I do find it somewhat ironic that the two Sansar users who have posted user concurrency statistics for the platform in the past—Galen and Gindipple—have both largely moved on from Sansar to other projects.
However, I did receive a recent statistics chart generated by Gindipple, courtesy of Medhue (thanks!), which I wanted to share with you:
Gindipple’s stats show slow but steady growth in the number of concurrent users on Sansar. The monthly average concurrent Sansarians figure (bottom chart) has roughly doubled between March 2018 and October 2019.
Galen’s statistics page shows a similar growth in users, including peaks of up to 150 concurrent users at one time:
Now, I do have a couple of criticisms of this image.
First, it is not an infographic; it is a cartoon. The zig-zag graph in the background is purely decorative, not informative.
Second, the small print along the bottom is almost impossible to read. It says:
Total concurrent users across all platforms potentially 2-3 times larger than Steam CCUs (concurrent users). Numbers based on Steam stats in September 2019 – Source: Steam Database Info
Even Wagner cannot deny that Sansar has had a recent jump in usage:
As of last month, in terms of peak concurrent users, VRChat remains the 800 pound Knuckle [a reference to the Ugandan Knuckles meme], with Rec Room maintaining its distant second place. There was also a small surprise bump for Linden Lab’s Sansar… After concurrency rates that averaged in the mid two figures (yes, that low) for most of the year, Sansar peak concurrency for September jumped to 220 last Friday. Thanks, at least in part, to a VR dating show hosted by online celebrity Jesse Cox and probably more key, the launch of an official Hello Kitty experience…
The problem with relying solely on Steam statistics in the case of Sansar is that there are two different ways that people can download the Sansar client software:
Via the Sansar website (Linden Lab does not publish user stats).
We have no way of knowing what percentage of Sansar users downloaded their client software via Steam. Therefore, we still have to guess at the total overall level of usage of Sansar, using imperfect tools such as Steam stats and Galen’s and Gindipple’s statistics.
However, all three sources do show a slow but steady increase in the number of concurrent users in Sansar, which I’m sure Linden Lab is pleased to see. Of course, they also have their own internal statistics, which they do not release to the public, which I am sure confirm this trend.
Gindipple also released a pie chart showing the most popular Sansar worlds. Unsurprisingly (since all incoming users spawn there by default now), the Nexus is the most visited world, with 70% of the total number of recent visitors (I believe that these stats cover the past seven days):
Following the Nexus, the most popular Sansar worlds (formerly called experiences) are:
Skyway Avenue (3.69% of total recent visitors)
The Point of No Return – Chapter I (2.65%)
Susan’s Diary (2.39%)
Orphanage of Angels (2.35%)
Fire Goat’s Free Avatar Store (1.96%)
Ultimate Disc (1.93%)
The Slewhouse (1.85%)
Once Upon a Midnight Dream (1.77%)
Scurry Waters (1.57%)
Monstercat Call of the Wild (1.52%)
Sanrio World (1.44%)
Camp Goonies (1.24%)
114 Harvest (1.07%)
I do have rather mixed feelings about Linden Lab’s recent design decision to have users automatically spawn in the Nexus when they log into Sansar. On one hand, it does make it much easier for avatars to encounter other avatars in-world, and I often see groups of people gathered having conversations with each other, which is good.
But on the other hand, it is an absolute pain in the ass to have to keep going back to the Nexus when you simply want to explore the various Sansar worlds. If you are in desktop mode, you can still use the Atlas on the Sansar website, but if you are in VR mode, you pretty much have to keep cycling through the Nexus to find and select new experiences to visit, which quickly gets tiring.
UPDATE Feb. 21st, 2020: I just wanted to clarify that I talked about this as version “2.0”, but in reality, the official launch of version 2.0 of Somnium Space was pushed back to February 20th, 2020. So I have updated this blogpost to put “2.0” in quotes throughout.
I got a tip that the updated client for Somnium Space “2.0” (the newest version of the social VR platform) was now available for download from their website, so I decided to pay a visit today. (Somnium Space is also available via Steam, but I don’t know if you can get the newest client from there yet. I assume that you can. UPDATE Oct 6th: I have now confirmed from Artur Sychov that you cannot get the newest client from Steam yet. It should be available within the next month on Steam.)
