Category: Linden Lab

Now into its second year, the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) Conference opened on Monday, May 18th. Among the presentations and panel discussions that marked the day’s events was a 20 minute piece by Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, intriguingly entitled The Future of VR is User Created.

The presentation can be found in this official SVVR video, starting at the 39:00 mark. It was also recorded by Ruthalas Menovich, whose video I have taken the liberty of embedding below. Timestamps in the summary that follows in this article refer to Ruthalas’ video.

Those who may have been hoping to gain more of an insight into the Lab’s Next Generation Platform (aka Project SANSAR) will perhaps be disappointed by this presentation. As the title suggests, it isn’t so much focused on the Lab’s NGP, but rather on user generated content (UGC).

Thus, it forms something of an exploration of the potential of UGC within VR environments, as seen through the focusing lens of Second Life, and what Second Life has taught the Lab about some of the potential constraints posed by both supporting UGC and Second Life itself, which the Lab are now seeking to address. In doing so, it also touches upon some of the broader challenges facing platform providers as well, particularly in areas such as the state of VR technology itself, issues of monetisation for users, etc.

I’ll likely have some comments of my own on SANSAR in an upcoming article. For now however, I’m restricting this piece to a summary of Mr. Altberg’s presentation, with timestamps to the relevant points in Ruthalas’ video for those wishing to listen to them in full.

00:31 – 02:28: Democratising Content

The premise here is that the power of VR will be in democratising content – making VR such that those who wish to can create and share content among friends and audiences; not just necessarily in having it fed to consumers by high-end organisations with considerable technical skills.

As a demonstration of this, he quotes Mark Zuckerberg, and points to the idea that just as self-expression is a natural part of our physical lives – how we decorate our homes, the clothes we wear, the interests we pursue – so too is it important for VR to allow us similar levels of self expression, such as through the freedom to create the environments we enjoy. In support of this view, he also points to the enormous popularity of sites on the Internet which today enable us to express ourselves through the content we crate, be it video, photography, the written word, or other mediums.

02:28 – 14:30: UGC in Second Life and the challenges within SL

The focus moves on to Second Life and the challenges faced by anyone looking to enter the immersive VR environment with UGC.

Here he covers the rich diversity of user-generated content, which not only covers a huge range of interests and activities – social, educational, training, healthcare, business, entertainment, etc., and fulfils a massive variety of needs – homes, fashion, hobbies, landscaping, and so on -, but which is extraordinarily successful for both the company operating the platform and those providing the in-world content and services. In this he again cites the fact that in 2014, creators and providers redeemed some US $60 million from Second Life. The varying business models and their limitations – such as land – are mentioned.

The Lab’s work on making SL compatible with the Oculus Rift headset is touched upon, and a fair caveat is given on the aspect of performance. Ebbe notes that the work has to date really been more a useful tool for demonstrating to creators the difference between witnessing their creations on-screen and being immersed within them.

The limiting factors of Second Life are also discussed. Again, the land revenue model and its limitations (including scalability) are mentioned, as are the limits of region concurrency numbers and the challenges of trying to hold really large-scale gatherings in-world. The fact that user-generated content can itself be a problem is also mentioned; that users don’t necessarily know how to properly optimise their content to be efficient in terms of rendering and running, so the Lab will need to find a way to optimise that content.

Broader challenges in presenting an environment which allows everything that Second Life already does are also touched upon – such as issues of compliance and control given what are collectively vary large amounts of money flowing through the platform (with a GDP of half a billion US $ a year) supported through a floating exchange used to convert real-world currency into game tokens and back again, in order to ensure money laundering, etc., isn’t an issue.

Ease of use is also touch upon; not just in terms of SL’s own notorious learning curve, but also in the fact that VR itself is still very much a fluid environment in terms of technology and the devices which might be used within it – controllers, headsets, peripherals, etc – It simply isn’t clear (outside of head mounted displayed themselves) as to exactly what will come into commonplace use and what, out of all that is being suggested, developed, trialled or hyped, will fall by the wayside.

