Category: Sansar

The following notes are taken from the 4:00pm PST Sansar Product Meeting held on Friday, December 8th. Product Meetings are usually held every Friday at 9:30am PST and 4:00pm PST, and are open to all. There is currently no set agenda, and the meetings are a mix of voice and text. The official meeting notes are published in the week following each pair of meetings, while venues change each week, and are listed in the Meet-up Announcements. and the Sansar Atlas events section.

The afternoon Product Meeting featured a drop-in by Ebbe Altberg, the Lab’s CEO, and notes on his comments, with audio extracts are included in this update.

Fashion Release

This is still on-course for a deployment  – mostly likely during week #51, commencing Monday, December 18th, 2017. For a summary of some of the items included in the release, please refer to my December 1st Product Meeting notes. The following covers only those items in addition to that breakdown, and which were noted in the December 8th meetings:

• In addition to clothing, the release will allow the upload and sale of hair attachments, and hair can be removed from an avatar to make it bald. It’s not clear at present if the hair is / can be rigged or not.
• Avatar attachments will no longer be limited to a 1m x 1m x 1m size, but will be limited by the avatar bounding box – precise dimensions will be in the knowledge base for attachments when the release is deployed.
• There will be a snow material type for those wanting to make winter scenes.
• Audio:
  • Materials have been made more distinct and most spatial.
  • Voice fall-off has been revised so it starts fading from 2 metres away from a person speaking, rather than a metre.
• Some of the UI panels / floaters will be resizable and relocatable within the client, these include:
  • People and chat panels in the run-time mode
  • The inventory, scene object and properties panels can be resized and moved around in Edit mode.
• The Event calendar will be available on the Client Atlas, although it will look different to the Web Atlas format.

Materials Editing

As previously noted, this release will add the ability for experience creators to edit and change the materials on in-world (not accessories / clothing) on items they have obtained via the Sansar Store. However, any such changes will only be applicable when the object in question is within the scene. As soon as it is returned to inventory, any changes made will be lost.

This change comes ahead of any permissions / licensing capability in Sansar, and has caused some upset.  However, Cara indicated that when a permissions system is introduced, any items held in inventory will effectively be grandfathered – so it will still not be possible to save changes to their materials back to inventory.

Store Update

A Store Update had been planned for between the Friends release (October 2017) and the Friends release (December 2017), but this has apparently been pushed back.

Ebbe’s Thoughts

Ebbe Altberg dropped into the afternoon Product Meeting, part of his plan to spend more time at Sansar meetings and meet-ups – and took time to answer questions and offered thoughts on the platform.

An Important Note from Ebbe

You have to be careful when you listen to me, because I mix what’s actually going to happen with want we wish will happen all the time. So I can’t promise time frames for some of these things.

So when you listen to me, think about it as general ideas of where we want to go. Whether it happens or not, that’s kind-of a different story.

On Sansar’s Engine

“We made some really tough choices up front,” Ebbe said on the choice of building Sansar’s engine, rather than opting to utilise something like Unreal or Unity. “We would have gotten something much faster to market that would have been usable if we had just gone with an existing engine …  But because of the problem we’re solving for, which is user-generated content in massive quantities, going with another engine really becomes problematic over time.”

Essentially, this choice came down to the issues of backwards compatibility within the platform; using a third-party engine in full or in part potentially opens the Lab to content breakage as a result of changes being made to an engine or elements of an engine that are outside their control. This is a lesson they’ve taken to heart with Blocksworld, which is based on Unity, and has had problems over the last five years as a result.

On The Risk of a Large-Scale “Reset” for Sansar

This goal with regards to continued backward compatibility with content available and used within Sansar means the Lab is hoping that they’ll never have to do a large-scale “reset” with Sansar which might result in widespread content breakage. However, this can never be guaranteed; there may be times –  a significant bug, a major technical issue, an implementation (say) of new software the Lab wants to leverage for Sansar – which might result in content breakage. Should anything like this happen, the hope is there will be  advanced communication with creators so they understand the issue, together with time allowed for them to swap over to any “new” way of doing things (where applicable) in order to try to minimise the overall impact.

The Supply Chain  / Licensing

The supply chain / licensing (/permissions) system is one of the more complex aspects of Sansar the Lab is still working through.

