In a recent episode of the Dr. Phil show, a US television talk show dispensing psychological advice (lately it seems to have become a civilized Jerry Springer, but that’s just my opinion!), Dr. Phil explored the world of Second Life. He talked about the benefits and drawbacks to video gaming, but specifically in this episode addressed the virtual world of Second Life. Someone helped him create an avatar that looked just like him, and he even had Ebbe Altberg on the show to discuss the merits of Second Life.
Draxtor Despres created a video of the parts of that show where Dr. Phil explored Second Life. It’s fun to watch him manipulate his avatar in world and hear Ebbe’s comments, brief though they were.
Here’s the clip. Enjoy!
I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media
Now that the new platform is well underway, Linden Lab is giving us a glimpse into this other platform and what it means to Second Life residents, as well as new users of virtual worlds.
In an article published on the Xconomy.com website, and in an interview Ebbe Altberg gave in world at the SL12B celebration, more is being revealed about the timeline, the economy of Project Sansar, and more.
In an article on xconomy.com, Linden Lab is preparing to test this “parallel universe.” This article emphasizes again that Project Sansar is not a different version of Second Life. While Linden Lab has been making improvements to Second Life, “It would take more than just tinkering to retrofit it for current virtual reality hardware while keeping the site up and running,” stated Ebbe Altberg. Project Sansar is being created to be used with the virtual reality headsets, such as Samsung’s Gear VR and Oculus Rift (those two companies are still duking it out to see who becomes King of the VR).
The article states, “Although Second Life is still a popular online meeting place, as well as an e-commerce marketplace with a GDP greater than $500 million, Altberg says Linden Lab’s leadership team decided last year it needed to build a new world from the ground up if it wanted to succeed in the future.”
Alpha testing for Project Sansar will begin toward the end of July. Handpicked, eager to build something in the new virtual reality medium will be invited to the alpha testing, Altberg says. These guests, (they are not going to be Linden Lab staffers) will use each other’s games and other invented environments, trade feedback, and tweak their own work, he says.
About a year from the alpha release, Linden Lab will begin inviting ordinary users to explore Project Sansar, with a more public beta testing sometime during the first half of 2016, Altberg says. A version 1.0 might be ready by the end of 2016.
Quoting directly from the article:
“While Linden plans to do many things differently in Project Sansar than it does in Second Life, it will also draw on its dozen years of experience operating a pioneering site in several different fields: virtual reality, user-generated content, e-commerce, and virtual currencies. In Second Life, users can buy its currency called Linden with their credit cards at an exchange rate of 250 for one dollar. They can also earn Linden as participants in the Second Life economy, and cash out their virtual currency. Altberg says users redeemed a total of $60 million in 2014.
“Among the products and services for sale are makeovers for one’s avatar. Second Life’s standard-issue, free avatars all look like minor Marvel Comics characters—maybe to appeal to the male fans of digital games who flock to virtual reality sites. But users have also used Second Life for more diverse activities—to host meetings, offer college classes, teach each other languages, open fashion design houses, and set up real estate businesses. (The pirate ship with dirigible shown above is a Second Life creation.)
“Linden [Lab], which is profitable, earns revenues by renting “land” where users can build their virtual homes, museums, shops, or racetracks, at the rate of for $295 per month for a plot of a little over 16 acres. Users who only want to pitch a tent or open a taco stand can rent smaller spaces from virtual real estate businesses that lease large properties and then create subdivisions, Altberg says.”
Linden Lab continues to state emphatically that Second Life will live on after Project Sansar opens its doors as a parallel universe, probably under a new name.
“It’s still very popular and very successful, so we have no plans to discontinue it,” Altberg says. Second Life now hosts about 900,000 active users a month—a bit lower than its peak of about a million years ago. As a private company, Linden Lab doesn’t disclose its revenues. It had raised a total of about $30 million in equity financing by 2006.
The article on xconomy.com goes on to state:
“Linden’s employee count is now more than 213 “and we’re hiring as fast as we can,” Altberg says. Most of the new hires will support Project Sansar.
“Linden plans to make it easy for Second Life denizens to migrate their virtual activities to Project Sansar. But the alternate virtual world will have new features, and will operate by somewhat different rules.
“Altberg says the company is looking to scale up on a number of fronts, including the size of events that can be held in Project Sansar, the number of avatars participating, and the amount of money users can make through their projects.
“For example, Linden wants users to be able to make an unlimited number of “copies” of profitable constructs they’ve created. If an entrepreneur builds a virtual chemistry lab for a college class, that lab could also be sold to other colleges that want to teach chemistry, Altberg says.
“Competition within the virtual community might heat up in Project Sansar, because Linden wants to lower the barriers to entry for creators and entrepreneurs. The company is working on tools to make it easier to build something for advanced virtual reality hardware without being a professional developer. It’s also changing its revenue model.
“Rather than making most of its money renting land, Linden would make land cheaper, but charge taxes on users’ revenues from in-world businesses once they’ve succeeded. This could open up the site to new kinds of businesses, Altberg says.
“Some businesses in Second Life may not have the same success in Sansar,” Altberg says.
Clearly, things will be completely different in Project Sansar, VR will be the norm; the economy will be more resident-driven than land-driven. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Meanwhile, here’s the video from the interview Ebbe Altberg (a.k.a. Ebbe Linden in world) gave at the SL12B celebration:
I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media
In the official Second Life blog, Linden Lab announces that they will be ending the Authorized Linden Dollar Reseller program.
In 2013, LL introduced a pilot program for Authorized Linden Dollar (L$) Resellers. This pilot program was designed to give Second Life Residents additional options for purchasing Linden Dollars, particularly for those based outside the US.
