Month: April 2019

How to Get Started in Sansar: A Step-By-Step Guide for Newbies

I decided it was time to create a guide for newcomers to Sansar, explaining how to set up the client software, create an account, and take your first steps as a newbie avatar. I am going to assume that you have never used Sansar before, and take you step by step, with illustrations. (This information is current as of April 12th, 2019.)

Step 1: Decide Where You Want to Download the Sansar Client Software From

You have two choices:

What’s the difference? The clients are identical from both sources, but there is a big difference when it comes to buying Sansar’s in-world currency, called Sansar dollars. If you download the Sansar client software from the Sansar website, Linden Labs gets all the profits when you buy Sansar dollars (also via the website). If you download the Sansar client from Steam, Steam takes a cut of the profits when you buy Sansar dollars, using your Steam wallet.

Me? I prefer to cut out the middleman (in this case, Steam) and give Linden Lab a bigger share of the profit, since they are, after all, spending their time and money building the actual social VR platform. But if you already have Steam and want to organize everything from your Steam account, you can do that too. Choice is good!

Step 2: Install the Sansar Client Software

IMPORTANT! Be sure that your computer (Windows only, sorry Mac and Linux users!) meets the recommended system specs (you can check them out on their website or on their Steam page).

Once you’re satisfied your computer can run Sansar, download the software and click on the executable to install the client software on your computer.

Step 3: Set Up a User Account

After you have installed the software, open the program. You will see the following Log In screen. Click “Sign Up” at the bottom (see arrow):

At the next screen, you will enter an email address, an avatar username (no spaces), and a password. You will most likely use your email address and password to sign in to Sansar. (Note that if you already have a Steam or a Twitch account, you can use those instead.)

You will get an on-screen message to check your previously entered email to verify your account:

In your email program, open the email Linden Lab sent you and click on the big red button to verify your account. Easy!

Now you can go back to your Sansar client and sign in with your brand new credentials.

Step 4: Pick a Starter Avatar

You will be presented with a selection of custom avatars, of which you can choose one as your starter avatar (or you can decide to create a standard male or female human avatar if you prefer):

(Relax! You can always change your avatar later if you get tired of your first choice. That’s the beauty of avatars in social VR/virtual worlds!)

Once you have selected an avatar, you will arrive in what is called the Lookbook, a sort of changing room and private retreat that only you can access. You will also be presented with your first Quest (see red arrow):

Step 5: Complete the Quests and Earn Sansar Dollars

Now this is the fun part! To complete your first Quest, you must walk your avatar (using the WASD or the four arrow keys) over to the Sansar Social Hub:

And you will want to complete this Quest! Why? Because you can get FREE Sansar dollars which you can spend on anything you want to buy from the Sansar Store!

Once you arrive at the Sansar Social Hub (a sort of central meeting place for avatars in Sansar), just click on one of the two blue glowing avatars in the middle of the landing point:

Once you do, you will get a notification that you earned ten Sansar dollars (S$10) and be asked if you want to go shopping right away:

What I suggest you do is click on “Not now”, and go and finish all the available Quests. Click on Agent Animus or Agent Forma to receive and accept your Quests. You can have up to two Quests active at any one time. Once you complete a Quest, you return to the Sansar Social Hub and click on either Agent Animus or Agent Forma to receive your reward.

By doing these Quests, you will explore a few classic Sansar experiences and earn money you can spend to outfit your avatar as you please! Here is a listing of all the Quests and the amount of money you will earn for completing each of them:

  • Welcome to Sansar – S$10
  • Avatar Scan Points: Social Hub – S$10
  • Data Disc Recovery: Social Hub – S$10
  • Avatar Scan Points: Sansar Customs – S$10
  • Data Disc Recovery: Mars Outpost Alpha – S$20
  • Avatar Scan Points: 360 Cinema Dome – S$10
  • Data Disc Recovery: Zen Garden – S$30
  • Avatar Scan Points: Zen Garden – S$20
  • Data Disc Recovery: Mini Golf – S$40
  • Avatar Scan Points: Mini Golf – S$25
  • Data Disc Recovery: Colossus Rising – S$50
  • Avatar Scan Points: Colossus Rising – S$30

Here’s a hint: try to arrange it so you can pass all the avatar scan points and hit all the data discs at the same time in one experience. It saves having to travel back and forth!

After completing all the Quests, you will have S$265 to spend as you like in the Sansar Store (which you can access within the client software by selecting the Shop button on the left-hand side of your screen, or by going to the Sansar Store on the website. Don’t forget to take advantage of all the free items on the Sansar Store, too!

