On Monday, October 30th, 2017, Jenn from Linden Lab blogged two news items on Sansar.
In the first post, Jenn announced the winners of the two recent Sansar competitions: the Top Props contest and the seasonal Sansar’s Scariest competition for the best Halloween-related experience.
There were four categories in the Top Props contest, with the winner in each category receiving an Oculus Rift + Touch bundle, plus a one year Sansar Super Creator Subscription, while honourable mentions receiving a one year Sansar Creator Subscription. The winners, selected by a panel of Sansar staff and special guest judges are:
Sansar Top Props contest winners
The Sansar’s Scariest contest offered a single Grand Prize of US $10,000 together with an Oculus Rift + Touch bundle and a one year Sansar Super Creator Subscription. In addition, three honourable mentions would each receive a one year Sansar Creator Subscription.
The final selection on winner and honourable mentions was made by journalist and VR consultant Alice Bonasio, who has written extensively on VR for a number of publications, including VRScout, WIRED, Fast Company, and The Next Web. Her selections were:
Having spent time in both of these experiences, I’ll be providing write-ups on them in due course for those who may not have had the opportunity to visit.
In addition, Alice outlined a number of other experiences she enjoyed. For her feedback on those, and her notes for the winning entry and the honourable mention, and for the honourable mentions in the Top Props contest, please refer to Jenn’s blog post.
Image courtesy of Linden Lab
In the second post, Jenn outlined the upcoming Friends and Fashion releases. If all remains on track, the Friends release – focused on social aspects of Sansar – will be deployed on Tuesday, October 31st, and in addition to Jenn’s notes, you can read more about it in my Sansar week #43 update.
The Fashion update, currently scheduled for around mid-December 2017, will allow designers to create and sell avatar outfits, which thanks to the integration of new technology will be able to move and fold naturally. In addition, the update is currently planned to include:
The ability to restricted access to an experience to just those on your Friends list if you want.
More branding options for creators on the Sansar store, and the ability for the Sansar team to present curated collections of selected sellers and items.
Improvements to full-body IK.
Support for importing terrain height maps, and audio materials for terrain.
I’ll have more information on both the Friends and Fashion releases as a part of my weekly Sansar technical updates.
Darkwood Forest, by C3rb3rus offers an atmospheric and interactive environment which offers a touch of elven-like fantasy and a little whimsy.
As the name might suggest, the setting is a forest, perhaps caught in the dimming light of twilight as the light angles down through the branches of huge trees surrounding a body of dark water. Beyond the ring of trees sits a rugged, denuded landscape, almost lunar in its appearance, which offers an otherworldly feeling to the setting.
A wooden board walk runs around the water, winding under the roots of the trees and along the shoreline. Ornate lanterns illuminate this path, with giant mushrooms, the undersides of their cups glowing softly, adding a little more colour to the scene. The lanterns tend to put one in mind of elven lamps, although the boats – one of which gently tracks its way in a never-ending loop around the water – are perhaps more sampan in style and have tyres as fenders, again revealing this is not necessarily a purely fantasy realm.
Similarly, while the huge trees might be mistaken for Mallorn right out of Tolkien, with their platforms and wooden walkways running around and between the great trunks, a closer look reveals the platforms aren’t typical elven structures. Electric-like lights are strung around some, all have corrugated tin roofs, and one is emblazoned with a sign: BAR. So if these are the property of elves, then they are a most unusual bunch.
Follow the board walk and you’ll sooner or later come to a wooden elevator gently rising and falling between the board walk and the platforms above. The ride, when you step into it, is extremely smooth, and once on the platforms, you can walk to where steps wind further up the trunk of a tree to one of the buildings.
“You can’t enter the building yet.” C3rb3rus told me. “Eventually they will be, but I have some other things to do first.” Instead, follow the suspended walkway in the other direction from the elevator and you can catch a ride aboard the airship which gently circles through the trees. A simple dirigible with a boat-like gondola slung beneath it, this also has a fantasy feel to it. Boarding it is simply a matter of stepping onto the deck as it comes to a brief halt alongside the platform.
The ride, like that of the elevator, is very smooth and offers an excellent view of the landscape below. There is a brief stop before the airship returns to the tree platform, but getting off there isn’t recommended. As you do look down from the airship, you might spot a track cutting its way through the landscape just beyond the ring of trees. Starting near the spawn point, the path leads – by way of a water crossing – to another little touch of fantasy.
