An obscure site called Xconomy has an in-depth interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, but if you want want the most essential gist, Nalates has a good summary, which I'm summarizing to seven key points around Project Sansar, its follow-up to Second Life:
- Linden Lab plans to have testers in Sansar starting the end of July, 2015. First one into the new world will be hand-picked, skilled creators.
- Sansar runs at 75 frames per second (FPS) and will run at 90 FPS to meet the expected Oculus Rift requirements.
- Sansar version 1.0 will be ready by the end of 2016.
- Moving from Second Life to Sansar will be as easy as possible.
- Sansar will run under "somewhat" different rules.
- The Lab plans to have Sansar support larger events, meaning having more avatars attending events.
- The Lab is changing its revenue model from renting land and plans to make Sansar land cheaper. Linden income will come in the form of taxes on users’ revenues from in-world businesses. With an interesting phrase tacked on, “once they’ve succeeded.”
Emphasis mine, because the top point bears emphatic emphasis: The very first early alpha testers of Sansar are going to have a disproportionate influence on how the platform grows (or doesn't), so I seriously hope this hand-picked group is comprised of many different kinds of content creators, and not just those already heavily involved in Second Life.
To succeed, Sansar needs to gain a userbase far, far beyond the existing SL userbase, and be even more appealing (for instance) to hardcore gamers who'll make up most of the first early adopters of VR. Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen any outreach for Sansar testing beyond the existing SL userbase by Linden Lab. However, it's possible the hand-picked candidates beyond SL were quietly approached by the company. In fact, I'm asking the Lindens about that now.
1:30pm: Linden spokesman Peter Gray responded to my question on the make-up of early testers this way:
At this point, we're not revealing details about who will be invited to the first stages of the 'alpha,' and they will be under NDA. What we have said is that the very first external creators invited to Project Sansar will need to be skilled at creating with Maya. We plan to start with a small, dedicated group of creators we know (but they won't necessarily need to be SL creators), who will need to have a good degree tolerance and patience for the kinds of hiccups and changes that we expect may occur early on in the alpha. As things progress, we'll grow the alpha to include more creators.
Emphasis mine. Interpret as you will!
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At Meet The Lindens with Ebbe Altberg on Friday at SL12B Ebbe indicated that the very early testers are likely to be architects with a lot of patience.
This is the early Alpha stage, things are likely to change a lot.
Those who customise avatars will come later.
Posted by: Ciaran Laval | Monday, June 29, 2015 at 11:35 AM
so they are still going to host all the land and allocate all the resources? They are going to cut the cost of land though? So essentially admitting they've been raping land owners in SL for years. Nice.
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Monday, June 29, 2015 at 12:48 PM
At the Talks at the Birthday, they indicated it will be people who work in Maya. Creatives who use other software will come in later, but essentially in these early days, they are testing with one program to get things working.
We talked about a lot of other issues - such as animators and where they will be brought in during the development process and so on. They see the platform as bringing various skill sets in further down the line. It's a careful development strategy that will, in the end, have new creative tools that can be used inworld by users.
Inara Pey has a full transcript of the conversation - you might find it a useful read. And the official videos on all the talks will be up shortly.
Posted by: Saffia Widdershins | Monday, June 29, 2015 at 12:58 PM
I personally enjoy exploring, I would love to see larger tracks of virtual land (greater than 256m x256m), and I REALLY want all land to be connected, or accessible by a world ocean. Eliminate sim crossings, make it a single, ever expanding world, if you get to the end, it wraps you to the opposite side like pac man (reverse screen theory). I wonder if they could use the Improbable tech for a true persistent world, such as what is begin developed in the game World's Adrift???
About Improbable:
Improbable is developing an operating environment that makes building simulated worlds possible. Worlds which can be run in real time, simulating the behaviours and interactions of millions of entities.
http://improbable.io
Posted by: UCMO | Monday, June 29, 2015 at 01:01 PM
Its interesting to see the 'holding pattern' the Lab is adopting. Theres an awful lot of tech buzz and (fail) and froth - together with a lot of 'alternative to sl honest' same old grid stuff. (and the ex-dealers in sl bux wahhh is so..)
