What was the name of the "New" virtual world from Linden Labs, that "split off"? What happened to it?

[Chase01]

VR is still in its infancy and more of a novelty at this point. So its not a shocker Sansar wasn't going to do well. I'm all about the silver lining but in business terms, it was a failure. I am glad someone was dumb enough to buy it and LL was able to recovery some of the money they wasted on it.

[Coffee Pancake]

39 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

That's why we still have these 'great' features after 19 years in the business? :
- Group chat:  Please on Discord, ours is as good as broken beyond repair.

Not having a functioning modern chat system for social groups is pretty unforgivable.

I don't care if whatever we have uses land groups, or works anything like group chat does now.

39 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

- Building tools: Please on Blender and a good paint program, ours is never updated since the stone age of SL.

Industry standard tooling is win for the platform, this could be a LOT better though. It should be seamless and not a convoluted maze of special tricks and gotchas.

If you wanted to write a letter on your PC, would you use the built in notepad or a word processor.

In world building tools does need some love. It's not helped by the build floater in the viewer being one of the most complicated and fragile its of UI code we have. I can't help wonder how many good ideas have died at the realization that it would mean reworking parts this floater.

39 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

- Friends requests: Please use E-mail or Discord first to be sure that both are online otherwise it fails.

Again .. tent pole social feature that just doesn't work as it should.

SL should be doing what other social platforms have done for years. Friend requests are sent regardless of online presence and then sit in a pending queue for the target user to approve, reject or just ignore forever.

39 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

- Dress up an avatar: Please follow classes, beg on the forums for information, use hours of your time. Each and every creator does what he/she thinks is best.

Lack of official documented workflows and best practices lead to a huge amount of hidden specialist knowledge, that not everyone who makes clothing has discovered the hard way yet.

If this was any other content creation platform, there would be guides and systems designed and documented explicitly showing how to create and deploy all of the required content types.

39 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

- Bellisseria: Please refrain from rezzing anything because otherwise the sims lag out till goes no more. Look at the beautiful themes, don't try to live in them. At least not with the official browser (Catznip does a lot better).

I would really like to see an official feature that allowed parcel owners to designate objects rezzed on their land as either structural, exterior or interior.

The viewer could then maintain separate draw distances for different designations of object and only render interior objects when the avatar was contained within the same bounding box as a surrounding structural object. Etc etc etcetcetcee...

Likewise, being able to flag objects rezzed on your land as adult or not would be great for people who really don't want to see such content.

These flags need to be part of an objects properties  but always editable by the user or land owner. Context can be literally anything in SL and if you want to live in a giant repurposed shoe, marking it as structural is your call and should override the creators.

39 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

So somehow we did not benefit from Sansar at all except maybe:
- Tillia: charges more than in the past for everything.
- Sales taxes no longer included for US citizens. Pay up like the Europeans do.

"We don't understand SL, but we do understand money. Lets get the money part squeaky perfect."

39 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

And to look a the bright side, we got:
- More land impact on a parcel and sim
- light settings change every parcel border one crosses
- 35 shades of water and skies.

Don't color me impressed about what we as long term users got out of it during the last decade.
SL isn't exactly cheap for us users, the progress made is poor considering the money that they rake in.

Agreed 100%

Compare SL to a subscription MMO. We're far more expensive, we don't get a fraction of the reinvestment from the operators and we have to make almost all of our own content and fun.

SL might not technically be "a game", but as it impacts everything we do in SL, if LL treated it as one we would be doing a lot better.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Lucia Nightfire]

5 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Just for a moment try to imagine where SL could stand at the moment if all those effords would have been put in the repairs and further enhancement of the usability of our beloved world. 
Kind of makes me sad.
We as consumers payed and are probably still paying to recoup from the losses from the Sansar project and got nothing more out of it than 35 shades of water and skies, and a 360 degrees picture possibility.

🤐

Even if LL never spent that capital, development would not have been any different in SL.

The same slow as mud development and disconnect from management over what this platform needs to attract/maintain new users will never change until the dinosaurs in charge go extinct (retire) and staff in tune with industry standards and use case are hired in their place.

Every user group showcases that we have entirely the wrong people making decisions.

[Coffee Pancake]

32 minutes ago, Chase01 said:

VR is still in its infancy and more of a novelty at this point. So its not a shocker Sansar wasn't going to do well. I'm all about the silver lining but in business terms, it was a failure. I am glad someone was dumb enough to buy it and LL was able to recovery some of the money they wasted on it.

It's really not though, VR as a technology has been plodding along for decades at this point.

There is nothing new in this space, just more iterative refinement of systems as imagined in the 1960s.

https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html

 

The goggles are higher resolution, the frame rates are better, the motion tracking improves, the virtual environments get richer and more polished, we're not strapping actual CRTs to our heads anymore .. but iteration isn't innovation. The technology is and always has been dependent on strapping a screen(s) to your face and hoping you're not in a room with jerks while you fend off motion sickness. At least you don't have to be in a science lab anymore .. yaaay progress.

 

It we ever get a tech that beams the images into our heads without a fancy array of screens and optics, that will likely be called something else, just so industry can start fresh with a new buzzword.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

16 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Who was this?

Like Pioneer DJ.

[Chase01]

6 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

It's really not though, VR as a technology has been plodding along for decades at this point.