There’s a separate launcher program, from which you select either a PC (flat-screen) client, or the VR client. Unfortunately, I could not get the PC client to work for me (or perhaps I accidentally skipped a tutorial), but I was able to successfully use the VR client with my Oculus Quest headset.
Like Decentraland and Cryptovoxels (two competing blockchain-based virtual world platforms), Somnium Space is laid out as one large contiguous landscape. Decentraland deliberately constrains how far you can see into your surroundings, but in Somnium Space, you can actually see the distant mountains on the misty horizon! There’s a truly vast sense of space. It just feels bigger. And yes, I can confirm that you can walk (or teleport) all the way to those distant mountains and back!
I faced a similar problem that I did when I first visited Somnium Space and reported on it back in May 2018: it was difficult for me to get good pictures to share with you on my blog!
I had difficulty getting some good screen shots, because there didn’t seem to be a snapshot feature in the VR client software… So I had to hold up my VR headset in one hand, and grab a screenshot with SnagIt with the other from what I could see in my VR headset reflected on my monitor!
There’s a lovely, landscaped park-like area not far from the spawn point with lightposts and park benches, complete with the sound of chirping birds to add atmosphere:
Off to one side is a lakeside café, next to large floating island attached to what appears to be a zip line or tether of some kind! The in-world water is quite well-done and looks realistic. The soundscape work is effective too; you can hear the waves lapping against the shore as you stand on the café pier, looking out at the scenery.
It’s only natural to want to compare Somnium Space with two other blockchain-based virtual world projects, Decentraland and Cyptovoxels. As you can see from these pictures, Somnium Space is easily the most realistic-looking blockchain-based virtual world to launch to date. The flat, voxel-based landscape of Cryptovoxels and the lowpoly, almost Minecraftesque aethestic of Decentraland cannot begin to compete against this! Given that Decentraland does not support virtual reality, and is unlikely to do so anytime in the near future, I am also wondering how many investors who spent small fortunes on Decentraland’s LAND parcels must be feeling at present.
My visit was on the eve of the one-week land auction taking place in Somnium Space from Oct. 6th to 13th, 2019. In an earlier blogpost I had written:
Somnium Space is holding an Initial Land Offering (ILO) starting October 6th and running until October 13th, where 4,500 parcels of virtual land will be auctioned off in partnership with OpenSea. (Bidders will have to have a Ethereum cryptocurrency wallet like MetaMask.)
Lands available for purchase have a clearly visible green neon border, making it easy to see what parcels are for sale as you explore the new, expanded landscape. Here’s a map of the parcels that are up for grabs to the highest bidder (the red ones were already claimed in a previous crowdfunding event):
I came away from my visit feeling quite impressed at the progress that has been made in Somnium Space. And I am quite looking forward to seeing how the platform develops over time, as landowners begin constructing buildings and putting their personal stamp on the place.
You might look like a cartoon, but Facebook still wants you to back that up with your real-life name and details.
Ian Hamilton wrote an article for UploadVR about Facebook Horizon, dated Oct. 1st, 2019, which finally confirmed my worst fear about Facebook’s new social VR platform: that you will indeed be required to link to your account on the Facebook social network in order to use it.
At Facebook’s Oculus Connect 6 VR developer’s conference I tried an early version of the company’s unified social networking space “Horizon” that’s coming in early 2020.
The intent in Horizon is to build a shared network of virtual spaces with games, physics and interactions not possible in the real world. If Horizon sounds like Rec Room, VRChat or AltspaceVR that is because it is like Rec Room, VRChat or AltspaceVR — except Horizon requires your Facebook account. The first thing Facebook showed me was how to block people who bother me. As memory serves, the button was available near my wrist and when I pressed it I saw some options for what do with the report that looked very Facebook-esque.
“You still will use your Oculus ID,” said Meaghan Fitzgerald, head of product marketing for AR/VR content at Facebook. “Your name in Horizon is your Oculus identity, but we do require a linked Facebook account and that lets us do some great things around both safety – making sure it’s backed by a real person – but also for the people who want to invite more of their social network from their Facebook world into their VR environment. [With Facebook integration] they have better tools to do that – they can share out to groups and communities. But it is a Facebook product and we want to take advantage of the social features that Facebook has built as we’re thinking this through.”
