Following the recent deployment of the Friends release for Sansar (see my overview for more), the promised Events update has now been deployed to the web Atlas, as the first iteration of an events notification capability that the Lab intends to grow over the coming months.
For this initial deployment, the feature is – as noted – limited to the web Atlas, where it appears on the Home tab for the Atlas, located between the banner list of experiences and the Recommended Experiences (aka “Featured” experiences, as referenced in the client Atlas, and more generally by the Lab). Note that if there are no events listed, the section will not be visible in the Atlas.
The capability is currently limited to just three events at a time being displayed, as shown in the banner image at the top of this article, and below. Each is displayed with an image of the experience hosting the event, the event title,the time (PST) / day (and presumably date, if the event us further out than “tomorrow”) it is being held. Beneath this is a short description of the event, which can be expanded by clicking on the More… option, as shown below.
Details of an event can be expanded (to a degree) by clicking on its associated More… option
Clicking on either the image or the title for an event will display a pop-up message, again repeating the day / time of the event, and which also give the URL for the host experience, allowing users to visit it via the experience’s web page & then launching the client.
Clicking on the image / title of an event will display a pop-up which includes a link to the hosting experience’s Atlas page, allowing people the visit the experience
Currently, the events are limited to those run by Linden Lab – simply because these are the major form of event in Sansar – such as the daily Community meet-ups and the weekly Product Meetings, as listed.
However, in the future, as the capability grows, users will be able to e-mail the Lab with details of their own experiences for inclusion. I’ll blog on this / update this article once the e-mail address and requirements for submitting an event have been made available.
The Events feature itself will, as noted, be expanded over time to allow more events to be included, although exactly what form it will take (additional tab in the Atlas?) is, I gather, still TBD at the Lab. Again, I’ll cover further updates as they appear.
As I recently reported, the winners for the two recent Sansar contests – Top Props and the Halloween themed Sansar’s Scariest – were officially announced on Monday, October 30th.
For the latter competition, in which users were asked to create a spooky / scary experience in the spirit of Halloween (although not necessarily limited to the theme of Halloween), and the final decision on the overall Grand Prize winner and honourable mention were decided upon by journalist and VR consultant Alice Bonasio.
In issuing the official announcement, the Lab included some feedback from Alice on her decisions, and on Wednesday, November 1st, Alice offered an expansion on her thoughts around the entries and on Sansar in a piece written for VR Scout.
Of the grand prize winner, The Diner by C3erb3rus, Alice comments:
Even by Sansar standards, the lighting and textures in this experiences were amazing, incredibly nuanced. From the giant flying saucer spinning away to the MGM lion roaring from the drive-in movie screen in the distance, every element felt well-executed and real. Which is probably why it produced the best—spoiler alert—“jump out of your skin” moment of any of the experiences I tried.
Having spent time exploring the experience, I can only agree. The Diner is fabulously atmospheric, a wonderful throwback to the horror B-moves of the 1950s, complete with spooky diner, things that jump up in the night, flying saucers and more. There’s even a B-movie feature – the British black-and-white 1958 movie, Fiend Without a Face – playing at the drive-in alongside the titular diner. Careful exploration is recommended indoors and outdoors, as there is much to be discovered in the diner, down at Area 51 and even at the drive-in.
The Honourable Mention for the contest was Paranormal Investigation by Abramelin Wolfe, an experience I visited just after it opened, but have yet to write about. In it visitors take on the role of the paranormal investigator in a haunted house. A more traditional kind of Halloween build, but one that is fun nonetheless. It’s a dim, occasionally hard to explore setting when in Desktop mode, but one that’s worth taking the time to explore, as you might discover that the bumps in the night you might occasionally hear in the attic might not necessarily be caused by things trying to spook you. Commenting on the experience, Alice said:
This felt like something I would have paid for if it was a console game. Carefully crafted visuals, well-timed and well-judged sound effects, this is an experience that has something for everybody, including Ghostbusters fans like myself, who will delight in having the library books floating off the shelves all around them. Definitely not the most original in terms of theme and composition, but absolutely beautiful to look at and a pleasure to explore.
