Fans will soon be able to step into a virtual Sansar comedy club and enjoy live stand-up shows by well-known comics such as YouTube star personality Steve Hofstetter – for a new event series called “Comedy Gladiators: a Virtual Comedy Experience.”

The live comedy showcase will allow fans to do everything in VR that they would do at a real-life comedy club
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Fans will soon be able to step into a virtual Sansar comedy club and enjoy live stand-up shows by well-known comics such as YouTube star personality Steve Hofstetter
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The live comedy showcase will, according to Sansar’s creators Linden Lab, allow fans to do everything in VR that they would do at a real-life comedy club: purchase tickets in advance, shop for custom merch and memorabilia, even order drinks.

“Fans can purchase tickets online via the Sansar Store, just as they would for a real-life event, and receive instant access to the virtual venue. Once there, they can purchase a wide range of items, including commemorative virtual t-shirts, beer mugs, and even physical copies of Steve’s most recent book, Ginger Kid,” according to their news release.

You can purchase tickets online via the Sansar Store
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Tickets went on sale for $9.99 for the first event in the series which was scheduled for Monday, December 10, at 7:30 PM PT, and featured stand-up and storytelling from Hofstetter alongside Ben Gleib (voice of Marshall in Ice Age: Continental Drift), Maz Jobrani (part of the “Axis of Evil” comedy group), Alonzo Bodden (winner of Last Comic Standing season 3), and Mary Lynn Rajskub (actress in Fox series 24).

Tickets went on sale for $9.99 for the first event in the series
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This idea itself is nothing new, of course. There are many companies out there trying to monetize on virtual live events such as concerts. AltspaceVR tried it as early as 2016, before they were acquired by Microsoft, claiming to be the first ones to host a live comedy event in VR (on a slight side note, any time anybody claims to be the first to do anything in VR they are almost guaranteed to be flooded by comments and clarifications from the Second Life community who will helpfully tell you how they’ve been doing that s**t since the 90s).

There are many companies out there trying to monetize on virtual live events such as concerts
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Sansar itself has been successfully exploring different in-world experiences, including an exclusive eshibit of Star Wars memorabilia and artwork from Burning Man in partnership with the Smithsonian, but these have mostly been free. Since launching Sansar in public beta last year, however, Linden Lab has made no bones about the fact that monetization is a core part of its plans for the platform, much like it has been for Second Life. This is therefore quite a big milestone for the company according to Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.

Sansar has been successfully exploring different in-world experiences, including an exclusive eshibit of Star Wars memorabilia and artwork from Burning Man in partnership with the Smithsonian
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“By bringing these commercial opportunities into VR, Sansar is taking virtual events to a whole new level – enhancing and expanding on what’s possible in-person. We look at Comedy Gladiators as the first ripple in a larger wave – the first event of many more that bring entertainers into VR – and we’re thrilled that Steve shares this vision”

For entertainers like Hofstetter, the collaboration offers a chance to greatly expand their audience without compromising the intimate feel of a live performance:

“Every day, I get emails and DMs from fans who want to see a live show, but they live in parts of the world I’ll probably never tour in,” Hofstetter said. “VR allows those fans to not only see a live show, but feel like they’re part of a bigger community,” he says.

Sansar’s Avatar Broadcasting feature will enable the performers taking part in Comedy Gladiators to virtually broadcast their performances across an unlimited number of spaces in Sansar, reaching a wider audience than a physical event could ever allow and giving a lot more fans a chance to grab a front row seat.

By bringing these commercial opportunities into VR, Sansar is taking virtual events to a whole new level
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Sansar’s Avatar Broadcasting feature will enable the performers taking part in Comedy Gladiators to virtually broadcast their performances across an unlimited number of spaces
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Whether or not fans will keep coming back to spend their real-world cash on virtual shows and merchandise will really depend on the quality of experience. In terms of visuals, Sansar is probably the most advanced of the social VR platforms, but that often comes at a cost in terms of slow loading times and intensive demands on your GPU and CPU, so it will be interesting to see whether they manage to lure enough pundits to develop this as a scalable commercial avenue. I’d say that for $10 it’s worth a try, just for laughs.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Sansar To Host Live VR Comedy Series With YouTube Star Steve Hofstetter via @alicebonasio https://t.co/54OlwLk8Cs pic.twitter.com/3TgSfza2Ku

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 9, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post A Virtual Comedy Experience appeared first on Tech Trends.

Intel and The Smithsonian partner up with Sansar to bring everyone the ephemeral art of Burning Man.

Linden Lab’s Sansar just announced a partnership with Intel and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) to provide virtual access to the museum’s Renwick Gallery collections as well as its research, and education resources

“With Sansar, we hope not only to make the museum experience more accessible, but to also let people curate their own experiences and share their unique perspectives with the world,” says Jason Gholston, Head of Sansar Studios, which last year launched similar initiatives such as the Art of Star Wars exhibit to help expand the reach of unique and exclusive art collections.