Facebook’s terms say “you cannot use Facebook if…you are under 13 years old.” Where other social services, like Rec Room, let you get online and playing with other people without even registering a real email address, Facebook is going to back its social service with Facebook’s policy which demands accounts operated by people who “use the same name that you use in everyday life” and are asked to “provide accurate information about yourself.”
So, as expected, at some point I am going to have provide Facebook Horizon with a my newly re-established (but still empty) Facebook social network account, in addition to my Oculus account, linking all the information that Facebook has on me together. While Facebook is certainly well within its rights to ask this, it does make me uneasy, especially given the privacy and data security scandals of the recent past on their social network (not least, the Cambridge Analytica fiasco where Facebook data was weaponized and used against us to, among other things, help Donald Trump get elected).
But in order to do this marketing and reap its anticipated profits from this new social VR platform, Facebook has to know who you are. And this is not going to sit right with earlier generations of virtual world users, who are used to hiding behind a different avatar name, and an identity and appearance that are created from scratch, and which may have absolutely nothing in common with the person behind the keyboard.
These issues are certainly not new, and they are not limited to social VR platforms and virtual worlds. For example, there was a great deal of controversy over the fact that Google expected users to register for its then-new Google+ social network using their real-life first and last names. There was a great deal of push-back from many Google+ users about the need for people to be anonymous or to use handles or pseudonyms. One example given where such anonymity would be necessary is someone who is fleeing a domestic abuse situation, and who wishes to avoid becoming the target of stalking. This issue was never really satisfactorily laid to rest before Google+ finally shuttered its doors in its failed bid to become the next Facebook.
And, of course, Facebook has long discouraged users of its social network from using pseudonyms, anonymous names, or avatar names. There have been many stories of people who set up Facebook accounts under their Second Life avatar names, only to find them later disabled and removed by Facebook. Wagner James Au of the blog New World Notes wrote back in 2011:
Facebook is reportedly deleting numerous profiles of Second Life avatars on the social network. Among them is Angie Mornington, a well-known personality in SL, who recently received an email from The Facebook Platform Team, informing her that “Your personal account was recently disabled by Facebook.” The message included a link, Ms. Mornington told me, and after clicking it, “I wound up at a page that said that in order to restore my account, I have to scan and upload a government ID showing my real name and photo, with everything else blacked out (social security number, address, etc.) I refuse to do that.”
At the moment, however, there doesn’t seem to be a thorough or systematic purging of Second Life avatars — at least not yet. Over the weekend, I lost about a hundred friends on my own Facebook network, presumably avatars, but I still have hundreds of Facebook friends who are avatars. In any case, it does appear to be a substantial purge, and comes two years after a Facebook rep told me that while the social network requires accounts based on real names and/or identities, “[t]he vast majority of fake accounts on which we take action have been reported to us by other users.” So it’s possible that any purge is actually being driven by a rash of users filing reports against avatar-based accounts. Or perhaps Facebook is becoming more stringent about its policies in the run-up to their IPO.
Not only does Facebook expect you to present as your real-world self in Facebook Horizon (your real name, your personal details, your social contacts, etc.), it would appear that the company wishes to eventually move towards a point where you would even look like your real-world self as much as possible, too, although that technology is still many, many years away from implementation. Ian Hamilton writes:
It is worth noting that while Horizon features expressive cartoon-like avatars for launch, Facebook teams are hard at work on ultra-realistic human representations they call “codec avatars” that could ultimately be tied to your real world identity in the same way Horizon will be. Codec avatars are still years away and they’ll likely require a new generation of VR headsets to work, but the same way your iPhone or Android phone authenticates its operator using biometric signals, future VR headsets may authenticate the user in hopes of establishing trust and security online.
In short, Facebook does not seem to want you to be anybody but your real-life, easily-identifiable, easy-to-market-to self on Facebook Horizon.
What this means is that there is still a significant market opportunity for any social VR platform or virtual world which allows and even encourages you to make your own avatar, completely constructed from the fabric of your own imagination and creativity (including a customized, anonymous name and detailed backstory to match, if you wish to engage in roleplay). A virtual self-representation that has absolutely no links to the real-life you. People want that. People need that escape from reality.
