Linden Labs Announces First Invitations to Sansar Sent, Drops "Project" In Name

In a press release yesterday, Linden Lab stated that this week, they would be sending the first of their invitations for Sansar to the content creators whom applied since May. For the first time since they named what had previously been called the "Next Generation Grid" in May 2015 as "Project Sansar," Linden Lab began referring to the virtual world simply as "Sansar," dropping the "Project" part of the name.

Linden Lab® today announced that the first invitations to the Sansar™ Creator Preview are being sent this week. Select applicants will be invited to create their own social VR experiences with the new platform, slated for public release in early 2017.

The Sansar website, where content creators can still apply to early access, has been changed to www.sansar.com .

It was announced that over 6500 people had applied for early access, "As the platform matures, we’ll continue inviting more and more creators up until public release early next year." Earlier this month, Ebbe Altberg, the CEO of Linden Lab, stated in an interview he expected Sansar to be ready to be fully opened to the public in January 2017.

Inara Pey noticed the change in the name, and emailed Linden Lab's Peter Gray (Peter Linden) about it. His response was simple: "Good eye." Inara commented, "The new name shouldn’t really be a surprise – after a year or so of referring to it as “project Sansar”, to the media and the VR public, changing the platform’s name to “Sansar” is a lot easier and less confusing than trying to effectively rebrand the platform, even if it hasn’t yet been formally launched."

Linden Lab would also post four screenshots from Sansar onto it's Flickr account. Among the pictures was one with a few avatars, the first such screenshot they have released so far.

To view the press release in it's entirety, (Click here).

Source: Modem World

Bixyl Shuftan

Project Sansar to Go Public in January 2017, Ebbe Linden States In Interview

More than two years since it's development was first announced, Ebbe Linden is confident enough about Project Sansar's development that he announced a date for when it will be fully available for the general public: January 2017.

Ebbe gave the date in an interview with Donnie SC Lygonis. He stated a few months ago in testing, Sansar had a high "discomfort rating." But since then, it's improved. Ebbe also repeated that the Lab plans to invite in an additional number of testers, by invitation only, later this August.

So it seems after about two and a half years, people will finally be able to set foot in the virtual world.

For the Podcast with the interview: Click here .

*Addition* Listening to the video, Ebbe Linden described the decision to start work on a new virtual world as their response to Second Life's slowly declining user base. They had been trying to do something about it for a while, and after Ebbe came in they concluded the best thing to do was to work on something entirely new.

Sources: Daniel Voyager, Jo Yardley

Bixyl Shuftan

May 4 Lab Chat Videos and Transcripts Now Available

For those who missed the Lab Chat some days ago, hosted by Saffia Widdershins and Jo Yardley, along with Ebbe, Oz, and Troy Linden, there are now videos and a transcript of the event.



(click here if the video fails to play).

The videos, the above, part two, and part three, were posted by Linden Lab. Inara Pey provided the transcript, in addition to a summary of the event: "Lab Chat #3 in 10-ish Minutes."

Sources: Lab Chat Blog, Modem World.

Lab Chat in LEA4 on May 4

By Gemma Cleanslate

I was happy to be able to attend the latest Chat Lab at LEA 4 on Friday. It is good to see these discussions continue. Saffia Widdershins and Frau Jo Yardley hosted and presented questions that had been submitted prior to the event and then switched to the audience questions. You will be able hear the entire conversation or read the transcripts soon. This is just a teaser.The Lindens participating were Troy Linden, Oz Linden and Ebbe Linden. They tried to keep the answers understandable and not too technical although some was over my head. There were over 100 avatars at the meeting, including some other Lindens attending also: Xiola, Keira, Pete.

Saffia opened with the announcement that there the LEA(Linden Endowment for the Arts) land grant applications are open to creators who wish to apply.

Then they went directly to questions. The first few were about Bento, and involved the new processes of movements that will be up coming. Some creators are using certain moves in very creative ways as you will see. The lab is trying to incorporate suggestions of the residents into its development and are actually thrilled to see the residents being so creative. It sounds all very interesting and I hope to try the beta just to take a peek.

There was discussion of the current viewer improvements that they are working on. Another question was about uploading of mesh and how to make it easier to upload more than the present 8 faces at a time.

