Second Life’s new 15th birthday video

Tags

anniversary, birthday, sl15b

Linden Lab has just released a special 15th birthday video that, very cleverly, isn’t just meant for us long term users and residents, but also a great little advertisement and sort of teaser to everyone who hasn’t been in SL yet.

Besides Ebbe looking very relaxed with an unbuttoned shirt somewhere in Amsterdam (not my house, I swear, stop looking at me like that, I deny everything!) we see some avatars holding up signs with a few very interesting facts & figures that should impress the outsiders.

In the video Ebbe talks about and shows a few users, what they do in SL, we get to see a bunch of nice places and even Philip pops in to say hello.

Enjoy;

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Youtuber streams visit to 1920s Berlin sim live.

Tags

Beau Hindman, video, youtube

Beau Hindman, a games writer and youtuber, recently visited the 1920s Berlin Project and decided to stream his exploration of our neighbourhood live.

It was fun to watch, Beau is very enthusiastic about Second Life and wants to show his viewers how wonderful our virtual world can be.

He has streamed visits to Second Life before (check out his playlist by clicking here) but of course when he came to Berlin us locals paid even more attention.

See him struggle with the idea of locked doors, peek through windows, bump into a few people, plan to rob our baker  and above all, enjoy himself and be impressed with our little city.

Enjoy!

Ebbe Altberg interview about SL & Sansar which is going public next January.

Tags

"second life", ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, media, podcast, project sansar, sansar

Donnie SC Lygonis, Swedish business coach, currently working in Silicon Valley, recently interviewed Ebbe Altberg (AKA Ebbe Linden, CEO of Linden Lab) for his podcast on spreaker.com.

Ebbe talks about his career, how he ended up with LL, he brags a little about how awesome Second Life is, talks about the new Project Sansar, how users can create experiences there and the future of VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality) and MR (Mixed reality).

Nothing really new or earth shattering is said, but Ebbe did mention that only a few months ago people who tested Sansar gave it a fairly high ‘discomfort rating’, probably based on how dizzy they felt using a headset in this Virtual World, but that today this rating is very low after fine-tuning the speed of walking, tweaking the teleporting, etc.

Ebbe repeated that this August, more users (by invitation only) will be invited to come test Sansar, it already is August, so lets hope those invitations are about to be send!
Close to 5000 people have signed up to be allowed to become part of the August test wave, I am one of them and my virtual suitcase is packed.

My plan for Sansar is to first build an embassy for Virtual Time Travellers, nothing fancy, nothing big, just a place where people interested in using VR for historical purposes (education, entertainment, etc) can hang out, chat, make plans and wonder how long it will take before I can build 1920s Berlin there.

Ebbe also mentions that Sansar will open “to the world” in January 2017.
We’ve been told that Sansar would go public in 2017, even early 2017, but as far as I know, this is the first time an actual month is mentioned and January is quite soon.

Most important of all though is the mentioning of The 1920s Berlin Project at 43:10 🙂

I love that Mr. Lygonis mentions how annoying it is that with all the experience we have in SL, it must be a bit annoying to have all these people re-inventing the wheel when they pitch something as original, unique and new… while we’ve been doing it in SL for over a decade.
Ebbe answers politely but I prefer to imagine him running around Silicon Valley screaming; “SL has been doing that for over a decade, and that, and that!”

After the interview Mr. Lygonis got to try Sansar and calls it “to date; the most interesting virtual reality environment”.

You can listen to the complete podcast by clicking here;
https://www.spreaker.com/user/constantinnovation/episode-7-ebbe-altberg-virtual-reality-s_1

Ebbe talks Sansar at ZDNet & USA today

Tags

ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, project sansar

Today ZDNet (a business technology news website published by CBS Interactive) published an interview with Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab.

You can read the full article by clicking here, I quote a few bits I found extra interesting below;

“We’re very fortunate to have over a decade of experience regarding what people want to do when they immerse themselves in a digital world,” Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg said.

It is really good that Ebbe keeps telling people this, because that is without doubt the most valuable thing about our Virtual World; we have tons of people with years of experience spending time in VR and creating VR experiences while it seems that so many other people are just getting started… and are reinventing the wheel again and again but that is a story for another time.

With its new VR platform, Linden Lab is aiming to solve that. Called Project Sansar, the platform that will allow just about any user — regardless of technical skill — to build their own VR content at a very low cost. The platform is being billed as “the WordPress or the YouTube of VR.”

Although I’m not so sure yet if we won’t need much technical skill to build (in stead of create with stuff others build) their own VR experience, at least not for a while, I am glad to see it being promoted as the WordPress or Youtube of VR, I think that is a very good way to sell it and maybe the new name of the world should represent this.
Hello VRTube?

The platform is not open source, but it will be compatible with industry standard tools. For example, creators will be able to upload a variety of common 3D file formats (such as .fbx and .obj), and scripting will be done with C#, rather than a language unique to the platform.

