What you're looking at here are hundreds of experiences created for Sansar, Linden Lab's new social VR platform, by users during its closed Alpha period. Anyone with the the requisite OS/hardware (Windows 7 SP1 or newer and an NVIDIA GTX 970 or better graphics card, for starters) can now create a free account and start exploring and creating. That's right -- at long last and after much anticipation, Sansar is now in "open Creator Beta":
At opening, Sansar’s Atlas directory already has hundreds of virtual experiences, including multiplayer games, recreations of historic sites and landmarks, art installations, movie theaters, museums, narrative experiences, jungle temples, 360-degree video domes, sci-fi themed hangouts, and more.
Creators invited to the platform during a limited-access preview have published thousands of amazing public and private experiences, and with the opening of beta today, the world is now invited to join them. More than 14,000 people applied, but Linden Lab limited the number to about 3,000...
Each instance of an experience is currently set to allow 35 concurrent avatars, and automated instancing will enable creators to reach unlimited audiences. [Linden Lab's Bjorn] Laurin said that will hit 100 avatars per instance by the end of the year. Many thousands of creations are already in existence, but not everyone has made their experiences public, Laurin said.
14,000 people is notably small compared with the 600,000 or so active users in Second Life, not to mention the 1 million or so Oculus/Vive owners presumably looking for a new social VR experience to explore. But now that Sansar is finally open, it's time to stop speculating, and actually deep dive into the platform itself. And however it's received by the market, Linden Lab deserves some major kudos for bringing such an ambitious project to fruition.
Click here for all New World Notes covers of Sansar. And please share your own Sansar experiences in Comments below!
When I use Sansar with the Oculus Rift, I quickly experience nausea, but only if I move around within the environment as I would move an avatar around in Second Life. Using the alternative method, short teleports, causes zero nausea in me. It's not a limitation of the software or hardware, I believe it to be a limitation of our species. My eyes detect forward motion, but my inner ear tells me that I am motionless - making my body believe that I just ate some bad sushi and I should get rid of it asap.
Posted by: Mac | Monday, July 31, 2017 at 12:53 PM
It's as I've been saying for MONTHS, the thing looks like one of those Unity-based virtual worlds already out there for PS4/PC like Four Kings Casino, Atom Universe or Big City Stories. And those themselves are basically a bunch of small devs trying to recreate various pieces of PS3 HOME (the casino, the hub social spaces and the Home Tycoon gamespace respectively) instead of getting together with Sony and just making another home and not duplicating the effort and functionality!
Sansar doesn't even match the functionality of HOME! When Home went open beta the stores were ready the theatre was functional with sitting, and the user residences were ready...what HOME didn't have was a bunch of touristy "oooh look at this showcase you can't really do anything in" experiences.
I mean sure, early HOME didn't have a LOT Of stuff, but at least you could play Saucer Pop!/Bowling/Pool/Chess/Checkers.
And guess who did the Apollo 11 experiences at the very top of the Atlas....LOOT Interactive....a former PS Home developer.
You know, LL, having a Linux build of the Sansar client will make it easier to do a build for BSD machines like MacOS.....and the PS4.
Posted by: CronoCloud Creeggan | Monday, July 31, 2017 at 02:18 PM
Created my account, it took nearly 30 minutes for the thing to install on my machine which easily hits the specs. Now I have been trying to get into 'experiences' for a while now. The thing hangs each time you try, you can't cancel the failed experience and you have to log back in. Good luck Sansar!
Posted by: Selina Greene | Monday, July 31, 2017 at 03:16 PM
it's only for Windows System and, I must tell, I don't like the graphics... SL at its beginning was much better as look... I cannot enter coz I'm a mac user... not a good thing
Posted by: Asia Connell | Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 06:55 AM