Since then, LL has expanded the payment options for Second Life users, and today, you can easily purchase L$ in more countries than ever before, using a credit card, PayPal, or Skrill, which supports a wide range of payment methods. Since these options support the vast majority of Second Life users, they made the business decision to close the Authorized Linden Dollar Reseller pilot program.
As an Authorized Linden Dollar Reseller, ZoHa Islands will be contacted directly by Linden Lab with the details for the next steps, and we will have approximately six weeks to sell off our L$ inventory. As of August 1, 2015, the Authorized L$ Reseller pilot program will be closed, and the LindeX will be the only authorized place to purchase L$.
How to Buy L$
If you’re used to using an Authorized L$ Reseller, such as ZoHa Islands, you will still have many options for purchasing L$ as of August 1, 2015. If you put payment info on file for your Second Life account, you can purchase L$ in the Viewer with the “Buy L$” button. If you’ve never done it before, check out this quick video:
Among the options for payment information you can put on file in your account are:
• Credit Card: Using your credit card, you can purchase L$ on the LindeX using multiple currencies, including EUR, GBP, JPY, and AUD.
• PayPal: PayPal can be connected directly to a bank account in more than 193 countries and regions.
• Skrill: Skrill supports a wide variety of payment methods. To start using Skrill for Second Life, just login at SecondLife.com, click “Billing Information” under “Account,” and then select “Add a Skrill Account.”
If you have been using ZoHa Islands to purchase Lindens, stay tuned to this blog for more information as this program is phased out.
I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger and Social Media
Living In a ModemWorld by Inara Pey posted a blog post about the future of virtual reality (VR) in Linden Lab’s newest platform, Project Sansar.
Ebbe Altberg gave a 20-minute talk titled “The future of VR is user-created” at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) Conference, which opened on May 18th, 2015.
“Those who may have been hoping to gain more of an insight into the Lab’s Next Generation Platform (aka Project SANSAR) will perhaps be disappointed by this presentation. As the title suggests, it isn’t so much focused on the Lab’s NGP, but rather on user generated content (UGC).” says Inara in her post.
Ebbe touched on SANSAR during the third part of his speech, but he really didn’t give much more away about the platform than has already been revealed by the Lab in statements made about it to date: That it is in development, that it will be running in a closed alpha from summer 2015, etc.
Ever since Linden Lab let it slip that they are working on a new project, dubbed “Second Life 2” by speculators, rumors have abounded regarding this mysterious project. Hoopla ensued; people were in a panic over whether Linden Lab was going to stop supporting Second Life once the new world was up and running; content creators and residents alike were up in arms over the fact that the new world would not be backwards-compatible and user-created content from SL would not be transferable to the new world.
Recent rumblings in the forums and blogs have indicated that the nickname is Project Sansar. Indeed, patents have been applied for that use the name Sansar, and Project Sansar.
Inara Pey, in her blog “Living in the ModemWorld” (that’s a clickable link) speculated that: “Sansara was one of the early names considered for Second life (being derived from Samsāra, which occurs in both Buddhism and Hinduism, and, perhaps more particularly where SL is concerned, was used by Hermann Hesse in his 1922 novel Siddhartha as a reference to the “world of illusion”), and currently lives on as the name of SL ‘s oldest and largest mainland continent. Whether “SANSAR” is a play on this is unclear – it might just as easily be an acronym.”
Apparently both “Sansar” and “Project Sansar” are being bandied about, and threads point to the fact that both names have had patents applied for by the Lab:
In addition, in October 2014, Ascio Technologies, Inc., filed a domain name registration for projectsansar.com listing Linden Research as the Domain Administrator.
A few days after this information was beginning to leak out, Linden Lab tweeted:
Stay tuned to this blog; we will post more as information becomes available.
I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media
Oculus has announced their plans to debut their highly-anticipated VR (virtual reality) headset in the first quarter of 2016, saying that it hopes to “transform gaming, film, entertainment, communication and much more.”
It is anticipated that VR headsets will revolutionize virtual environments such as Second Life (it is my understanding that the “Second Life II” is being built with virtual reality in mind) and High Fidelity, the VR virtual world project currently in alpha testing by former SL CEO Philip Rosedale.
Oculus is probably the most well-known name in the pool of Virtual Reality headset makers, as their Rift headset has been in development for several years. Until now, most virtual reality technology has come in the form of prototypes and development devices shown at trade shows and high-profile announcements. Rift’s launch has been highly anticipated, with some analysts speculating that if Oculus didn’t hurry up and launch, that other companies such as the Vive, a brainchild of a collaboration between Valve and HTC, would edge them out as a contender.
Meanwhile, Sony announced intentions to launch its own virtual reality headset for its PlayStation 4 video game console, called Project Morpheus. Samsung has also thrown their hat in the ring, with their announcement that they plan to launch Gear VR, a version of the headset made to be compatible with Samsung smartphones.
Oculus itself was the brainchild of a virtual reality enthusiast Palmer Luckey, who co-founded the company in 2012 after a mix of money and encouragement from industry veterans. Oculus held a crowdfunding campaign through Kickstarter that generated more than $2.4 million in pre-orders for its prototype. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion in 2014.
According to an article on CNET.com, “Analysts say they aren’t worried which company launches first. Part of the reason is that the resources and investment necessary to attract game developers to make specialized content, as well as the cost of research into next generation technology, leave a lot of opportunity for deep-pocketed companies to duke it out for a while.”
Here is C|NET’s review of the Oculus Rift headset.
