Linden Lab’s Sansar have announced a whopping new list of features in their latest release notes; Sansar Release Notes for September 8, 2017.
Most eye catching will be features such as :
- Terrain Editor
- You can now sculpt your own terrain in Sansar! Make mountains and craters, which you can paint using Sansar’s default presents. Simply drag and drop the terrain plain from the system objects panel. Read more.
- The ability to add your own terrain textures and height maps is coming soon.
I haven’t been able to look at this yet but this looks like a very interesting development indeed. The link to read more explains how you can create terrain in Sansar and then raise, lower, flatten, soften, harden etc. These terms will be familiar to those who have experience in virtual worlds such as Second Life.
- .OBJ import
- Sansar now supports .obj file import. See here for some .obj import tips.
Sansar had previously supported the .FBX format but this release means it now also supports .OBJ format, which I’m sure will please many creators as .OBJ is a very popular format.
- Web Audio Streams
- Stream live radio stations and more in Sansar. You can now stream Shoutcast, Icecast, and other services using MP3-based URLs (Several other formats, like OGG, also work. AAC isn’t supported.). Read more.
The ability to live stream radio stations, or more importantly, Shoutcast, Icecast and other services is a pretty damn important development in putting the social into Sansar, so this is a very welcome development.
- Running
- A long-awaited and frequently requested feature is now in your hands. It’s time to run like the wind in Sansar!
Hurrah! Walking around Sansar was a slow process. The reason for the slow pace was due to an issue with Virtual Reality mode not being happy with fast moving avatars, it looks like that issue has been overcome so now you can run around Sansar to your hearts content.
I haven’t yet worked out how you run mind you, indeed I’m in a very confused state because the latest update took me back to the avatar customisation screen and when I logged in I had a different default avatar, which came as a surprise but is easily rectified by going back to “My Looks”.
There are a shed load of other updates that look interesting too, please read the release notes for full details.
I would say that the big advantage of the .OBJ format is that it is very widely supported. For some software, such as Poser, it is the default data format and export in that format is almost universal. Because of the Poser use, there are utilities which can manipulate the format, doing things such as UV-mapping. When they had standardised on the Collada format for Second Life, it seemed bizarre to choose .FBX for Sansar. This doesn’t diminish the strangeness that much but it may mean that creators are not going to be locked in to expensive proprietary formats.
Yes, good point about .OBJ being widely supported, it’s a very sensible format to go with. Ideally Second Life and Sansar would support the same formats.