Alice also lists a number of other experiences she enjoyed – one in particular of which still stands as one of my favourite experiences in Sansar, in terms of both presentation and potential. This is Tyler Scarborough’s Stasis Interrupted – Chapter 1, which I’ve reviewed here. This is really a superb setting for the opening of a story, and Alice nails the description:
It’s like Alien, but with Zombies.” If you’re a fan of either genre (or, like me, preferably both) you will probably like this experience quite a lot. The creators got the slick look and foreboding mood of Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece just right, something that can be surprisingly challenging … This is all about building up suspense and atmosphere, and even during my relatively short test-drive it managed to do that.
Alice goes on to mention Miner Difficulties by Through The Waterfall (Jasmine and Galen), which I’ve also reviewed, together with Joyride by Alex, and several more experiences were mentioned in the official blog post about the competition.
Alice Bonasio: Sansar’s Scariest special judge
The fact that so many were singled out beyond the grand prize winner and honourable mention underlines a point raised about contests like this: a single large cash prize doesn’t really reflect the amount of effort put into entries, and might even dissuade people from entering future competitions. The Lab has indicated that they’re aware of this, and are looking to possibly revise the prize pool in future contests.
In commenting more generally on the contest, Alice doesn’t shy away from pointing out that Sansar does have some problem which need to be ironed-out, particularly around the area of processing power (I’d also raise a question on performance; while my PC may no longer be top-of-the-line specs-wise, it is still an i4 system with 16Gb RAM and a GTx 970 4Mb GPU, and there is still at least one experience in Sansar I cannot load).
True, she raises the issue more around the VR aspect of the platform and the current high cost of entry into VR (something not exactly Linden Lab’s fault), but performance issues are there within the platform, and can limit access in Desktop mode – which is important, given the relatively slow take-up of VR, if Linden Lab wishes to reach a broader audience with Sansar until such time as (or even if) VR gains more of a broad-based market footing.
In drawing attention to performance, Alice appears to look to the new Windows 10 Mixed Reality headsets as a possible solution, securing an answer to a question I recently asked at a Sansar Product Meeting, without gaining a definitive answer: would Sansar be supporting these headsets in the future? Alice has more success than I, quoting Bjørn Laurin, the Lab’s VP of Product as saying, “We’ve been experimenting with some of the Windows Mixed Reality headsets, and do plan to make it possible to use Sansar with them in the future.”
It’ll be interesting to see whether the new headsets increase people’s interest in VR / AR – right now the price differential between the higher-end versions of the headsets and the Oculus Rift isn’t that great, which might limit the appeal of at least some of them. I’m also curious as to how quickly the Lab’s experiments with the new headset might product user-visible support. In the meantime, Alice’s VRScout article makes for interesting reading alongside the Lab’s own competition blog post.
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.
Voyages Live: Egypt: people arrive at the cenotaph at Gebel el-Silsila. as recreated in Sansar from a model built by INSIGHT Dr. Phillipe Martinez is centre foreground in the blue jacket
On Wednesday, October 4th, I was one of a number of people who joined a special immersive “voyage” through ancient Egypt, visiting three sites of antiquity which are not open to the public in the physical world, but which have been digitally re-produced in a virtual environment for the purposes of study, and have also been optimised for presentation in Sansar.
Joining us for the journey were Kevin Cain, Director of INSIGHT – the Institute for Study and Implementation of Graphical Heritage Techniques (also sometimes called Insight Digital) and Dr. Philippe Martinez, INSIGHT co-founder and Lead Archaeologist, author, and University of Sorbonne professor.
The cenotaph at Gebel el-Silsila, located on the banks of the river Nile, available to visit in Sansar
INSIGHT, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, has been at the forefront of digitally capturing sites of antiquity in Egypt, and Dr. Martinez himself was one of the earliest exponents of computers and 3D capabilities in archaeology.
