Yesterday, I had a different soft of experience in Sansar: I gave a guided tour of the social VR platform to an up-and-coming YouTuber from Las Vegas named Vbunny, who is a VR game vlogger and Twitch livestreamer!
I first discovered her when she posted a video review of the iOS mobile app for Rec Room. Here’s Vbunny’s YouTube channel, which is still rather small in terms of subscribers, but has what I consider to be high-quality content. I think she’s well on her way to YouTube success!
Today, she tweeted her thanks:
For my tour, I decided to show her seven worlds:
- The Nexus, where we met a few other Sansarians
- Ready Player One: Aech’s Garage
- Lost Art of Star Wars
- NASA Apollo Museum and Apollo 11 – Sea of Tranquility
- Point of No Return – Chapter I, where we met Medhue, one of the creators of the quest
- Ryan’s Garden (of course!)
Because I wanted to keep the tour open-ended, based on what she was interested in, I made the mistake of not visiting these worlds beforehand (in order to have them added to my Codex). I had just casually assumed that they would be in my Codex somewhere because I had visited them in the past. Wrong! Obviously, the Codex only took into account my most recent world visiting history.
Because of my mistake, I landed up having to drag Vbunny back to the Nexus three times, in order to go to the Prime Portal, find the world I wanted to show her in the listing there, then open up a portal for us both to use. It was totally awkward and inconvenient, and it has made me wonder if replacing the Atlas with the Codex is such a good idea after all. (I couldn’t use the Sansar Atlas as my backup plan, as I had intended, because you can’t spawn a portal from the listings on the website. Perhaps this is something that Linden Lab could consider adding?)
Anyway, aside from that minor quibble, Vbunny had a great visit. She kept remarking on the quality of the lighting in the worlds we visited, a strong suit of Sansar. She likes the avatars. And she just loved killing zombies!
While waiting for her to show up at our agreed-upon meeting place (of course, The Nexus!), I spent a very agreeable hour or so chatting with the various people who showed up there, in a wide variety of avatars. One charming young woman’s avatar was a Chinese bowl of food, and we landed up sitting around her in a huddle, in an impromptu communal conversation! Other avatars popped in and out, both old acquaintances and new. It was a wonderfully convivial way to pass the time waiting! Despite my misgivings about the Codex, I do think that Linden Lab creating The Nexus as a meeting place was a stroke of genius, and clearly a good move overall for the platform.
Another thing I discovered: I might make a great host of a pre-taped show, but when it comes to being a part of someone else’s show, I found myself surprising tongue-tied! I felt I was noticeably short on banter. Perhaps, again, it was because I did not prepare enough beforehand for this visit as much as my producer, Andrew William, and I prepare for taping an episode of the Metaverse Newscast. (And yes, we have not posted a new episode in quite a long while. Both Andrew and I have been phenomenally busy with our respective real-life jobs these past couple of months.)
Anyway, I very much look forward to seeing what Vbunny and her husband/producer come up with! She sent me the following message on Discord (which I have her permission to share with you):
Thank you so much for showing me around Sansar yesterday. I stayed on for another almost 2 hours just talking to some people and visiting the Hello Kitty world. I also customized my avatar and was blown away by how much customization you can do!
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