They moved on to Sansar and one thing I found very interesting is the goal of being able to accommodate more than 100 avatars at bigger events  and possibly concurrent across some worlds and are hoping that by the end of this year there may be some movement in that area. Right now the most work is going into testing for the fundamental and basic user experience to be sure it is the best it can be. Thousands of creators have asked to be in beta for Sansar and at this point hopefully they will be notified and admitted in July or August . They are looking for committed users to use the beta , and as they need to be sure the project is ready enough not to inflict “too much pain on the first users.”

It is great to hear the Linden Lab group so accepting to suggestions from the questioners who have good ideas to be incorporated. That is how we solve things here says Frau Jo.

Another interesting question was regarding some of the avatars who are begging in groups for 100 L for rent for example and the best way to report them. Reporting by AR  is requested, please, with all the possible information for the Lab to be able to make a decision based on what they are told. It is better not to flood with multiple AR’s because it slows down the process. It is the nature of the complaint that is the issue and not the number.

The Lab is not ready to discuss money issues in Sansar but it looks like there will be some form of coin like lindens but that is still ahead for decision making .One sad thing I heard is that Mac users will have to wait until  the end of the year or more before all the doors will work. Some more linden experiences on the way but not yet ready for prime time.  There is much information, some not understood by me, but they try hard to not make it too technical in nature. It is good  to see the Lindens back in Second Life working and playing with the residents. It is greatly appreciated that they are listening to the residents. The meeting with a couple of breaks lasted for almost 1 hour and a half and it was most interesting. There is  uch more discussion that you will want to hear for yourself. Watch for the announcement of the transcript availability.  https://labchatsl.wordpress.com/  is the place to find it and the past ones are there for you to check out while you wait. 

Gemma Cleanslate

Sansar Open to Applications For Content Builders

In a recent Press Release, Linden Lab announced that it was now accepting applications from content creators to test out their next-generation virtual world under development, Project Sansar. Called a "Creator Preview," the Lab states they will began inviting over "later this summer" the first of those applying.


“Creating social VR experiences is too hard and expensive today, and that limits the value and growth of this incredible new medium,” said Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO. “Creating your own VR experience shouldn’t require an engineering team, and Project Sansar will make that possible. Over the past few months, a small number of creators have already made an impressive variety of awesome social VR experiences with Project Sansar, from virtual versions of real-world locations to fantasy worlds and stylized game-like environments, and more. We’ll soon be ready for many more creators to join Project Sansar, and we can’t wait to see what people will create.”

The application itself is a short one, asking for name, email, any website, what type of content the person intends to create, what tools they use to make it, what computer operating system they use, what type of headset they use, if any, and if they use Second Life.

There have been only occasional  peeks into Sansar so far. On the Project Sansar News Facebook Page , one Israeli user posted two screenshots following a post by Daniel Voyager, which were later reposted on his blog,"On the right hand side there appears to be Sansar user interface buttons seen for the first time."

As of now, Linden Lab states Sansar will not be available for the general public until "at the end of 2016."

For the Linden Lab press release, Click Here.

For the Sansar application, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Community of the Year

There were no shortage of people whom had an impact on Second Life in ways large and small in the past year. Project Sansar, earlier referred to as "SL 2.0" by residents, was seldom far from out collective minds, wondering how it's eventual release would affect the Grid we've gone about in and invested so much time and effort in for so long. But Sansar isn't here yet, not much is known about it, and residents have gone about their business.

In April, unknown griefers struck the SS Galaxy, and the lack of customer service from Linden Lab led the owners of the ship to retire the ship. It was arranged for the Lab to take ownership of the build, but it was a museum piece, no more would there be a crew and community behind it. These griefers, and the clumsiness of the Lab, caused no shortage of sad faces.

Linden Lab's clumsiness would continue, locking out Flea Bussy, the owner of the noted "Grendle's Children" mall, and bringing it in danger of shutting down as while offline he wouldn't be able to make the tier payments. Fortunately a number of residents stepped in, and helped the store in which Philip Linden allegedly stated, "As goes Grendle's, so goes the Grid."

With the end of SL GO this year, people wondered if this meant they could no longer access Second Life with tablets and older computers. Fortunately there was "Bright Canopy," created by Chaos Priestman and Bethsael Robbiani, which offered to do what it did. It wasn't as low priced, and there were some problems getting it up and running. But eventually they did. Chaos and Bethsael, for preserving access to Second Life via iPads and other tablets, are deserving of runner-up.