In the 1980s, for example, he encoded the decoration of 12000 blocks dating to the time of Amenhotep IV – Akhenaten, discovered reused in the 9th pylon at Karnak. The database was then used under artificial intelligence techniques with the output of hundreds of virtual reconstructions belonging to the first temple dedicated to the god Aten. Also around that time, he spent two years working on a 3D reconstruction of the ancient Egyptian temples of Karnak and Luxor.
Kevin Cain (l) and Dr. Phillipe Martinez (r) and, inset, their respective Sansar avatars (again, left and right)
INSIGHT’s work now involves state-of-the-art techniques such as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a surveying method that measures distance to a target by illuminating it with a pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses, and photogrammetry, the science of making measurements from photographs. INSIGHT’s work in recreating sites of anitiquity in 3D was also intriguing revealed during some of the earliest looks inside Sansar prior to the Creator Preview opening, when images of the tomb of Nakhtamon (“TT341”) were used in various promotional talks and demonstrations of the platform (see here for an example).
The tomb of Nakhtamon is one of three locations thus far reproduced in Sansar in a collaboration spanning INSIGHT, the Sansar Studios team, the University of Sorbonne and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. Both it and the cenotaph at Gebel el-Silsila, were scheduled stops on the tour, but such was the interest shown in the tour and in INSIGHT’s work, the tour was extended to include a reconstruction a section of the Ramesseum “Coronation Wall”.
Tomb of Naktamon (“TT341”) in Sansar – part of the collaboration with INSIGHT and visited on the tour
For the purposes of the event, the two primary destinations together with the Voyage Live: Egypt experience, where people initially gathered, were spun-up in their own special instances. This meant that casual visitors to either Voyages Live: Egypt or the locations on the tour would not feel that they were intruding on a private event or have their own visit spoiled by a group of avatars suddenly crowding them out and getting in the way.
This in itself demonstrated a key strength of Sansar: the ability to spin-up instances of experiences to deal with special events and the like, without necessarily having to close them off from public access / other uses occurring at the same time.
The Ramesseum “Coronation Wall” reproduced as a 2 million poly model in Sansar, optimised from an 800 million poly original.
At Voyages Live: Egypt, attendees were introduced to Kevin Cain and Philippe Martinez, and a little time was spent talking about INSIGHT’s work, the backgrounds of our guides (Mr. Cain, a specialist in computer graphics and imaging worked widely in the film industry before a fascination with preserving sites of antiquity drove him to establish INSIGHT as a non-profit entity specialising in the digital recording and mapping of sites of antiquity, as which has now worked in a dozen countries around the globe).
INSIGHT’s work is not only fascinating from a lay perspective – offering the potential for VR and a platform like Sansar to open-up historical sites for education and learning across all ages without putting the actual site at risk – but because it is of very real benefit in helping to preserve ancient sites from accidental damage, whilst providing archaeological teams an opportunity to effectively study locations even when the locations themselves are not open to study, again to help preserve them.
Linden Lab has announced the first Sansar virtual tourism / history event, which will take place on Wednesday, October 4th., between 10:00 – 11:00 PDT on Wednesday, October 4th.
Presented in partnership with the Institute for Study and Implementation of Graphical Heritage Techniques (INSIGHT, also referred to as Insight Digital), Voyages Live: Egypt offers those registering for the event the opportunity to join with Egyptologist, author, and INSIGHT co-founder, Dr. Philippe Martinez for an interactive guided tours of select Egyptian heritage sites which have been recreated in Sansar with a high degree of fidelity.
The cenotaph at Gebel el-Silsila as modelled in Sanar
These sites, which are inaccessible to the public, have been recreated as a part of a joint project between INSIGHT, the Sorbonne University, and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. The project has used LiDAR (or LIDAR – Light Detection and Ranging – a surveying method that measures distance to a target by illuminating it with a pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses) and photogrammetry (the science of making measurements from photographs) to produce models of sites of antiquity in Egypt. Some of these models have been optimised by Linden Lab and presented in Sansar in exacting “you are there” detail.