No Collada (DAE)?

In Second Life, a person or business can spend nearly $300 a month to host a space (it’s half price for educators and nonprofits, but that’s still a hefty sum). Altberg promised that hosting a Sansar experience will cost in the “tens of dollars” per month.

Now that is good news.
We’ve already been told that “tier” will be a lot lower in Sansar but I think this is the first time we’ve been given a sort of number.
Of course we do not know how much land or “prims” we get for this but I like to think that this means I will be able to host something the size of 1920s Berlin (4 regions) with many more prims for less than $50 a month.

USA Today also published an article about Sansar that you can read by clicking here.
Again, I’ve quoted a few things that stood out for me;

“We’ve never referred to it as Second Life 2.0,“ says Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg of Project Sansar in an interview here. “We think we’re building what will be the easiest ways for users to create virtual reality experiences that are social.  And to make it easy for people to create, share and monetize these experiences.”

The writer is also invited to try Project Sansar and describes his experience;

Donning Oculus Rift headgear, my Sansar demo began on a virtual replica of Mars, before I was teleported to an ancient Egyptian tomb, where I could inspect the hieroglyphics on the walls up close. Soon, I found myself “inside” a 360 video and later spent time in a virtual reality toy room where I was encouraged to knock down a bridge and bat other objects around.

As for moving SL users to Sansar;

Altberg hopes to draw users from Second Life to Project Sansar, while acknowledging the likelihood of some cannibalization. “We obviously have the largest ready to roll audience…. But rather me than someone else,” he says.

Ebbe ends with;

“The luxury we have (in developing Sansar) is that we have already seen people successfully do all of the things I mentioned in Second Life. The true strength of VR will be social.”

 

Ebbe Altberg talks to AWE.tv

Tags

ebbe altberg, ebbe linden

Ebbe Altberg (CEO of Linden Lab) did a short interview with AWE.tv a few days ago.

He doesn’t say much that new or shocking for most of us but one thing he did mention is that “thousands and thousands” of people have applied to be given early access to Sansar and that they will be given acces around “early August”.
Going public is still scheduled for the end of the year.

Sansar will also have spacial audio, 360 video, avatar customisation, will work with headsets and controllers, you’ll be able to create inside of VR, etc.

One thing that made me frown a little was that he said;

You can use a X-box controller or the keyboard and mouse if you’re just on a PC but if you really want to get the full meal then you want independent handcontrollers like the Oculus Touch or the HTC Vive controllers because it makes a huge difference.

Now of course it makes sense that using these things will enhance your VR experience in Sansar but in stead it sounded a bit like not only will Sansar be a lot better with them but perhaps a bit impractical or cumbersome without them.
Will the VR headsets and controllers just be a nice bonus that makes Sansar better or something you don’t really want to be without in Sansar?
I sort of want the full meal without all that stuff, I can enjoy a meal without ketchup but not without cutlery.
Is the VR stuff the ketchup or the cutlery?
And why are we talking food?

Anyway, not much news, but still worth watching even if it is just because of Ebbe’s nice sweater.

Enjoy;

1920s Berlin machinima shown on German TV

Tags

machinima, pepa cometa, television, The 1920s Berlin Project, tv, zdf

National TV station ZDF in Germany today showed part of the 1920s Berlin machinima made by Pepa Cometa.

The show, called ‘Volle Kanne‘, is a sort of morning talkshow with a short item about the interesting things they found online.

The machinima Pepa Cometa made and put online 3 weeks ago has had over 13 thousand views so far and has impressed many people.

It is great that it now reaches an even larger audience in Germany, as quite a large percentage of SL users are German.

You should be able to watch the item by clicking here, Berlin is mentioned around 1:00.

Thank you for the heads up Maddy!

 

Second Life video about 1920s Berlin has 10.000 views within 2 weeks

Tags

machinima, media, pepa cometa, PR, publicity, The 1920s Berlin Project, video

The stunning machinima made by Pepa Comata about The 1920s Berlin Project in Second Life has been watched over 10.000 times since it was uploaded two weeks ago!

It has been picked up by a few websites and shared on Facebook and twitter, reaching an audience beyond those who know and use Second Life already.

A nice article about the video was published on ‘The Creators Project’, you can read it by clicking here.
They have close to a million ‘likes’ on Facebook and amongst these readers quite a few were impressed even if some were surprised to learn Second Life was still even around.

One viewer commented;

I’ve been meaning to uninstall Second Life from my pc. Good thing I didn’t.

On twitter the video was also shared and received a few wonderful compliments;

@RoblemVR @1920sberlin Beautiful piece of art to be experienced. infact this kinda aesthetics are essential & also the missing piece in vr

— Vino (@vino3d) April 7, 2016

This shows the power of well made, good looking machinima but of course also of networking and social media.
People are impressed and intrigued, not just with our 1920s Berlin sim but also with Second Life still being around and looking this good.

