Many of you might remember that in May 2025, I had a hard drive crash that, among other things, disabled my Valve Index PCVR headset. Well, it’s taken me a LOT longer than expected, but yesterday I finally reinstalled Steam and SteamVR, and my Valve Index tethered virtual reality headset with its Knuckles hand controllers is once again working! 🎉🎊🥳
The very first thing I did was download and install the platform that inspired me to get into virtual reality in the first place: Sansar. I first joined Sansar in December 2016/January 2017 as part of a closed creator alpha/beta test of the then-still-in-development social VR platform. We were not allowed to post publicly about it until the official open creator beta launch on July 31st, 2017, which is when this blog was started. (Formerly known as the Sansar Newsblog, this blog was renamed to just RyanSchultz.com as I started to write about more than just Sansar.)
For me, I had not been back to visit Sansar in about two years, by my reckoning. My avatar still looked pretty much the same (although for some reason he had lost his shoes, making me rummage though his voluminous inventory of clothing to find some suitable footwear!).
The new starting point for all avatars is the incredible Sansar amusement park:
I tried out a couple of the rides, and I even jumped on the Hovercoaster, which takes you all over the park, and even underwater, before depositing you back where you started. It was like I had never left.
After my visit to Sansar Park, I went back to the world that I had created nine years ago, Ryan’s Garden, which was still as I remembered it, including this working carousel:
I did take a bit of video, but it’s hard to hear the sound of the carousel as clearly as you can when in-world:
As amazing as it is to me that Sansar still exists after nine years (being run by what I assume is a team of volunteer labour), I did still notice a few bugs here and there. For example, filtering and keyword searching on the online marketplace (while in-world) did not seem to be working for me (however the website store seems to work fine). The men’s parrot T-shirt I created using Marvelous Designer is still up on the marketplace, for sale for 100 Sansar dollars:
But overall, the Sansar experience is the same as I remember. It’s good to be back. (And hey, I discovered I have over 4,000 Sansar dollars in my wallet! Time for a shopping spree? 😉)
I do notice that there really aren’t a lot of events taking place on the platform, compared to the old days, but it’s still nice to see that there are still some regularly scheduled times and places for avatars to meet up (even what appears to be a continuation of our weekly exploring as a group!):
I still do need to reinstall all the platforms and apps I had before (VRChat, etc.), but it’s a HUGE step forward for me as I begin to work on the metaverse textbook I am researching and writing during my 12-month research and study leave from the University of Manitoba. I also haven taken home my Meta Quest 3 virtual/augmented reality headset from work, so I will be able to use both as needed to visit the various social VR platforms I plan to write about.
Anyways, that’s the update for today. I’ve already started work on researching and writing my OER metaverse textbook, hooray!!
With special thanks to Vassay for helping me get back into Sansar, when I had trouble logging into my old account. Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦
