Second Life Users Literally Pile on Top Each Other to See Sansar, Share Excitement & Skepticism

While Sansar's open beta launch today has been featured on Variety, VentureBeat, and numerous other tech/game/entertainment industry news media outlets, it's likely that most actual new users to Sansar are coming over from Second Life. To judge by my social feeds, most any avid SLer who has a PC powerful enough to try it out is doing so right now. Indeed, they're showing up in such rapid numbers that their avatars are literally piling up on top of each other in some places (as above). Some immediate reactions via Plurk:

“I’ve been trying to download for the past 40 minutes from the download page. It just keeps saying ‘Waiting for sansar.com’ and circling circling circling - 1angelcaresWriter

“It's pretty. I don't like the camera controls, and I miss being able to run and jump and fly, unless that's just something I haven't learned how to do yet. And the avatars are completely ugly. But the experiences are pretty.” - Alicia Chenaux

“There seems to be no way of knowing who is who if you don't have headset. Otherwise it looks gorgeous.” - AJ Arabello

Speaking of names, longtime SL blogger Ciaran Laval has some important advice on creating a Sansar avatar and avatar name. After the break, a live video feed from SL YouTube star Strawberry Singh, and some early Sansar tourism photos from Flickr. Post your own reactions and video/photo links in Comments!

Comments

[Jeannie Oh]

5000 S is 50 bucks USD, my interest just died.

[Just Say'n]

I tried to say hello to everyone at every experience today but almost everyone seemed rude with those talking in public chat refusing to even acknowledge my comments of "Hi or "Hello everyone, nothing like how friendly everyone was when SL started, back then people would literately try to give you the pixel shirt off their backs if you needed it.

not one public conversation in any of the experiences just people who wanted to talk to those they knew and everyone else could take a hike

Anyways, my experience today after all this time getting a chance to talk to others left me feeling like it was all a get together of VR Snobs who only wanted to talk to those they brought along, I was willing to overlook the whole blue mars vibe but now you can just count me out if everyone visiting Sansar acts like a twatwaffle.

Will retry in six months to see how things are heading as of now it's too early and everyone is an asshole in my opinion.

[amandamagick]

I would love to go in and see. But it is not possible for Mac users. So I registered my name so no one takes it... if I ever get to be in Sansar.. see ya there maybe... Mac users have been snubbed so to speak lol...

[Thea Dee]

Just Say'n: Considering how much difficulty I was having with things, I would think that maybe others were having similar issues and not necessarily being assholes but YMMV. Some people responded to me when I said a few things in the public chat, but not very many. After reading the help files, I also learned that anyone using a VR headset cannot even read or reply to text chat.

Jeannie Oh: The cost of the Sansar currency is not really useful info without knowing how much desired items will cost. The current offerings on the Sansar market seem fairly inexpensive, like maybe 5000 in Sansar currency might buy quite a bit, but I guess we will see more in the future.

As far as my first Sansar experience, I was disappointed with the lack of basic camera controls like pan and zoom, and other basic user functionality like run, fly, jump and other methods to make it easier to move around. I was also surprised that the only way to interact with things was to walk up to them - no sitting or clicking. I am hoping those things will be added soon, otherwise the ability to enjoy the experiences on a desktop computer is too limiting.

[Vurt konnegut]

Wagner, ffs stop having such a downer on these eyephones;)

[Skygirl Kline]

If you need to cam round an experience rapidly, press F4. Pressing the +/- keys will speed or slow you down.

[Carlos Loff]

Macs are out ?? Im out

[leonard]

Very Corporate.

Fail

[Clara Seller]

Just finished the nickel tour of Sansar and was surprised at how easy it all was. I was inworld in a couple of minutes. Picked my location, avatar, entered, walked around, looked around, played with my appearance, tested the chat, pushed all the buttons, found the exit and left.

I was surprised at how well this functioned, nothing like my experience with High Fidelity. The graphics are nice. The avatars grizzly, but not without potential.

It left me with a feeling of ambivalence. Even if I had some passion and inspiration to start making one of those experiences of my own, I'm left wondering "then what?". Invite people to some look at what I just made in my potty? I guess I could devote my time to trying to be pretty, when that's possible, snap pictures of my beauty in other people's creations. I'm sure I"m missing a lot and I'm not sure that I care. It kinda has "vanity project" written in it's core.

