As many know already Ebbe Linden CEO of Linden Lab spoke this week at the 9th Annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference 2016 talking about and answering questions on Project Sansar. Here are the latest updates that you need to know about including beta testing and building etc.
VR Headset
Recently Linden Lab have been playing a lot with the new VR hardware and trying to integrate it with Project Sansar. Linden Lab are working on integrating HTV Vive with Sansar with the addition of Steam VR at some point in the near future.
Cross Platforms
The good news is that Project Sansar is being built for Windows PCs, Oculus and Vive HMD which sounds great. The lab is working on Project Sansar for Android and IOS devices. I can’t wait for the launch of Project Sansar for Android. There will be a streaming solution for Project Sansar which is being worked on by third parties. Apparently a Mac viewer is being looked at currently and it could be launched at some point in the future.
Possible Exchange System
A few things I learnt is that Project Sansar will be for an age range of 13+ along with content ratings and that the Linden Dollar will probably not be used in Project Sansar. Ebbe Linden did mention that there will be an exchange system so you can transfer Linden Dollars to the Sansar currency (still early days yet).
Building in Sansar
In Project Sansar there will be many interesting building tools in Project Sansar and Linden Lab will support 3rd party tools. So that means you can use Maya or Blender to build stuff and import it. Ebbe Linden mentioned that there will be tools within Project Sansar including layout, terrain, object manipulation tools and more. Over time the lab will work on creation tools so you can build within Project Sansar.
Ebbe Linden said that Project Sansar will be nowhere near as feature rich as Second Life is now, many of things you depend on in Second Life will not be available at the beginning. Ebbe Linden mentions that when Project Sansar goes public many people will leave Second Life to have a look around however to find out they can not do the things they do in Second Life.
Ebbe has already experienced 360 video in Project Sansar and he has already used hand controllers to rearrange objects in Project Sansar. Project Sansar uses the baking progress meaning that you have to publish what you have built. This will allow the system to optimize lighting and performance better.
There will be no skill based gaming in Project Sansar at first but this may change in the near future due to it being very costly and requires a lot of time..
Beta Testing
Firstly you will need Maya to work in Project Sansar, you will need be experienced in building etc and willing to give feedback to help test Project Sansar. It’s worth mentioning people who just want to snoop around is not what they are looking for. It’s better to wait until the opening planned for Q4 2016.
In May or June 2016 the lab will open up Beta access for Project Sansar to a set of creators. Linden Lab are very focused on creators for the rest of the year. From July until the end of the year the lab will invite more and more users to join.
The lab will start accepting applications from people who want to get involved in beta testing through an online signup page depending on your skills. Project Sansar will be opened to the public at the end of the year / early 2017.
There are no plans to migrate everyone from Second Life to Project Sansar for years to come and they remain different products.
New Previews of Project Sansar
During the past few months Linden Lab have published first still pictures of what’s possible in Project Sansar. Ebbe Linden mentioned in his speech that between now and June 2016 Linden Lab will be revealing new pictures along with Project Sansar in action via demos. During Q3 2016 even more will be revealed on Project Sansar which sounds very exciting indeed.
My Final Thoughts
I enjoyed listening to Ebbe Linden speech at VWBPE 2016 and it’s good to learn more about Project Sansar. From what I’m gathering most want to start beta testing and want to see new video demos/pictures. It’s still early days for sure and it’s going to be really good to hear more about Sansar in the months ahead.
Daniel Voyager 
He doesn’t have a clue. Waiting for next CEO and hoping not too many resources were wasted on Sansar.
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Ebbe did say that Linden Lab have been working on Sansar for around 2 years now and many things are still being worked on. I don’t think Ebbe will be going anywhere anytime soon unless something bad happens which is very unlikely.
I’m following Sansar closely this year and I’ll blog more when I hear more. 🙂
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Since the usual term of office for LL CEO’s is three years and Ebbe started in January 2014 so his regular term of office ends January 2017 there is hope he will be gone soon after the first of the year! 🙂
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This will be such a Huge Flop, I sorry but Linden Lab is getting smoked by Open Sim and the Hyper Grid / who and the heck want’s to shell out the money $ for things like Maya / and the entire Virtual World wear a telephone on your face thing is ridiculous.
Just my rant for today
JayR Cela :_)
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So, the “brain trust” at LL thinks Sansar will be a great success. Limiting who gets in first – beta users(Linden Pets), rigging the land market to benefit the largest landowners, limiting creation within SL2 to only those with access to Maya(no inworld creation tools now or lets all be honest – probably never), And high entry costs for anyone considering running a “business” within SL2.
So, take that old, worn out, tattered SL playbook and double down on it. Rig Sansar economically even more than SL is. Sounds like a absolutely brilliant idea to me. All us “little guys” will just have to go along with this. We have no other choice… lol!!! 😉
Unless LL makes SL2(Sansar) exactly like SL was prior to Fall 2006 where everyone was on a level playing field. Creation wise and land cost wise. No favorites. Then SL2(Sansar) is DOA… Smelling like a week old bit of roadkill. Perfect for us buzzards. But not too appetizing for the average joe resident.
The Turkey Buzzard goes hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssssssss! 😉
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I agree with ninety five percent of what you say. My impression from listening to Ebbe’s keynote is that the Ebbe and LL’s “brain trust” know Sansar will be a failure when it debuts at the end of the 2016 because of their mismanagement so and they are lowering expectations like a typical Politian.
What I am waiting for is Ebbe to be gone and hoping they haven’t wasted too many resources on Sansar.
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I think we should wait until Sansar is in Open Beta / Public Launch and then we can have a debate then. 🙂
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The question becomes will the Open Beta or Public Launch even ever really happen. Hopefully the powers that be at LL will see the failed Sansar is such a waste they won’t send good money after bad. Of course there are many cases when the sunk cost is just so big that doomed project will just continues until someone in power says ENOUGH!
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Personally, I think it’s incredibly disrespectful what Linden is doing with Sansar. It’s going to be their Windows RT, a complete failure. With Second Life, they got a bit lucky and stumbled into a need that people have for an anonymous 3D social platform, and, over time, put together a nice user-base. Now, they want to just thumb their nose at that user-base and start over. You can’t do this. There is absolutely no technical reason that the Sansar technology shouldn’t be an expansion of the Second Life platform. If need be, make regions that only a Sansar-like viewer can teleport to, and possibly other regions that mandate a set of VR goggles.
It’s also been suggested (and I wholeheartedly believe it) that Second Life’s success is at least partly due to some wonderful virtual real estate developers, content creators, action scripters, and the like. However, these third-party vendors are also making substantial sums of money from the Second Life platform, and, possibly, Linden wants that money for themselves. This would be like Microsoft saying that Adobe, Turbotax, Quicken, etc. could no longer run on Windows. It takes a community to make a good technological platform, and Linden needs to accept this.
It’s already severely disheartening to existing Second Life users that the new Sansar features won’t be a part of the virtual world we have come to enjoy and love. We feel betrayed, and may very well look for alternatives once we’re abandoned by Linden so that their new recruit of arrogant programmers can design a system they can call their own. It’s truly shameful.
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