Category: Linden Lab

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Second Life Nachfolger “Sansar” eröffnet offizielle Open Beta

Das Entwicklerstudio Linden Lab veröffentlichte die Plattform Second Life im Jahr 2003 und zog damit massenhaft neugierige Spieler an. Im selben Jahr besaß das System rund 36 Millionen registrierte Benutzerkonten und konnte rund um die Uhr zwischen 30.000 bis 36.000 eingeloggte Nutzer vorweisen. Dabei entstand im Spiel ein komplettes Finanzsystem mit eigener Währung. Nun veröffentlichen die Entwickler die Open Beta für den Nachfolger Sansar innerhalb der Virtual Reality, der jedoch im Vergleich zum Vorgänger einen neuen Weg einschlägt.

Sansar das Second Life der Neuzeit in VR

Der Hauptfokus von Second Life und dem Nachfolger Sansar liegt in der sozialen Interaktion zwischen den Teilnehmern und der Erstellung von Inhalten für die virtuelle Welt. Dabei ermöglichen die Systeme über Avatare eine Kommunikation zwischen den verschiedenen Anwendern und Kulturen weltweit. Die Avatare simulieren die Gesichts- und Körperanimationen und übertragen sämtliche Emotionen in die VR.

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Im Gegensatz zu Second Life ist die virtuelle Umgebung in Sansar jedoch keine riesige eigenständige große Welt, sondern eine Plattform, auf der die Benutzer ihre eigene virtuelle Welt hosten, dazugehörige VR-Erfahrungen erstellen und freigeben können. Die verschiedenen Welten mit den virtuellen Kreationen sind miteinander verbunden und können per Weltatlas von anderen Spielern besucht werden.

Dadurch ist jede einzelne gehostete Welt ein eigener Eintrittspunkt in Sansar. Die unterschiedlichen VR-Kreationen sind per Link an andere Nutzer teilbar, wodurch es möglich ist, spezifische VR-Erfahrungen direkt anzubieten und zugänglich zu machen. Die Welt kann man sowohl öffentlich als auch privat freigeben.

Insgesamt 35 Spieler können sich gleichzeitig in einer Welt aufhalten. Wird diese Zahl überschritten, so klont der Server die gehostete Umgebung und eröffnet eine neue Instanz, in der sich dann weitere 35 Spieler tummeln können. Dadurch sind sämtliche VR-Erfahrungen jederzeit zugänglich und es entstehen keine Warteschlangen.

Sansar-Linden-Lab-Second-Life-VR-HTC-Vive-Oculus-Rift

Die verschiedenen VR-Erfahrungen können beispielsweise mit einer 3-D-Modelling Software wie Maya oder Blender erstellt und direkt in Sansar importiert werden, um sie dort im Desktop-Modus oder innerhalb der VR auszubauen. Des Weiteren können die Entwickler ihre erstellten VR-Kreationen im Sansar Store zum Verkauf anbieten.

Open Beta und Bezahlmodelle

Seit einigen Monaten befand sich Sansar in der geschlossenen Betaphase, nun eröffneten Linden Lab die offizielle Open Beta für alle Interessierten. Durch den Vorlauf sind bereits mehr als 120 Angebote mit VR-Erfahrungen verfügbar, und es gibt einiges zu erforschen. So kann man beispielsweise das NASA Apollo Museum oder den Monkey Temple erkunden.

Die Nutzung ist kostenlos, möchte man jedoch mehr als drei VR-Erfahrungen gleichzeitig hosten, so muss man eines der Bezahlmodelle in Anspruch nehmen:

  • Creator-Paket: 5 VR-Erfahrungen, Support per mail innerhalb von 48 Stunden – 9.99 USD
  • Super Creator-Paket: 10 VR-Erfahrungen, Support per Mail innerhalb von 24 Stunden und Live Web Chat – 29.99 USD
  • Professional-Paket: 20 VR-Erfahrungen, Support per Mail innerhalb desselben Tages, Live Web Chat, Telefon – 99.99 USD

Sansar steht auf der offiziellen Webseite für Windows PCs mit Oculus Rift und HTC Vive zum Download zur Verfügung.