Darkwood Forest is a beautifully defined setting, restful, a little haunting in style – but not in a bad way – and richly atmospheric. The airship, the boat (which can be boarded via SHIFT-click teleport) and elevator are all very smoothly done, and the vertical nature of the setting, with the tree platforms and buildings, make it something of a unique setting.
The following notes are taken from the Sansar Product Meetings held on Thursday, October 26th, a day early to allow for the 1st Sansar Halloween Blitz Dodge Cannon Ball Tournament, which is being held on Friday, October 27th, 2017 – see here for more.
Product meetings are usually held every Friday at 9:30am PDT and 4:00pm PDT, 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 on a weekly basis, and are announced in the Meet-up Announcements.
The October 26th meetings took place at Darkwood Forest by C3rb3rus. Product team members Cara and Carolyn attended the morning and afternoon sessions respectively, together with Torley and Brett, respectively. Jenn, as usual, led proceedings. I did miss a portion of the morning session, as everyone ran away while I had to go AFK (meanies! 😀 ), so the official write-up may cover topics not mentioned here.
The next release, currently targeted for Tuesday, October 31st, starting at around 11:00am SLT. This means that Sansar will be down for around 90 minutes. An outline of some of the features to be included in the release were previewed at the start of October, and further information is given below.
Social Updates
Connecting with people: it will be possible to search for people by name via the client’s People App and send them Friend requests to add them to your Friends list. However, because Avatar Names are not unique, and can only be verified via Avatar ID, searches must be via Avatar ID.
Desktop mode avataridentification: it will be possible to identify people round you in Desktop mode, by clicking on them to display their Avatar Name / Avatar ID. This will also allow you to Friend / audio mute an avatar.
Sort client Atlas entries: the sort options recently added to the web version of the Atlas (e.g. those under the All, Sansar Studios, and creator tabs) will be available in the client Atlas. sorting as a whole is also improved.
Scripting Updates
Trigger collision events on non-dynamic objects: it will be possible to trigger events on non-physical and static objects. This also mean that scripts triggering events can be attached to animated objects.
New scripting APIs: details, however, still TBC.
Other updates
Publish work flow: the experience publish work flow includes additional contextual dialogue designed to make the process more intuitive.
Documentation: Links within the UI (presumably leaning towards the UI’s Edit Mode) to Knowledge Base articles.
Website calendar: to advertise events such as the daily meet-ups and the weekly Product Meetings, with links to the host experience. This will eventually be expanded to the client, and to include creator / community events.
Events Feature
A new feature in the works is for promoting events. This was intended to be part of the Friends release, but at the time of the October 26th Product Meetings, it looked as if it will slip to a separate update, following “soon after” the Friends release. This will:
Initially be a “little section” on the Web Atlas which can be expanded to see more events.
Be expanded in future iterations – although exactly what form it will take (Events tab in the Atlas? A calendar?) is still under discussion at the Lab.
Include a means (most likely an e-mail address) through which event organisers can submit their events for inclusion in the listing.
Darkwood Forest – Torley (l), Jenn (centre left), and Cara (r) from the Lab at the morning Product meeting, with Tyler Scarborough in the spacesuit (centre r)
Fashion Release
The initial Fashion release is currently on-track for around mid-December 2017.
The Lab will be extending invitations to creators to join a beta testing group for the fashion capabilities. This will be a selected group, and subject to NDA due to some proprietary aspects of the fashion capabilities.
Other Items
Audio Discussions and Torley’s Tips
Sounds approaching white noise (e.g. background “swooshing” style noises) can be broken up through camera issues. This is a known issue, and should improve when the Lab has full audio stream integration in the future, which is currently waiting on some third-party fixes.
While it has not been confirmed as something the Lab will implement, there has been discussion around possibly adding controllable fall-off curves for sounds in Sansar in the future. In addition, Torley has been experimenting with how reverb can be used (e.g. for enhancing echoes, etc). Galen has also put forward a suggestion for handling reverb.
Torley also offered some sound design tips:
If using a relatively constant background noise (e.g. a engine rumble), rather than using a single large emitter, or several very large overlapping emitters using the same sound, try using multiple emitters using variations of the sound. This prevents it becoming too homogeneous and can introduce subtle variations that add depth.
Use large audio blocks as a means to initially map the background sounds in a scene, then refine by differentiating the sounds into smaller areas, duplicating and varying as required, then add more focused sounds to build the layering.
