This evening, Linden Lab launched what they are calling the Body Language release of Sansar. Among the highlights of this major client software update are:
- Avatars in VR can now utilise the full range of hand gestures that the Oculus Touch hand controllers provide — thumbs up, okay signs, and finger guns. Avatars in VR can also now bend at their torsos and crouch. More information is in this article. (Apparently, HTC Vive users are going to have to wait a little while for feature parity with Oculus Rift/Touch users.) Please note that you will only be able to see your own hand gestures when in third-person mode in VR (you have to click down once on the right-hand Oculus Touch thumbstick to switch between first-person mode and third-person mode when in VR). Here’s a short video demonstrating this very cool new feature, created by Linden Lab employee Aleks:
- The long-awaited and frequently requested permissions system is finally here! This enables a broad range of capabilities for content creators, especially those interested in selling items in the Sansar Store. See the new Linden Lab articles Allowing resale of store items and Buyer’s Permissions for more information. When editing a listing for one of your items in the Sansar Store, you can now choose to allow buyers to resell your item, either on its own or as part of one of their creations. When you choose to allow this, you must set a minimum resale price. Then, whenever someone resells your creation, you receive the resale price as a commission! (Note that legacy Store items default to no resale, since the option wasn’t there for the creators to choose from. If you made the item, you should be able to change it to resellable. If you didn’t make it, the creator will have to relist the item on the Sansar Store.)
- And to make that even easier to sell all of your items, the Sansar Store is now fully integrated into Sansar! You can do all your shopping in Sansar without having to open the web store. (It’s still not the same as having in-world stores like Second Life, High Fidelity, and Sinespace do, though.)
- When working with an object in a scene, you can now add grab points, which define the position and orientation of the object in an avatar’s hand when they pick it up in VR or desktop mode. This is helpful for ensuring that handheld objects such as weapons, tools, and other handheld accessories snap into the correct orientation as soon as they’re held. For more information, see this article.
- There’s a new voice indicator which makes it easier for you to tell who’s speaking (this can be turned on or off as you wish):
- The in-client chat app has a new look as well as a few new features, including supporting SHIFT+ENTER to make a new line, and CTRL+A to select all text (Yay!).
- Voice broadcast: You can now enable voice broadcasting in your scene by streaming it through the scene background sound or audio emitters. This is a significant upgrade for live events in Sansar!
And these are just the highlights! There’s much more! Here’s the complete list of new features. Congratulations to Ebbe Altberg and his team for the impressive amount of work they put into this new release!