The Smithsonian’s goal in doing this is to expand the reach of the Institution’s collections to a billion people, in five years’ time. This means making its museums’ objects available to the public across a wider range of mediums including immersive domains.

“Technology has the potential to achieve new goals and ambitions for museums and galleries. Immersive technologies, like virtual reality, unlock new and exciting ways to experience art and exhibitions. Fans can now check out the No Spectators collection from their own home,” says Raj Puran, director of immersive technology business development at Intel.

Anyone, anywhere in the world, either on a desktop computer or via Sansar, can now experience these artworks
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With Intel’s advanced data-processing on the Sansar Social VR platform, the Smithsonian has been able to accelerate the digital 3D capture, preservation, and distribution of artefacts in its collections, so that students, educators, and the broader public can virtually access and engage with the museum’s collections from anywhere in the world. It hopes to provide a new kind of viewing experience and transform the museum business, from the creation to the consumption of educational content.

“I don’t fear technology usurping the importance of art and museums,” says Stephanie Stebich, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “I think technology can make museums and their collections even more inclusive, approachable, and dynamic,” she adds.

The first phase of the partnership will focus on the “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man” exhibit, which features large-scale works of art from the event on view for a limited time at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery. No Spectators captures the spirit of creativity and community, and has been digitized through hours of careful laser scanning and photogrammetry.

Spectators captures the spirit of creativity and community, and has been digitized through hours of careful laser scanning and photogrammetry
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Technology has the potential to achieve new goals and ambitions for museums and galleries
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Anyone, anywhere in the world, either on a desktop computer or via Sansar, can now experience these artworks. So far, 17 pieces of art were digitized for this experience (first phase is the first floor of the Renwick Gallery, in Washington, D.C.). 12,490 photos were used to generate the 3D models of these pieces. This took the team a total of 1,050 labor hours to complete VR ready models of the artworks

“This is an innovative new way to access educational content from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and to preserve art for future generations,” concludes Gholston. “We’re democratizing the museum experience one exhibition at a time.”

This is a really interesting use of immersive technology, since the artistic installations at Burning Man are ephemeral (the event’s “leave no trace” policy sees amazing artworks ritualistically burned to the ground each year) yet here we have a medium which would allow them to become accessible as VR experiences, giving those expressions of creativity a new and permanent home in the virtual world.

VR could actually give a sense of permanence to the essentially ephemeral art of Burning Man
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This article was originally published on VRScout

Experience The Art Of Burning Man In VR via @alicebonasio https://t.co/zQ7Rpr7sMF pic.twitter.com/hepaeefk9T

— VRScout (@VRScout) July 30, 2018

For companies looking to leverage Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR Tech Trends offers a comprehensive range of Virtual Reality Consultancy Services.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Creating Virtual Museum Experiences appeared first on Tech Trends.

A new documentary explores how embodying digital characters in virtual worlds like Second Life empowers people of all abilities to find their voice and identity.

In Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me! filmmaker Bernhard Drax travels from Los Angeles to rural South England to tell the stories of 13 ability-diverse people ranging from 24 to 92 years of age who find solace and inspiration in the user-created Metaverse that exists in their computers.

It’s a raw and intensely emotional investigation into the power of living vicariously through an avatar
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This is not escapism, it’s augmentation
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Drax sends his documentarian avatar Draxtor Despres into the virtual universe of Second Life (SL) as well as next generation VR platforms like High Fidelity and Sansar to find out why a 40-something disabled Chicago native feels best represented by a colorful superhero gecko but Cody LaScala – confined to a wheelchair his entire life and interacts with VR via a trackball and his foot – makes his avatar an exact replica of his physical self and asserts that he doesn’t see himself as disabled, but rather as someone with “different abilities.”

“In Second Life you can choose to be a refrigerator if you want, and that has really momentous implications for embodiment,” explains researcher Tom Boellstorff, who together with his colleague Donna Davis conducted a 3-year study entitled “Virtual Worlds, Disability and New Cultures of the Embodied Self” with funding from the National Science Foundation.

This movie makes me want to be a better person, a more responsible human - Deanya Schempp
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“This is not escapism, it’s augmentation,” says Boellstorff, whose research approaches the question from an anthropological perspective as a way to understand digital culture and how communities form and share information as social capital in the virtual world.

As Davis explains, virtual worlds like SL provide people with safe spaces where they can find and express their true selves: “People turn to Second Life to share very intimate conversations in a way they never would with a person in the physical world, because they feel they safely can.”

In Second Life you can choose to be a refrigerator if you want, and that has really momentous implications for embodiment
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By designing more inclusive technology the industry will also be making those experiences better and more meaningful for everyone
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For those that speculate about the potential of social VR, it is interesting to note how inhabiting a virtual world allows these people to form and maintain meaningful relationships and connections with others, as SL user iSkye Silverweb recounts:

“I don’t think my partner and I ever would have met in the physical world, even if we were in the same city, and it is because I am deaf.  Communication IS an issue for me; I would always be concerned about it, with meeting anyone.”