Only use point emitters for sounds in very localised situations (e.g. a sound emanating from a specific point). For fall-off, spherical emitters are better than square emitters.
Resources such as audio volumes.etc., have a level of opacity assigned to them, defined by the physics engine. Requests have been made to offer greater variance in the level of opacity / transparent in various resource types, and this is something the Lab is examining, particularly as the layering of resources in a scene is liable to become more complex. Similarly, consideration is being given to changing the colour coding used in the Edit mode, as this can cause issues for people with colour vision issues.
Store Related
Listing / product updates: adding the ability to offer product updates remains a “high priority” for the Lab, although it is seen as having a complex series of interactions (e.g. with licensing / permissions and the proposed supply chain economy), such that implementation isn’t as straightforward as it might appear. However, the increasing need to update “standalone” products and present them to customers (e.g. so that products can keep pace with things like scripting improvements) has been recognised and is also being discussed at the Lab.
Product ratings: one outcome of the recent Store focus groups was a preference to so product ratings removed from listings. Currently, there’s no time frame on if / when this might be done.
In Brief
Web search bar: the placement / visibility of the search bar on Sansar web pages was improved with an update on Wednesday, October 25th.
Collision (?) Crashes: there is a potential client / experience crash which may be related to collisions with physical objects (e.g. get hit by a ball thrown by someone once or a number of times, and the experience may crash). It doesn’t happen with every collision with physical objects, nor is it necessarily related to the volume of collisions occurring within an experience. Galen has identified the crashes may be linked to an experience having a large number of complex surfaces, the speed at which items may be moving – the faster the physical object(s) is/are travelling, the more they might be prone to crashing the experience.
VR Friend Request Issues: some have noticed issues trying to accept / give Friend requests in VR mode. These appear to be related to the accuracy of the gaze pointer and the HTC Vive controllers perhaps more than Oculus Touch controllers. The Lab is aware of the problem and investigating it.
More granular control over animated objects: the Lab is planning to provide better control over animated objects via scripts (start, stop, point from which they animate, point at which they stop animating, etc), in time.
Resource metrics: Galen has requested the addition of a new tab to the Debug dashboard which would allow creators check their resource utilisation (e.g. server CPU and memory use), FPS, etc., in order to better optimise their work (particularly where scripts are concerned) . This has been taken aboard by the Lab as a means to help creators in optimising their experiences.
Revise dynamic object highlighting in Desktop mode for better control: currently, any dynamic object is highlighted in blue in Desktop mode, whether or not it is intended to be held by an avatar. This can lead to people trying to pick up scripted dynamic objects that are not intended to be held, risking them being repositioned or even crashing the experience. SIN has requested that the blue highlighting is updated so it can be toggled on / off by creators according to whether or not an objects can be held, to remove user confusion (as well as requesting the crash issue itself be looked at).
Bug Fix Release: each Sansar release includes bug fixes, as do updates. However, the Lab is considering focusing an early 2018 release on the list of bugs / issues which don’t make it into a release or update as they are not necessarily seen as urgent.
Adult Content in Sansar: allowing adult in Sansar is currently not on the roadmap.
Attention all personnel: non-human presence located in cryogenic bay. Quarantine procedures have been activated. Please report to security personnel for instructions. Thank you for your co-operation.
This is the warning you’ll hear on entering the main part of Tyler Scarborough’s Stasis Interrupted: Chapter 1, which might be described as a science fiction horror story. The warning – the first of several which cascade down on you – is given within a vast chamber deep within what appears to be a massive colony transport vessel. The chamber as stacked with stasis pods, presumably each one designed to hold individual colonists in a state of suspended animation during the voyage. However, all is not well, as evidenced by the warning.
Walking a little deeper into this huge chamber will trigger the additional alerts, each more dire than the last, culminating in a call for all personnel to get to the escape vehicle launch bay and evacuate the ship. Clearly, a major incident has occurred, and the warnings are your cue to find the escape vehicles.
Three massive airlocks separate the cryogenic bay from the rest of the ship – but only one of these is operational, alarms grinding and warning lights flashing. Beyond it lies the first signs of trouble: blood slicks the floor leading the way to the crew stasis pods, all of which are empty. Several identically dressed bodies lies on the floor. Bald and with bare feet, they would appear to belong to former colonists – and all clearly died violently. Just what has happened? Dimly lit corridors beckon you onward…
Finding your way through the ship is not as straightforward as might first appear. Beyond the crew stasis pods is a network of corridors, all under emergency lighting. Visibility is reduced to what can be seen through the sweep of yellow light cast by strobing lights, some of which may reveal more of the crew as you progress, and which can lead to a slight sense of disorientation.