(Quellen: RoadtoVR | Sansar | Videos: Sansar Youtube)

Der Beitrag Second Life Nachfolger “Sansar” eröffnet offizielle Open Beta zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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Create Your Own Social VR Experience as Sansar Beta Goes Live

Regular VRFocus readers will likely know about Linden Lab and it’s social virtual reality (VR) platform Sansar that’s currently in development. Designed as a place that’ll enable everyone to create, share, and ultimately monetize social experiences for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, over the last few months the project has been in a creator preview with 2,000 developers building content. Today Linden Lab has announced the opening of the creator beta for Sansar, allowing anyone to dive in and create content.

Sansar is free to use for those with a compatible head-mounted display (HMD), with additional capacity and customer support available to creators through paid subscriptions, starting at $9.99 USD/month.

Sansar

The studio has revealed several other details regarding Sansar’s open beta launch. As the platform is designed to bring people together, more than 50+ avatars can be within an experience in Sansar at any given time, and automated instancing allows creators to reach unlimited audiences.

“Sansar democratizes social VR,” said Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab in a statement. “Until now, complexity and cost has limited who could create and publish in this medium, and Sansar dramatically changes that. It’s been inspiring to see the thousands of virtual creations that have already published with Sansar during our limited preview, and I’m looking forward to the explosion of creativity we’ll see now that we’ve opened the doors in beta.”

As previously reported, Linden Lab has teamed up with IKinema to use its inverse kinematics tech allowing for avatars in Sansar to mirror users’ full-body movements. Linden Lab also partnered with Speech Graphics to enable the complex facial animation of the avatars to be synced to what is said in the mic.

To help creators advertise and share their creations each Sansar experience will have a unique link that can be shared across Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs, basically whomever the creator wishes. The platform will also enable users to earn money by selling, renting, or charging for access to their experiences through the Sansar Store for Sansar Dollars (S$). As development of Sansar continues, in the future Linden Lab will allow creators to be able to monetize entire experiences.

For the opening of the beta, the platform will host a week of launch activities so that users can experience what Sansar is all about. This will include an appearance by Buzz Aldrin in the Apollo Space museum, curated tours by Egyptologists of the lost Tombs of Tomanokin, and a free throw tournament with an NBA star.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Sansar, reporting back with the latest updates.

Sansar Pricing & Subscriptions

Free Creator Super Creator Professional
Experiences 3 5 10 20
Customer Support Email Email

48 hrs max response time within business hours

 Email

48 hrs max response time within business hours

Live Web Chat

 Email

48 hrs max response time within business hours

Live Web Chat

Phone
Price Free $9.99/mo $29.99/mo $99.99/mo
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Linden Lab’s Sansar to Showcase two Museum Experiences at Sotheby’s NYC The Art of VR

 

Starting tomorrow Loot Interactive’s The Art of VR event will be taking place at Sotheby’s NYC. As part of it Linden Lab and Suzanne Lloyd will be debuting two virtual reality (VR) experiences, The Apollo Museum and the Harold Lloyd Stereoscopic Museum, both of which have been built utilizing Linden Lab’s new social VR platform, Sansar.

In the Apollo Museum, visitors can virtually explore true-to-scale models of the Saturn V rocket, Command Module, and Lunar Module, then walk the entire mission from launch to re-entry via a Museum-length mission map; and teleport to a recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing site. For those unable to attend the experience launches for PC, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive later this year.

“The Apollo Museum that LOOT Interactive has created with Sansar is an awesome example of what social VR can bring to museums,” said Bjorn Laurin, VP of Product at Linden Lab. “Social VR lets you experience things you otherwise couldn’t, and using Sansar, LOOT Interactive has created a unique and engaging educational experience. Exploring exhibits is more fun when you can do it with other people, and it’s an incredible feeling to be on the moon at the site of the Apollo 11 landing with your friends.”