It’s a raw and intensely emotional investigation into the power of living vicariously through an avatar, and how this – as one user puts it – “provides her with sustenance” and helps people to cope with all manner of both mental and physical disabilities.

As the recent death of Anthony Bourdain so painfully highlighted, mental health issues often amount to an “invisible disability,” yet in SL, Jadyn Firehawk explains how she could make her avatar visually represent her bipolar condition: “I made something in Second Life, I call it a ‘brain sling’.  When somebody wears a sling on their arm, nobody asks them to lift a heavy object.  A ‘brain sling’ or some equivalent of it, it IS a way of wearing a sign,” she says.

Interestingly, however, doing that seems to also have empowered Jadyn to find a new freedom of expression and achieve more within that virtual world. In SL, Jadyn is a Master Builder who has come to embrace a whole new set of abilities and creative skills which she actively shares within the community.

I don't think my partner and I ever would have met in the physical world, even if we were in the same city, and it is because I am deaf
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Deanya Schempp, who collaborated with Director Drax on the project, explains that she volunteered to do the closed captions for this movie pro bono, as she felt that the subject, the people, and the research deserved to be heard. What she didn’t realize, however, was the impact that project would have upon her personally:

This movie makes me want to be a better person, a more responsible human. As I listen and watch, I come to understand that it is not these folks who are disabled: The disabled ones are the ones who will not be able to look beyond the cartoon appearance of virtual worlds, or even of this movie, to listen and learn from other human beings whose daily lives are so much different from their own. The disabled ones are those who cannot see beyond appearances to respect the human there.

“Disabled people just don’t think about their disabilities on a daily basis–or at least not until some insensitive blockhead points at us and reminds us we’re supposed to be this thing called disabled,” agrees Second Lifer Daisy Gator.

In Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me! filmmaker Bernhard Drax tells the stories of 13 ability-diverse people ranging from 24 to 92 years of age who find solace and inspiration in the user-created Metaverse
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Over the course of the documentary, Drax and the various documentary protagonists also met (both virtually and physically) with technologists such as Philip Rosedale – Founder of Second Life who is now developing a new Virtual Worlds called High Fidelity – and Ebbe Altberg – Linden Lab’s current CEO – about how they intend to intend to design the future of social VR with disability in mind.

“We need to build highly extensible open-source systems that enable those who would provide varied forms of access and accessibility to the system to be at the table,” says Rosedale

By designing more inclusive technology, however, the industry will also be making those experiences better and more meaningful for everyone, as Boellstorff concludes:

“If there’s one thing you learn when looking at these things is that when you’re inclusive and accessible it benefits everyone, not just people with disabilities.”

This article was originally published on The Next Web

Exploring digital identity through avatars https://t.co/YqNTtckyOs

— TNW Contributors (@TNWcontributors) June 11, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Finding our True Selves in VR appeared first on Tech Trends.

As we experience the second coming of VR, what can we learn from this enduring Virtual World?

$68 million paid to Second Life creators in 2017 alone
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In advance of Second Life’s 15^th Anniversary in June, its makers Linden Lab have released an infographic celebrating the successes of the platform since it first launched in 2003 (feeling old yet?).

• 428,000 years of total time users have spent in Second Life
• $68 million paid to Second Life creators in 2017 alone
• 57 million accounts created since 2003

These statistics highlight how Second Life has allowed its users to not only connect with others, but also make millions in real money through the platform’s virtual economy.

428,000 years: The total time users have spent in Second Life since it launched in 2003
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For more on what’s in store next for Second Life and Linden Lab’s new Virtual Reality Social Platform Sansar, you can hear it directly from the horse’s mouth – CEO Ebbe Altberg:

57 million accounts were created in Second Life since 2003
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To find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers bespoke Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Infographic: 15 Years of Second Life appeared first on Tech Trends.

With the launch of its new fashion marketplace, Linden Lab wants to attract more users to Sansar.

While still in public Beta, Sansar does seem to be gathering some momentum. In October I was impressed by the quality of the scary and atmospheric experiences they showcased in a Halloween competition that I helped to judge, while only last week they also opened the virtual doors of their Hollywood Museum to showcase some exclusive Star Wars movie memorabilia.

While still in public Beta, Sansar does seem to be gathering some momentum
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Marvelous Designer is a 3D fashion design tool used by numerous mainstream brands and independent designers to visualize true-to-life 3D garments
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Now Linden Lab has announced it is launching a fashion market for user-created avatar clothing. It will be powered by integration with Marvelous Designer sofware, which is widely used in the film and games industry to create digital clothing. It can virtually replicate fabric textures and physical properties to the last button, fold, and accessory, which is pretty important if people are actually going to start spending money to kit up their avatars and spending more time in social VR platforms like Sansar.

Linden Lab has announced it is launching a fashion market for user-created avatar clothing
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Users will now be able to play around with those realistic cloth simulation as they customize the fit and style on their avatars
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Marvelous Designer is a product of CLO Virtual Fashion a 3D fashion design tool used by numerous mainstream brands and independent designers to visualize true-to-life 3D garments. CLO can be used to express a variety of design details for every type of garments from simple T-shirts to complex outerwear, and Sansar users will now be able to play around with those realistic cloth simulation as they customize the fit and style on their avatars.

