My Visit to Sansar!

Hey guys! I just got word not too long ago that Sansar was now in open beta! Strawberry Singh has a lot of useful information on Sansar – I recommend watching the videos before downloading the viewer. The avatar and camera controls video is very useful – too bad I didn’t watch beforehand!

As you can see, Sansar is similar to Second Life in that people still haven’t learned to move off the landing point  😀

Before installing Sansar, make sure your computer meets the  hardware specifications. How to check?

For Win 10, click on: Start ->Settings->System -> About
For Win 8: Charms bar -> Settings – > Control Panel -> System
For Win 7: Start -> right click on My Computer -> Properties

Since I am a desktop only user, I checked the recommended and minimum specs:

Luckily I passed, and was able to download and install with no issues. I heard that a number of people had a hard time downloading Sansar due to the high demand on the servers.

Regarding the avatar name, I just used my regular name from SL. I guess when it was in closed beta people had to provide their RL names. Strawberry had said she used her SL name with no issues, so I did the same.

So now what I will do is just to post and comment on the pictures I took while I was at Sansar. I just did a lot of screen shots and cropped them in paint (can you believe Microsoft wanted to get rid of Paint…why???).

So this was the first place I went to on the Atlas (kinda like SL’s Destination Guide). This is the outside of the Moya Museum.

Walking around inside felt like an actual visit to a museum. I could hear my footsteps as I took a look around…all by myself.

One thing that I found myself doing to get the experience to come in for me (I had nothing but black screens) was to go into the appearance section…I think it’s called My Looks. Not sure how the guy avatar got there – I made him by accident ^^

The next place that I visited was Valencia. I liked the colorful buildings, as well as their shape. This was the first time that I saw a couple of people.

There was a guy there as well but he left just when I took the shot. As you can see, as for now there is not an obvious way to tell who people are. I guess that is like real life that way.

I took  a picture of the atlas so you can see how I was able to go from experience to experience.

This next place is called Walk into Sound. This place looked cooler on the atlas than it did while in the experience. Walking wasn’t as smooth as the other places were – think of SL when you are bumping into a lot of invisible objects on the ground that makes you bump. Also since I wasn’t sure how to cam around to see where I was going, I could not see properly the stairs that were going down. So I had to leave. Maybe now that I know the camera controls, I will revisit it and see how it goes.

This was another cool place that I wanted to check out – Skyline Cantina & Breakroom . The only thing that confused me was that in the Atlas photo it looked dark, but as you can see from the photos it was not like that at all.

Where’s Moni?

Now this was an active place – 114 Harvest . So many people coming in at once. And you can hear people talking on voice, but you have no idea who is talking…that was sort of weird.

This is an example of how nearby chat looks like, but you can’t see it unless you click the chat window.

A few of us started to walk down the street, but it was too far for me to walk. I had just learned how to get to places quicker – kinda like the equivalent of double click to teleport in SL, but with light effects.

So the last place I went to in Sansar was Zen Garden.  I am not sure how to grab the link from the featured section at the top of the web-based atlas. But it is a popular spot as well. I actually went to this place first, but all I saw was a black screen and heard a couple of guys talking. I couldn’t see what was happening and it actually intimidated me – I actually logged off and restarted Sansar so I could go to another experience.

I went down an elevator shaft to this lower level, where I saw floating platforms. I didn’t feel like wandering over there, so I went back up topside.

I saw some names that I recognized that was nearby. I was kinda hoping that I saw someone I knew so I could add them to my friends list.

I was monitoring my graphics card, and whereas in SL GPU % is 10 or less, in Sansar it was at 99-100% while in the experiences. So Sansar is very graphics intensive. I had closed down all other programs while in Sansar so that my computer could use all of its resources on that. And I think it worked pretty well.

How do I feel about Sansar? It feels like I went on a trip, went to the future (as in Back to the Future), and kinda like a new world nostalgia all rolled into one feeling. Will we be migrating over to Sansar any time soon? Nah. Is it a nice place to visit and explore? yes, and you may want to bring a friend or two so you can comment on what you see.

People have said that you can’t do much in Sansar, and you can’t – I couldn’t even enter the homes at 114 Harvest. But I feel like even if you could, there is only the exterior shell.  Now in order for Sansar to succeed, they have to start building the interior – the content that will make people want to spend more time there.

Interesting links on Sansar:

Linden Lab press release

Sansar Newsblog