Here’s an example of a look you can pull together for the male human avatar, using items from your default clothing inventory in Lookbook and free items from the Sansar Store:

This avatar is wearing:

So, that should be enough to get you started on your Sansar adventure. Have fun, and be good to your fellow newbies!

Strawberry Singh Accepts a Job with Linden Lab

Wow, this is such a surprise! But a good one.

Popular longtime Second Life blogger Strawberry Singh has accepted a job with Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life:

There have been some changes in my real life that I wanted to share with you and be completely transparent about. I have been hired by Linden Lab as their Marketing Content Specialist.

This is a new chapter in my life which came at a perfect time when I felt like I really needed a change. I am incredibly excited to be working for a company for whose product I have so much love and passion.

This is the position which I had blogged about earlier. Congratulations, Berry! Best wishes in your new position.

UPDATED! Sansar Video: Follow the Dancing Bear

Sansar user Wurfi has created a wonderful, beautiful 5-minute YouTube video that really gives you a representative sampling of the 1,396 public Sansar experiences created to date by the social VR platform’s wildly creative users (as far as I could tell, the only Sansar Studios created experiences included were Aech’s Garage from the movie Ready Player One, and the Sansar Social Hub):

Enjoy, and please be sure to share this video with your social networks!

UPDATE Oct. 21st, 2021: While Wurfi’s wonderful video was taken down on YouTube, he has put it up on Vimeo, so I have updated this blogpost to point to the new video.

VRChat Announces the Quest Creator Program

I admit it: I’m a gadget freak. When the first Amazon Kindle was announced in Canada, I bought one. When the first Apple iPad was launched, I bought one. And when the Oculus Quest is finally officially released, I will be buying one.

I predict that the Oculus Quest will be phenomenally popular, and help to finally usher in the long-awaited consumer VR market everyone has been forecasting for years (and getting wrong). I also predict that any social VR platform that supports the Oculus Quest will get a boost as well. So far, for the top 12 most popular social VR platforms, it looks like this:

Will There Be a Version for the Oculus Quest?

YesNo? (Status Uncertain or Rumoured)
– Bigscreen
– Rec Room
– Somnium Space
– VRChat
– vTime XR		– Sansar
– TheWaveVR		– AltspaceVR
– Facebook Spaces*
– High Fidelity
– Oculus Home*
– Oculus Rooms*
– Sinespace

*Obviously, there’s going to be something from Facebook/Oculus, but whether it will be a rebranding or extension of Facebook Spaces, Oculus Home, or Oculus Rooms, or something completely different, no one knows. And Facebook is keeping that a closely guarded secret for now.

While both High Fidelity and Sinespace have said that they will be supporting the Oculus Quest, I have as yet heard no official announcement from either of them. The same goes for AltspaceVR.

Today, VRChat launched their Quest Creator Program. And for the first time, we get some clear indications of what features will and won’t be allowed for VRChat worlds and avatars intended for Quest users.

It will be a dual-publishing model: publish once for PC users (i.e. Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality headsets), and publish a second time for Quest standalone headset users. If a creator publishes only for the Quest, their world(s) will only be visitable by users in the Quest. If the creator publishes only for the PC, Quest users will be unable to visit. Here’s a Venn diagram for those of you who like Venn diagrams:

Worlds published for both PC and Quest will have a cross-platform icon (the central symbol in the image above) in the VRChat Worlds Atlas. Users from both platforms can meet in cross-platform worlds. Quest-only worlds won’t show up for PC users, and vice versa. PC-only avatars will not display to Quest users (a default avatar will display instead).

Here’s some information from a newly-published guide to VRChat Quest Content Optimization:

While building worlds, you should try to keep polygon count low. You want to leave room for the user’s avatars as well. We recommend that you budget approximately 50,000 triangles for your world in total.

The same general rules apply for avatars that apply for worlds. Keep in mind that you may have 10 or more users in the same room, so you’ll want to budget your triangle usage pretty heavily. We recommend that you aim for 5,000 triangles for your avatar.

This will be a challenge for avatar authors that prefer to import characters from various platforms rather than create an avatar themselves. Decimation down to this level can be destructive, and you may need to look into techniques like retopologizing geometry to keep your polygon count low.

Quest worlds cannot use custom shaders or post-processing, and regular shaders and audio sources will be limited. Quest avatars also cannot make use of features such as dynamic bones, cloth, cameras, lights, and audio sources. Particles and shaders will be limited.

We can expect that similar restrictions will be in place for other social VR platforms for them to work on the reduced processing power and memory of the standalone Oculus Quest headset.

Oh, and in an interesting twist, Quest developers will soon be able to use the Oculus Go as a sort of testbed for their work. However, this is only an interim measure to allow for testing, and VRChat has no plans to actually release a version of VRChat for the Oculus Go:

Exciting times ahead!!