“Our experience operating Second Life has shown how important and valuable user-created avatar fashions are, and with Sansar, we’re taking it to an exciting new level,” says Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab. “Our integration with Marvelous Designer means that not only can you change what you wear, you can customize the fit and style to adjust how you wear it in Sansar. For example, you can roll up your sleeves, loosen your collar, and arrange your scarf just as you like it.”

For designers, Sansar’s fashion market could prove to be a tangible business opportunity
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Linden Lab says that this opens up new creative and entrepreneurial opportunities for users. For designers, Sansar’s fashion market could prove to be a tangible business opportunity, if Second Life (SL) is anything to go by. Over the past 15 years, SL users have created nearly two billion virtual objects, and avatar fashions account for a major portion of the $500 million (USD) user-to-user economy, and some designers have earned millions of dollars from their virtual fashion businesses.

“Innovative fashion companies, world-leading film and gaming studios, and creative hobbyists around the world are already using Marvelous Designer to create incredible virtual clothing designs,” said Jaden Oh, CEO & CTO at CLO. “Our integration with Sansar is the first of its kind, and it makes it easy for our users to sell their creations in this new market.”

New and existing Sansar users can currently get a 60-day free trial of Marvelous Designer
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New and existing Sansar users can currently get a 60-day free trial of Marvelous Designer, and Linden Lab is clearly hoping that this move will not only help kick-start Sansar’s in-world economy, but also increase user take-up and engagement by allowing them to customize their avatars in creative ways. Fashion is a major part of how humans convey individuality and personality IRL, and the same applies in virtual reality.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Time to Dress to Impress—in Social VR #Sansar via @alicebonasio https://t.co/HoAPe4lSki pic.twitter.com/CqZh6U3e0A

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 28, 2017

Tech Trends offers comprehensive Virtual Reality Consultancy services to support businesses looking to adopt VR/AR/MR technologies into their brand and communications strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Dressing Up Social Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

To accompany the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Linden Lab unveils a Virtual Reality exhibition at its newly opened Sansar Hollywood Art Museum.

The wait is over and the latest Star Wars is finally out in cinemas (YAY!) but that also means fans have to  put up with the endless marketing tie-ins as everyone tries to piggyback off the franchise’s popularity – NOT so YAY

Specially at Christmas, as I walk around the shops and stare at all the random products leeching off the Star Wars brand, I’m constantly reminded of the scene in Spaceballs where Yogurt pimps his merchandise.

Sometimes, though, you still come across a genuinely awesome tie-in that reminds you of why you fell in love with Star Wars in the first place. And Sansar’s VR exhibition of exclusive historic production art at The Hollywood Art Museum (HWAM) does that.

Sometimes, though, you still come across a genuinely awesome tie-in that reminds you of why you fell in love with Star Wars
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HWAM’s first exhibition is a unique collection of Star Wars production pieces, including the very first drawings made for the film franchise and never-before-seen production art from the original trilogy by Lucasfilm alum Joe Johnston, Ralph McQuarrie, Phil Tippett, Drew Struzan, Colin Cantwell, and more.

HWAM’s first exhibition is a unique collection of Star Wars production pieces, including the very first drawings made for the film franchise
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The museum's creator Greg Aronowitz, is a director, designer, writer, producer, and practical effects professional
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The museum’s creator Greg Aronowitz, is a director, designer, writer, producer, and practical effects professional whose credits over the past 30 years or so include Terminator 2, Jurassic Park: Lost World, X-Files and Saving Private Ryan.

Aronowitz is also an avid collector who has amassed an incredible collection of Hollywood production art, from storyboards to costume sketches
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Aronowitz is also an avid collector who has amassed an incredible collection of Hollywood production art, from storyboards to costume sketches, concept drawings, models, and more. The pieces give you a glimpse of the creative process of making these iconic films, from Citizen Kane to Tranformers, which he’s always been keen to share.

But although there are plans to eventually build a real-world version of the museum, so far the objects didn’t really have a home where they could be accessible to the general public.

“The dream of a brick and mortar gallery is still a bit out of reach, but Sansar made it easy to create a virtual museum, where we can make the work available to artists, students, movie fans, and anyone around the world who’s interested in the creative process and history behind some of the world’s most beloved titles,” says Aronowitz.

As the HWAM exhibition opened on December 9^th, they also simultaneously hosted a pop-up gallery at one of Los Angeles’s oldest art supply stores, where George Lucas’s visual effects company, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), acquired many of the supplies the artists used to create early Star Wars works in the mid-seventies. The event featured both some of the physical art and VR stations where attendees viewed the Sansar experience.

You can access the experience on the Sansar desktop site via Windows PC (be warned, it does take a while to load, but it’s the price you pay for having such polished visuals) or with a VR Headset such as the HTC Vive or Oculus.