Sansar_ApolloMuseum-1

While the Harold Lloyd Museum features the Hollywood legend’s collection of stereoscopic photography. Digitised utilising photogrammetry, the virtual museum is filled with objects, videos and pictures of Harold’s lifetime achievements. Harold Lloyd produced over 200,000 3D pictures, including shots of Marilyn Monroe, Betty Page, the opening of Disneyland, and more.

Suzanne Lloyd, President of Harold Lloyd Entertainment, said, “My grandfather would be thrilled to see that his time capsule of vintage 3D photography that spanned over three decades of people and landscapes all over the world is being reintroduced to the world through virtual reality. I look forward to expanding my grandfather’s library with the LOOT Interactive team for this generation and many more to come.”

“We are enormously proud to be introducing Social VR to the world with the Apollo Museum and the Harold Lloyd Museum,” said David Sterling, LOOT Managing Director. “Social VR is an entirely new type of dynamic entertainment that will entertain us and enrich our lives like nothing that has come before.”

The Art of VR takes place at Sotheby’s NYC, from 22nd-23rd June, while VR In the Sky at the One World Trade Center, runs from 12th-13th July 2017, both of which are open to the public. Click here for tickets and more info.

 

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Linden Lab Adds Bing Gordon to Board of Directors

Creators of MMO Second Life, Linden Lab, have announced that Bing Gordon, Chief Product Officer KPCB is joining the Linden Lab Board of Directors.

Linden Lab say that they are looking to Gordon for advice on strategy and marketing as they improve Second Life and launch their new virtual reality (VR) platform Sansar.

Sansar is a new product from Linden Lab, a type of VR social media where VR users can share their experiences. More than 10,000 creators are signed up for early access to Sansar, and Linden Lab expect the product to go into open beta sometime in 2017.

“We’re honored to have Bing join our board of directors and work with our team,” said Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab. “He’s helped to bring to life some of the most influential entertainment experiences in recent memory, and as we prepare to open Sansar for all creators, his insights, expertise, and counsel will prove invaluable.”

“Linden Lab has a wonderful legacy and future, based on its technical excellence and forward vision,” said Gordon. “Over the past 14 years, Second Life has proven the value of user-created virtual experiences, and enabling people to create their own social VR experiences is a massive opportunity for which no company is better positioned than Linden Lab is with Sansar. I’ve been spending a lot of time working with Ebbe and the team over the past six months, and it’s an exciting time to officially join Linden’s board.”

Gordon has worked extensively with companies in various industries such as education, health and commerce with regards to both marketing and introducing gamification in order to make products more engaging for consumers. He has also previously worked for Electronic Arts and has served on the board of Amazon and Zynga.

VRFocus will bring you further updates about Linden Lab’s VR products.

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New Linden Lab Video Promises Sansar Open Beta this Spring

New Linden Lab Video Promises Sansar Open Beta this Spring

The first thought I had as this new Sansar video arrived in my inbox was how Linden Lab still seemed on track to deliver an accessible and very good looking product. As an increasing number of platforms scramble to lay their claim to the social VR space, Linden Lab steadfastly refuses to rush things, or deliver anything that looks half-baked. Yet in spite of that there haven’t been significant delays, and in the sometimes overhyped world of VR, delivering on one’s original promises can be a very exciting thing in itself.

The other thought that immediately followed was that I could practically hear the sound of collective outrage emanating from the faithful Second Life community as they heard Sansar described as something “unlike anything the world has ever seen before.” Not that it will stop most of them from being first in line to sign up for it, of course. Not only do those million or so SL users still put the platform to all sorts of creative uses, in fact, but many in the community were also chosen to join the highly skilled first batch of creators selected to put the closed version of the platform through its paces.

At the moment, however, they – along with the rest of us – will have to wait a while longer to get their hands on the platform. Sansar is set to remain in its invitation-only creator preview stage until Spring 2017, when it will go into open beta.

So while the two-minute video didn’t offer any earth-shattering new announcements, it does show plenty of stunning visuals, beautifully rendered movement, and impressive-looking UI. Apart from delivering a new slogan for Sansar (Created Reality) the voiceover generally reiterates all of the messages which its CEO Ebbe Altberg has been delivering ever since we first spoke with him for a fireside chat back in 2015 to discuss their plans for the Virtual Reality space. Over the years Linden Lab has continued to dedicate considerable expertise and resources to their budding VR platform, and it is probably fair to say we’ve been consistently impressed with the previews we’ve seen so far.