Stasis Interrupted – with mains power apparently down, only emergency lighting is available within the ship, reducing everything to dark corners, shadows, and the metronomic sweep of yellow light
Eventually, the corridors will lead you to the ship’s cargo deck, stacked high with containers of equipment and supplies. Once again, finding your way across this area isn’t entirely straightforward. Just keep your eyes on the deck, and you may find the way. Once you do reach the far side of the cargo bay, things get a little easier, as emergency light sticks help direct you to the last of the escape vehicles.
It is aboard the escape vehicle that you’ll encounter the disembodied voice of another survivor, giving you instructions on what to do next. Unfortunately, whether by accident or design, the audio message was too distorted for me to clearly understand. Also, shortly after hearing it, I found myself back at the spawn point with a teleport script error message. My assumption is that the message marks the end of “chapter 1” of the adventure.
Stasis Interrupted – this is not the escape vehicle you are looking for …
This abruptness of this apparent “ending” (assuming it’s not an error) did spoil things a little for me; Stasis Interrupted is otherwise an exceptionally well crafted experience. The transport vessel feels huge, as one might expect such a space craft – presumably on a one-way trip – to be. Certainly, if this is the first chapter of an unfolding story, then I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next; there is enough to keep one engaged here – and the use of spatial and ambient sounds is so far the best I’ve come across thus far in Sansar. It would also be interesting to see how things might be enhanced once the likes of NPCs in Sansar are properly catered for – being pursued by the unfortunate colonists could add a sense of urgency to the situation!
Stasis Interrupted is accessible via both VR and Desktop modes, and I had no problems in exploring the environment while in Desktop mode. However, the initial spawn point for the experience does contain a warning for those using VR mode and who might be sensitive to flashing lights. Those comfortable with passing beyond the warning can use the teleport to continue (denoted by “ENTER” on the floor), and enter the experience proper.
If you are looking for somewhere that little bit different to explore for Halloween, or enjoy environments a little reminiscent of Alien, Stasis Interrupted is the place to be.
Carolyn (right) addresses the afternoon product meeting, Friday October 20th, 2017
The following notes are taken from the Sansar Product Meetings held on Friday, October 20th. These meetings are held every Friday at 9:30am PDT and 4:00pm PDT, 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 on a weekly basis, and are announced in the Meet-up Announcements.
The October 6th meetings took place at Witchy’s Upside Down, a Halloween themed experience by Beverly Zauberflote.Product team members Cara and Carolyn attended the morning and afternoon sessions respectively, with Jenn and Brett Linden, the Digital Content Manager at the Lab leading / attending both.
General Announcements
Contest results: both the attachments and the Sansar’s Scariest competitions have now closed and final decisions on winners will be announced via a blog post, potentially in week #43 (commencing Monday, 23rd October).
New contest: the Lab is in discussions with a new contest for Sansar, and details are likely to be announced “soon”.
Spooky Karaoke, Saturday, October 21st at 14:00 PDT: taking place at the Studio Club – Karaoke & Hang Out by SIN. Sansar users are invited along to exercise their vocal talents in a karaoke contest. The catch: as it is Halloween, the tune must be in theme with the season.
Halloween Party, Friday October 27th at 10:00 PDT: taking place at Starry Skies’n’Stuff by Jenn from the Lab.
Sansar Roadmap and Upcoming Releases
Gindipple channels his inner Bruce at the product meeting, Friday October 20th, 2017
A further “roadmap blog post” providing insight into upcoming releases is being drafted, and will cover the next two releases following the upcoming October / November 2017 Friends release.
FRIENDS RELEASE
The roadmap blog post on the Discovery and Friends releases can be found here), in short, the Friends release may include (subject to final confirmation):
Ability to search for people.
Improvements to publishing experiences.
An Events tab in the Atlas to showcase virtual meet-ups and special events to attend.
New guides to Sansar’s controls in desktop and VR mode.
Additional improvements for locating people are also planned, but will probably not be available for the upcoming Friends release. These include:
An Atlas indicator for the number of people in each experience.
The ability to locate where friends are in Sansar (with an option for people to opt-out if they do not wish to reveal where they are).
