From the Collision Conference last week, here's Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg revealing some new footage of Project Sansar -- both creating scenes in VR, and some new sample scenes, including a photographic recreation of an ancient Egyptian site, a North Pole/Antartica scene, and more footage of that sample Mars we've seen in recent months -- including more than one avatar. Scroll past the opening boilerplate, which is mostly stuff regular readers are already familiar with -- the action starts at about 8:18 in.
Some screengrabs below -- watch and discuss over the weekend! In his talk, Ebbe revealed something that made my jaw drop -- did you catch it?
Up to a bad start - Only few creators go in Alpha - Elites - And right in the same discussion they talk about democracy and open to all - Are these guys listening to themselves ???
Posted by: Carlos Loff | Friday, May 06, 2016 at 05:06 PM
oddly enough this reminds me of HiFi, which currently in beta, which suggests Rosedale is quicker on the uptake than LL. However, I notice that the content that so far has been created for Sansar is more polished, whereas HiFi looks still somewhat goofy. Don't think either of the platforms will really launch VR in the mass market direction because they are still equipment heavy to really do anything productive and interesting. Despite Ebbe's (spelling?) statement that equipment price will rapidly go down, I think it is still niche until the price point of about a current generation gaming console and has been improved radically in terms of ease of controls and maybe even with native support (no computers, just the headset and accessories).
Posted by: Kitty Revolver | Friday, May 06, 2016 at 09:05 PM
"Ebbe revealed something that made my jaw drop -- did you catch it?" err curious as to what that was, really, as think I missed it.
So - its got vive controllers working to shift stuff around? OK, makes sense and nice to see how clumsy they seem to be. Hope they won't be compulsory.
75 staff? seems about right.
A Marketplace to buy stuff (from full 'experiences' to props)? seems bleedin' obvious, to steal a phrase:)
People can make money via selling stuff... erm yes?
Take a zillion poly model and have to tweak it a lot to get 'performant' - yep, check.
Current cash generated from SL is being used to pay for the new project? Well, d'oh, thats how biz works so that also makes sense.
Seems the Lab have basically a rather nice engine there almost ready to go. The fact the ceo is couching it in almost SL terms is - not all that surprising really. For one thing, they are the only ones so far to make a going concern out of the idea.
Inara Pey makes the point that runtime/user aspect are distinct which also makes sense as a dev engine for 'experiences'.
Oh - and they have someone called Jason who arranges rocks. Always a plus point.
Overall, looking not too bad at all and having followed the hifi stuff so far (and all the others that have come and gone), actually rather better than not too bad.
Posted by: sirhc deSantis | Saturday, May 07, 2016 at 07:37 AM
Ebbe makes a painfully decent argument for the possible vanilla uses of VR.
But it still seems like a giant leap from professional content creator to the beloved Fran dancing her heart out. There are so many blanks to be filled in before the end of this year.
Right now it feels like an uninspired Wordpress for discount professional publishers who want to write for free and let someone else pocket the money when they sell it to Fran.
I think these 75 people have a whole lotta work to do in showing how this is more than some huge gofundme experiment.
Posted by: Clara Seller | Saturday, May 07, 2016 at 08:51 AM
Both Oculus and Vive support seem to have been confirmed - excellent, excellent.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Saturday, May 07, 2016 at 09:00 AM
Im actually somewhat impressed
Posted by: metacam oh | Saturday, May 07, 2016 at 10:21 AM
wow avater look good :)
Posted by: יעקב | Saturday, May 07, 2016 at 10:37 AM
burp
Posted by: joe | Saturday, May 07, 2016 at 12:54 PM
I wonder if they're considering a way to digitalize our RL appearance on our VR avatars (not neccassarily photo-realistic). It may seem creepy for an SL user, but I feel that is really needed to create "social VR experiences" in a way the mainstream audience they're aiming for really understands...
Posted by: Wolkenreiter | Monday, May 09, 2016 at 05:18 AM