“No longer is VR limited to professional developers and engineers,” the narrator in the video promises. Users will be able to collaborate with other creators and innovators, re-create history, delighting friends, colleagues, customers and the entire world with their creations, she says.

In addition to the environments which we’re already familiar with from previous demos and screenshots, the video also showcases some action shots of the creator platform in action. The narrator tells us that it allows creators to easily generate, share and monetize content at the click of a button: “creators can upload original assets from common 3D formats, repurpose existing content, or get new assets from the ever-expanding Sansar store,” easily adding lighting, spatial sound and scripting and interacting with others through detailed avatars. We also get a glimpse of what the Sansar store looks like, with several items up for sale and prices listed in Sansar Dollars.

While it’s unlikely that trade inside this currently walled garden is booming (only a few hundred creators have been invited to the platform so far), Linden Lab is keen to build and populate a robust marketplace ahead of opening Sansar to the public. The ability to monetize is a cornerstone of the company’s strategy after all, much as it has been for Second Life – which still generates enough profit for the company to self-fund the development of Sansar.

Sansar continues to boldly claim it will transform the way we live our virtual lives from education and commerce to entertainment and live events.

“Get ready because the future of 3D creation and interactive social VR is coming,” she concludes as it’s revealed that the voice we’ve been hearing is in fact coming from an avatar sporting a t-shirt with the Sansar logo. There’s nothing unusual about her at first glance, but the lip sync is pretty impressive for those who know how hard that is to get just right. It’s something that Altberg and his team were particularly excited about when I met them in London last year – the way in which their tech can – regardless of what language you are speaking – coordinate your voice not only with your avatar’s mouth, but with the facial muscles and movement of their face so that it looks much more natural.

It remains to be seen how quickly this space will grow, but with improved headsets hitting the market in 2017 and prices already starting to drop, it looks like Sansar’s bet not to compromise on quality could pay off. While there are a lot of social VR platforms open to the public already, it is likely that consumers equipped with better quality headsets will also eventually crave better quality content, and this video confirms that Sansar certainly has the potential to deliver that.

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New ‘Sansar’ Video Glimpses More Virtual Worlds Made on the Social VR Platform

Sansar is the next-gen virtual world platform from Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life (2003). Due to launch in Spring 2017, Sansar is a new take for the company on virtual worlds, this time built from the ground up with support for virtual reality.

There’s no denying that Linden Lab did some things right with Second Life, a $500 million GDP in 2016 is a testament to that. But they also did some things wrong, even Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg will admit.

“Between the Creator and the Consumer, Second Life never really settled on which was our primary customer,” Altberg told Road to VR in an interview at the company’s San Francisco headquarters in January.

That realization is the basis of Sansar, which represents an entirely new take on virtual worlds for the company. Unlike with Second Life, the Linden Lab is shifting away from having a single massive virtual world, choosing instead to set itself up as an enabler of creators by making Sansar a platform, rather than an all encompassing virtual landscape. More like the ‘WordPress of social virtual spaces’, the company readily compares.

That means that users will not ‘enter the world of Sansar‘ any more than they would ‘visit WordPress’ to find content online. Instead—much like accessing a website via a URL that’s built atop WordPress—users will seek out and choose to visit individual virtual worlds built atop Sansar.

SEE ALSO
Open vs Closed Metaverse: Project Sansar & The New Experiential Age

Sansar is made to serve creators, Linden Lab says; it’s the creators who will build virtual worlds that serve users and customers. At least that’s the hope.

Unlike Second Life, Sansar is built from the ground up for virtual reality. That means everything from teleporting locomotion to native support for VR motion controllers. And while the most advanced creators will build complex virtual worlds that are imported from third-party tools, Sansar does offers users the ability to acquire, rearrange, and remix pre-made assets from inside Sansar itself, including while in a virtual reality headset.

