Survey: Who Wants to Try Out Project Sansar This Year?

Now that we know a fair amount more about Project Sansar, Linden Lab's VR-compatible follow-up to Second Life, here's a new survey of consumer interest. Read these notes from the last public discussion on the platform by Linden CEO Ebbe Altberg, and register your opinion!

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[melponeme_k]

I"m not interested because they won't have support for Mac. My windows laptop will be far too old to run it and I'm not running out to buy a new one just to tour.

[Lemon Panda]

No thanks.

[Clara Seller]

I'd be interested in trying it out if it wasn't limited Beta.

But if I'm supposed to spend six months in anticipation while watching little bloviating toons discuss their important contributions and exciting Sansar experiences on YouTube, then I'll probably be content staying an outsider.

[JohnC]

This will be my last post on the subject of Sansar, so it's a bit of a gob full.
In all honesty I still have no real idea of what Sansar actually is. Most interviews seem to follow the pattern of :
Q “Is Sansar like this?”
A “No, not exactly”
Q “Well how is it then?”
A “well I can't really say right now, apart from hinting at things that will no doubt not be in the finished product, which won't be finished anyway when it is released ”
Q “will we be able to do this kind of thing?”
A “well no, but maybe yes, or at least yes at a later date anyway, or possibly not, all depending on certain secret circumstances”
and so on and so forth.
So is it a game engine like UE4, Unity, Lumberyard etc ? Well yes but hold on!
Apparently not “Ebbe thinks that when Sansar goes public many people will leave Second Life but only to have a look around and when they realise they can NOT (YET) do the things they do in SL in Sansar they will return to SL”
Really? If you cannot even achieve in Sansar what you can in SL at the moment, then it will be a million miles from the complexity of the big game engines.
So what is it? And why keep it so secret, why are there no “first looks” beyond tweeted images that just confirm bad judgement.
“FIY Linden Lab, building 1920s Berlin is a pretty advanced demonstration of experience building tools... subtle hint” Seriously? Does LL have any idea at all of the utterly jaw dropping mind blowing VR experiences that every other developer is pouring out at this very moment? Obviously not, because they don't get out much.
While other VR developers pay professional creators to build their world, LL use the old tried and tested, dare I say Cheapskate, SL technique of “inviting” users to build their world for them. Hell, it saves money, so why not?
Or maybe they are getting paid? Who knows in this hush, hush secretive world of friends.
Every sentence spoken about Sansar seems to imply that even when it is released, whatever it is, it will not be complete. Who do they expect to interest, outside of the specially selected friends and captive audience of SL, in such a vaporous uncertain product.
The real players in the real world of VR, as seen by those truly interested in any kind of investment, are all at this years GDC, that's where the real players in the VR hype circus are at. One can only imagine that LL are either scared to compete, have nothing to show or dwell in some illusory world where think they do not need to do what every other VR pedlar on the planet at the present time believes they must.
Ebbe says that SL is “the best Virtual World on the planet”, which is a very insular, “So there” kind of statement, and rather unbelievable coming from a company that is, what amounts to, abandoning it and moving on to what they claim is a very different experience.
If it is so wonderful why do they need to spend all their money on something new, why not spend it on updating the wonderful SL bringing it into the new VR world. It is also a kind of denial of the fact that SL has big problems and this is frustrating for currant users. If SL is so wonderful, “the best Virtual World on the planet” how come it does not deserve to take it's rightful place in the new world of VR according to the headset Overlords, who belittle it or simply ignore it.
What is Sansar ? Honestly, what is it I am supposed to be interested in or not.

[Han Held]

Fuck that. Y'all go ahead and get burned first. I'm going to wait a few years and see if it shakes out or not before I jump in.

[Tamar Luminos]

I'm curious enough to try it out. Cheaper "land/experience" prices, depending on just how cheap, might be a draw for me because SL is way too expensive for that sort of thing. But- I honestly don't expect to leave SL for it, and I really don't have my hopes up that Sansar will be a more engaging product than SL. I like SL, a lot- after many years of playing in it. So Sansar would really have to wow me with it's supposedly advanced capabilities to take some of the time and money I pour into SL every month.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Let me know when there's a Linux version.

[sirhc deSantis]

Of course, with both hobnailed boots, same as I did for BM, CP, HF (wonderful how they all parse to two initials so easily) and fully expecting to go 'ok, been there, done that, back in a year or so' but prepared, ever the optimist even now despite all the experiences, to be surprised, if not exactly shocked and awed. (to misquote Nanny Ogg).
Caveats being if box is up to it, costs me nothing except time yadda yadda.
Might as well, eh :) Plus can laugh at the 'bloviating toons' too (do like that phrase, can we keep it?)

[Henri Beauchamp]

I voted "Other" since I will not use Sansar if it is not available for Linux platforms, which is to be expected given LL’s total disloyal stance towards Linux: they use Linux and Open Source software on their servers (saving a HUGE amount of money), but they don’t want to repay the Linux community with support for this OS… Shame on them !

[Kyle Flynn]

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.