Linden Lab CEO Teases Project Sansar Screenshot of Rapidly Created Mars VR Experience

Well now Ebbe Altberg, this is an interesting thing to tease us with:

Took just a few hours to create a multi-user #Mars #VR experience with #ProjectSansar pic.twitter.com/YvTER74Kui

— Ebbe Altberg (@ebbealtberg) February 4, 2016

Much more appealing and intriguing than the generic Project Sansar images we saw last November. Far more intriguing is the claim this took just a short time to create. I think that strongly implies one of three ways to handle user-generated content I floated last May:

• Pre-fabricated building blocks and templates with which users can "snap together" parts of already optimized 3D content, ala Sims 3.
• A consumer-friendly, "dumbed down" 3D modeling system that creates optimal content out of the box -- a platform to be either created or purchased by Linden Lab.
• Alternately, require users to create their own content in industry standard 3D modeling platforms -- as difficult as they are for 99% of average users to master.

I'm guessing option one or three -- whipped up from a big toolbox of cool 3D widgets, or rapidly uploaded from existing offline 3D models, and glued into place on Sansar's servers. Discuss!

Update, 1:35: In Comments, "Taylor" points out a follow-up Tweet from Altberg which suggests Option 3 is most likely:

@Demonkid Definitely leveraging some assets we had...but still...

— Ebbe Altberg (@ebbealtberg) February 4, 2016

... of course, these pre-existing assets could be implemented into the toolkit of Option 1. But we'll see!

Please share this post:

Tweet

 

Comments

[Cake]

"A consumer-friendly, "dumbed down" 3D modeling system that creates optimal content out of the box"

LL, you would be my BEST FRIEND EVER if you provided that! I'd be playing this game forever.

[Taylor]

Definitely option 3, based on the Twitter conversation after he posted that:

‏@Demonkid Feb 4
@ebbealtberg I'm guessing that does not include the time building 3Dmodels in maya? :-P

‏@ebbealtberg
@Demonkid Definitely leveraging some assets we had...but still...

https://twitter.com/Demonkid/status/695352224789041152

[Connie Arida]

A forked version of the Makehuman open source mesh avatar creator may be a start. Why reinvent the wheel there.
http://www.makehuman.org/

[Clara Seller]

I looked at the MakeHuman avatar creator site that Connie Arida posted.

Amazing. Would love to have a system avatar that could produce results like this.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Anyone else, they'd be talking about the tech and tooling involved.

[JohnC]

I don't mean to knock Ebbe really, he seems like such a nice guy, but..
Short version: You mean it took a specially selected team of Maya artists and a brand new game engine to put out this vague hazy screen shot, that tells us little or nothing about anything, except maybe the people who produced it.

Long version: It guess it kind of shows the influence of LL's decadent years, dwelling in a backwater of game development that they would post a shot like this as an example of their cutting edge new world beating game engine. Or maybe Ebbe is leaking stuff and the rest of the team are quietly despairing of their leaders judgement.
Just take a real long sober look at what you are seeing here.
A few rocks, a flat desert floor, an antenna and what look like maybe a vehicle of some kind, all almost totally obscured by haze and fog.
You mean this could not be done in SL even as it is?
Sadly, because the lighting has always been worse than useless in SL, and had to be faked all the way down the line, many users, including the developers it seems, get all excited when they manage to pull off a blurry, hazy out of focus scene with a bit of distance fog, a few pre made assets and a sun light in it.
There is actually nothing here that I and many others could not have produced in SL a few years back.
Sansar it seems, from what little information we can deduce beyond all the smoke and mirrors, appears to be attempting to get in the ring with the the big game engines and take them on at their own level in the big wide world of VR. Needless to say they have a long way to go, both technically, and more importantly on the Community development side.
I doubt very much these kind of images will impress anyone other than those steadfast SL survivors who are still clinging to the stern rail of the slowly sinking good ship SL. Desperately scanning the dark horizon for any hopeful sign at all of the rescue ship, HMS Sansar. Even though the Sansars Captain keeps messaging the SL, in no uncertain terms, that they are not pulling along side to pick up survivors, and unless you can swim in a pretty spectacular fashion, you are going down with the ship.

[cyberserenity]

Second life is today a terribly dated platform. Sansar i suppose going to be a upgrade. New shadres ond scripting. Why not a Unity connection?

[djehan]

I like that engine, even though I agree with JohnC a tad.
I don't think it is any relevant to talk about the 3D models because we all know that most people will use prefabs and/or 3D objects and texture packs they bought somewhere else, resulting into being able to set that scene in less than an hour, at least for a modder. Now if you ask an environment artist like me, this would take around 6 comfortable hours to make from scratch, modeling and texturing, iF the engine deals with ambient occlusion in a decent way, dynamic shadows seem fine so far. Also it doesn't look like the poly count needs to be optimized as hardcore as in SL (at least for the creators that actually care about this with larger environments), but for that exact scene anyways it is so minimal you can most definitely use way more poly per objects, that also reduces the time to create them.
All in all, the 3D asset job is quite minimal and I think this picture is here to show the engine more (it obviously uses 2/3 of the screen alone), I like it but it most definitely lacks godrays. In conclusion I don't think Ebbe Altberg lied about the amount of time it took.

[Iggy]

It's likely Studebaker Avanti or Pontiac Solstice. Take your pick. Too late for many of us who once followed the brand.

[Rob]

How are they building ?

From outside Sansar via a third party tool as mentioned but Maya is still no VR environment itself I think

Take a look at building within the Unreal Engine, it's a start !
http://www.roadtovr.com/first-look-unreal-engine-will-soon-let-you-build-vr-inside-vr/

[Masami Kuramoto]

Looks like Insilico Mars, possibly by the same creator. Nothing you couldn't do in SL with proper use of WindLight.

[Issa Heckroth]

I agree, thats a nice fancy antenna but otherwise, you could do that in SL in an evening too (if you can afford the land, of course ;) )

[sirhc deSantis]

Agree with Issa, knocked up my own take with habitats, vehicles (with actual doors and moving tracks) and props (all from bits I had - sort of laying around plus a bit of zippy blender) on Saturday afternoon/evening (with a break to watch hockey) on a fresh local install of simona - hey fully interactive, multi user and ready to roll, just add your own OS spacesuits, oar available :) Add a bit of damage handling and you have a hostile environment too.
Longest bit was fiddling with terraforming and getting a sort of alright land texture.