Day: July 20, 2018

Linden Lab Just Announced a HUGE Increase in the Number of Sansar Experiences We Can Create!

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All of a sudden, Sansar users have a lot more space! (Photo by NASA on Unsplash)

Linden Lab has just announced that they are increasing the number of Sansar experiences you can create at each of their levels of subscription. This is big news, but the biggest news is that the number of experiences you will be allowed to create with a free subscription has been raised from 3 to 20!!!

Today we have a big announcement for Sansar, and the future of creating experiences on our platform. The whole team has mulled over this decision for a long time, and at last we have a reached a decision we can now present to you today.

Effective immediately, we are increasing how many experiences users can create:

  • Free users: Increased from 3 to 20 experiences
  • Creator: Increased from 5 to 25 experiences
  • Super-Creator: Increased from 10 to 30 experiences
  • Professional: Increased from 20 to 40 experiences

This is an unexpected, and wonderful piece of news! I can think of no other social VR/virtual world platform that offers you the ability to create up to twenty experiences (each of which can be up to 4 km by 4 km by 4 km in size) for free. That’s a lot of free space!

More details from the announcement are here:

This is a big change for Sansar, as it’s going to open up a lot of creativity for all of our users. Now there is not only greater freedom to share your experiences with others, but also more room to testing and iterate on ideas before publishing. We’ve seen so much creativity come out of community, and we can’t wait to see even more!

For users that have been our loyal subscribers, we are going to be compensating you with a USD transfer to your US$ Wallet (not your Sansar Dollar Wallet). Depending on how long you have Subscribed to our plans, this amount will be 1 to 2 months of your Subscription level.

This means that if you have been a Subscriber to our Creator, Super Creator or Professional plans for less than one month, you will get one month’s worth of US$ credit at that level (i.e. Creator = $9.99). If you have been a Subscriber for more than one month, you will be given two month’s worth of credit (i.e. Creator = 2 x $9.99).

Sansar Store Spotlight: The First Custom Avatars Have Appeared in the Sansar Store!

Well, that didn’t take very long at all! Less than 48 hours after the latest update to Sansar (which allowed you to create your own custom avatars), and the first custom avatars are already available for sale from the Sansar Store!

First up is Ravioli’s gargoyle avatar, which is FREE:

Gargoyls Custom Avatar 20 July 2018.png

Then there’s Fabeeo Breen’s zombie avatar, which is also FREE:

Zombie Custom Avatar 20 July 2018.png

And following quickly on Fabeeo’s heels was Nya Alchemi, who released a cute boar avatar, which is also FREE:

Boar Custom Avatar 20 July 2018.png

Also up is a Frankenstein-inspired female monster avatar called “Yolandenstein”, for sale for S$5,000 (US$50):

Yolandenstein Custom Avatar 20 JUly 2018.png

By the way, here’s a link to the new Avatars section of the Sansar Store. (Check back often to see what’s new!)

So I bought all three free avatars and went into Sansar to try them on. There’s a new section under the Avatar tab in the Lookbook which allows you to select a custom avatar:

Custom Avatar 20 July 2018.png

Just click on the custom avatar you want to wear, et voilà ! Be sure to click the Done button at the bottom to save your changes:

Custom Avatar 2 20 July 2018.png

(Note that you will not be able to wear any human clothing on a custom avatar, as it is essentially a single piece wearable. The clothing must be part of the avatar.)

Here’s my boar avatar at Nya Alchemi’s S.L.A.R.P. experience:

Boar Avatar 20 July 2018.png

Apertus VR: A Brief Introduction

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I got an email from Akos Hamori of the Shared Virtual Reality Research Group at the Institute for Computer Science and Control at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, telling me about Apertus VR. It’s a little different from the other products that I’ve covered in this blog, because it’s a free, open-source software engine which allows you to build your own VR/AR applications for science, education, and industry.

Their website offers numerous examples of how to use Apertus VR engine:

Apertus VR 2 20 July 2018.png

Here’s a 2-1/2-minute YouTube video showing some of the applications you can build using the software, a sort of three-dimensional mindmap:

And here’s a half-hour presentation on the project: