Meeting Notes - January 20, 2017

During the Jan. 20 community meetings with Sansar creators, various members of the Sansar development and marketing teams updated the community on the latest Sansar news and improvements, including:

• New Sansar Release - An updated version of the Sansar client is due sometime in the next week.
• This will require a new download, but it is not anticipated that it will cause any compatibility issues with previously-created content.
• As mentioned during last week’s meeting, the next release will feature more realistic reverb via audio materials and support for multi-selecting and duplicating items.
• It was also announced that the new release will render existing applied teleport scripts invalid, which will require creators to re-apply any teleport scripts to their objects.
• Also, immediately prior to the new release, it is anticipated that there will be a brief period of downtime so that the development team can update some backend services to Sansar.
• Teleport Bug Progress - Developers are continuing to make progress on fixes to some known bugs pertaining to teleports, including a documented bug that causes users to crash during some teleports.
• New Slack Channel - There is a new Sansar Bug Reporting channel on Slack that is available to approved members of the Creator Preview.
• Sansar Building Contest Update - It was announced that this building contest has concluded and winners should be selected and notified in the next week.

During both Q&A sessions, the community was able to provide feedback and bug reports on several other topics, including:

• A creator reported some difficulty getting Sansar to publish her creations due to concerns over high CPU activity (running at 100%) when uploading large terrains and other assets. The creator was reassured by both Sansar staffers and other community members that this behavior is expected as the complexity of the surface topology is known to have a strong impact on processing time.  However, Product Director Jason Gholston assured the creator that the development team is working on improvements to this issue (which has been identified as a “top priority”).
• Another creator indicated high incidents of upload failure and speculated if it might be due to their lower bandwidth connection outside the U.S. The Sansar team will be investigating further via bandwidth throttling tests to identify what point uploads start to timeout on lower speed connections.
• There was an inquiry about how to “hide” work-in-progress creations from the main Atlas so that they were not discoverable by default. Subsequently, a new tip was shared on how to better control visibility of your creations. Under My Projects, select the ellipsis (...) button for more options and then copy the URL for your experience to share discretely with anyone without it being listed in the Atlas.
• A community member asked how to get an Atlas thumbnail of their experience that excludes their avatar. To eliminate your avatar in your image, simply use first-person view (F3 on your keyboard or click down on the right thumbstick on your XBOX controller).
• A couple of creators identified a bug pertaining to uploading of objects with a collision mesh. One creator indicated that he is experiencing these objects show up as invisible after they are uploaded and speculated that this may occur if they only have a color but no texture. The Sansar development team is going to investigate.
• There was interest in the community on the pending availability of keyframe animations (such as those found in the Sansar Studios-developed Colossus Rising experience). In response, it was identified that this is on the roadmap for completion sometime in 2017.
• One creator (who also has a presence in Second Life) asked about whether Sansar would eventually allow for multiple creators to collaboratively develop, link experiences and/or share space within the same Sansar experience (similar to how parcels are divided up within a single sim in Second Life). This request was acknowledged but it was undetermined when/if these features will also be supported in Sansar. As part of the conversation, it was reiterated that the Sansar platform does not aim to replicate some of the familiar features and functionality found within Second Life.
• There was general discussion about how best to navigate through the large volume of information in the Sansar Slack channel. One creator suggested that a new Slack channel dedicated to Tips & Tricks might be useful.  

All participants in the Creator Preview are welcome to attend future Office Hours. Watch the Office Hour Announcements section on Sansar.com for more details on future times and dates.