[Carlos Loff]

Engrave in stone or steel what Im about to predict, it is damm inevitable

Sl is the oldest and most successfully VW and still have not managed to go to the masses, it allows people to create and run worlds with low spec computers

Sansar is not only new, as it is very different from SL, it has all the ingredients to not attract many definitive residents besides first time curious folks

Now they demand this ???
--- Windows 7 SP1 or newer --- Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater --- 8GB+ RAM - NVIDIA GTX 970 equivalent or greater

It will flop big, besides many news and posts and wonderful videos, in permanent paying creators and users it will FLOP BIG, and the worst is yet to come - They will pull out resources from SL maintenance on a usual stubborness of Linden Lab, they even may raise many SL prices because the last thing they will desperately do in Sansar would be raising prices - They are between the wall and the sword

ENGRAVE THIS - Bad news to all of us

I still haven´t been able to go because I use Mac, but anyway although with midele quality settigs I can fly fluid on SL, I wouldn´t be able to even walk in Sansar and Im the kind of guy capable of jumping into buying Land or whatever an experience is, just to test the model - But is folks like me they are loosing, wither by operative system, either by higher specs

It would all be beautifull if they did not want the masses, but it is the masses they want and the masses do not have - --- Windows 7 SP1 or newer --- Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater --- 8GB+ RAM - NVIDIA GTX 970 equivalent or greater

[Carlos Loff]

Another big problem is the currency scale they have chosen - 300 lindens would be ok for a dummy statue if well done, now 290$S for this, is ridiculous, have you noticed how much it is in dollars ? Just an example - https://store.sansar.com/listings/c673e549-b4ec-41fc-bfe3-862528b36176/bauarbeiter-alwin-bake

[Carlos Loff]

Unfortunately there is no EDIT button for the posts, I would like to correct, minimum are these, still too much for THE MASSES to settle as they like - Regular and spending cash - 8 GB RAM
Disk space 3 GB, plus additional disk space for VR Headset Installation
Video card NVIDIA GTX 960 / AMD Radeon R9 290 or greater w/ 4 GB

[Fuzzball Ortega]

The experiences are awesome. But, unless there's something I missed, all you do is walk around and look. I'll stick with Second Life.

Though it would be nice to have the same graphics and lighting in SL, minus the way the avatars look.

[Carlos Loff]

In the market, a very poor simple market page and system, we do not know if items can b copied and replicated and if there are perms system, so how the hell will one decide to buy ? And how the hell Creators can price something if there is no distinction ' Are all the items copy ? Are they mod ? Are they transfer ?

[Ciaran Laval]

Carlos it's aimed largely at the VR market and those specs are Oculus Rift ready specs, this is one of the reasons why I don't see a major rush from SL to Sansar and that's before we get to them being very different experiences anyway.

[Flashing Merlin]

Only got as far as the initial sign up page. When I went to my email, and clicked the link to "Confirm Email Address," I got a Sansar page saying "Unexpected error occurred."

I expected the Sansar viewer to fail, just like the SL viewer frequently does, but if they can't even get a simple HTML sign-up link to work, it's a petty bad omen.

[Flashing Merlin]

Kept trying the "Confirm Email Address" link, and eventually it went thru, and I was able to download the viewer. After downloading, it started installing. By the time it said 10% finished, I realized it would take over an hour to install, however it crashed at that point, saying it was unable to complete installation.

One of the most annoying things about the official SL viewer is that the Lindens insist on updating every few days. At least I can avoid that wait by switching to a third party viewer, but if Sansar is going to insist on frequent updates, and they're each going to take an hour, and there's no third party viewer to switch to, this wait will really become annoying.

Going back to try installing it again, but by now if I ever get it installed, all I want to do is register my avatar ID to save the name, and then quit.

[CG]

Tried it for a while. Without a VR headset it seems pointless. Creating your own instance isn't the easiest either. Can't just drop a prim and start building. Pretty much have to upload or buy everything and anything. Also noticed you cant upload .dae (Collada) files. Non supported? 3DS Max and Maya I think is though. I don't know... Not for me. Rather have seen them make improvements on the very successful Second Life. So many things they could update on SL but don't. Now money generated from SL will go to fund Sansar which I think will be a crash and burn project. Its nice... if you have a VR headset. But very boring very quick.

[Veteran and entrepreneur]

I am a retired like thousands that play in SL, we are too older to sit and create and andle a store, but we spend a good and generous amount of money monthly in our rents and hobbies. In my case, I love tosail and collect boats, I have a full sim with a open access to the sea (open rezer). In SL spent hours and hours having fun. I spend monthly 400$ and I have years in SL. My reality is not the same of all retirees, I do not think it's possible that all SL retirees can upgrade their PCs to log in Samsar. We are a muscle of money in SL and this muscle will stay in SL.

[Truff Bhytes]

Sansar is useless for me, they don't have Mac compatibility.

Oh well, save me thousands of hours wasting time there.

[Ziggy ALcott]

Was fun to create and learn how in Sansar however I am really not inspired by much more than how nice it looks, avatar are ugly, can run now but its so awkward I dont enjoy it. Cant fly ,..bummer! The controls and social aspect ( or lack thereof) need lots of work. SL is still better even though it's really much emptier as far as residents than years ago. I agree they should have spent that $ on SL.