You can access the experience on the Sansar desktop site via Windows PC or with a VR Headset such as the HTC Vive or Oculus
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This being social VR you’re also welcome to mingle with other fans, although I did get accosted by a persistently annoying troll that wanted me to hug her as I was looking at some of the gorgeous pen and ink sketches on the wall. You can just mute them out and get back to your geeking though, so it didn’t really spoil it for me. And if socialising is your thing, there are a several social events and parties planned in the museum to coincide with the movie release.

This being social VR you’re also welcome to mingle with other fans
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At various points as you walk your avatar around the rooms you trigger helpful audio information which tells you the story behind some of the objects
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The beauty of having such an exhibit in Sansar is that the graphics are good enough to do the objects and drawings justice. I spent several happy minutes marvelling at the details of obscure blueprints, sculptures and storyboards.

At various points as you walk your avatar around the rooms you also trigger helpful audio information which tells you the story behind some of the objects. And just like in a regular museum you can just read the plaques next to the exhibits.

The beauty of having such an exhibit in Sansar is that the graphics are good enough to do the objects and drawings justice
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It is easy to picture how I’d be given the choice to dress up my Avatar in Star Wars costumes or even the entire exhibit hosted in Tatooine
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But what isn’t like a regular museum experience is that with a lot of the physical objects – basically anything sitting on a plinth – you can just pick them up – and not get told off. Play with stuff to your heart’s content and it will just find its way back to where it belongs, undamaged and ready for the next fan to have a go.

The Star Wars exhibition feels like walking through a set from the film
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And of course that is just the beginning. Sansar is a very young platform indeed, only recently out of Beta, so we’re yet to see some of its crazier possibilities realised by the creator community. With something like this though, it is easy to picture how next time around I’d be given the choice to dress up my Avatar in Star Wars costumes like at Comic-Con or even have the entire exhibit hosted in, say Tatooine.

“With Sansar, not only are we able to present pieces in context – the Star Wars exhibition feels like walking through a set from the film, for example – but the museum is also a social space. We threw a virtual party on opening night, I’ve lead groups on guided tours of the collection, and we’ll host talks with artists as well It’s a very interactive space, with more accessibility than the physical museum could ever have, says Aronowitz”

There is huge scope to have fun with this sort of content and experience, and I’d be amazed if Sansar’s creative community doesn’t step up to that plate soon, much as they did when creating the Halloween competition experiences I helped judge in October. In the meantime, it’s not a bad taster of what’s in store for VR fans.

Play with stuff to your heart’s content and it will just find its way back to where it belongs, undamaged and ready for the next fan to have a go
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This article was originally published on VRScout 

See Original, Exclusive Star Wars Artwork in VR via @alicebonasio https://t.co/KYDH7rFIwA pic.twitter.com/PKmN9455cw

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 13, 2017

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Geeking Out in Sansar with Star Wars VR Movie Memorabilia appeared first on Tech Trends.

Sansar Creators were up to some really cool tricks, and the results were some spooky Halloween VR treats…

I am often impressed by the way Sansar looks
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I am often impressed by the way the Sansar VR platform looks. Some of it might be buggy, but overall, the slick visuals you see on its user-generated experiences wouldn’t look out of place in a AAA game. In the social VR space, still dominated by blocky avatars and limited landscapes, the sheer variety and polish in Sansar makes it stand out – in a good way.

But this all comes at a price, and anybody familiar with gaming will be know the trade-off between how good something looks and how long it takes for to download, all too well. In order to test out all these textured, beautifully lit, atmospheric experiences, I therefore had to spend what felt like a long time loading them on a very powerful PC.

To render Sansar experiences properly still takes a lot of computer power
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Which made it both fund and challenging to be one of the judges in Sansar’s Halloween-themed competition, which awarded one lucky winner a 10,000 prize, and which featured a broad range of spooky environments and experiences. It was a chance to see first-hand what the platform has enabled its users to create in VR, even without if they don’t have the benefit of vast amounts of technical knowledge to do so.

The visuals in some Sansar experiences are worthy of AAA game titles
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Granted, many of the people onboarded onto Sansar’s Creator’s Beta (which went live earlier this year) are actually gifted designers. Yet what Sansar is building towards is a set of tools and functionalities that allows everybody to create and kit out their own virtual worlds however they wish, without having to worry about a steep learning curve – a factor that definitely contributed to stalling growth in Linden Lab’s original Metaverse, Second Life.

“Sansar is about empowering everyone to create, share, and benefit from their own social VR experiences, and we want to make it accessible to as many people as possible,” agrees Bjorn Laurin, Linden Lab’s VP Product.

So, without further ado, here’s the lowdown on ‘Sansar Scariest’ competition winner and additional honourable mentions, which have just been officially announced by Linden Lab:

Winner

The Diner by C3rb3rus

A dark, seemingly abandoned Diner that’s just on the side of the quiet road and an old-fashioned drive-in movie theater set the scene for an unsettling encounter with the unknown. Did you hear that? It sounds like someone calling for help!

