In Second Life, a vast online digital world, users create 3D content, including avatars, buildings and almost anything imaginable. In this internet-powered world, users can shop for virtual clothes, buy land, and attend concerts, classes or other virtual experiences almost like real life but digitized and certainly otherworldly.
Now fans of this long-enduring digital world can visit a new virtual reality (VR) world with the introduction of Sansar, an immersive online community where users create and share VR experiences.
After years of creating content for Second Life, Dario Buratti decided to give his elaborate 3D designer condos and party spaces a VR facelift.
“VR is the ideal environment for any creative person,” said Buratti, a 3D modeler who built his VR Cult events hub for hosting virtual art exhibits, fashion shows and concerts in Sansar.
“You can draw a space, walk inside of it — as if it were real — and meet people inside the experience,” he said.
The events hub was among the first crop of virtual places to populate Sansar. True to its roots, Sansar is an exploratory virtual world, an online habitat where people build virtual places and hang out.
Since entering public beta in late July, the platform has already produced a bouquet of VR environments, including a Zen garden, a famous piece of unbuilt architecture and the Apollo 11 moon landing site. By equipping builders with cutting edge technology, Sansar is raising the bar for what it means to be immersed in virtual worlds.
With Sansar, San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab has given content creators the necessary tools to make luscious VR spaces. Now it’s moving boldly into the next phase of pulling curious people into these VR worlds.
History of Second Life
History suggests that if people build it, others will come. The idea of virtual worlds entered the public consciousness around 2007 with the increasing popularity of Second Life, Linden Lab’s first foray into digital worlds. As of 2015, 1,019 square miles of user-created content has been made for the platform, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island.
“There was so much creative energy being invested in Second Life,” said Philip Rosedale, who founded the virtual hideaway in 2003. “At one point, the land mass was expanding so rapidly that, even if you were flying through Second Life on a plane, you couldn’t have kept up with it.”
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At the weekly meetings, with his development team’s 40 avatars huddled around him, Laurin can hear a voice and know exactly who is speaking to him. He looks in the person’s direction and sees the avatar’s lips moving. This ability to hear a voice radiating out of someone has had a contagious effect on sociability in VR.
“I routinely see small groups of people standing together under a tree, talking, like they do in real life,” he said.
Together with other sensory tricks, such as how the sun casts shadows from an avatar’s body onto a wall, Sansar has the technical prowess to render exceptionally lifelike VR worlds.
Through Sansar, content creators — like Buratti and his unreal art gallery — have the VR tools to bring their dreams to life. They can invite other people into those dreams. Now that this new VR world is live and growing, the guests are arriving.
Source: IQ