Also getting the lockout treatment was TotalLunar Eclipse, the owner to the Steelhead Estates. As he was already having a number of real-life issues, this was the last straw, and he made his decision to take an indefinite break from Second Life, and so his estates would be closing down. This would have killed off many other communities in this virtual world. But the Steelheader's held together. There were a number of offers to help out, and eventually one of the sims was saved., and a new location found for the other club. It was not a perfect ending as the rest of the sims went offline., and many of those in the group moved to other places in the Steamlands. But the community group is still together. Their Relay for Life team is still together. So there's hope that the antics the Steelhead community us note for will continue.

So the residents of Steelhead collectively are named Second Life Newser's "Man of the Year," or in this case, "Community of the Year."

Bixyl Shuftan

Project Sansar Login Page, CNN Article

With the public viewing of Linden Lab's "Project Sansar," it's next generation virtual world, later today, A German blogger, Echt Virtuell, posted a link to what looks like it's login page, along with a screenshot of it, at www.projectsansar.com. The page is not a static one, the white outline of various objects morphing and changing with the passage of time against a wilderness backdrop.

Project Sansar has been making real-life news, one article appearing on CNN's website a few days ago on September 15 by Heather Kelley. She describes Second Life as "an aging virtual world" that while still used by "hundreds of thousands of loyal users" and profitable, "but it's not the future. ... Starting fresh gave Linden Lab a chance to rethink how a virtual world is organized and how it makes money." She describes a few things what the Lindens have been building, "They've made a desert scene with crazy big machinery, weird futuristic lounges and a famous landmark. They've even created an exact replica of a conference room in Linden Lab's San Francisco office, down to the objects on the desk." And it seems the release date, once described as "sometime in 2016," has been moved back to "by the end of 2016."

Hat tip: Daniel Voyager, Cristiano

Early Showing of Project Sansar by Linden Lab This Friday

Linden Lab announced that they will be giving a "hands on preview" of their next generation virtual world this Friday. The news was given over a San Francisco events website.

This interactive virtual reality workshop will provide a hands-on preview of the new 3D virtual experience platform, code-named Project Sansar, being developed by Linden Lab, the makers of the popular virtual world Second Life. This new platform will enable people to virtually walk through 3D...

Hamlet Au of New World Notes commented, "Pretty strange to see this apparently open-to-the-public event promoted on a popular general interest SF event site when Project Sansar is supposed to be in closed Alpha with early users under heavy NDA. But there it is. So if you happen to be in San Francisco this Friday and can attend, please report your reactions ..."

But before anyone out there who hasn't heard this news before books a flight to California, Hamlet stated that the event is sold out. Curiously, Linden Lab's Peter Gray called it a "AIA event," which could mean the American Institute of Architects.

So on Friday evening, we should be getting a better look at Linden Lab's next generation virtual world.

*Update* In other Project Sansar news, Inara Pey posted on her blog that Linden Lab that one of the possible permanent names for the world being considered could be "Created Reality."  As she put it however, "while the name ... may doubtless describe the platform’s function in presenting spaces where people can create their own virtual realities, it does actually read rather, well, bland."

Linden Lab Announces Project Sansar Closed Alpha Ready For Volunteers For Testing

Earlier this week on Tuesday August 18, Linden Lab issued a press release saying that their next generation virtual world, currently called Project Sansar, was ready for testing and stated a "small number of volunteers have been exclusively invited" to help out.

Linden Lab stated they plan for Sansar to be able to be used, when ready for full release, by handheld devices, as well as being compatible with VR headsets such as Oculus Rift. They touted the next generation virtual world as able to "empower people to easily create, share, and monetize their own multi-user, interactive virtual experiences, without requiring engineering resources. ... eliminating the complicated challenges that today limit the medium to professional developers with significant resources." They did not go into detail as how this would be different from Second Life.

Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab's CEO (known inworld as Ebbe Linden), talked about "Lowering the barrier for VR experience creation. ... Project Sansar will do for virtual experiences what WordPress has done for the Web."

Slated for general availability in 2016, Project Sansar will democratize virtual reality as a creative medium. It will empower people to easily create, share, and monetize their own multi-user, interactive virtual experiences, without requiring engineering resources. The platform will enable professional-level quality and performance with exceptional visual fidelity, 3D audio, and physics simulation. Experiences created with Project Sansar will be optimized for VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, but also accessible via PCs and (at consumer launch) mobile devices. Users can explore and socialize within Project Sansar experiences through advanced expressive avatars, using text and voice chat.