Store and Fashion Releases
The next two releases are the Store Release, scheduled for November, and the Fashion release, scheduled for December. Details of what will be in each of these releases has yet to be finalised, however:
The Store release will feature a range of updates and fixes for the Sansar Store.
The Fashion release will mark the “first phase” of deployment of clothing and fashion support within Sansar. Bjørn Laurin from the Lab outlined the plans for this in week #38 (meeting notes), and allowing for possible changes to the plans since then, I’m including the audio from that discussion below:
The hope is to have Fashion release available around mid-December (ish), to allow for the Lab’s traditional Christmas / New Year holiday closure, when only essential services are covered.
One point of note is that as Sansar does not as yet have maturity ratings (or similar), this avatars will retain a basic baked layer of underwear to prevent full body nudity. Thought is still being given how to implement this baked layer so that it does not interfere with fashion designs from creators.
Repeat / Stale Notifications and Messages
A recent issue is that of repeated / stale notifications and messages (e.g. direct messages from a previous session being repeated and marked as new; friendship requests previously accepted being repeated, etc). This has yet to be fixed, and in the meantime the planned deployment of a sound being played alongside of received messages / notifications has been delayed until the issue has been fixed. The problem has also led to requests that notifications and direct messages are timestamped.
Avatar Animations
Avatars in Sansar can walk and run as present. In the future the abilities to sit, jump, crouch, and pick objects up will be made available. However, as Bjørn also discussed at the week #38 product meeting (see the link above), not all of this is easy to implement in Sansar, and I’m again including his comments from that meeting for reference:
The improved avatar interactions / animation capabilities are seen as something to be added during 2018, and so will not be a part of the final 2017 releases. As Cara commented in the product meeting, and in addition to the points Bjørn discusses in the audio above, is that Sansar’s ground-up design means that capabilities for animating avatars within in cannot simply be “lifted” from Second Life or a similar-looking game engine. They require building into Sansar’s own avatar rig. Also, as part of the fashion work, the avatar itself is being re-worked to separate out the clothing bakes, and the Lab wants to complete this work before adding additional avatar capabilities.
Account Management
PayPal Support
In September, the Lab announced policy changes relating to the Sansar Store, which, among other things, required creators to file a payment method (credit / debit card) with the Lab. Following concerns raised from those stating they are unable / will not use credit / debit cards and requests for PayPal to be made an option, on October 2nd, the Lab confirmed the credit / debit card requirement would not be enforced.
At the October 20th meeting, Cara confirmed that adding PayPal to Sansar has been moved up on the roadmap, and is now a high priority, although subject to some other back-end work being finished.
The Avatar Name is somewhat analogous to Second Life Display names, inasmuch as it is a name by which someone is known in-world. Multiple people in Sansar can have the same Avatar Name (just is in the physical world there are multiple John Smiths, for example).
The Avatar ID is designed to be a unique identifier for each user / account. No two users can have the same Avatar ID.
Currently, both are fixed (although it may be possible to change an Avatar Name in the future). However, as both are visible to other users (the avatar ID being prefixed by “@”), this has raised a concern over account security. Accounts rely on e-mail addresses for log-in purposes, which again are not hard to discover, potentially meaning two out of three unique account identifiers (e-mail address and Avatar (account) ID) can easily be obtained (the third being the password). That said, the Sansar approach is not too dissimilar to Second Life, in that the user (account) name and user’s e-mail address can be discovered.
In Brief
Wednesday, October 18th Patch: there was a small patch released on Wednesday, October 18th, 2017 to address some crash issues. Release notes for this update are apparently in-hand.
In-Scene Interactions: the ability to interact with scripted objects such as light switches, door handles, etc., in Desktop mode is being worked on, but will not be appearing before 2018. Currently, such interactions will only work through direct collisions with trigger volumes.
Animated Mesh in Sansar: Animated Mesh (Animesh) is now open for testing in Second Life, prompting questions on when similar capabilities will be available in Sansar. Cara confirmed work is continuing on this, and the scripting team will be working on APIs for more granular control of animations, looping, etc. It’s not clear whether this will be available as a part of the upcoming 2017 releases or be targeted for 2018.
Avatar Attachment Size: avatar attachments are currently limited to a size of 1m x 1m x 1m and a tri count limit (15K per attachment). Requests have been made to increase both. Currently, there are no plans to change either in the short-term, but both may be revisited, depending on use cases offered.