Funny how thats working :)
And the lab still holds the big gorilla card in terms of test audience too. Interesting times.
Posted by: sirhc deSantis | Monday, June 29, 2015 at 01:14 PM
If you've missed the more recent interview with Ebbe, you can watch it here;
https://youtu.be/pj6DE5sCqUs
Posted by: Jo Yardley | Monday, June 29, 2015 at 01:30 PM
Improbable looks very impressive, it will be very interesting to see if it delivers.
Posted by: Ciaran Laval | Monday, June 29, 2015 at 01:54 PM
The linden marketing machine is in full swing!
First they will hand pick : This eludes exclusivity, makes the product more desirable, watch out for controlled leaks!
Get the bloggers, evangelists and experts talking too, free publicity ahoy!
I love SL, but come on guys :-)
Posted by: Cube Republic | Monday, June 29, 2015 at 02:37 PM
Cube said it all and while some dream about Sansar SL is slowly fading away, more sims closing then ever, some old same issues never solved and worse, a majority of users using outdated viewers.
Posted by: zz bottom | Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 05:25 AM
And what LL has now is SL and its users base so before making us dream make sure we can enjoy what we have, now and for the years to come.
Posted by: zz bottom | Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 05:27 AM
Certainly it would be nice to get invites but at the end of the day these are really alpha builds and expect them to not have many features at all with they do
When it comes down to pricing they can make it cheaper because there new system they using is not tied down to the old system you had in sl
So I will expect that they will still make a Profit there are business
They sound like they're listening to residents especially at the moment so They will be keep Chatting as they said at sl12b
Posted by: User | Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 06:24 AM
If those first content creators get access to a marketplace first, they will have first-mover advantage which is a hugely unfair deal for the content creators who have grown up with Second Life and made it what it is. Is this a slap in the face to content creators who have stayed loyal to SL when they could have gone elsewhere in the 3D universe? That is what high end content creators want to know. We are good at what we do, we make quality product. But because we do it in Blender, the Lab is throwing us under the bus for some dudes who can afford Maya and know some guy who works for the Lab. This sucks for the long-term loyal creators on SL. Screw this.
Posted by: sams son | Monday, July 06, 2015 at 11:01 PM
Those LL hasn't alienated, ripped off with their Terms of Disservice, or p.o.'d to the point they have abandoned virtual worlds entirely.
So...it'll be a very, very short list.
There will be those who are sticking around. But with the recent mysterious "LL isn't honoring my credit requests (read payouts from L$ to RW currency) and won't tell me why" victims, there may be fewer and fewer left to cherry-pick.
The content creator abandonment rate has been significant since 2010.
Posted by: Krinkles Q. Klown | Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 10:10 AM
They said they are just starting with Maya, and they will add Max etc as time goes on.
The point is the alpha is so rough right now, realistically you probably don't even want to be in it at this point. It's going to crash constantly, and they will probably wipe out all your work every time you turn around. Being a good alpha/beta tester is actually a lot of hard work, if you're really going to isolate issues and write up good bug reports with clear steps to reproduce an issue.
I've never had them not honor my cash out tickets, even for large sums. Since late last year, they do require you to jump through a lot of hoops to prove your RL identity and ownership of the bank account you're having it wired into. These precautions (while indeed annoying when you're in a rush) are just as much to protect you as them.
Posted by: Levio Serenity | Monday, July 27, 2015 at 05:27 AM
@ sams son.
Speak for yourself. I create with Maya / been in SL since 2003. I also am not part of the test nor would I want to be.
The reality is the beta testing will be more than sufficient to get all key creators up to speed, and nobody will be getting "early" sale access.
Posted by: Jolly Rodger | Friday, September 11, 2015 at 08:42 PM