... and you can't see the exterior through the windows.

 

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I'm basing my thinking on The Sims 4, which, according to rumors, was originally going to be an online game before the debacle of the online-only SimCity and pushback from Simmers.

In The Sims 4, you play by family. Each family has a house on their lot that is completely customizable during play for that family. That lot is surrounded by a neighborhood area that the active family can visit and interact with but not change. They can see accurate models of their neighbors' houses from their house but the furnishings in those houses are invisible, and they need to go through a loading screen to get to the full simulation of that house. If make changes to the architecture of a house, the view of it from the neighboring lots will change the same way when you play a different lot. The neighborhood looks the same from every house, but they're all separate simulations.

My 2011-vintage laptop can play a Sims 4 neighborhood smoothly but it struggles to hit 10 frames per second in a skybox in Second Life with settings barely above minimum.

In Sansar, the land baron, as in someone who is in business only because they own land, will be extinct. Full stop.

However, someone who's providing a value-added experience like Calas Galadhon or 1920's Berlin could find themselves doing quite well.

[wherorangi]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Here's a simple example - a developer builds a city neighborhood with parks, stores, events, etc. They also build some multi-story apartment buildings. If a visitor likes the city, they could buy an "apartment" - actually a separate experience. The "tenant" would step into an "elevator" in the building in the main city and step out into their own separate place which they have complete control over. When the tenant wants to experience the city they just step back into the elevator. A "five story brownstone" could have a

thousand

apartments like this linked to it and the city owner wouldn't have any expenses related to them and they wouldn't use any of the "city's" resources. A nominal "rent" for connection rights would be all the city owner would need to turn a profit on the apartments as time went on. Meanwhile, since the apartments are small experiences for few people, the tenants and the Lab would have very low recurring expenses for the apartments themselves. If there was a disagreement between the "city" owner and the tenant the city owner could ban the resident from the "city" but the banned resident could still be able to keep the "apartment."

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i can see how this can work. Is pretty good actually. I like it

what it also means is that we could after making our apartment then conceptually move the whole thing to another point in the multiverse. Seamlessly connected by portals to other experiences. In the case of a apartment complex then the portal could be made to look like a door

which then raises what you mention about how do landlords make money. And the answer is what you say. Rather than rent then we pay for access to the landlords experience. The question then of course is how many people would want to do this, to make it worthwhile for the apartment complex owner

 

 

[wherorangi]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

People think things have to be done certain ways because Second Life does them that way, but Second Life does things the way it does because it was decided that it was the best way to do it in 2003 for a "world" that in many ways is quite different from how Second Life eventually developed, even if only looking at its first few years of existence.

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no. people dont think that

what we do is relate how stuff works in SL and how that might translate to Sansar. And if stuff doesnt translate then how else might it be done

[wherorangi]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Why should you need to "rezz" and "mount" a vehicle? That's the way Second Life simulates vehicles but that's by no means the only way to do so. Why not just wear it?

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for this to work well then we would need the ability to sit on another avatar and become part of their linkset

which would be pretty cool

would also present a quite good solution to the issues with couples dances and such as well I think

 

[wherorangi]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Eh? How come that my avi can outpace everything availabe in SL easily just by using an adequate scriptie? Speed isn´t limited by something related to the havok engine. There are no fixed "physical" speeds for avis in SL.

 Oh, can you please paste the routine you mentioned? Maybe you can prove me wrong.

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http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Voluntary_Movement_Speeds

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Basic-movement-controls/ta-p/700033

Your scriptie is just changing the value of the fixed flight speed. You can't accelerate or decelerate like a real-world vehicle does.

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yes we can

we do have write our own engine tho

i would have to dig it out if you did want to see a script to do this

when I was playing on Inworldz when it started, it didnt have vehicle physics, so I modded this script I found written by a Linden way back before SL had vehicle physics as well. Basically emulates vehicle physics in LSL

I made a motorbike out of it. And then I made a simboard than could fly and go on land and water and do tricks and stuff

Balpien Hammerer did the same thing on there for flyable dragons and stuff like that. He made some car engines and boat engines as well   

[Vivienne Schell]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote

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My 2011-vintage laptop can play a Sims 4 neighborhood smoothly but it struggles to hit 10 frames per second in a skybox in Second Life with settings barely above minimum.