Even by Sansar standards, the lighting and textures in this experiences were amazing, incredibly nuanced. From the giant flying saucer spinning away to the MGM lion roaring from the drive-in movie screen in the distance, every element felt well-executed and real. Which is probably why it produced the best – spoiler alert – “jump out of your skin” moment of any of the experiences I tried.

Honorable Mentions

Paranormal Investigation by Abramelin Wolfe

Join the ‘Ghost Catchers’ and take part in a paranormal investigation this Halloween exploring a very haunted house. Many rooms with many ghosts. Some nice, some…..not so nice!

This felt like something I would have paid for if it was a console game. Carefully crafted visuals, well-timed and well-judged sound effects, this is an experience that has something for everybody, including Ghostbusters fans like myself, who will delight in having the library books floating off the shelves all around them. Definitely not the most original in terms of theme and composition, but absolutely beautiful to look at and a pleasure to explore.

Stasis Interrupted – Chapter 1 by Tyler Scarborough

A space ship where something has gone horribly horribly wrong – find your way to the escape pod, or face a most terrible fate! Try not to get lost in all those dark, flickering halls.

Sorry if this counts as a spoiler, but they had me at “It’s like Alien, but with Zombies.” If you’re a fan of either genre (or, like me, preferably both) you will pr

obably like this experience quite a lot. The creators got the slick look and foreboding mood of Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece just right, something that can be surprisingly challenging (as the latest films in the franchise painfully demonstrated, but let’s not go there). This is all about building up suspense and atmosphere, and even during my relatively short test-drive it managed to do that in spite of some bug issues (haha).

Miner Difficulties by Through The Waterfall

The dark is a very scary place….. better bring a light.

This was an interesting example of creators trying to experiment with storytelling and narrative rather than merely focusing on world-building. This uses various mechanisms (such as assigning you a bird “guide” to help steer you in the right direction. Unfortunately I lost my bird and it didn’t come back, leaving me rather lost…

Joyride by Alex

Follow the path , don’t stray . Keep on walking all the way. Studio Skye presents a Halloween journey to oblivion.

Joyride felt like the most multi-faceted and surprising experience of them all. It kept me constantly guessing from the moment when it first had me ducking to avoid the phantom cars rushing towards me. The landscape changes all the time, shifting from realistic visuals to Tim Burton-esque surreal tableaux. When I finally had to move on to the next experience on my list, it was with some regret, as it definitely felt like there was a lot left to explore here.

There were many atmospheric Halloween Experiences on Sansar
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Linden Lab plans on integrating Windows Mixed Reality HMDs with Sansar
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Linden Lab acknowledges the issues I raised regarding processing power, as well as the barriers that the high price and setup difficulty of HMDs pose, but overall Laurin sounded an upbeat note on the consumer VR space:

“It’s exciting to see all the activity in the VR hardware market, not only with new HMD options, but also with more VR-capable computers,” he told me when I asked about the release of Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Headsets. “We’ve been experimenting with some of the Windows Mixed Reality headsets, and do plan to make it possible to use Sansar with them in the future,” he confirmed.

Laurin also seems unconcerned with the growing competition in the Social VR space, and tells me that they were actually encouraged by the recent Microsoft acquisition of AltspaceVR.

“It was sad to see Altspace closing due to financial difficulties, and we think it’s great for their community and our industry overall that Microsoft has picked them up. It’s encouraging to see very large companies recognizing the value and potential of the medium of social VR,” he says.

If Sansar is to become (as is their ambition) the dominant social VR platform and the standard building, sharing and monetizing content in the medium, there are certainly issues that need to be addressed. Yet considering this is still such early days, I think it’s fair to say it’s good to see the progress that has been made, and to enjoy a few thrills along the way.

Sansar Shows Off User-Generated VR Content in Halloween Competition via @alicebonasio https://t.co/42L3rV5l66 pic.twitter.com/pqaX5tjbZk

— VRScout (@VRScout) October 31, 2017

This article was originally published on VRScout

If you would like to find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your own project or enterprise, Tech Trends offers Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Sansar Unveils Scariest Virtual Reality Halloween Experiences appeared first on Tech Trends.

As Linden Lab opens the long-anticipated Sansar Beta, there’s already a whole multiverse to explore, and create. 

Tech Trends has been following the progress of Sansar for a while now
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What now feels like a very long time ago (it was in fact only April 2016, but VR has come a long way since then) I met Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg at their San Francisco HQ to chat about what was then called “Project Sansar”, their ambitious social VR platform.

Much like “The Facebook” in tech less is often more, so the “Project” bit has since been dropped, and Sansar has now opened to the public in Beta following a closed creator preview earlier this year.

Until now, complexity and cost has limited who could create and publish in this medium, and Sansar dramatically changes that.

explains Altberg, who says he’s now looking forward to an “explosion of creativity”

Indeed, Sansar’s Atlas directory of public experiences already features hundreds of virtual experiences, including multiplayer games, recreations of historic sites and landmarks, art installations, movie theaters, museums, narrative experiences, jungle temples, 360º video domes and sci-fi themed hangouts, says Linden’s Communications Director Peter Gray.

