{"id":5588,"date":"2016-01-22T22:18:24","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T22:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=5588"},"modified":"2016-01-22T22:18:24","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T22:18:24","slug":"project-sansar-looms-large-but-second-life-is-probably-still-the-best-virtual-world-out-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=5588","title":{"rendered":"Project Sansar Looms Large But Second Life Is Probably Still The Best Virtual World Out There"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Project<\/p>\n

Project Sansar is widely being dubbed as the Second Life of Second Life. This makes it sound as if Second Life has gone away, if you read the headlines, but when you read the articles then you discover that Second Life is not only healthy, it’s arguably still the best virtual world out there.<\/p>\n

We’ll take a look at a couple of articles to demonstrate this point, the first is by Annie Gaus and published on Silicon Valley Business Journals :\u00a0In virtual reality, Second Life prepares for its second act<\/a>. The article talks about the virtual reality boom, the fact that Linden Lab have a new product on the way and dives into the hype machine that is currently in action regarding VR :<\/p>\n

Now, the makers of Second Life are preparing for a new life of their own in the fast-developing virtual reality market, which Deloitte analysts estimate will hit $1 billion for the first time in 2016.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, before we can move forward into the new virtual reality, we have to step back and the article acknowledges that Second Life was a successful early experiment, so successful that the article also points out that Second Life’s longevity makes it ancient in Internet years.<\/p>\n

The article also contains some quotes from Ebbe Altberg, many which have been heard before but one really stands out from the crowd, especially when people seem to feel that the end of the Second Life virtual world is nigh :<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still the best virtual world out there today.\u00a0We’re profitable all thanks to Second Life.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

People should bear this in mind, Second Life is still paying its own way for Linden Lab, Project Sansar is still some way off from being a polished product and even when it is a polished product, it won’t be Second Life, which means that Second Life may still have a home. The article does of course delve into Project Sansar, which is seen as the future, but the future isn’t here yet.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The second article I want to highlight is by Sophie Charara over at WAREABLE :\u00a0Virtual worlds reborn: Can Second Life’s second life democratise VR?<\/a> This article is lengthy and has a lot of meat on the bones, it’s well worth a read. This article talks more of Project Sansar than Second Life, or more to the point, the article speculates about Project Sansar, but it does point out that Second Life is still very much alive :<\/p>\n

Slightly down on a peak of 1.1 million users, nevertheless the biggest virtual world in the er, world never went away. Now Linden Lab has 12 years worth of valuable experience around how people interact in virtual spaces.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article talks about how Project Sansar is a social platform, how the experiences can be real in terms of relationships and identity and much more :<\/p>\n

First and foremost, Project Sansar is a social platform, that’s been in development for around two years and lets you build and share virtual CG spaces, activities and experiences. Linden Lab are selling it as WordPress for VR. That makes sense as the project aims to both democratise VR and make it much more diverse than if the future of the medium were decided by say, the games industry and Hollywood.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article also delves into what our brain does, or how our memories can be influenced, by virtual reality experiences :<\/p>\n

Spending time in Project Sansar allows you to live your life (a life) without physical constraints – you can go any place, any time and be anyone. That’s a powerful idea – democratising experiences, not just creativity – and it’s one that clearly informs the work of Altberg and his teams of engineers and designers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Linden Lab’s CEO refers to Chris Milk and Nonny de la Pena’s work with building empathy by placing viewers directly into scenes with VR and he cites Stanford University’s Jeremy Bailenson who has shown that our brains cannot distinguish between memories created in the real world and in virtual worlds.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting and fascinating stuff, but the reality of how far away Project Sansar is in terms of gaining the wider mainstream audience Linden Lab seek is also highlighted. Peter Gray (AKA Gray of The Lab From San Francisco) is referenced :<\/p>\n

This pre-alpha group of VIP testers will grow “in the coming months”, according to senior director of communications at Linden Lab, Peter Gray. The final version of Sansar is set to open up to “hundreds” of beta testers in June 2016 and a launch, which is now late 2016\/early 2017 on PC, mobile and “as many different VR platforms” as possible.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting stuff for sure, but with Project Sansar not looking set for a wide release until next year, Second Life, warts and all, still looks like the virtual world of choice and has established communities, commerce and creativity.<\/p>\n

Second Life won’t be around forever, but it’s really hard to disagree with Ebbe Altberg when he says that Second Life is still the best virtual world out there today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Project Sansar is widely being dubbed as the Second Life of Second Life. This makes it sound as if Second Life has gone away, if you read the headlines, but when you read the articles then you discover that Second Life is not only healthy, it’s arguably still the best virtual world out there. We’ll … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Project Sansar Looms Large But Second Life Is Probably Still The Best Virtual World Out There”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[996,3,997,14],"tags":[19,937,1022,697],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6rJUK-1s8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5590,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588\/revisions\/5590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}