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Recently Ebbe Altberg (CEO of Linden Lab) gave a Sansar demonstration at WebSummit together with Bjorn Laurin (VP of product at LL).

A big screen in a brightly lit room was used so it is rather difficult to get an idea of how good (or not) everything really looked.
On top of that this was all filmed by a member of the audience, so far from ideal.
Nevertheless there were some interesting things to see.
It is also incomplete but till another (official) comes out, this and twitter pictures is all we’ve got.

Also something went wrong it seems, thank you windows…

The “Scottish Highlands” (the most wonderful place in the rl world) was a scene I had not yet seen before.

They also demonstrated the Video dome, something I think will appeal to a lot of people as it is quite a novel way of watching 360 videos, especially if you have a headset of course.

Also new was a view of a window called ‘Atlas’, which appears to be the new ‘search’ or ‘destination guide’.
On the screen we see several destinations that we already know;

  • WSJD conference stage
  • Egyptian tomb
  • Mars outpost Alpha
  • Origin Cinema
  • Toppleton Toy Town
  • Can’t see, probably the bridge.
  • Another WSJD stage
  • The video dome
  • The Highlands
  • One I can’t read.

Loading of a scene is real fast, of course they use a top of the line computer and don’t have to share a sim with a bunch of laggy avatars and I can only compare it to my MacBook  which sometimes takes a little time to load textures and so on.
But if Sansar loads this quickly on regular computers and with other people in the same sim, it is quite an improvement.

The Mars sim we’ve seen before, but now we see Toppleton Toy Town “live” and it looks like fun.
Everything is set to physical (to speak in SL terms) and by bumping into it you destroy the place.
Now this looks nice but is not that earth shattering to us in SL, we can already do something like this.
Although probably not so detailed as it is quite tricky to build something with prims set to physical and are a bit jumpy.
However something that is interesting is the Zeppelin.
No I do not just say that because I’m obsessed with these majestic airships, but because it appears to be hanging from a string and reacts realistically to being bumped into.
I may be mistaken, it may just be a prim set to float and be physical at the same time without falling, but the movement makes it seem like it is hanging.

The next stop, Origin Cinema, takes a little longer to load.
Ebbe is about to explain that perhaps this place wasn’t loaded into the cache yet when it loads.

Ebbe explains they use teleporting by pointing and clicking, which is something that is used a lot in VR at the moment as we don’t really have a good walking simulator device in RL yet.
I wonder/hope that they’ll add a walk to option in stead of teleporting.
Even with a headset I can imagine that teleporting all those little steps can be a bit peculiar but for others it can perhaps ruin the illusion/immersion if you’re trying a realistic roleplaying scene and people just vanish and then appear again further down the road.
One of the unspoken etiquette rules of (RP) SL is that you don’t teleport away in sight, but go around a corner first.
For Sansar I’d like to see an option where your avatar physically walks/runs to the spot you click in stead of teleporting.
Sounds like more fun but also more realistic for people near you.

Watching a video in VR is nothing new to us in SL of course, but for outsiders who have forgotten about our virtual world, it might be impressive.
After all, virtual cinemas are still being described as something new and none (as far as I know) of those allow you to actually (re) design that cinema or watch movies there together with friends from all over the world who all have their own individual avatar and can dress up for the occasion.

Next Bjorn takes us to the editor, this is where the “building” happens.
We get a quick short look at the screen but then we move on to the next location.
Which is a shame because of course the editing is most interesting for most of us.
So far all we have is still just moving stuff around build outside of Sansar.

A few pictures from Twitter;

Nice to see the familiar looking rotate arrows.

Next a visit to the Tomb, great example but nothing new for those of us who’ve been following Sansar news for a while.

Anyway, what we see looks pretty good but, on this screen, without headsets, there doesn’t seem to be much there that we can’t also replicate in Second Life today.
It is difficult to judge how different Sansar is or isn’t without actually having had a chance yet to try it myself.

Here is the video;