For those unfamiliar with the idea, in essence, if someone creates an experience intended for re-sale which utilises content made by other creators, and then packages the experience for sale, the supply chain system will ensure the other creators will automatically get paid to some degree as well for their creations with each sale of the experience. On a smaller scale, it would mean a building designer could furnish their buildings from a range of furnishing and décor suppliers, rather than having to make everything, and again, the supply chain means those designers receive an amount from each sale of the building.

Obviously, this involves considerable added complexity in terms of permissions, licensing, tracking, payment, etc., – so until things are ready, there is not detailed talk on time frames for introduction – but it is the goal Linden Lab is hoping to achieve.

Avatar Animations for Non-VR Users

When using Sansar in Desktop Mode, the avatars are – in a word – wooden. Changing this is a “high priority” for the Lab. However, how this is to be achieved is still the subject of debate within the Lab. Some want extremely smooth, human-like avatar movement, with blended transitions between animations to give a more fluid movement (such as getting up from a chair being a fluid transition from seated to standing, or a turn to face to the left being a sequence, fluid body move).   Other prefer a “snappier” transition – as is the case of turning left or right in Desktop Mode at present, or the avatar “jump” from seated to standing seen in Second Life.

Allowing user-created animations and animation systems (e.g. SL-like animation override systems) is currently much further down the road than trying to provide a more basic animations within the Sansar locomotion graph.

A Broad Look At The Future

The focus thus far has been building-out the platform, getting the software and infrastructure needed to support it all brought together, with more recent work centred on creator tools and needs and initial avatar development and accessories support – all of which will be continuing. However, Ebbe expects some of the focus in 2018 to start shifting towards more general use of Sansar – including user engagement and user retention, hopefully growing the user base for those who find Sansar usable at this stage of its development.

This does mean that the focus will entirely shift away from creator tools and capabilities. Rather it will see more of a blending of things: some work will be focused on the user aspects of the platform – socialising, interactions, etc., other will remain focused on creator tools, and on things like adding more interactive capabilities which can be used within experiences to broaden their appeal.

And his wish for Sansar’s Creator Beats one year anniversary (July 31st, 2018)? That there are more people using Sansar, that the default experience for someone coming to the platform is that there is life within it, there are people, there’s vibrancy within experiences with events and activities to be enjoyed. It is acknowledged that currently, visits to experiences can be lonely, and the Lab will be looking at ways and means to reduce this alongside increasing new user interest / engagement.

Continue reading “Sansar Product meeting 2017 week #49 – with Ebbe Altberg” →

The following notes are taken from the 4:00pm PST Sansar Product Meeting held on Friday, December 1st. Product Meetings are usually held every Friday at 9:30am PST and 4:00pm PST, and are open to all. There is currently no set agenda, and the meetings are a mix of voice and text. The official meeting notes are published in the week following each pair of meetings, while venues change each week, and are listed in the Meet-up Announcements. and the Sansar Atlas events section.

Events Calendar: Submitting YOUR Events

As I’ve previously reported, the last Sansar updated included the basic framework for an events calendar in the Web Atlas. Initially, this only highlighted events organised by the Lab, but the ability for Sansar users to submit their own events for inclusion was promised, together with further updates to the calendar itself (e.g. including it in the Client Atlas).

On Friday, December 1st, Linden Lab provided details on how Sansar users can submit their events for possible inclusion in the events calendar, with the caveat that all submitted events are subject to the event team’s approval at this time, and no guarantee is given that all events will be added to the calendar.

Event Calendar Submission Process

• You should allow at least one week for your event to pass through the submissions process.
• Send an email to events@sansar.com requesting to add your event into the events calendar. This e-mail must include the following information:
  • A title / name for the event.
  • The URL for the experience which will host the event.
  • The time of the event (PST).
  • A short, concise description of the event (which may be edited by the events team).
• Note that no other URLs / links can be given, other than the host experience URL.
• You receive an email confirming your submission, indicating it is being reviewed by the Sansar events team.
• You may be contacted and asked to provide further information (e.g a revised description for use in the event calendar).
• If the event is accepted by the team, it will be added to the events calendar and remains active until the time of the event has passed.
• Note that due to the current limited display space for events, and depending on the number and dates of events in the calendar, your event may not appear in the Atlas until any immediate events have passed.

Fashion Release

Still on target for a mid-December deployment, the Fashion release remains focused on clothing and fashion, but will also include other updates as well. Both fashion and non-fashion updates in the release are bullet-pointed below.

Fashion Related Updates

Not that this is only an initial fashion release. Capabilities will be enhanced.

