Sansar Creators & Linden Lab Still Working to Optimize the Platform's Heavy Experiences (Comment of the Week)

Pictures of Sansar's Harvest 114 from Linden Lab's official Flickr account

Lots of interesting conversation about the heavy download times required by Linden Lab's Sansar, most notably Harvest 114, a kind of suburban neighborhood experience which is often promoted by the company and is somehow 24 gigabytes (i.e. much larger than the entire world of Skyrim). "BlueBell", one of Harvest 114's developers, recently posted a defense of the experience, writing:

When we started in Sansar we had no clue to what was acceptable or what would work. That was not lack of knowledge on the side of the creators, there was just no documentation. It did not come with a full manual, we had to test what the limits were. We did not know how objects were decimate or optimized by the engine, we had no info on things like Level of Detail. Not even a recommended texture size. We all had to learn the hard way, trail and error.

I am on a notebook, 2 years old, 18GB ram. My specs do not even meet the requirements for a VR set. I do meet the specs that Linden Lab advises. I can get in [Harvest 114] fine, I can get into edit mode and work on very, very heavy scenes... Harvest is not the fastest loading scene, I am aware. But there are experiences that are on the same level.

May I remind you Harvest is made by creators that are Sansar residents. Not by some game design studio, like many other heavy experiences, but by people that may know Sansar better then any design studio ever could. Why? because they work closely as a group, closely with Linden Lab support, and they are working on it every single day. Working to make it faster, better and populated. If you ask me, that is succeeding. It is the most alive experience on the Atlas...

BlueBell claims Harvest 114 is the most popular experience on Sansar, and says they are working to optimize it:

[W]e are working on it 24/7. Bare with us. We are still the place, though, that people find it worth logging into as we are maybe heavy but also very much alive and events are peaks in the Sansar statistics. Even me on my kinda old notebook.

Linden Lab is very, very helpful optimizing and advising. Puzzling sometimes to see what a bug makes a bug. They know a long road is ahead but at least they are paving it with our help. Harvest is the one experience that pushes LL's limits. That is a good thing, both LL and us as creators draw lessons, draw the road map. Sansar has no future if we cannot have place where people gather to live, or even malls, big events like maybe a Burning Man type event. Harvest pushes the limits to make a fun and better future. Both sides watch and learn. There just has to be a "Harvest" or we will slow down Sansar and the fun of it!

As a point of fact checking, Sansar's average daily peak concurrency has fluctuated between 5-20 users total over the last 8 months, with no spikes above that. So while Harvest events might be statistical "peaks", they're apparently not enough to push concurrency averages above 20. As a point of fairness, many readers praise it, including one reader, Theanine, who adds this constructive criticism:

I've said for a long time that Harvest should stop being used as the main "lobby" area of Sansar, because it's too performance-heavy. A lobby region/world should always load quickly, and Harvest just doesn't fit that description - yet! I hope it does someday, because it truly is one of the most beautiful experiences in Sansar. It's absolutely stunning. But that beauty comes at too high of a cost right now.

Much more here.

Comments

[Chic Aeon]

Just a note that I noticed 37 folks at Elliot's loft today when I was testing clothes uploads. And of course some other experiences had folks in there too --- plus there are the people that don't show up as they are in unpublished sites.

So that daily peak concurrency doesn't top out at 20 as you state. I have seen many more showing up on Atlas pages.

[Hamlet Au]

Sorry, I meant to write average daily concurrent users, not peak. (I've corrected that in the copy.) The peak is higher than the average, possibly 2-3x more (i.e. 40-60).

[Tankgirl]

Harvest is not made by sansar residents. Drax is paid by the Lindens.

[Clara Seller]

After a couple of years, we're trying to figure out if Sansar's daily users is 5 or 20 or 60. We're trying to see if we can get this mule to move a little faster. We've got a long road and we're trying to figure it out as we go.

Why? That question just won't stop popping up in my head.

How much manpower and how much financial resource is required to get 1 single user after this much time?

I don't think the details are the problem. Isn't the big picture the problem?