In Sansar, the land baron, as in someone who is in business only because they own land, will be extinct. Full stop.

However, someone who's providing a value-added experience like Calas Galadhon or 1920's Berlin could find themselves doing quite well.

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Wowsie. Out of how many polygons is your skybox made? How complex is your avi? Must be that, because with "barely above minimum" settings there should not be anything else wwithin draw distance getting rendered.

The Sims 4 was released  in 2013, so that your 2011 vintage laptop might be able to run it. But are you serious with declaring a 2013 desktop, singleplayer (online multi player Sims-versions discontinued because of commercial failure) app which isn´t and never was anywhere close to the overall complexity of the online app Second Life as a role model for Project Sansar? Oh my.

Better compare it to something like Skyrim or such, if you insist on advanced graphics. You cannot even log into that with a  2011 laptop, i guess.

Allright, if you have optimised, restricted and boiled down to the essentials content made by professional game model designers for online gaming exclusively, then you might be able to achieve a much better client performance overall. But then this environment  is not anything related to Second Life anymore.

[Amchai]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/09/a-college-is-a-community-but-cannot-be-a-home/500882/

"And I worry that some progressive college students are missing this inherent untenability by unconsciously proceeding as if there is a right to feel at home in college, but only for those with a “correct” or “enlightened” view of what home should be."

[wherorangi]

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Parhelion Palou wrote:

I've been wondering how Sansar will handle vehicles (as shown in an early video) given the optimization requirement. If you wanted to have a vehicle available but not present in-world (you click on something to mount/rez it), does that vehicle have to be part of the content that is optimized off-line for that particular world? If someone could bring in content from elsewhere and mount it, the optimization for the world might be degraded even if the new content is optimized. One vehicle may be fine for the experience, but thirty vehicles might be too many. So far I've been assuming that anything that can be rezzed/mounted in the world is already part of that world

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this leads into how avatars are outfitted

like if the experience is optimized out of line, then how are avatar outfits optimized for a particular experience, given that we (avatars) arent a property of the experience owner

which then leads to where would we be able to change outfits if they were bake optimized. Like would we have to go home to change and bake, or can we change and bake in somebody elses experience ?

 

   

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

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Wowsie. Out of how many polygons is your skybox made?

How complex is your avi? Must be that, because with "barely above minimum" settings there should not be anything else wwithin draw distance getting rendered.

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Theresa Tennyson starts giggling with cruel glee.

You tell me. It was one of yours. (And no, I wasn't wearing an Evil Mesh Body either.)

[Vivienne Schell]

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Amchai wrote:

So, assuming Sansar will not replace Second Life anytime soon - how will the problem of marketing to disparate users who cannot be reached en-masse be overcome ? Anyone can create and sell their wares, but how is it possible to develop the mass market which commercial users would require for their indivdual experiences ? Second Life has failed in this respect will Sansar follow ?

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My guess is: If you want a mass market for an app, you need to target the mass maket for computer systems. And what sells best there are mobile devices, followed by midrange desktop PC´s and game consoles. Any software which is developed for high end desktops in first place can be fairly successful in it´s niche, but not become a true mass success.

Goggled VR is not ready for mass adoption yet. It might be so in five to ten years (depending on the pace of hardware pogress in regards to performance), but for now it´s high end only. So, let´s assume that a goggle VR app establishes itself in the high end niche fairly successfully. In five years, once the average consumer drops in cause their laptops can render VR, there will be the same trouble with people who will claim "the engine is obsolete, outdated." and all this. LL has this trouble now with people claiming the same for Second Life. The competition will not stay in bed, for sure.

It might be too risky to bet on goggle VR alone. But you need the goggle VR feature desperately cause you already started with marketing it as essential part of the experience. What is left then? Something which will run on mobile (with strictly reduced graphics and bandwidth) as well as (in full resolution) on hi end computers. While mobile and midrange will be the primary market - NOT goggle VR. Basically, it will be the same as Second Life in this regards, but the difference between "low" and  "ultra" might be even much more drastic, due to bandwidth and GPU power differences. This might cause serious trouble in regards to "shared experience" and marketing, PR, media coverage and and and, because the media reports on what the media sees and if that´s seen on a mobile device, marketing a VR goggle experience (which cannot work on mobile) is pretty dangerous.