• Will allow clothing uploads and sales through the Sansar Store.
• Clothing uploads will be handled in the same manner as accessories, via the avatar customisation editor.
• This initial release will not include cloth physics. Instead the baking service will continue to handle clothing as is currently the case, until such time as some optimisation updates for experiences have been implemented, as cloth physics can be resource intensive.
  • It will still be possible to use the character models within the customisation editor, clothing physics just won’t at this time be baked with the clothing  / avatar within an experience.
• Subject to further confirmation, this update will probably not include avatar shape sliders.
• The avatar mesh models will be provided via the Knowledge base.
  • These will most likely be supplied as .FBX files, rather than a blend file – but this is still TBC.
• As has been previously stated, the character models will have pre-baked underwear as a part of the avatar skin (and so cannot be removed).
  • The Lab is still working on this, and how much of the avatar the pre-baked underwear will cover.
  • The idea is that those wishing to make their own underwear or items such as swimming outfits, will be able to mask the pre-baked underwear.

Some concerns have been raised by designers familiar with Second Life over the complexities of rigging in Sansar, and whether additional tools might be required (e.g. to ease the workflow in Second Life, Blender uses can employ Avastar and Maya users MayaStar to ease the rigging process and obtain an “SL-ready” Collada file). The hope is that the .FBX files supplied by Linden Lab should be sufficient to handle rigging in either Blender or Maya using their native capabilities, rather than being reliant on third-party plug-ins, although sets of weightings might be useful.

Non-Fashion Updates in the Release

• Improvements to uploading assets to experiences in Edit mode: the button for uploading items currently in the Inventory panel is to be moved to the  tool bar in the upper left corner of the Edit screen.
• Ability to upload custom height maps
• Addition of the event calendar to the Client Atlas:  this is being planned, but at the time of writing, still TBC as being in the release.
• Experience access controls: a first pass at experience access control, allowing experience creators to set their scenes for either public access, or limiting access to only the people on their Friends list.
  • Access controls will be expanded in future releases to include whitelists, ban lists, etc., and give more granular control to experience creators.
  • If an experience is set to Friends only (or controlled by a whitelist, once available), it will not appear in the Atlas listings for anyone who cannot access it.
• Media Previewing: the December release will include the ability for experience designers to preview audio and video streams when building their scenes in Edit mode (they’ll no longer need to publish and switch to Runtime mode to  hear / see media).
• The Materials Editor will be able to modify objects post-upload:
  • This applies only to in-scene objects (both a creator’s own items and those purchased from the store).
  • Changes cannot be saved back to inventory, and only persist as long as the object is in the scene / experience.
  • This capability does not apply to clothing / accessories.
  • Concern has been raised about implementing this before a suitable permissions system has been implemented to allow creators to control whether or not their items can be modified. While a permissions system most definitely is required, given this update will not allow user changes to objects to be saved back to inventory, the concerns raised did come across as a little over-wrought; however, the feedback is being taken back to the Lab.
• Audio improvements:
  • Audio materials for terrain.
  • Voice quality improvements, including gating to reduce the amount of background noise being capture when people are speaking or leave their microphones open (people leaving their microphones constantly open is perhaps the biggest irritation with Sansar, particularly when they are off furiously hammering their keyboard for minutes at a time, or sitting and filling their faces with food. A polite application or OS toggling of their microphone would be appreciated).
  • Audio normalisation has been disabled, to help ensure that audio uploads retain their intended levels / quality.
  • Users in experiences will be able to adjust the sound levels within an experience.
• Scripting improvements: still TBC, but should include better memory management, and updates to reflective handling.

Other Items

• Avatar attachment size increase: the Lab is still investigating what to do with the current 1m x 1m x 1m avatar attachment size limit. It’s currently not clear if this will be changed with the Fashion release or not.
• Ability to update Store items and distribute to customers: this is mow being targeted for an end of Q1 2018 release.
• Custom terrain textures: will not be in the next release or “any time soon”,  due to unspecified issues. So more likely to be later in 2018 than sooner.
• Inventory updates: not in the next release, but being development, and may include a folder capability or similar hierarchy capability.
• Water Editor: there are no plans at present to release a water editor.
• Wish lists: as the audiences between the community meet-ups, the Product Meetings and the Sansar forums are somewhat different, Jenn has started to occasionally write-up unofficial “top ten” wish lists of things people at the community meet-ups would like to see, which can then be checked again feature requests on the forums and topics raised at the Product Meetings, and feed into the Lab’s general thinking.