We wanted to make Sansar available to everyone as early as possible, and there are still a lot of features and capabilities that we’re excited to add to the platform soon, as well as many improvements to the current featureset.

Which is all very well and good, but, to be perfectly honest, it still looks damn sexy (not in a naughty way, although that might well come soon). Over the past year I’ve seen a lot of these platforms popping up – many of them with amazing potential – but their wow factor usually hinges on the immersion of VR itself rather than the visuals.

Sansar stands out in the Social VR space with slick visuals and functionality
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Sansar, however, definitely stands out in terms of slick visuals and functionality. It doesn’t feel half-baked, and this is due not only to the stunning environments, but to the avatar features, which – thanks to a partnership with IKINEMA – incorporate full-body Inverse Kinematics to enable avatars to mirror users’ full-body movements. Additionally, Speech Graphics sync facial animations automatically to match speech patterns, all of which goes a long way towards enabling much more natural social interactions in VR.

Avatars that move naturally are important to the quality of the social experiences users can create and enjoy on our platform, and integrating IKinema’s tech helps us to deliver that without requiring any peripherals beyond VR hand controllers.

explains IKinema CEO Alexandre Pechev

A lot of work has gone into getting Sansar to this stage – Linden Lab has a dedicated team of over 70 people working on the platform, and development has been on-going for several years – but in order to fulfil their ambition to become the dominant platform in the VR space, they are counting on two very unique advantages:

It is able to self-fund the platform’s development, and the source of that funding is also the longest enduring “metaverse” out there, Second Life (SL). And means they have a lot of data on what works – and doesn’t – in the virtual world.

After 15 years, Second Life is still going strong with a thriving creative community
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After 15 years – a veritable lifetime in tech terms – SL is still going strong with about a million users, consistently generating real-world profits for Linden Lab and giving it access to a very engaged creative community, many of whom are very excited about Sansar as Gray confirms:

There’s been strong interest in Sansar among Second Life users since we first announced the project. “Many SL users are thrilled by what they can create today and are loving the many compelling Sansar experiences that are already available to explore.

It’s tempting to think of Sansar as a sort of “SL 2.0” but it wants to be much more than that. To capitalize on the new wave of enthusiasm for Virtual Reality, this new platform needs to become accessible and intuitive in a way that SL never really managed to be. One of the key obstacles which stalled the platform’s growth was its steep learning curve – which suited the hardcore community but put off casual users – and the difficulty of sharing content outside the platform itself.

With Sansar, however, people can go directly to whichever experience they want, says Gray. Each of these hosted multi-user experiences has a unique link that can be shared with whomever the creator wishes. Via Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs, etc. and viewed either with VR headsets like the HTC VIVE or Oculus as well as on desktop mode on PCs. Each instance of an experience is currently allows 35+ concurrent avatars, and automated instancing will enable creators to reach unlimited audiences, says Gray:

Let’s say you’re an educator interested in space exploration. You can click a link to visit the Apollo Museum experience that LOOT Interactive created with Sansar, and you’ll go straight there. You might then choose to browse the Atlas directory and find a social VR basketball game that looks fun, or an immersive art experience that intrigues you, and could invite friends to join you there. If instead, fantasy roleplaying and VR horror experiences are more appealing, you can go right to those.

Sansar operates a freemium model, where users can join for free but extra support is available to creators via subscriptions starting at $9.99 per month. It has a drag-and-drop editing interface that makes it much easier to create scenes either by importing assets from common 3D modeling tools or purchased from the Sansar Store.

Sansar has a Freemium model that lets users monetize their creations
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Monetisation is a key part of their strategy, which makes sense considering Second Life’s successful track record in making a virtual economy pay for both itself and its users. They created a marketplace called the Sansar Store Creators can sell virtual objects – thousands of items are already available to purchase in Sansar Dollars (S$) – but in future Linden will also enable users to sell, rent, or charge for access to actual experiences.

But which among those thousands of experiences published so far have most caught the eye of the team at Linden Lab? VP of product Bjorn Laurin is partial to the Apollo Museum experience and Grey couldn’t quite decide between Little Giant – where you can share in the colourful imagination of a 3-year old child as her toys literally come to life – or Secrets of the Worldwhale where you walk up to a wizened old rat to begin an adventure exploring “an eerie world on the back of an ancient whale and discover hidden treasure.”

Altberg, however, choose as his personal favourite a project spearheaded by Second Life veteran Draxtor and Ria (who also created the Little Giant experience). 114 Harvest is a collaborative storytelling project about a quaint little town that harbours a dark secret, and the potential for developing such collaborations is evidenced by the fact that the 114 Harvest Facebook group quickly attracted nearly 1600 members. If this early interest is any indication, it seems fair to expect that Altberg might get that explosion of creativity after all

This article was originally published on The Next Web

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post You Can Now Start Creating Your Own Virtual Worlds with Sansar appeared first on Tech Trends.

