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In Moving From SL to Sansar, Is There a Loss of Serendipity?

Sansar Facebook Group 3 August 2017

The Sansar group on Facebook (please note: this is NOT the official Facebook page for Sansar, which is here) is currently quite small (only 143 members), but it has been very active this week with Monday’s launch of the open creator beta of Sansar.  Among the participants in the discussions is Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg himself, which is refreshing to see.

One topic that was recently raised for discussion was the issue of sim/experience design.  User Phil Clarke posts:

For me, the one major architectural advantage that SL has over Sansar is the ability to accidentally discover places when exploring. One of the best things about SL was being in a store then camming over to a fantastic club or building you didn’t know existed. Sansar’s experience model prevents that currently it seems. I suppose an advantage of Sansar is that your experience never gets ruined by someone else’s prim frenzy, but interested to hear what others think?

You can follow (and join in) the ensuing discussion at the Facebook page.  One valid point is raised in the comments by Markus Breuer, with which I agree: “But, if we are honest, most of SL moved onto private sims…and into sky boxes a long time ago. Obviously, the concept of connected areas wasn’t what the majority of customers wanted.”

Do you feel a loss of serendipity in moving from the one contiguous landmass of Second Life to the separate experiences of Sansar?  If you have an account on Facebook, please consider joining the Sansar group on Facebook to add your voice to the conversation.

Freebies from Reid Parkin

Reid Parkin Freebies Sansar Store 3 August 2017

I told you I would be highlighting Sansar freebies, and here is the first batch!

In addition to sightseeing, many of you are building your own environments in Sansar. One of the creators invited to take part in the closed beta of Sansar was Reid Parkin, who specializes in botanical creations: trees, hedges, grass, etc.  I have bought many of Reid’s trees for installation in my own outdoor experience, Ryan’s Garden.

Click this link and you will get a list of Reid Parkin’s creations for sale in the Sansar Store, with the freebies listed first!  Among the many free items Reid has put out in the Store are pampas grass, duck weed, a wooden bench, even a full grown tree!  The rest of the items are moderately priced, with most at S$30 to S$50 and nothing over S$65.

Reid Parkin has two published experiences in the Sansar Atlas, Reid’s Plants and Parkins Fall, where you can wander around and take a close-up look at his creations.

Discussion in the Oyo Lounge: Three Pressure Points for Sansar

Oyo Lounge 2 August 2017

Every day so far this week Jenn,  Linden Lab’s Lead Community Manager for Sansar, has invited avatars to gather at the Oyo Lounge at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time/Sansar Time.  We meet up at Alfy’s experience and chat about various topics: movies, current events, other virtual worlds, etc.

One item of interest that came up during the discussion was the consensus that there are three key pressure/pain points which Sansar needs to pay attention to as it grows in size:

  1. Organization and searching of Atlas listings.  As the number of experiences gets ever-larger, it becomes ever more important to be able to search for and pull up a particular experience quickly.  A Facebook poster, Ørjan Sandland, mentioned a helpful tip: it is possible to keyword search the web page version of the Sansar Atlas using CTRL-F (of course, you have to make sure that the web page is fully loaded before that will work properly). And of course, that trick doesn’t work when you’re in a VR headset.
  2. Organization and searching of Store listings.  Again, as the number of items in the Sansar Store increases, the harder it is to find something.
  3. Organization and searching of your personal inventory.  Veteran Sansar builders have huge inventories now, and have no way to create folders, or search for items, other than scrolling through lines and lines of listings.

The sooner these three pressure points are addressed, the happier we all will be.

Looking forward to tomorrow’s meetup with Jenn at the Oyo Lounge at 2:00 p.m. Sansar time!  Hope some of you can attend and take part in the discussion.

444 Experiences And Counting…

Sin's Name Tag for Ryan Schultz 1 August 2017

Another day and another nametag!  This one I am wearing in the photo above was created by Sin, thank you so much for making this for me!  I now have a nametag for every possible outfit 🙂

Since Linden Lab opened the doors of Sansar to the general public on Monday, July 31st, the number of experiences published in the Atlas has increased dramatically.  This morning I did a quick count and I came up with 444 experiences in total!  Since each experience can potentially be as large as 4 km by 4 km by 4 km, that’s a LOT of virtual real estate already!  It’s wonderful to see so many people hopping right into virtual world building.

Every day in the Sansar Newsblog I plan to highlight one particularly noteworthy experience in my Pick of the Day post.  Yesterday was my first pick, the NASA Apollo Museum and Moonscape by LOOT Interactive.

In addition, every day I will post a picture of a different experience that evokes a particular atmosphere in my Scene of the Day.  Yesterday, my first scene was a serene shot of Maxwell Graf’s experience, Respite.

Starting from today, I will also be keeping an eye on the Sansar Store, and alerting people to various items that I think are especially interesting, decorative or worthwhile.  I’ll be keeping an eagle eye out for any freebies and special deals so you can snap them up for your own experiences!