That could be a problem to deal with on the technical side. Another problem is usability. Second Life always had trouble on the mass market because of an extremely steep learning curve, due to it´s complexity. I doubt that a somewhat more efficient and better sorted user interface can solve the Second Life usabiliity problems, just because the "world" and "sandbox" model it is too complex to get simplified by the UI. But simplification could work with a different, basical, simplified VR model. It does not have to be as simple as Minecraft, but I´d expext a much more stripped down to essentials general user interface and functionality as we have in Second Life now. Which will work on mobile, too.

"What can I  do here?" is another question to deal with. I guess that´s what Linden Lab tries to adress with "experiences". Even the Minecraft sandbox has some simple default gameplay for entertainment, and expanding this idea to something more complex, but not too complex for the entertainment of Joe Doe might be an excellent idea. While the VR goggle minority could be pleased by hi end shooter "experiences" in full HD as well - just on a different "experience" level. Which might be extremely cool. But then the universal Second Life "world" idea with a universal "shared experience" must be scrapped.

My guess is that Sansar will move into the described direction, and that such a model might have a realistic chance on the market if LL does it right. But it canot be anywhere close to Second Life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Parhelion Palou]

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wherorangi wrote:

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Parhelion Palou wrote:

I've been wondering how Sansar will handle vehicles (as shown in an early video) given the optimization requirement. If you wanted to have a vehicle available but not present in-world (you click on something to mount/rez it), does that vehicle have to be part of the content that is optimized off-line for that particular world? If someone could bring in content from elsewhere and mount it, the optimization for the world might be degraded even if the new content is optimized. One vehicle may be fine for the experience, but thirty vehicles might be too many. So far I've been assuming that anything that can be rezzed/mounted in the world is already part of that world

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this leads into how avatars are outfitted

like if the experience is optimized out of line, then how are avatar outfits optimized for a particular experience, given that we (avatars) arent a property of the experience owner

which then leads to where would we be able to change outfits if they were bake optimized. Like would we have to go home to change and bake, or can we change and bake in somebody elses experience ?

 

   

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I hadn't thought about the avatars. I haven't read much from LL about avatars in Sansar either.

Perhaps the avatars (not the people behind them) will be the property of the experience owner. Say a large breakfast food company wants to put up a VR goggle experience for the children who eat the company's sugar bombs. They would never accept just any avatar into their experience. They'd have a selection of safe-for-children avatars that you'd pick from when you registered for their experience. You could use your identity across experiences, but not necessarily your appearance.

In cases where the experience owner doesn't restrict avatar appearance, Sansar's instancing capability could handle the problem of a highly complex avatar. The system detects that the avatar is dragging down the framerate so it spins up another instance of the experience and puts the avatar in it. There'd be complaints from said avatar that Sansar is keeping everyone from seeing their glorious appearance, but I've heard that's been happening in SL too.

As for changing outfits, etc. -- I'm more clueless than usual. That question can go in the bucket with things like: What will the chat system look like? Will it be possible to send messages across experiences? (If so it had better be possible to block the capability or the cereal company will be furious about the things their customers are reading.) Will there be groups? What sort of new and interesting things can be done with the new scripting system? I figure I'll find out in just a few (or several) months.

 

[Vivienne Schell]

Avatar complexity and basic 3D structures can most probably be optimised for a mobile compatible level by professional content design, without losing too much eye candy. Obviously LL works on exactly that by developing plug-ins for Maya and other widely adopted, standard pro 3D design applications. It´s targeted at professional content creators wo know what they are developing for: An online multiplayer environment and not a desktop app using unlmited resources. That´s a wise decision, but if the upcoming "experience market" really will change the SL-ignoring minds of the pro studios and freelancers to cooperate with Linden Lab no one can tell.

If it does change their minds it should not be a problem to provide the "experience" market with adequate products quickly, and if not, then it will take longer because the skilled dilettants will need some time to get things right. We´ll see.

What´s left to deal with are shaders and all the visual and functional bells and whistles, where a modular structure (from "low" experience to "ultra" goggle-experience and a wide range of pre-defined, easy to apply functionality scripts could do the job perfectly.

There are many opportunities to make Sansar a working and successful platform, once one stops with comparing it to Second Life and crying for a larger Second Life update instead of thinking big.

