Day: January 8, 2018

Pick of the Day: Aech’s Garage, the Ready Player One Movie Experience in Sansar

This evening, I was able to visit two new Sansar experiences:

A while ago, on the official Sansar Discord channel, I had said that whatever virtual world gets the Ready Player One tie-in would get lots of publicity. Well, Sansar got that tie-in! I am so excited and happy! Congratulations to Linden Lab for landing this one!

And here are some pictures of the Ready Player One experience, called Aech’s Garage (you used to be able to get to it only from special teleporters within the Intel CES Booth experience, but now there’s a direct link):

Ready Player One 2 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 3 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 4 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 5 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 6 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 7 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 8 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 9 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 10 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 11 8 Jan 2018Ready Player One 12 8 Jan 2018

NOTE: You can install the Sansar software client, if you don’t already have it, at https://www.sansar.com/download. And then you can visit the Intel CES Booth by searching for “CES Booth” in the Sansar Atlas, or just by clicking this link: CES Booth. You can then get to Aech’s Garage (the Ready Player One experience) via special teleporters at the CES Booth. See you in-world!

UPDATE 11:24 p.m.: SIN kindly shared with me one last photo from Aech’s Garage.

SIN's photo of Aech's Garage 8 Jan 2018

UPDATE Jan. 9th: Linden Lab has now made a direct link to Aech’s Garage available from the Sansar Atlas, here: [HTC] Ready Player One – Aech’s Garage. You really do owe it to yourself to download the Sansar client software (if you haven’t already) from the link I posted above, and visit this experience in-world. Pictures alone do not do it justice!

I understand that it took Intel, HTC Vive, Warner Brothers, and Sansar Studios of Linden Lab six weeks of work to pull all this together, and that work shows. This is a highly-detailed, mind-blowing Sansar experience, particularly in VR, and well worth your time!

Infographic: Comparing Sansar and High Fidelity

As I have said before, it’s only natural to want to compare two of the VR-capable social virtual worlds: High Fidelity (founded in 2013 by the visionary Philip Rosedale), and Sansar by Linden Lab (the company founded in 1999, also by Philip Rosedale, before he left to start HiFi; the current CEO is Ebbe Altberg). The two virtual worlds have much in common, but there are some significant differences between them.

My first blogpost comparing Sansar and High Fidelity back in August generated a fair bit of traffic for the Sansar Newsblog, but that post is now dated. Some of the information I gave is no longer accurate because of recent updates to both platforms.

So it’s time for an infographic I created using the free design service, Canva.com, comparing and contrasting both virtual worlds. (Philip Rosedale himself said that my infographic looked good, so I feel fairly confident that it is accurate. I don’t need Ebbe Altberg to sign off on my Sansar information; I am already somewhat of an expert in that particular area!)

Sansar

I hope that this information helps people understand the differences between the two virtual world platforms. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and I want to do what I can to help correct it. Thanks!

“Most of the animations I would create wouldn’t need clothes.”

Just another day on the official Sansar Discord channel:

Most of the animations... 8 Jan 2018

(By the way, I did ask Ecne and Lillani permission to post what they said. I will *never* post an image like this from Discord without checking with all people quoted first.)

UPDATE: Medhue, who runs an animations business in Second Life, and who is well known for his tutorial videos for Sansar, weighs in:

You are SPOT ON about rigging. Technically, if given all the right resources to properly rig, there should be little to no poke thru. Animation is how you would test your weights in the rigging. Marvelous Designer clothing, though, is AUTO rigged, by the Sansar client. Generally speaking, if the clothing is not very loose fitting, then the auto rigger does OK, not great or perfect. The further you move the clothing from the body, the hard time the auto rigger will have. ALL of this is no excuse for banning animation.

All that said, rigging and weighting are one of those things that you never actually perfect, but more or less give up and call good enough.

Editorial: Linden Lab Needs to Fix Sansar’s User Forums and Blogs

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Photo by Daniel Páscoa on Unsplash

Inara Pey, in her most recent blogpost report of last Friday’s Product Meetup, says this:

Sansar forums, blogs, etc: it has finally been recognised that the current tool used for these – ZenDesk – is not well suited to the task (YAY!), although fixing this is not a high priority. There have been internal discussions at the Lab about using the platform and tools employed in creating the Second Life forums, blogs, etc., to build something for Sansar – potentially more as a cost saving opportunity then for the sake of functionality. Frankly, I’m still stunned that this wasn’t the route taken from the start given the Lab have the tools and the experience to use them, which could have been easily leveraged, rather than going for a tool entirely unsuited to the task and which presents information in a very unfriendly – and dare I say amateur – manner.

AMEN. I am in 100% agreement with Inara on this. I am going to add my strong opinions on this matter, which I have shared already with everybody (including Linden Lab staff) on the official Sansar Discord forums.

I know that at the casual meetup he attended last week, Ebbe Altberg (Linden Lab CEO) said he wants to have a “consumer launch” of Sansar sometime in 2018 (as opposed to a “creator beta”). But BEFORE they do that, Linden Lab really, really needs to reconsider the software they are using for their community forums/blog/documentation. I mean this truly ugly and uninspiring thing with the too-small font: https://help.sansar.com/hc/en-us.

Frankly, it looks terrible and it projects a bad image for Sansar, which in so many other ways has a professional look and some design appeal to it. They already have a fully-functional, attractive-looking community forums/blog/announcement system in place for Second Life, why don’t they use that? Their official blog in particular really looks TERRIBLE, and it has a HORRIBLE URL to boot: https://help.sansar.com/hc/en-us/sections/115001137103-Official-Blog (hate to say it, but it’s true). Linden Lab should fix this before they kick off any campaign to attract consumers/end-users into Sansar.

I hate Zendesk, it is unattractive and Linden Lab can certainly do better. Look at the Second Life community forums page: https://community.secondlife.com/ and their knowledge base: https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/ and their blogs: https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/. Much better than what Sansar currently has!

 

Look at what High Fidelity has, it is much more visually appealing and functional: https://forums.highfidelity.com/. High Fidelity uses Medium (a free solution!) for their blog: https://blog.highfidelity.com/. Let’s compare that with the official Sansar blog:

High Fidelity Blog 8 Jan 2018
High Fidelity’s Official Blog
Sansar Blog 8 Jan 2018
Sansar’s Official Blog

I rest my case!