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Open world or just Experiences?

Chris Jackson

July 09, 2017 09:25

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I've looked around but I haven't seen yet where it is stated if there will be an open world area like SL, or if this will be individual user-created experiences only.

While the area we get for an expereince is pretty decent size, they really are not fit for vehicles/water/aircraft. 

The experience I see as more like a fancy way to display your wares, a store. A social hangout, sure and some gaming exp. too, I see that. Not sure how thrilling it would be to just click a location and teleport everywhere, exp to exp. Part of the thrill is exploring the area. Scrolling through a list of exp isn't very thrilling.

No open world area? That could be a game-changer.

22 comments

• 1
  
  Agustine July 09, 2017 11:32

  Sansar is not an open world nor mmo like SL... its primary focus is a VR platform, much work is still needed but it will have more interactivity coming.. 

• 1
  
  Richardus Raymaker July 09, 2017 13:13

  Why you think 4x4KM, That's the size the talked about in the past. I have not checked it. Is not suitable for verhicles. That;s big, and no simborder.

  It's a perfect size for boats and cars etc. It still can work with planes to, but mabye limited.

  But who is saying that there's not soem option coming someday that you can Teleport when you fly at the edge to other experience and proceed with flying ? It's just idea. It's all so young.

  For  me sansar is 100x better then SL. i can build here and i can have land. Both are pretty impossible in SL because costs.

• 0
  
  Chris Jackson July 09, 2017 16:36

  So I take it that the answer is no, no open world, just these individual experiences?

• 1
  
  Prospero July 10, 2017 08:19

  Well, the Experiences are not connected like in SL. So no permanent online mainland. If an experience is empty it will shut down until someone enters it again.

  And yes, Sansar ist not supposed to be SL 2.0.

  But still, the difference between a SL Sim and a Sansar Experience is more in the name then all other. It is nearby the same. Why should you not be able to TP from your Home to your favorite Club to your favorite RP sim just like in SL. The only real difference is that you have no simborders anymore and so you can not cross multiple sims/experiences without tp`ing. SL does consits of different "experiences as well", and most of the time you tp from one sim to another. The difference will be smaller then you think, in the end.

  Not to forget that if a Sansar experience can take the size of ~4x4 km that is far far more then a SL sim with its 256 meters. it is like 16x16 the size of a sl sim or 256 times bigger then a SL sim - imagine what great places can be build upon it!

  Communities and Meeting Places will be build, the same as RP sims and private homs, malls, etc.

   

   

  Edited by Prospero July 10, 2017 08:21
• 0
  
  Gindipple July 10, 2017 08:46

  I do feel it is unfortunate that it's not connected.

  It loses a sense of reality in this.

  I can't walk/drive/fly/swim/boat over to my neighbor's house.

  But then I really wanted a glorified graphically intense minecraft too

  4KM will be constraining in no time, maybe later people will be able to purchase larger chunks and connect them

  Thinking big, like space game like Eve, MMO style or 1st shooter

• 2
  
  Prospero July 10, 2017 08:55

  4x4 km is not that small, it is 256 times the size of a sl sim. That is half a continent in SL ; )

  I quite never walked over sim borders and I never see people visiting my sim or my playgrounds by feet or car - they do all tp in.

  Off course it is not the same then a persitant world, but it is not that bad either and the positve factors are way way more important.

  If you build your house on a 1/256 parcell of an experience/sim holder (aka landlord) in Sansar you will have 255 neighbours which all have a parcell of the size of a full SL sim. If you divide a full SL sim into 4 parcells you will have 1023 neighbours on a Sansar "sim" - that is far more then in SL.

  Edited by Prospero July 10, 2017 08:56
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  Gindipple July 10, 2017 09:18

  I don't see the concept of landlord here though, people that want to own land in SL own it for the ability to decorate to their liking. That concept will be their own "Experience". It will be come check my place out, ok I'll TP there.

  I don't see the concept of sailing around Fruit Islands or Blake Sea passing by other people's houses happening as is.

  Or flying in a plane looking down saying that's where Johnny lives.

  Now I understand this isn't SL, but there's a sense of community there that grew around that concept of owning a plot of land and having neighbors that you could walk/drive/swim over to visit

  The gaming concept alone may override that here, if that so emerges.

   

• 3
  
  Richardus Raymaker July 10, 2017 09:27

  Read this meeting blog. the have still plans for collaborative editting. Sansar It's still early. And i can already do more in it then with Secondlife.

  https://help.sansar.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004544627-Meeting-Notes-March-17-2017

   

• 2
  
  Prospero July 10, 2017 09:36

  @Gindipple

  I see no reason why there should not be place for "landlords" in Sansar. Not everyone wants to have its own "experience/sim". Renting a small parcell may will cost less then being a full experience owner (beware, I think experiences and their price do scale differently then in SL) and not to forgett the importance of "themed living and community living" - not everyone wants to life on an isolated island so community living will be a natural part of a social metaworld. And we human beings are social beings, at least for the most part. Some may want solitude, the lot is looking for social interaction/living. A lot of people do even life in their RP sims in SL, in houses which you can decorate and put in the furniture you like. Why should there be no place for all of these in Sansar..? In the contrary, all of that will evolve naturally. Even if LL should give everyone some "Experience Ressources / Land" for free (like in SL the Premium Members have a free piece of land too).

  p.s.: also not everyone wants to build their "sim/experience" from the ground, putting up a beach or buying japanese plants and trees to have a japanese environment. A lot of people probably just want a themed sim/experience where they can rent a nice prebuild house, or a parcell, and then put their pictures in it and maybe the favorite club-chair they bought from the store.

  Edited by Prospero July 10, 2017 09:46
• 2
  
  Agustine July 10, 2017 11:56

  Sansar has remote and local teleporting... local teleporting is within same experience.. remote teleporting is like as if you visit/jump from one website to the next..

• 1
  
  Robert Galland July 10, 2017 12:15

  The differences can be more in the details than the concept to be honest.  I am not sure if there will be a large desire for residential areas (estates) in Sansar.  It could easily be done, though.  Collaborative editing would be important, at least for the SL crowd.  Others may not mind coming into an experience already created and having house that is furnished and landscaped, but in an experience that offers another attraction - sailing, skiiing, etc.  As Augustine stated, you can teleport within an experience or between experiences now.  Or, if experience are not meant to be connected by a teleport, you can open up the Atlas and go where you want.  I think we are so early in the development of Sansar that we need to think about and envision what it can be, not what it isn't right now.  It's just too early.

• 0
  
  Chris Jackson July 10, 2017 22:38

  Thanks for the really good posts. Very thought-provoking. I agree that one needs to think outside the SL box. What this can be I agree is the better way to look at it. I believe there is great potential here, I just need to rewire how I look at it.

  As for the size of the exp. It's pretty big for personal use. WAY more than just a plot of land for house for sure. I'm laying out the plot plan for mine and my main structure is around 300x300 square and that feels really small. And there is the vertical to think about to, so it's not small really. More like a fair size ranch. You can put a TON of stuff in that area, but will that sucker load in less than 4 days? Ah, balance!

  I've been to several other exp's and am amazed already what people have done. The "114 ...." California neighborhood exp is really cool. I would love to know how theybuilt it, how they modeled/textured stuff. Lots of work there.

  Seeing where this is at now, I'm actually excited to see where it will be a year from now.

  Do you think that building an exp to sell will be the thing?

  Edited by Chris Jackson July 11, 2017 06:31
• 1
  
  Teager July 11, 2017 02:42

  I absolutely believe that building and selling experiences will be a thing here! LL has already given us the first step towards prefab experiences, by being able to select a pre-assembled scene to start with, when you are creating a new experience. I feel like it would add a lot of value to the community to allow us to sell similar prefab scenes, either by adding to that dropdown list when creating a new experience, or by linking objects together to sell as a cluster of pre-assembled structures. With the way Sansar is set up, I fully expect the sale of prefab experiences to serve a similar function in Sansar that sale of real estate and home rentals serve in Second Life.