[wherorangi]

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Parhelion Palou wrote:

Perhaps the avatars (not the people behind them)

will

be the property of the experience owner. Say a large breakfast food company wants to put up a VR goggle experience for the children who eat the company's sugar bombs. They would never accept just any avatar into their experience. They'd have a selection of safe-for-children avatars that you'd pick from when you registered for their experience. You could use your identity across experiences, but not necessarily your appearance.

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yes I think so as well

is I think what LL mean by multiple profiles under our main account

like we can access a experience, like sugar bombs for example, under a profile that we register for on the sugar bombs website. We cant access the experience on another profile

which leads to what stuff can be worn by a profile. It most likely will be that only stuff made specifically for that experience can be worn by the profile

which raises interesting implications for people who create stuff for sale. Interesting compared to how SL for sale stuff is made and sold

 

 

[Parhelion Palou]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Avatar complexity and basic 3D structures can most probably be optimised for a mobile compatible level by professional content design, without losing too much eye candy. Obviously LL works on exactly that by developing plug-ins for Maya and other widely adopted, standard pro 3D design applications. It´s targeted at professional content creators wo know what they are developing for: An online multiplayer environment and not a desktop app using unlmited resources. That´s a wise decision, but if the upcoming "experience market" really will change the SL-ignoring minds of the pro studios and freelancers to cooperate with Linden Lab no one can tell.

If it does change their minds it should not be a problem to provide the "experience" market with adequate products quickly, and if not, then it will take longer because the skilled dilettants will need some time to get things right. We´ll see.

What´s left to deal with are shaders and all the visual and functional bells and whistles, where a modular structure (from "low" experience to "ultra" goggle-experience and a wide range of pre-defined, easy to apply functionality scripts could do the job perfectly.

There are many opportunities to make Sansar a working and successful platform, once one stops with comparing it to Second Life and crying for a larger Second Life update instead of thinking big.

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LL's stated target use is VR goggles, specifically the Rift and the Vive. They want to ride the VR hype wave and hopefully make lots of money/get big. Their graphics engine is designed to get the 90 fps that those goggles want, not to optimize anything for a smartphone. LL has been courting professional studios and developers because they'll need experiences in the marketplace to sell to companies and people to create custom experience for those companies. It's all about the VR goggle market; if it works for anything else that's a side benefit. I do believe that if Sansar is to survive LL will have to broaden their focus, but what we're getting for the initial cut of Sansar *is* something targeted at a desktop with significant resources. That's what Rift & Vive need to operate. Fortunately Sansar should work well enough for any computer that can run SL as long as they're not using goggles.

Most people here aren't crying for a larger SL update. We're trying to figure out whether Sansar can do the things we do. If not then there's no reason to waste time on it.

 

[Vivienne Schell]

Well, if my memory does not betray me, one of the first official Linden announcements on Project Sansar included development for mobile devices as well as for desktop and goggle. They may have changed their mind on this since then, but i doubt it.

I agree that they ride the goggle hype wave, but riding that does not exclude a much broader development than for the high end niche. Which is mandatory for a broader success of the platform. in my opinion.

And i really doubt that anyone can "do ALL the things they do in SL", and even if some things can be done they will be done in a very different way, so different that these things will not even feel to be the same things. Nothing LL announced so far confirms the conclusion that Sansar will be a "replacement" for SL where all things can be done which can be done in SL.

[Parhelion Palou]

LL said they would have viewers for mobile devices, but what you could see on those viewers would necessarily be a subset of what you could see on a desktop viewer. That statement doesn't mean they're planning on optimizing anything for mobile, however the fact that there is optimization to get the 90 fps should improve things for everyone.

I didn't say Sansar could or should do all the things that SL can do. I'm selfish ... I want to know if it can do the things *I* need to do in SL, or enough to do the job & perhaps add something cool. I'll check it out in open beta and see.

[Phoebe Avro]

I would not be surprised is Project Sansar it a total failure and becomes a big white elephant, it will not in any way shape or form compete with SL for a very long time if ever.

Put it this way Microsoft did not buy Minecraft for a very large sum of money for its good graphics did they, they bought it because its popular in the form it is.

[Eretz]

Avro, my preference would be to see both of them thrive. Only how would the individual user benefit from the commercial potential of both? How would limited resources capture a mass market for content creators for example ? In this way SL has many similarities - huge economy and not much scope for making anything out of one's endeavours, mainly because the market is too difficult to reach and it would cost real money if one were to try.