There is nothing new in this space, just more iterative refinement of systems as imagined in the 1960s.

https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html

 

The goggles are higher resolution, the frame rates are better, the motion tracking improves, the virtual environments get richer and more polished, we're not strapping actual CRTs to our heads anymore .. but iteration isn't innovation. The technology is and always has been dependent on strapping a screen(s) to your face and hoping you're not in a room with jerks while you fend off motion sickness. At least you don't have to be in a science lab anymore .. yaaay progress.

 

It we ever get a tech that beams the images into our heads without a fancy array of screens and optics, that will likely be called something else, just so industry can start fresh with a new buzzword.

I am well aware of the VR tech backstory. The tech behind it has been improving, but when I say it is a novelty, what I mean is that most people have never even tried VR in any capacity. It is far from mass usage. Maybe in 5-10 years that will be a very different story.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Chase01 said:

I am well aware of the VR tech backstory. The tech behind it has been improving, but when I say it is a novelty, what I mean is that most people have never even tried VR in any capacity. It is far from mass usage. Maybe in 5-10 years that will be a very different story.

Not having tried VR has more to do with not wanting to try VR.

It's not gained mass market appeal because the techno-danglies are perfectly perfect, it's that most people take one look at it and decide on the spot .. nope ! The rest who do buy in to try, are more likely to use it once, feel ill, and then never touch it again (and of course lament the cost and disappointment to anyone who will listen).

The second hand market is flooded with nearly new mint in the box setups that their owners have barely used.

My son picked up a used once Quest2 setup for the price of shipping, used it a few times and found it to be an intensive and stomach turning experience. He's had great fun .. and goes months between dusting it off and having another go.

It's a dead end technology that's coming to the end of it's hype cycle

[Luna Bliss]

11 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

It's a dead end technology that's coming to the end of it's hype cycle

 

[Sid Nagy]

It is the same as with 3D movies and hologram technology. Very interesting in itself, but the world does not seem to be waiting for it.

[Coffee Pancake]

25 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

It is the same as with 3D movies and hologram technology. Very interesting in itself, but the world does not seem to be waiting for it.

I very much enjoyed the home 3D movie experience, far better than the cinema one that's for sure which just felt like wearing sunglasses in a dark room.

But still .. no one wanted to have to wear any kind of glasses to watch a movie at home, even the super light polarized kind. 

Even tricks to let the the screen display 2 outputs at the same time so you could watch TV while your kids gamed didn't take off.

[Chase01]

50 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Not having tried VR has more to do with not wanting to try VR.

It's not gained mass market appeal because the techno-danglies are perfectly perfect, it's that most people take one look at it and decide on the spot .. nope ! The rest who do buy in to try, are more likely to use it once, feel ill, and then never touch it again (and of course lament the cost and disappointment to anyone who will listen).

The second hand market is flooded with nearly new mint in the box setups that their owners have barely used.

My son picked up a used once Quest2 setup for the price of shipping, used it a few times and found it to be an intensive and stomach turning experience. He's had great fun .. and goes months between dusting it off and having another go.

It's a dead end technology that's coming to the end of it's hype cycle

Not sure if you agree or disagree with me ...

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

If we ever get a tech that beams the images into our heads without a fancy array of screens and optics

There have been some interesting breakthroughs in regards to the optics side of the equation in recent years.  A few years ago a team of researchers developed a new type of lens which is capable of "replacing bulky curved lenses with a simple, flat surface that uses nanostructures to focus light" (A metalens for virtual and augmented reality). 

I haven't seen them used in VR headsets yet, but I believe they're using the same lenses in the production of these AR contact lenses Mojo Vision unveils latest augmented reality contact lens prototype.

Virtual Reality is a nice place to visit, but due to it's isolating nature it will never be more than entertainment, Augmented Reality on the other hand has far broader potential uses and, in my opinion, will eventually absorb the VR market as AR tech advances and becomes capable of providing a "full view" experience.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Fluffy Sharkfin

[Coffee Pancake]

4 minutes ago, Chase01 said:

Not sure if you agree or disagree with me ...

My point is it's not going to get mass market support. The minority who have it and are willing to deal with the shortcomings and sickness are sold and having fun. Everyone else is either once bitten twice shy or just nope!

There are no killer apps, no must have applications that make it mandatory, and no obvious ways it offers a more compelling user experience outside of niche toys.

VR proponents are left clinging to future iterations magically fixing things when that has never been a driver of technology adoption. We all got into home computers back when home computers we're objectively terrible, swearing at alexa to turn off the lights, 3d printers that made little blobby boats and little else, garbage quality mp3 music, pirated movies in real player format, gameboys, vga digital cameras and so on.

If a technology is worth having, garbage tier is all it takes for mass adoption.

[Chase01]

Ok, so ease up on that quote button. I promise its safe to do so.

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Not having tried VR has more to do with not wanting to try VR.

In some cases, it's more not being able to afford VR than not wanting it.

[StarlanderGoods]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

 

There are no killer apps, no must have applications that make it mandatory, and no obvious ways it offers a more compelling user experience outside of niche toys.

 

Come on, have you played SuperHot  ? AudioShield?

Im half joking, because those 2 are really fun, and Ive put a lot of time on them, but I have bounced off of most other VR capital G games (as oposed to tech demos, wich is 90% of VR titles)