Linden Lab’s ambitions to make Virtual Reality accessible to everyone are shaping up nicely, if this newly released video is any indication.

While it doesn’t contain any new product announcements, the footage showcases the functionalities they’ve been promising and testing out in their closed “Creator’s Preview” for the last few months.

You can watch the video below, or read the complete overview on UploadVR

Linden Lab's Social VR Platform Sansar is on track for Open Beta release this Spring
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New @LindenLab video promises Sansar Open Beta this Spring! via @alicebonasio #VR #Sansar https://t.co/RXP7WrTyva pic.twitter.com/NIXCg7a5Gq

— Upload (@UploadVR) March 7, 2017

The post Building Excitement Around the Sansar Social VR Platform appeared first on Tech Trends.

Let’s for a moment set aside war, celebrity deaths, terrorism and the impeding political Armageddon, and focus on what was good about 2016: VR.

2016 was a great year for VR, if little else
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This was the year when Virtual Reality became a buzzword and we started talking about “experiences,” and how immersive they all were. But as exciting as these have undoubtedly been, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The really good stuff is yet to come, but 2016 gave some good hints about what’s in in store.

As the real world becomes an increasingly uncertain and unwelcoming place, perhaps it’s no coincidence that we’re so keen to make virtual worlds work out. Maybe we’re indeed headed for a Ready Player One Oasis-type scenario, but if the range and depth of VR I’ve come across over the past few months is anything to go by, it might not turn out to be such a grim fate after all…

VR let us get that Superman(or woman) feeling by flying around in VR using Google Earth and witness Andy Murray’s Wimbledon Victory from the middle of Centre Court, or the Olympics in Rio. With VR people can already experience different places such as West Hollywood, but the technology can also help you fight phobias, and even reunite an elderly war hero with the community he helped save during World War II.

You can get that Superman(or woman) feeling by flying around in VR using Google Earth
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We’ve also seen some beautiful and powerful examples of how VR is being used in storytelling and I talked to creators about the shaping the language and conventions of this new medium. When leveraged properly, VR has also shown great potential as a tool for tackling difficult issues and engendering empathy. From the BBC project showing the plight of a refugee family fleeing Syria to making us care about the demise of coral reefs.

From virtual books to sports coaching many companies are exploring the potential of VR for education
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From virtual books to sports coaching many companies are exploring the potential of VR for education, as the opportunities for engaging students with content quickly become apparent and tools like Google cardboard made the technology easily accessible to teachers and students around the world.

In April I went to Linden Lab’s Headquarters in San Francisco and discussed the potential of VR for education with their CEO Ebbe Altberg, who explained how their virtual platform Second Life had already been used by Universities and that while the creative SL community did use the legacy platform, they were now investing in a brand new platform to allow users to generate and share their own VR content, Sansar.

We also discussed how the platform would inevitably be used for less “Safe for Work” purposes and how Virtual Reality Porn might help to drive the technology towards mass-market adoption much as it did for the Internet itself. While in the beautiful City by the Bay I also geeked out at their amazing arcade museum and mused about how we can see the evolution of VR from those early machines.

Tools like Google cardboard made VR accessible to teachers and students
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Sansar is not the only player emerging in the social VR space, however. Earlier in the year I saw some interesting developments from Improbable in London and AltspaceVR is pushing ahead with initiatives like allowing punters to watch live events such as comedy shows in VR. One of the challenges of making social interaction in such platforms, work, however, is to create a sense of presence – which requires creating more realistic personalized avatars – and making people comfortable in VR for longer periods of time, which means tackling issues such as simulator sickness.

One challenge of Social VR work is to create a sense of presence, and that means better avatars
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And let’s not forget games of course, VR is a whole lot of fun and although I definitely don’t have as much time as I’d like for playing them, I came across some interesting titles, such as HOVR by independent Lebanese studio Game Cooks, and popular Swedish game SVRVIVE, not to mention my own personal, longstanding obsession: Resident Evil

Even without the expensive headsets, people have been doing amazing things with AR
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When I finally got my hands on the HoloLens for the first time I was rather blown away, and while Magic Leap came under intense fire for allegedly misleading people about its demo videos, causing some to question whether they can deliver on their promise of fully immersive, untethered mixed reality – there were plenty of signs that AR and MR have a bright future indeed.

I was blown away by my HoloLens Demo
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Even without the expensive headsets, people have been doing amazing things with AR such as supporting surgeons in war zones and teaching children digital and creative skills. Many of the interesting projects I came across were from relatively small companies exploring specific niches; One start-up in Russia was crowdfunding development of Mixed Reality lessons to bring subjects like Chemistry and Physics to life, and even the Adult industry got in on the action, producing a low-budget workaround to project live holograms of a much naughtier kind to users around the world using just their mobile phones and a cheap adaptor. And with players like Apple giving out strong signals that they are about to enter this “ARena” (sorry, couldn’t resist) things are bound to get very interesting in 2017.

Watch this space.

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Best VR 2016 – Tech Trends Virtual Reality Yearly Recap appeared first on Tech Trends.