Chic at Ebbe's Place

I have been working in Sansar every day all day for two weeks now. My experience (mostly items I had made for SL or other platforms and updated) is almost complete. I have had a great time building and I love the look. 

To answer @animats question more fully now that I know more -- I do not believe Sansar is any easier for uploading mesh than Second Life. Indeed the uploader is picker in that any unused materials OR UV maps (just discovered that today) left in your file when you make your model to export will cause grave issues. 

That's not a bad thing. It is easy to fix those issues in a few clicks once you know they are required. And adding those steps to my workflow will make my blender files neater for both platforms.  It's nothing you would see in a finished product, but neatness is a good thing. 

I have built my first experience much like I would build a quarter sim installation in SL. Sometimes the textures were a bit larger and I added normal maps to quite a few items, but all in all I wasn't trying for "new", just "prettier". And prettier it is all because of the atmosphere. Turn that off (availability in edit mode) and SL looks better - LOL.

In general I made my build with "game assets" in mind. I believe it will load quickly even for those with less than stellar download speeds. I won't know that for sure until published. I doubt I will redo it if it is slower than I would like --- other than turning off some normal maps perhaps. Either way it is a good benchmark as to what you can do for good loading times. 

And that brings me to my biggest worry about Sansar -- and nothing new here.  The loading times can be painful even with a 20mps connection (very good for my part of the world).  I went to a much advertised privately built experience this afternoon as a test of the cache system which someone told me would make it difficult for me to actually KNOW how fast my experience would load.

I clicked on ENTER and waited. I waited TWELVE FULL MINUTES  with the "loading assets" only half way done before I gave up and went out to water the garden. When I came back 20 minutes later I had arrived.  To TEST (you know how I like to test) I exited the scene, closed the Sansar viewer and waiting a minute or two then logged in again directly to that experience thinking it would load faster.  The bottom line? Well I waited twelve minutes again and then closed the viewer.

IF this doesn't get better, I can't see Sansar going too far. The official Sansar Studios sites I have visited load in about two minutes for me -- this with a couple of SL avatars on as well. That's fine. I can live with that. Some private experiences were in that same timeframe. They were small and not too exciting but at least I wasn't going out making breakfast and washing dishes while I waited to visit.

I guess it is no surprise that some folks are going overboard on "pretty" and yes the sim was pretty, just not worth waiting half an hour for.  So MIDDLE GROUND. That's what I am going for. I am hoping (and I will likely put in a request) that LL might add icons on the "desktop friendly" quickly downloading experiences. If not, I can see folks coming in to try and leaving lickety slipt. Honestly I would NOT have waited all that time for the scene to open had I not been testing.  

I am still spending my entire month of August over there. I have a ton of stuff to upload to the store (figured it would be better to have a link to see things as I always like to SEE things). I don't expect to sell a bunch now. I am there for the future, much like Kitely keeps sending me checks most weeks *wink*.  

After that I will play with more hair and jewelry just for fun.

PS. think I figured out the problem with the house from hell upload -- a multiple UV map thing and the Sansar uploader takes the FIRST of your UVmaps and not the one USED and turned on --- so now I know and I will likely remake. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not :D.