[Ripley Von D]

I hope Linden Lab supports Linux with more consideration because I stopped using Windows and moved to Linux permanently. Some people I know have experienced Windows 10 fatigue and finally switched to either Linux or Mac. The only way I can develop for Sansar (and I do want to) is if Linden Lab makes Sansar available on Valve's Steam so that it can run on it's Proton comparability layer for windows games. I used to love using Windows but I won't ever be using it again.

[Chic Aeon]

@ Tankgirl

That was a pretty broad statement you made. Harvest is not made by sansar residents. Drax is paid by the Lindens.

Maybe you would like to say more?

I have no idea if Drax is paid by the Lindens or not, but I do know that there have been several people on Discord saying that they have built (and are currently building) Harvest. They are residents of Sansar. So I am pretty confused over the "Harvest is not made by Sansar residents".

Please of course state your sources :D. Mine is the Sansar group on Discord -- mostly the building channel. And on the previous thread on Harvest Bluebell (hope I remembered that correctly) said that she was actively building on the Harvest experience.

Just trying to keep the story factual.

[Tankgirl]

Drax is paid vy the Lindens. That is a fact. That he choose to use artists for free, by promising to help them with their careers, instead of paying in them a real income, does not change that fact. Yes the Lindens abuse comtent creators as free workslaves. And that is how Harvest was made.

[Tankgirl]

@chic and bluebell wanna keep things factual? ask drax if he is paid by the Lindens, instead of defending things that you know nothing about? Then ask any artist that dared to say no to Drax, what happened. You cannot say no to drax, because he is part of ebbes old boys network. Try it, see how much longer you are welcome in sansar.

[Theanine]

@Tankgirl, I've done work for Drax. I made several custom avatars for his documentary Our Digital Selves. And for all of the work I did, he paid me 100% fair and square.

I don't know if the Harvest team is being paid, but I definitely did get paid. So this claim that he uses artists for free isn't true. You should tread carefully before you libel someone.

[jimjane]

"When we started in Sansar we had no clue"
Pretty much sums it up.

[Chic Aeon]

Well "I" have said no to Drax a few times and I am still here. I definitely wasn't defending him :D

MEANWHILE, what I came here to add to the "discussion" was some info I found in Inara Pey's blog this morning. Along with lots of other news, NEW folks will soon be taken to an experience rather than just to the Atlas (or LookBook to get "your look").

"Which experience a new user is sent to will depend on a number of factors: whether it is public; how many are already in it (to avoid sending new users to an experience nearing its capacity and the possibility they may be re-directed to an empty instance); and those experiences that present a heavy / long load time will also be avoided."

Thought that was most interesting and likely a very good plan.

[Pulsar]

In the quoted text, Bluebell defines "sansar residents" those 3rd party persons that aren't a game design studio. Tankgirl claims they - like Drax - are paid and so aren't residents. Whether they are paid or not, and if then you would call them paid users or employees, that doesn't change Bluebell's point: they aren't a game design studio. However, Tankgirl point seems to be that Linden Lab, rather to pay an expensive professionals studio, took advantage of their own user-base and paid some user to do the job (thus not really just an user anymore), and they made Harvest. The fact that some user said they built it, doesn't say if they were paid or not. :)
Tankgirl's tells to ask Drax. Theanine confutes the other claim, that Drax in turn doesn't pay instead. At last, it looks like we found that someone has been paid! (kidding).

[Pulsar]

However, besides maybe a couple of examples to follow, I don't think Linden Lab should hire a professional game design studio to build something good in Sansar. The whole point of Sansar is the "Wordpress of VR", if you need professionals to make something decent, that means they screwed it up entirely. Given it's apparent that most users don't know or don't care about optimization (and not just that...), you should build your platform in a way that encourages it.
Sinespace is doing a better job, by weighting everything, spaces, furniture etc as Mb (and displaying the download size for each place in the list, but the important part is weighting all the items in that way).
Instead LL did the same mistake they did with SL here. And Sansar is plenty of these half-backed and poorly planned stuff. It's bewildering, LL isn't a small startup with few devs. It shouldn't be at all like this. The excuse "it's a beta" (that feels like an alpha) is quite weak, when you look at what others are doing instead. If LL wants to hire someone, they should better hire someone like Adam Frisby and showering him with the million dollars they have.