Drawing on more than 12 years of unique experience running Second Life, the largest-ever user-created virtual world, Linden Lab will make it fun and easy for Project Sansar users to create social VR experiences, eliminating the complicated challenges that today limit the medium to professional developers with significant resources. Project Sansar will allow creators at all levels to focus on realizing their creative visions, without having to worry about issues such as hosting and distribution, multi-user access and communication systems, virtual currency and regulatory compliance, and other challenges associated with creating, sharing, and monetizing virtual experiences today.

“We want to lower the barrier of entry for VR experience creation,” said Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab. “Project Sansar will do for virtual experiences what WordPress has done for the Web: empower a broad range of people to create with professional quality and reach global audiences. By greatly expanding who can create virtual experiences, Project Sansar will also extend the value of VR to a wide variety of use-cases — from gaming and entertainment to education, architecture, art, community-building, business meetings, healthcare, conferences, training, and more.”

The small group of initial creators invited to help test Project Sansar will create 3D content using Autodesk’s Maya® software and will export their creations to the new platform. At consumer launch, Project Sansar will support a variety of third-party creation tools as well as native building options, so that creators can work with their preferred software.

In the coming months, Linden Lab will welcome additional creators and content partners to Project Sansar as new features are added to the platform and testing expands.

Linden Lab is also currently recruiting talented engineers to join the team developing Project Sansar. More information about working for Linden Lab, current positions, and applications can be found at lindenlab.com/careers.

* * * * *

Daniel Voyager and Inara Pey have also reported about the announcement. "The Verge" also did an article, though it's choice of words, "fading from public view, was a virtual world in its own right," could be interpreted as saying Second Life was dead and closed.

Both Daniel Voyager and Inara Pey posted about a youtube in which Ebbe Linden discusses a few details about Sansar: https://youtu.be/2mQj7TpE-Wc . Inara also wrote an analysis of the talk.

Bixyl Shuftan

More on "Sansar" as the Code Name For Linden Lab's Next Generation Grid

It was a few days ago on May 5 that Linden Lab announced the code name of their next generation virtual world still in development: Project Sansar. There's been some conversation here and there about it, such as the SL Universe forums, and New World Notes. Hamlet Au didn't like the name, "Sansar seems like such a silly name. I'm personally inclined to keep calling it Second Life 2 for now." It did remind him of two things. One was the name of the largest mainland continent in Second Life: Sansara. The other was Philip Rosedale's original idea for Second Life's name, "Sensarra."

Strawberry Singh posted in Twitter that "Sansar" was an actual word, meaning "world" in Sanskrit. It was also brought up the name could easily be twisted around in mocking ways, such as "Sexar." Adeon Writer explained a couple other meanings, "Sanasr is Turkish for Ferret. It's also some term for reincarnation. So reincarnated ferrets. And since the most important question to ask in a virtual world is 'Can you be a ferret?' I think the name is perfect."

Canary Beck in contrast to Hamlet Au thought the name was a good one, giving "Ten Reasons Why Sansar Would Be A Good Name For The Successor to Second Life." As listed, "It's unique, the dot-com TLD looks easy to acquire, it's easy to type and pronounce, it's easy to remember, it's short, it feels right, it's protectable, it carries no baggage, it's a place, not a life, it's exotic and visually extendable."

With all these in mind, I keep going back to the Turkish meaning of the word, ferret, and have this mental image of the new world being populated by masses of ferret Tinies, all doing the "Riverdance."

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Announces "Next Generation" Grid's Code Name: Project Sansar

After almost a year after Ebbe Linden revealed Linden Lab was working on a new virtual world, the code name for what residents have been calling "SL 2.0" has finally been announced: Project Sansar.

On her blog, Inara Pey stated she got the following message from Peter Gray (Peter Linden)

Project Sansar is the internal code name we’ve been using for the new platform, and we do plan to use that name externally in its early stages (like the invite-only alpha we begin this summer). However, this is just the project name, and we anticipate changing it prior to launching the platform to everyone.

 Stay tuned for more information to come.

SL Enquirer, Daniel Voyager, Modem World,