New World Notes

Transferring Second Life Content to Sansar is "Make-or-Break" for Sansar (Comment of the Week)

Second Life brand owners have been uncharacteristically quiet about Project Sansar, and reader "Rei" has a good explanation why:

Sansar is a total wait and see proposition for me. The inventory to transition [from SL] is huge. For example, I love Blueberry's stuff. (Probably to the tune of $50+ over the past year.) While I cannot expect Blueberry to care too much about that, they cannot really expect me to spend lots of money to get the same stuff back [in Sansar].

Looking at my own content (mostly buildings and landscapes) I do not have much desire to work on old stuff just bring it into Sansar, where presumably I will pay Linden Lab more to sell it. Nor am I willing to pay money to bring it in to Sansar to restore former SL clients' inventory.

I am sure the predicament is not lost Linden Lab:

Sansar Officially Appears on Twitter as @SansarOfficial

So far there's not much on it beyond some recent media coverage and those new pretty-if-avatar-free images, but Linden Lab's Project Sansar platform is now on Twitter. Only now -- after months of speculation that this was only a placeholder name -- it's known by its official name "Sansar" (Hindi for "world".) Tweets embedded below, follow for the latest.

Tweets by SansarOfficial

New Sansar Screenshots Sweet, But Sorely Lacking Avatars

With early creators getting their invites into Linden Lab's Sansar, Linden Lab's Flickr page now comes with several new Sansar screenshots. Which look great, except they're less the one feature that most virtual world users look for first: Where's the avatars?

Here some are! Way off in the sun-blasted distance. Maybe they're celebrity avatars, and this is the closest the Linden Lab paparazzi can get to them?

Wait a minute. Computer: enhance, enhance, enhance.

Yeah: no. Still doesn't show us much. Are Sansar avatars really that generic?

Here's a couple more screenshots, full of atmospheric effects and impressive architecture...

Second Life Brand Survey: Are You Already Preparing to Launch Your SL Brand in Project Sansar or High Fidelity?

Now that we're starting to see some SL-based brands transition to the next generation of virtual worlds, I'm curious how many others are also in that process. For this survey question, feel free to define "already" as openly as your like -- anything from directly working with the companies behind High Fidelity and Project Sansar, to exploring these platforms' beta with an eye what it takes to set up shop at launch.

Linden Lab Disputes Real Name Requirement for Project Sansar, But Unanswered Questions Remain

Last Friday, Linden Lab spokesperson Peter Gray responded to my e-mail to him from last Wednesday, asking if it was true, as original reports and an interview with CEO Ebbe Altberg seemed to suggest, that Project Sansar would require users to create accounts with their real life names. Peter insists that this is not accurate, but I haven't gotten an official response from Altberg himself, despite three follow-up e-mails requesting one.

"As Ebbe said [in the interview]," Peter told me, "requiring a user to provide their real identity to Linden Lab in order to create an account wouldn't preclude one from using a pseudonymous (or anonymous) persona when interacting with other users on the platform. This is quite clear in the quotes below: 'So I could go into a role-playing, or into an experience as an anonymous user in that context. But to the platform, I am not anonymous...It’s definitely something we’re thinking a lot about. But do I want that people in Sansar should be able to walk around anonymously? Absolutely!'"

However, in another part of the very same interview, Ebbe also suggested that the company is considering an identity system which integrates Facebook's real name policies with a pseudonymous one akin to Second Life and Twitter:

Project Sansar May Require RL Names, Suggests CEO, UPDATE: Audio/Transcript Confirms, "But We Have Not Made Final Decisions", UPDATE 2: Linden Lab Disputes

Update, 7/28: Linden Lab Disputes Real Name Requirement for Project Sansar, But Unanswered Questions Remain

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg made a public appearance in Second Life yesterday during that virtual world's 13th year anniversary, and dropped this potentially unlucky bombshell about Project Sansar:

Ebbe was then asked if users of Sansar would have the option to chose their own names for their avatars, or would they be having to use real-life identities. Ebbe answered he was leaning to the latter, "I think what's best for Sansar is real names. ... anonymous identities makes things confusing."

I missed this press appearance, so it's possible that SL blogger Bixyl Shuftan misheard Ebbe on this point; I'm double-checking with Linden Lab now. But if that's accurate -- still a big if -- that's a pretty big potential showstopper:

Why is Linden Lab Likely Spending Over $20 Million to Develop Project Sansar?

Last week when I blogged Linden Lab's latest and pretty impressive Project Sansar demo, I mentioned there was something in it that CEO Ebbe Linden said that made my jaw drop. And here it is, starting at around 9:25 (video below):

We've been working about two and a half years, it's a very large investment. Thankfully Second Life is kicking off a lot of money for us so we can make this massive investment. We have over 75 people in R&D building this platform to make it possible for all of you to create and share and socialize [in] VR.

Emphasis mine, because it bears emphasizing. Here's some basic, common sense assumptions:

• The average developer salary is about $100,000 a year
• Most/all of these 75 developers have been working on Sansar full-time
• Most/all of these 75 developers have been working on Sansar for least the last 2 years
• Most/all of these 75 developers will be on staff until at least Sansar launches at the end of this year

Do the basic math, and it means Linden Lab will easily spend close to $20 million developing Project Sansar before it even launches, just in developer salaries alone. That's definitely a "massive" investment as Ebbe says, and it actually seems like way more staff than is necessary, if Sansar is just a multi-user 3D creation platform.

WATCH: Linden Lab Unveils New Video of VR Creation & Preview Scenes from Project Sansar

From the Collision Conference last week, here's Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg revealing some new footage of Project Sansar -- both creating scenes in VR, and some new sample scenes, including a photographic recreation of an ancient Egyptian site, a North Pole/Antartica scene, and more footage of that sample Mars we've seen in recent months -- including more than one avatar. Scroll past the opening boilerplate, which is mostly stuff regular readers are already familiar with -- the action starts at about 8:18 in.

Some screengrabs below -- watch and discuss over the weekend! In his talk, Ebbe revealed something that made my jaw drop -- did you catch it?

Few NWN Readers Register for Project Sansar Creator Preview; Games & Design Leading Project Categories

Here's the results of that Sansar Creator Preview I took last week:

With just 66 readers responding, the plurality say they haven't signed up for the Preview at all, while among those who have Games and Design/Architecture are the leading projects they've proposed creating in Sansar. Those are the best uses of a 3D, VR-enabled platform, so that makes sense. What's interesting to me is how few of you signed up for the Preview:

Project Sansar Creator Preview Survey: Did You Apply & If So, To Create What Content?

Now that Project Sansar's Creator Preview is taking applications, here's a survey for all you content creators reading this: Did you reply, and if so, what kind of content did you propose creating there?