Second Life to Become Small Town to Sansar's Big City?

Interesting analogy from Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg just published on Vice:

Altberg has no plans to shut down Second Life unless it ceases to be profitable; for now, Sansar remains something else. He acknowledges that some users have been worried about a shutdown for months now, but adds that just as many are "banging on the door" to see the final form of virtual reality Linden's technically been chasing all along. "Some of them may probably stick around in Second Life for a long time because that's their home," he said, "just like not everybody moves from their town to the city, just because a city grows up somewhere else. "

I mean I guess that's possible, but seeing as Sansar seems to be optimized for Oculus Rift and HTC-Vive, and there likely won't even be 800,000 owners of those devices at the end of this year, I'd say it's more plausible Sansar will be the small town for at least the next 2-3 years. Especially compared to Second Life, which with 600,000 or so active users gives it roughly the population of Seattle.

(And Seattle's is only a mid-sized city by US standards, tiny next to Shanghai and so on globally.)

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Comments

[metacam oh]

Im pretty amazed by the isolated bubble Linden Lab lives in

[Pussycat Catnap]

Sansar won't ever be a 'city' unless it creates a set of connected regions. Last I checked they had no plans to even allow customers to do this.

If it does do better than SL, the analogy won't be a city - it would be the city developer that owns lots of 1-3 story buildings all over the commercial district, versus the slumlord that owns a high rise in the suburbs (like they do in some Asian cities - where the 'suburb' is rows of high rise buildings, and the downtown businesses can often be historic small buildings).

Sansar isn't really competing with Second Life. It is competing with Open Sim.

[JohnC]

I don't see Sansar and open sim as comparable really. Sansar is run by one company, Open sim, maybe to it's detriment, has no one in charge. If you had the nerve and the know how you could theoretically make something completely your own, and sell it as such with Open Sim. With Snasar, as with SL, everything you do will always be branded with the LL, SL,Sansar logo. But wherease if I take the Unreal engine and build a game you just add that logo on the end credits. With Sansar and SL that Logo goes to the front, and dominates the product. A sim built in SL or in Sansar. They own what you do, there is a massive difference compared to every other game engine and even Open Sim, if you dare step outside the confines of OS grid and the metaverse

[youcan]

Freedom is scary at first. But you'll adapt. Sansar is old-school closed-grid.

Be free.

[sirhc deSantis]

Hilarious as at least one of the 'other grids' already likes to position itself as town vs big city (and not a bad thing to try to push either).

(As for the 'we own all your stuff' seriously...Thought anyone who was worried worked out that its dingos kidneys a long time back. In any 'engine'.)

[Pussycat Catnap]

"I don't see Sansar and open sim as comparable really."

Individual isolated pockets of VR using the same technology not connected.
- In this way they are equivalents.

[Han Held]

Not really getting the sansar/opensim comparision either. I literally just don't see it.

Feature for feature, opensim compares closer to SL, Inworldz' fork of opensim and whatever the MOSES project comes up with.

I've decided that I simply don't care about hifi and sansar, but from my vague understanding they're closer to each other than either one is to SL (or anything based on the SL protocol).

[Botanical rootcreeper]

I think vr worlds are the future regarldless how well sansar does. As soon as vr headsets become affordable to all then vr worlds will most likly rule. The entire internet will most probably become vr. Even shopping for our real life items will be done in vr. Our first life will be in vr. All i can say is role on that day.

[JohnC]

It's funny when people make sweeping statements that take no account of the many millions of people in the world who for quite simple reasons, medical, location, choice? will never be able or simply not want to use VR. And it's no use saying, well they will just get left behind. It is far more likely that at some future point humanity will realize that technology is a servant and not its master. we will all live far less complicated lives and what technology we use will be almost seamlessly integrated into a far more natural way of life. Which I know is a hard pill to swallow for all those with cyberpunk dystopian future fantasies, where we all look like extras from the matrix.

[Connie Arida]

It always amazes me when people play either/or zero sum arguments about technology. I remember people saying the end of the book was nigh.
Also, just because Sansar et al are optomised for occulus etc, does not mean they cannot be played without those devices. That makes the argument that these virtual worlds are hamstrung by that rather fallacious.

[JohnC]

They are not optimized for VR headset's, they are purposefully built with that technology alone in mind. The only reason they say that it can be used without the headset is because they fear that at some point they may need to fall back on users who don't have the Vr Gear. when Ebbe and Phil talk about their products they are not talking to none headet users. Of course you can go there and build stuff, but why on earth would you do it. If you build without a headset you cannot know if what you build looks any good to someone with one. It's would be like making a standard movie and selling it as a 3D movie. If you have looked around Hi Fidelity without a headset it is like a bad version of SL, without any of the features that keep people in SL.

[Chic Aeon]

@ JohnC

An interesting point that I hadn't thought about. I don't know how true it is (not there) or if in the upcoming near future VR citizens will outnumber crummy old computer and mouse folks but if VR is a really a necessity for designing in Sansar, then The Lab has pretty much shot itself in the foot.

While some creators may try out Sansar from other platforms, the main creator user base appears to be SL folks. Most of us are on hefty desktop computers (some not so hefty; some not so desktop) with our software skills honed from years of work. While there may be a few SL creators that use VR gear, I don't know any of them personally.

Hence and issue I didn't see coming. Thanks for that thought.