 

It also shows why it is so important to try and offer as many users as possible a visually pleasing experience when visiting Second Life.
Right now a minority get to experience our virtual world the way it looks in this video.
Having graphics set to ultra and shadows on is something many computers can’t handle.
That is why I hope Sansar will be able to do that for more users or that LL will at least offer a streaming service.

About a year ago, I wrote an article called ‘Music videos shot in Second Life and why we need more of them.’ and in it I mentioned a video by Pepa Cometa as a good example of what is possible.
I’m so glad she choose to accept my invitation to come to Berlin and make this wonderful video.

Let’s hope many more videos like this one are made, they allow us to show the world that SL CAN look good and is about more than just shopping and hanky panky.

Go on, have another look;

 

 

The Guardian podcast about Web Summit, with Ebbe Altberg

Tags

"second life", ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, empathy, guardian, interview, media

The Guardian newspaper published a podcast about the 2015 Web Summit under the title; ‘Is Virtual empathy the ghost in the machine for AI?’.

The subject is quite interesting, presenter Nathalie Nahai and her guests Oren Frank from Talkspace; Rana el Kaliouby from Affectiva and Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, talk about;

Could machines ever understand us emotionally? How much is technology already affecting our cognitive abilities, mental wellbeing and emotional lives? And as our personal and emotional experiences migrate to alternate platforms, VR, mobile, and others, will empathy be lost in an AI world?

You can listen to the entire 35 minute podcast on the Guardian website by clicking here.
Ebbe’s chat starts at 17.30

TNW website publishes interview with Ebbe about Second Life and Project Sansar

Tags

"second life", ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, interview, project sansar

Today an interview with Ebbe Altberg (aka Ebbe Linden, CEO of Linden Lab) was published on ‘The Next Web‘ website.
It has over 600.000 ‘likes’ on Facebook and over 1.6 million followers on twitter.
So no small fry.

It has a very catchy title, or as those pesky young kids call it; “Click Bait” worthy;

Think Second Life died?
It has a higher GDP than some countries

The audio was recorded at the Web Summit in Dublin and lasts about 10 minutes.
You can hear all of it by clicking here.

There isn’t much said we didn’t already know and no new exciting facts about Project Sansar were leaked, but it is a nice interview and once more Ebbe shows that he is pretty good at making people realise that Second Life is still doing well and has provided the people at Linden Lab with a lots of experience on running a virtual world, one that gives them now, on the eve of the Virtual Reality Renaissance, a very interesting position.

Sadly they used a rather dull picture to illustrate the article; a screenshot showing all the avatars that were replaced by nicer ones just the other day.

Article gives us a new glimpse of Sansar

Tags

ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, media, news, sansar, wdsu

Today a nice article about Sansar, the next virtual world Linden Lab is building revealed a few new details.

The article was published on WDSU, a NBC-affiliated television station located in New Orleans and CNN Money.

A few interesting things were mentioned so I thought I’d share them here.

Think of it as the YouTube of the virtual world — an entry point for anyone who wants to build a VR experience without investing a ton of time and money.

I think this is a rather brilliant way of describing Sansar, or any kind of user created virtual world.
I prefer it to the WordPress comparison made before.
I also think this is the way to sell Sansar to the world; this is the entry point for anyone interested in creating their own VR experience, just like Youtube has brought millions to the world of making this new kind of Television.

“We know more than anybody else what it takes to do something like this,” said Linden Labs CEO Ebbe Altberg.

Well done Ebbe on sharing that very important bit of information, no matter what you think of Second Life, it has given Linden Lab more of something pretty much nobody has; lots and lots of experience with a virtual online world.

Creating worlds will be more difficult in Project Sansar than Second Life, but Altberg said they’ve made a tool non-engineers can use.

This is both worrying and intriguing.
It is scary to hear that creating is going to be more difficult, but what does Ebbe mean?
Does it mean more difficult than the very basic building with prims or more difficult than making mesh, something many of us already need outside tools for.
I think it is essential for Sansar to succeed to have inworld building tools that make it easy for us to create but also allows us to create things together with others.
So this mysterious tool sounds good but I guess we won’t know how much more complicated it is till we get to try it ourselves or till one of the testers leaks information.
If you’re reading this testers… give me a call 😉

Internally, Linden Labs employees are working on polishing the product, building their own test worlds along the way. 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 Labs’ San Francisco office, down to the objects on the desk.

This are some of the first descriptions of what is already being created in Sansar that I’ve found and it sounds good.
It makes the imagination run wild.
If only I could go and have a look myself!
Someone send me an invite already!

Finally, what is it with people adding an S to Linden Lab?
There is no Linden Labs, technically, I don’t even think Linden Lab is one lab, they don’t wear white coats, there are no flasks, no bunsen burners, no brains in jars and they don’t even blow up stuff now and then.

Anyway, make sure to check the complete article out by clicking here.