Since inviting the first creators to start building inside of Sansar all the way back in 2015, the company has kept a tight grip on what virtual worlds inside of Sansar actually look like.

A new video released by Linden Lab today (heading this article) showcases some of the first worlds made by creators who were granted access to the platform’s preview. In Spring 2017, the company plans to open the doors so that anyone will be able to download the platform and explore the worlds therein.

During my interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Alterberg back in January, I got to tour some of the virtual worlds build on Sansar:

Giant Movie Theater

The first place I saw was a movie theater. A massive screen sat in a vast outdoor expanse with the night sky overhead. The seats in front of the screen were mostly covered over in windswept sand; as if there was once a huge theater that had deteriorated long ago, save for the screen, seats, and a huge flight of stairs leading down to them. The screen itself really felt massive (I’ve seen a number of other movie-theater VR experience that for some reason didn’t give a good sensation of scale). The screen was streaming a video from YouTube and the audio was playing throughout the entire space. Altberg said creators will soon be able to set virtual sound sources in Sansar so that the theater could have virtual speakers from which the sound originated.

Photogrammetry Tomb

Next was an Egyptian tomb which Altberg said was a real space that had been captured with photogrammetry. As we explored the tomb’s hieroglyphic-covered corridors together it became apparent that Sansar has 3D positional audio built it, allowing me to easily tell where Altberg was even when I wasn’t looking at him. That’s important not only because it helps your mind map the space and people around you more easily (which adds to immersion), but also because in multi-user scenarios, it’ll be much easier to tell who’s talking (which is also helped by automatic lip syncing).

Videogame Village

The next space we visited was a beautiful world that looked like a mashup between the Ocarina of Time (1998) and Jackson’s Lord of the Rings aesthetic. It was a bright and cheery village full of green foliage and earthen homes built into the sides of hills; a series of small foot bridges arched across the roofs of one home to the next. The space was very dimensional, with little paths winding up hills here and there, taking us to comfortable nooks enclosed with trees. The space had a definite stylized videogame look to it, but even though it wasn’t aiming for realistic visuals, it was probably the most charming and beautiful place I saw during my tour. In the center of town we came across a big monument of a cutlass that was sticking tip-down into the ground. Water cascaded down from the handled in ordered lines, and poured into pools at the base of the monument. Although the entirety of this virtual space was uninhabited at this stage, it called out to be the starting point of a great adventure.

Learn more are Linden Lab’s Sansar ambitions in our deep dive interview.

The post New ‘Sansar’ Video Glimpses More Virtual Worlds Made on the Social VR Platform appeared first on Road to VR.

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Augmented World Expo 2013: It’s a wrap!

Augmented World Expo 2013 was really an amazing experience. I’m co-founder and co-organizer of the conference, along with Ori Inbar, so it has meant a lot to me to see our event grow over the last four years, and thrilling to make such a big splash this year.  There were 1,163 attendees, and the expo show cased an ecosystem of emerging technologies – augmented reality, gesture interaction, eyewear, wearables, and connected hardware of  many stripes, that mark the beginning of natural computing entering the mainstream. It was a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with what it feels like to be an augmented human in an augmented world!

Videos of AWE 2013′s 35 hours of educational sessions and inspirational keynotes are now available on our YouTube channel. I am sharing my own talk (my slides are also up on slideshare here), and a few of my favorites in this post, but there are far to many to post here, so please browse further on the Augmented World Expo youtube channel.

One notable high point of AWE2013, for me, was the showcase sponsored by Meta, a startup developing the first device allowing visualization and interaction with 3D virtual objects in the real world using your hands. It was made possible by the generous contribution from the private collections of Paul Travers, Dan Cui, Steven Feiner, Steve Mann, and Chris Grayson, and passionate volunteers who are helping advance the industry. Sean Hollister of The Verge did this excellent report on the eyewear showcase 35 years of wearable computing history at Augmented World Expo 2013
 Also for more on Meta see this article by Dan Farber.