One such model in particular, that of the entrance to the tomb of Nakhtamon (“TT341”), was optimised from a model of some 50 million polygons to produce a 40,000 polygon Sansar experience used extensively in promoting the platform in the run-up to the Creator Preview and Creator Beta programmes. This experience is linked to the Voyages Live: Egypt experience, which also allows visitors to travel to what appears to be a work-in-process of the Ramesseum “Coronation Wall”, and to the cenotaph at Gebel el-Silsila.
Dr. Phillipe Martinez, Lead Archaeologist for INSIGHT, and who will be leading the Sansar tour on October 4th, 2017, pictured at Gebel el-Silsila
As the co-founder and Lead Archaeologist for the INSIGHT programme, Dr. Martinez is well-placed to talk about the INSIGHT work in the digital preservation of sites of historical import in Egypt and on Egyptology in general. Thus, Voyages Live: Egypt offers a potentially fascinating field trip. However, it is only open to a limited number of participants, so those interested are advised to register sooner rather than later in order to secure a place on the tour. Detailed information on the event will be sent via e-mail to all successful applicants in due course.
Linden Lab has announced forthcoming changes to their Sansar Store policies. Specifically, the changes comprise updates to the listing guidelines, together with new eligibility requirements for those listing goods on the Store.
To quote the blog post specifically on the eligibility requirements:
As of October 2, 2017, you’ll need to have a credit card on file for your account in order to sell in the Sansar Store. Adding one is easy – just follow the steps here.
Free account holders will be able to sell up to 50 items at a time. Subscribers at the Creator level or above will have no limits on the number of active listings they can have in the Store. Note: if you have more than 50 listings in the Store when this change goes into effect on October 2, 2017, your items may be de-listed, so please take a moment to review your items to avoid the inconvenience of having to re-list them.
New polices and requirements are being introduced for the Sansar Store
There has been a degree of negative feedback on these points in particular, and a part of the meet-up on Wednesday, September 27th – which was to discuss ideas and feedback for the Sansar Market – initially focused on the announcement. During that part of the meeting, the Lab sought to clarify a few things:
The overall number of creators using the store affected by the 50 item limit is regarded as “super low”.
Those who were invited into the Creator Preview with a free account will be able to continue with their current levels of listing (if over 50) through until the end of October 2017. The October 2nd change only applies to those joining from the Creator Beta launch onwards.
The 50 listing limit includes free items.
The move for having payment information on file is intended to help deter fraudulent activity within the Store from the outset (e.g. the legal selling of goods through an unverified account – something which has been / is an issue with the SL Marketplace).
This is only the first iteration of Store policies. The Lab is listening to feedback, so ideas and alternatives might be fed into things as time goes on.
One area of confusion lies with the term “credit card” – which actually covers the likes of debit cards which have Mastercard / Visa verification – although there is concern not everyone has access to these as well.
Some creators expressed a preference for a PayPal option to be implemented (PayPal is currently only available when cashing-up Sansar Dollars). This is coming, but no confirmed time line could be given. In addition, a suggestion was made for people to be able to offer alternative forms of identification for verification. This is something the Lab has done for SL merchants cashing-out from that platform, and hasn’t been entirely without its own problems.
Further feedback and discussion on this and other topics can be found on the official Sansar Discord channel.
The Discovery Release. Credit: Linden Lab. Location; Colossus Rising
Wednesday, September 27th also saw the Lab issue some information on the next couple of major releases for Sansar. These are:
The Discovery release: due at the end of September / beginning of October, this release will include an improved Atlas for the Sansar client, and object interaction for Desktop mode users. You can read more about this release in advance in my Product Update.
The Friends release: (presumably following the Discovery release at the end of October / beginning of November), this update will see the improvements to the Atlas continue, make it easier to connect with other Sansar users, and will also include changes to make it even easier for people to publish their experiences.
I’ll hopefully be following both releases as they happen, and have updates on them in these pages.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 