Store Related:
Ability to update Store listings: following the Store focus group meetings, this is now “extremely high” on the priority list for updates, although a determination still appears to be required on where it sits in the order of priorities compared to things like licensing / supply chain management.
Ability to group and sell related items: is on the roadmap, but is sitting lower down the list than things like the ability to update listings (above).
Community events: the Lab has put together a series of events for October, but is keen to see experience creators organise and host events. Those who opt to do so are asked to contact Jenn with details, so she can help promote and advertise them through blog posts, etc., in lieu of a more structured means of promoting events.
Dynamic objects:
The Lab is working out how to improve collision handling with dynamic objects in Sansar (e.g. through the use of convex hull collisions) to improve performance.
The ability to teleport onto dynamic objects will be looked at in the future.
LOD (Level of detail) system: again, on the roadmap, but is currently still in the planning stages.
Sansar and Oculus “Dash” and Windows 10 Mixed Reality:
Oculus “Dash” is new user interface designed to let users replace traditional computer monitors with highly customisable, nearly unlimited VR screen space described as being like the virtual screens and information displays seen in the 2002 film Minority Report. It is due to start rolling out in December 2017 as a beta product.
Windows 10 Mixed Reality is currently being deployed, and OEM headsets (currently VR focused) are being made available.
For Sansar, Linden Lab is watching the Oculus Dash development, and currently remains focused on Oculus Rift / HTC Vive support, rather than looking at Window 10 headsets.
As a new – and still developing / evolving platform – Sansar is currently perhaps more a place for experimentation for many, rather than a place to inhabit or use productively (which is not to say it cannot fulfil use cases, as I hope my article on the recent Voyages Live: Egypt tour shows). Because the platform can be seen in this way, I’m constantly looking out for experiences that push Sansar’s current capabilities just that little bit harder – and Linden Lab has been encouraging experience creators to do just this, initially through their Creator Challenge, which took place a few months back (see here for more), together with the Halloween-themed Sansar’s Scariest contest, which closed its doors to entrants in mid-October 2017.
Creator Jasmine has used both competitions as a means of experimenting with Sansar’s potential as a storytelling platform. For the Creator Challenge, she produced Through the Waterfall: Enter Another World, which actually took the prize for Best Narrative Experience. This is the not-entirely-happy story of what happens to two young girls in the aftermath of a tragic car accident.
The story starts atop a giant desk on which visitors are informed, Without dreams, we can never become more than that which we already are… , together with an invitation to jump down to the floor and find the first of a series of keys. Each key, when walked upon, teleports the visitor to a chapter in the unfolding story. It’s a fairly linear piece, requiring the visitor to “fill in” the blanks of the storyline, so to speak, but the crafting and use of media and music help move things forward through the six chapters. I’m not going to say more here so as not to spoil anyone’s visit.
Miner Difficulties is a further narrative-based experience, with the story developed by Jasmine, and scripting / choreography by Galen (the two of them working under the title of Through the Waterfall). The similarities between this story and that of Through the Waterfall: Enter Another World are fairly clear: both start in similar surroundings, both involve the visitor in an unfolding narrative (an introduction and three chapters for Miner Difficulties, rather than the intro and six chapters of Enter Another World). However, it is the differences in the way the story is managed with that sets Miner Difficulties apart from Jasmine’s earlier work and helps mark how Sansar’s capabilities are gradually unfolding and lending themselves to more sophisticated use.
Whereas Enter Another World relied upon the discovery of keys and narrative deductions on the part of the visitor to link the six chapters of the story, Miner Difficulties uses two “living” guides to steer visitors through the story and piece together events. These are a little bird and a little girl.
Again, I don’t want to spoil a visit, so I’m not going to say much on what to expect. Suffice it to say that the bird acts as a guide through the woods, leading visitors to the little the girl (and then continues onwards with you as you travel with her). The girl also acts as a guide – but as well as leading you onwards, she also talks to you as she does so, giving a natural structure to the narrative. Both bird and girl are beautifully choreographed and give a great sense of depth to the experience.
To those used to the complexities and capabilities of Second Life, these experiences may seem a little simplistic. However, they do demonstrate the potential for Sansar to become a platform for storytelling – and with the growing capabilities for both VR and Desktop mode interactions, it will be interesting to see how narrative-based experiences develop.
In terms of Halloween / ghostly experiences, I found Miner Difficulties one of the more involved in Sansar, and deserving of its status as a featured experience.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 