Continue reading “Ebbe Altberg: “The Future of VR is User-Created” (a look at SL + Sansar from the VR perspective)” →

On May 3rd, I posted about the speculation circulating concerning two trademarks the Lab registered in April 2015 for “SANSAR” (US serial no 86593259) and “Project Sansar” (US Serial no 86593254), and whether there might be related to the Lab’s Next Generation Platform for Virtual Experiences.

At the time I indicated that I’d already approached the Lab on the matter, but has not received any feedback, I also pointed out that in October 2014, the Lab registered the domain name “projectsansar.com”.

The Lab have now responded, both directly to myself, and via Twitter.

In is e-mail I received on Tuesday, May 5th, Peter Gray, the Lab’s Director of Global communications said:

Hi Inara,

Project Sansar is the internal code name we’ve been using for the new platform, and we do plan to use that name externally in its early stages (like the invite-only alpha we begin this summer). However, this is just the project name, and we anticipate changing it prior to launching the platform to everyone.

best,
Peter

Shortly after I received the e-mail, the Lab also tweeted:

That the name might be more an interim measure than a final operating name seemed to be indicated by the fact the domain name registration took place in October 2014, around the time the Lab was starting to indicate they had an internal name for the project. However, speculation as to the final name was understandable, given the trademarks were filed in April 2015 – although this obviously also converges with the Lab’s plans for a closed alpha to start-up later in the year, and so also fits with the name being the codename for the product.

I do still have some questions on the matter with the Lab; should I gain further replies, I’ll of course publish them here.

For the last several days, speculation has been circulating on whether the name SANSAR might be the name of the Lab’s new next generation platform for  virtual experiences.

Speculation first came via a post made to the SL Universe forums, and has since appeared on both the Profile feeds and forums, relating to trademarks filed by the Lab on April 10th, 2015, namely:

• US Serial no 86593254 – for “Project SANSAR”
• US serial no 86593259 – for “SANSAR”

In addition, in October 2014, Ascio Technologies, Inc., filed a domain name registration for projectsansar.com listing Linden Research as the Domain Administrator.

As has already been indicated in some of the responses to the forum posts referring to the trademarks, Sansara was one of the early names considered for Second life (being derived from Samsāra, which occurs in both Buddhism and Hinduism, and, perhaps more particularly where SL is concerned, was used by Hermann Hesse in his 1922 novel Siddhartha as a reference to the “world of illusion”), and currently lives on as the name of SL ‘s oldest and largest mainland continent. Whether “SANSAR” is a play on this is unclear – it might just as easily be an acronym.

The description of both trademarks is identical, and for those preferring to read it in a single pass rather than via the filings with the US Trademark office, it can be found on the Legal Force website, from which I’m quoting below:

Most of this reads pretty much as description for Second Life – so the applicability for a new virtual experiences platform is fairly obvious, and hence the speculation that is circulating.

However, what really does pique interest in this description  – beyond whether or not it pertains to the Lab’s new platform – is not the description of the environment, but the description of “online financial services”. The Lab has already indicated that Linden Dollars would be supported on the new platform, however, the description of a fictional-dollar-denominated credit card to charge online purchases suggests a new mechanism by which good and services within the new platform can be purchased, and by which the Lab might generate revenue.

Whether the name reflects the actual name for the Lab’s new virtual experiences platform or purely an interim project name (or even both, as may be the case given the two trademarks), is unclear. Sansar itself is a popular name for organisations related to the Asian continent (including SANSAR, the South Asian Network Supporting Awareness and Research based in Canada), so brand recognition, if this is to be the name, might be interesting in some quarters.

I approached Linden Lab for a comment on the matter, but have yet to receive a reply. Should one be forthcoming, I’ll update this article.

With thanks also to Ziki Questi