Oculus Users Consider Sansar Through Second Life Lens

Interesting thread in the very large /Oculus user group on Reddit, riffing off this recent TechCrunch post on Project Sansar. To succeed, Sansar needs to grow interest from VR fans far beyond the established SL user base, but as the conversational thread shows, that's a somewhat paradoxical challenge is: The only people likely to be extremely enthused by Sansar are dedicated Second Life users. (In great part because they're hoping to be able to move their SL content/identity/currency to Sansar.) For just about everyone else (in this case, Oculus Rift early adopters), pitching Sansar as "from the people who created Second Life" will elicit a shrug, or a vaguely positive/negative kind of "Oh that 3D Sims-like thing that got a lot of media coverage a few years ago" -- or from the millions who actually tried SL once, something like this, one of the top upvoted comment in the thread:

Yeah, it was popular for a hot minute but have you actually used 2nd Life? The UI is some of the worst shit I've ever seen, they have no idea what they're doing besides a general idea of "let's create a virtual world." I do not trust them or have any hype at all for them to lead anything or revamp anything with VR.

If I were with Linden Lab (and don't you wish I was, or maybe not), I'd put just as much emphasis on the non-SL background of people developing Project Sansar -- surely the 75 or so people working on it have also worked on other major MMOs/games/3D platforms that are also worth mentioning. Right?

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Comments

[Clara Seller]

I understand the political logic in trying to distance from Second Life in promoting Sansar. Maybe, at this point, it is the right thing to do.

I guess they are just hoping that nobody will notice that they've spent over a decade of time and energy managing a SL project that they believe is a colossal failure. That makes them uniquely qualified for success? Maybe people will just admire them for throwing their long time customers under the bus? I mean who doesn't love a company that can extract so much money per customer and and still feel absolutely no loyalty to them?

Mmm Hmm. I mean that Philosophy really worked out well for Philip Rosedale. He's got spunk. Maybe that's almost as good as having customers.

[Carlos Loff]

My only interest in Sansar, and Im a long time Virtual Worlds builder and community manager, would be the ease to have affordable land and the ease of building, allied to not a very big learning curve compared to SL/OS - I don´t care a single pixel about VR, in spite of finding it cool and interesting but not the key to move to Sansar

[Orca Flotta]

Anybody wanna know what I think? Check my latest post about the Sansar shitshow:

https://orcaflotta.wordpress.com/2016/07/06/much-ado-about-sansar/

[spood Udimo]

With any real luck, LL will just sell SL to a firm that really loves the environment and wants to make it flourish. LL always seemed halfheartedly modifying it just to keep it floating so they could work on other stuffs.

[Leni]

One of the commentors pointed out, that he hopes that High Fidelity would win because it's open source, and that would shape the future of the virtual worlds. I agree with that wholeheartedly. Still, I look forward to see a virtual world independent of any single vendor, something similar to world wide web or email system.

[sirhc deSantis]

Interesting that it is those already using SL that seemed to have a better experience than non users (and no - I don't think its anything to do with the vague hope of dragging their 'stuff' over with them. ID, maybe, currency - we will see. Stuff? Not unless its made already with the possibility of doing it. Don't think my flexi dreads will cut it).

The bit about ' no idea what they're doing besides a general idea of "let's create a virtual world." ' seems to be just a little bit missing the point. There again from someone who spells 'hope' as 'hype'.

Yep, the Lab really should update info on what the new thing is/might be, with the emphasis on what it is not, no doubt about it. Never been their strong point though. The fact that SL, with framerates too low even as a start, does seem to 'work' for at least some people would have been a good start but can see why not to emphasise.

One thing I have seen a fair bit of is the position 'I have this oh so neat new toy/I have been duped in to spending too much on something thats not quite ready yet So why is the world not rushing to entertain meeeeee' :) Especially with the P Go craze - must be so galling that a simple AR is hogging all the headlines. (Actually, been playing with an SL equivalent idea - locations are all there, just need a HUD with some animations and a bit of database but really don't fancy the potential lawsuits..)

Oh, an open source metaverse is already there. OSGrid is about to celebrate 9 years. Would need some work but its all there in principle.

[Thommy Boy]

It seems everyone is freakin' out thinking that LL will force you to use Sanasar and abandon SL. They have repeatedly stated that both will coexist - at best you will carry over your avatar name and L$. There is zero hope that your SL inventory will transfer - so get over that. Really, why would LL close SL - it's a cash cow! Sansar will do what SL failed to do - work with VR headsets at high frame rates, and be able to scale without the side-effect of lag. I for one welcome the idea of cheap land prices in Sansar!