My colleagues at Syntertainment, Will Wright, Avi Bar-Zeev, Jason Shankel, and LaurenElliott all gave great talks. Ironically, we’re not building augmented reality apps or H/W. We all just happen to continue to be very interested in the field.  

Thank you to everyone for supporting the event!

The press coverage was truly extensive:

In the shadow of Google Glass, an augmented reality industry revs its engines
The Verge, Sean Hollister, June 9, 2013, 271 Tweets

The next big thing in tech: Augmented reality
CNET, Dan Farber, June 7, 2013
Pick up on Current News Daily
350 Tweets

AWE 2013 Conference Report: Augmented Reality and Marketing
The Persuaders Marketing Podcast on Dublin City FM, June 23, 2013

AR Dirt Podcast – Ori Inbar AWE2013 Extravaganza Recap
AR Dirt by Joseph Rampolla, June 18, 2013

35 years of wearable computing history at Augmented World Expo 2013
The Verge, Sean Hollister, June 9, 2013
7 Tweets

Augmented Reality: Bruce Sterling, keynote at Augmented World Expo 2013
Wired, Bruce Sterling, June 9, 2013
9 Tweets

On the road for VR: Augmented World Expo 2013
Doc-Ok, Staff, June 7, 2013
3 Tweets

My Interview from Augmented World Expo 2013 [VIDEO] Wassom.com, Brian Wassom, June 7, 2013

Augmented World Expo
ZenFri, Staff, June 7, 2013

AWE2013: Hardware for an augmented world
FBNSantos.com, Felipe Neves Dos Santos, June 6, 2013

Augmented Reality Will Be the New Reality
InvestorPlace, Brad Moon, June 6, 2013

Wearable computing pioneer Steve Mann: Who watches the watchmen?
TechHive, Armando Rodriguez, June 6, 2013

Expo puts augmented reality in the limelight
ABC 7 News, Jonathan Bloom, June 5, 2013

These OLED microdisplays are the future of augmented reality
DVICE, Evan Ackerman, June 5, 2013

Visualized: a history of augmented and virtual reality eyewear
Engadget, Michael Gorman, June 5, 2013

Wikitude announces Wikitude Studio and in-house developed IR & Tracking engine
PapiTV, KC Leung, June 5, 2013

Augmented reality expo aims for sci-fi future today
USA Today, Marco della Cava, June 5, 2013

Augmented Reality: High Dynamic Range (HDR) Video Image Processing For Digital Glass
Wired, Bruce Sterling, June 5, 2013

Will Wright at Augmented Reality Conference: Don’t Augment Reality, Decimate It
AllThingsD, Eric Johnson, June 4, 2013

Philip Rosedale’s Second Life with High Fidelity
CNET, Dan Farber, June 4, 2013

Google Glass competitors vie for attention as industry grows
PC World, Zack Miners for IDG News Service, June 4, 2013

4D Augmented Reality Leader Daqri Announces $15 Million Financing
Press Release, June 4, 2013

CrowdOptic Powers Lancome Virtual Gallery App, Crowd-powered Heat Map
TechZone 360, Peter Bernstein, June 3, 2013

Augmented humans, enhanced happiness?
Crave Culture, Angelica Weihs, June 2, 2013

Metaio & Vuzix to Showcase AR-Ready Smart Glasses at the 2013 Augmented World Expo
Press Release, May 30, 2013

Four ways augmented reality will invade your life in 2013
Quartz, Rachel Feltman, May 30, 2013

Augmented Reality: Augmented World Expoâ„¢ is next week
Wired, Bruce Sterling, May 28, 2013

Strike it Rich with Cachetown and AWE 2013 Playing the Gold Rush 49’er Challenge In Augmented Reality
Press Release, May 24, 2013

Local Community College Student Headed to Silicon Valley to Learn More about Augmented Reality
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Staff, May 24, 2013

Explore an intricate labyrinth with smartphone AR
CNET Australia, Michelle Starr, May 21, 2013

Dartmouth firm lands super app
Herald Business, Remo Zaccagna, May 21, 2013

Augmented World Expo 2013–The Future of Augmented Reality
Silicon Angle, Saroj Kar, May 17, 2013