• 1
  
  Cherri Banks July 11, 2017 23:33

  We are taking the first steps in this journey, and where the experience goes will be influenced by the pioneers. I love the opportunities that are available now, and I can't begin to imagine what the future holds. It will be a time that we will look back upon fondly and say, "Remember when..." Carpe Diem!

• 1
  
  Ethos Erlanger July 12, 2017 00:45

  I think we should have a 4K challenge to see what it takes to fill up an entire experience with respect to size. Quality will always be subjective. Just imagine how long it will take to cross an entire experience on foot.

• 1
  
  Eloderung July 12, 2017 02:10

   I like this style more than Second Life, but I do very much prefer some ability to have collaborative spaces or even linked spaces--like a simulated mini mainland, if people choose to do it. I think that would be pretty great.

• 1
  
  Waldo July 12, 2017 23:20

  Opportunity! to build your own Telehub, and have it TP to other experiences ! you can be a Guide service provider and get known for that..

  I can def see people making "train" stations or modern looking telehubs. If you build a popular telehub, you could charge for listings/kiosks if that's permitted.

  I can see people setting up guided tour hubs, themed hubs for games, gardens etc, almost like a multimedia "review" of experiences.

  I belive this is HUGE. Quite the departure from SL, and we will be able to script or have somebody build just about anything we can imagine. They are already doing it with the Media surfaces, eventually we may even be able to set up a skype-type kiosk in our experiences and any other app we use on desktops and devices. Virtual anythings...

  as far as space goes, probably later in development you can stitch experiences together, or create a logical "trigger" plane an avatar walks thru that ports seamlessly to the other part of say, the game your building out. you do that already with the bigger games going from floor to floor, or location to location.  IF you get creative it can be part of the play, make sense, and  trigger automagically based on position of the avatar that triggers it.

• 1
  
  Amy Smoke July 13, 2017 07:53

  4x4km is pretty darn big.

   

  An open world PS2 game like GTA San Andreas is only just over that.

   

  Its a quarter of Skyrim’s world too. I think there’ll be some great, huge open worlds to hang out in. Just not The Crew big.

• 0
  
  November July 13, 2017 15:27

  Collaborating on RP spaces or joining them somehow would be absolutely great, I hope that will be possible.

• 0
  
  Galen July 22, 2017 22:12

  Because experiences are not connected into a grid, it will be practical for LL to expand the size of a scene in the future. I'm sure they will.

  Edited by Galen July 22, 2017 22:12
• 0
  
  Agustine July 22, 2017 22:17

  ...and these extra fancy features come with an extra price...

• 0
  
  Galen July 22, 2017 22:24

  The more I think about the not-a-grid aspect of Sansar, the more I respect what LL is trying to do.

  Right now, in SL, a sim is always on. It consumes a dedicated CPU, memory, and disk space. Even when it sits unused for weeks. What a waste!

  As best I can tell, Sansar leaves scenes (experiences are composed of one or more scenes) as packages in a database and, when someone first requests to visit it, a free server is allocated and the scene gets shipped to it and loaded into memory as fast as possible. So long as someone is in the scene, the server stays active, processing scripts, physics, and all other aspects of state. But a few minutes after everyone leaves, the scene shuts down and that server is now freed up to host another scene as needed.

  Think about it. I'd bet maybe 1 in 100 sims in SL has anyone on it in any given moment. If LL could have 1,000 sim servers host 100,000 sims by using dynamic loading, they could cut their sim server costs by around 99%. In principle, they could also charge 1/100th the cost to sim owners. Imagine paying $3 a month instead of $300 a month in tier for a full sim.

  So if you see the huge savings to be had, maybe it'll make more sense why you can't practically link a bunch of scenes into a grid in this scheme. You'd look across the border from your current scene and wouldn't be able to see anything in the next one if it isn't currently loaded. One possible future enhancement might be dedicated scenes, where maybe you pay a boatload more to keep your scene permanently online and can thus link it to other scenes to create a larger space.

  I've come to realize this system design choice is fundamental to Sansar and is a brilliant optimization. However, as with many optimizations, it comes with constraints that they can't easily get around.

  Edited by Galen July 22, 2017 22:27