Sansar News Bits: 10K Developers Requested Early Access, Linden Lab Promoting It for Enterprise Use

Couple points worth noting from that demo of Sansar that Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg gave last week:

Conducted at a Wall Street Journal conference, Linden Lab also created Sansar avatars to look like WSJ reporters (see above), with the subsequent story highlighting Sansar's use for enterprise: "Get ready for virtual reality meetings. And yes, you can stay in your pajamas." Pretty noteworthy that Linden Lab seems intent on pushing Sansar for business use at least as much as for consumers.

Another point from Variety, which reported from the WSJ demo:

Sansar’s early beta testers have not just been Second Life creators, but also some that don’t have any experience with Second Life at all, and are able to start with a clean slate. Linden Lab opened up Sansar to a small group of creators in August. More than 10,000 creators had signed up for access.

Depending on how you look at it, 10,000 people so interested in Sansar that they want early access as developers is pretty impressive... or not too impressive at all.

On the one hand, 10,000 developers are more than enough to build a really robust ecosystem of content for millions of potential users. Then again, 10,000 is just a fraction of the 120,000 or so people who create and sell Second Life content on some level. For that matter, there's over 5 million registered developers of Unity, a 3D platform that is either competing or compatible with Sansar.

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Comments

[JohnC]

"Get ready for virtual reality meetings. And yes, you can stay in your pajamas." I can't believe they dare try this daft idea again. Serious adults with important agendas do not piss about with childish avatars in virtual worlds. If someone cannot make a meeting you set up video conferencing in some form. The idea that everyone in the meeting is going to put on headsets and meet in a plastic world would be funny if it was not so pathetic. VR is at the moment best fitted for entertainment and virtual tourism. All other uses I see at the moment are crutches for the healthy.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Have to agree with JohnC. It's been tried. It's a bust. People don't want enterprise gamification.

[Han Held]

That is a horrible screen shot. In particular the woman looks like the models I was playing with circa 2002 ...in poser 4.

Virtual entertainment, virtual tourism, helping shut-ins go out, misc therapeutic uses (getting over PTSD, for instance), maybe even some spiritual uses (make your astral temple and muck about in it) yeah ...but "go to work in your PJs"? I think JohnC wrote up the flaws in that plan and there's nothing else I can add.

[metacam oh]

only Linden Lab could make Second Life 2.0 worse than the original

[sirhc deSantis]

It is All Hallows Eve so why be surprised that the ghost of enterpriseSL is out a'stalking.

I really thought the stake driven through its heart the last time round would have been enough.

[A dose of reality]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP0B3e49U3g

[Neil Canham]

You would be surprised - enterprise VR for collaboration is alive and generating significant interest.

[Jumpman Lane]

Didn't they try this once before in Second Life with business noobs and edu tards. I mean VR might be nice for meetings if it was photo-realistic like a video conference sans goggles. I mean wouldn't face-timing on your iPad in a pinch still beat the necessity of logging into a virtual world and looking at crappy avatars.

All these content creators, whew. I think with Sansar Linden Lab is missing the point of creating a virtual world. Who will people it? The wierdies who built SL are long gone. The world builders. The content creators nowdays are accessorizers. The wierdies who log i day after day expect a ready-made world peopled b y their turdy pals.

[sirhc deSantis]

Well yes Ser Canham, your company of course has an interest and may even make something useful/successful to boot, but we are talking about the Lab here and their previous attempts.

[JohnC]

The fact that you can fool ill informed wealthy businessmen to participate in what they believe in their ignorance to be cutting edge technology, is nothing to be proud off. Unless your only goal is to make money from fools.

[Orca Flotta]

VR has its uses. For example to provide realistic models for brain surgeons in training, in engineering and architecture. But you won't need a virtual world for that sort of stuff.

And for my glorified facebook chatroom I won't need a super computer and an expensive octopus. It's only slowing me down while I check my messages and IMs.

[Clara Seller]

I'm all in favor of sending Sansar to Wall St. and selling it's VR dollies as the next big thing for the power player meetings. It's kind of an ironic twist. (Excuse me while I LMAO) Who would have thought that Sansar could actually be used as a weapon? I think it's a great idea. I really, really do. Let's put face masks on every Wall St. player. I think it would be great for politicians too. I'm excited.

[Cathartes Aura]

The LL Board(Mitch Kapor) must be daily CRACK SMOKERS! To promote using Sansar as an effective, and most importantly superior, way to do teleconferencing is completely insane to me.

Just when you think they cannot get any more moronic...

For once I'm almost rendered speechless! Almost but not quite...

Since ole Mitch Kapor is responsible for all the bad decisions made by the LL board over the past 10 years, shouldn't he get off his incompetent behind and face his customer base and answer for his bad decision making?

Nothing but crickets out of the LL Board. They just keep pushing out one new CEO after another to take the heat off of them. They use the CEO as a scapegoat and after the CEO is of no use any longer they push them overboard and get another one.

F#$king Pathetic...

And the Turkey buzzard goes... Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. ;)

[Pathfinder]

In my current day job working for a B2B company with 10k+ employees and a globally distributed workforce, I spend probably about half my day in online multiuser meetings using GoToMeeting, GlobalMeet and WebEx. As long as there's file-sharing and screen-sharing and group text chat and voice, it works just fine. And one key thing that everyone understands is that *everyone knows that everyone else is probably doing other things in the background*. In business environments, everyone is multitasking.

That's the Achilles Heel for immersive VR as a solution for business meetings. You can't multitask when you've got a mask strapped to your face and you can't see your computer desktop. And don't tell me about solutions where you pop up a virtual computer desktop in VR. I've experimented with those. They are a horrible over-engineered design to a problem that already has an elegant solution.

Now, *education and immersive learning with VR* is a completely different story. Good educational experiences are focused experiences. Continuous partial attention kills learning. I have no idea what LL's gameplan for Sansar is around that very viable vertical. I have my own ideas on what would work, but they're my own at this point. :P

[JohnC]

Yes I am sure VR would work well in schools. That is after the kids have signed waiver of some kind to the effect that the parents will not sue the school if the kid eventually develops weird reactions and flashbacks when they get home or permanently mess up their eyesight for the rest of their lives. Maybe we should wait a while and see what maladies arise in the in the willing victims, before we inflict some cyberpunk future schooling on our children, even though I am sure they would not be complaining.

[joer]

Not surprised.

Fail.

[Tamar Luminos]

Well...at least we know now why they've avoided showing any Sansar avatars. *sigh*

Rubbery, cartoonish looking, just like HiFi's. Makes me appreciate SL's comparatively gorgeous avatars.

[madeline blackbart]

If you read the article it seems like that's whoever wrote the article say it could be used for meetings. There's only one quote from Alt in there and it only mentions using it as an offices....so I dunno.

[Connie Arida]

Another solution looking for a problem.

[Ellamaze]

This is another user-created space, yes? You'd think from the 10000 beta testers they allowed in, at least ONE would have made a decent skin by now. VR is VR is VR - 3D isn't going to change the fact that an unregulated space is essentially another place for good guys and bad guys to live. If we don't start using some of the things we learned in 2D toward creating SAFE experiences for learners/users, (via digital literacy ed, regulation, etc); the next gen of learners will be just as bonkers as we are.