It will be very interesting to see how Facebook Horizon deals with these kinds of challenges when they launch early next year. More and more, it sounds as if Facebook Horizon is going to be a super-hyped-up version of Facebook Spaces where avatars can finally move around freely. If that’s all it will be—yet another opportunity for Facebook to strip-mine our user data and social networks for profit—then I for one will be especially disappointed.
UPDATE Oct. 6th: We’re talking about VRChat vis-à-vis Facebook Horizon over on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, and I said the following to add to that particular discussion:
Facebook still has the potential to dominate the social VR marketplace and crush competitors. The fact that they are insistent on you linking your account on the Facebook social network to your avatar in Facebook Horizon means that they will NOT attract users who wish to have an avatar completely separate from their real life, which means that it is a market opportunity for other platforms like VRChat to occupy. I don’t think that many people in VRChat will want to give up their custom avatars for a boring, generic human avatar in Facebook Horizon.
And frankly, Facebook is not going after that market. Their intended market is the 2 billion+ people who already are on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to entice them into social VR. And you can bet that Facebook will advertise the hell of out Horizon. It’s all you’re going to hear about in 2020. And for the average, non-geeky end consumer, Facebook Horizon WILL be their first experience with social VR.
Well, people, that decision is paying off in spades! Bakes on Mesh works beyond my wildest dreams, allowing me to wear system avatar skins, and all my older layer-based clothing that I thought, at best, I would only be able to wear with a system body, my Catwa head, and Slink mesh hands (which gave me a noticeable seam at the wrists, despite my best efforts to match the skin tones). So I rarely wore my old system-layers-and-flexiprim clothing once I switched to a Maitreya Lara mesh body and Catwa Kimberly mesh head a couple of years ago.
But I am having a blast digging old system skins out of my inventory and trying them on my mesh body with the new Bakes on Mesh system! Here I am wearing an old Exodi skin called Isolde Soleil (a hunt gift from many years ago), which I used to love to wear back in my pre-mesh days, along with one of my favourite system layer outfits, a black lace-trimmed gown called Look My Heart by Likka House:
I just love the soft, flowing skirt on this romantic gown, that gently sways as I move! A well-textured, well-weighted flexiprim skirt will always look more natural to me than a more modern rigged mesh skirt. This look is so elegant. Perfect for Frank’s Jazz Club!
The only problem? Well, I look great—if you have a Bakes on Mesh-enabled Second Life viewer. Somebody at Frank’s Jazz Place sent me a picture of what I look like if you haven’t updated your viewer yet:
It’s a package of both hand and foot fixes in a variety of skintones. I just added the Suntan nail base and it matches my Exodi Isolde Soleil system skin perfectly! (I’m usually wearing shoes anyway, so I didn’t bother with the foot fixes.) So if you are going to start wearing your all your old system skins on your mesh body, be sure to pick up this handy kit!
Bakes on Mesh has suddenly give me literally hundreds of skins that I thought I would never be able to wear again! And hundreds of older outfits that I can once again wear on a fully mesh avatar body. It’s literally giving a “second life” (pun intended) to my older inventory!
UPDATE 10:05 p.m.: I wanted to add that Altamura is another mesh avatar body maker which has released a relay for use with Bakes on Mesh (it’s available to Altamura group members for free at this exact SLURL; the Altamura Design/Mesh Avatars group costs L$50 to join):
Please note that Bakes on Mesh will only work with bodies actually purchased from the Altamura store, and not the free versions of the Altamura bodies available at Ajuda SL Brasil, UniHispana Crea, and the freebie store at the London City sim, or that you picked up at various hunts and events in the past. (However, if you were lucky enough to pick up the Romeo and Juliet full-body mesh avatars last Valentine’s Day, those are full versions on which you can use Bakes on Mesh.) Also, you do have to buy and install the Omega system kit on the body before you can use the Bakes on Mesh relay (it’s for sale for L$99 at this exact SLURL).
Altamura has thoughtfully included free male and female skins in the unisex Bakes on Mesh package, so you can test it out right away. This is the Venus female skin on the Altamura Juliet full-body mesh avatar, along with an old system-layers-and-prims dress from PixelDolls (remember them?):
UPDATE Oct. 5th: Here’s another good example of Bakes on Mesh. This is the Altamura Juliet mesh body wearing an older YS&YS Megan system skin. Again, I used the League sunkiss nail base tattoo to fix the fingertips near the nails to match the Megan skin.
