Roddenberry Entertainment and Linden Labs (creator of the popular virtual world Second Life) have created a new virtual reality experience for Trekkies using their Sansar platform, called The Roddenberry Nexus. Visitors can explore a three-level gallery of artifacts from the Roddenberry archives. Roddenberry Entertainment had a preview of The Roddenberry Nexus at Star Trek Las Vegas last weekend, and now Sansar has released a video walkthrough for those who didn’t try the demo in Las Vegas.
The physical space is modeled after the TOS movie era design style. You can see a similarity to the recreation deck as seen in TMP, and the large doors between sections as seen in the Regula One space lab in TWOK.
The lower level lounge area
Looking at a model of the prototype Enterprise from Planet of the Titans
A virtual mannequin wearing a TNG 3rd season command uniform.
It’s worth noting that Sansar does not require a VR headset, you can walk around and point and click on things akin to a first-person game–but if you have the gear you can have a full VR experience. Currently, the Sansar application is for Windows only. VR headsets supported include the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift. Click here for the full details of system requirements.
Video walkthrough
Full Press Release
SAN FRANCISCO – August 1, 2018 – Sansar®, the premier destination for social VR, today announced their latest collaboration with Roddenberry Entertainment: the Roddenberry Nexus in Sansar – a new virtual experience for fans that showcases the best of Roddenberry’s science fiction properties, including never-before-seen art and artifacts from Star Trek®’s fifty-two-year history and new stories such as the short film Instant. The hangout space will serve as a venue for future Roddenberry events and fan meet-ups, and can be demoed live at the 2018 Star Trek Convention (August 1-5), in the Tropical Room at Las Vegas’s Rio Hotel & Casino.
In offering fans virtual access to its archives, from anywhere in the world, Roddenberry Entertainment continues to pioneer a richer, more interactive fan experience – one where fans not only have more places to hang and connect, but also new ways of experiencing the storied Roddenberry legacy. It’s an innovative streak that reaches back months: this past May, the company collaborated with Sansar to host a live episode of its Mission Log Podcast, aboard a virtual recreation of the bridge from the original Enterprise; a virtual Star Trek trivia night followed in early July.
“Roddenberry Entertainment always strives to be on the forefront of innovation, going where no one has gone before,” said Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment. “Sansar Studios is a leader in VR development and we are proud to partner with them on this new initiative, combining the history and legacy of Roddenberry with their groundbreaking technology.”
With the Nexus, Roddenberry Entertainment has found a way to further evolve VR’s role in fan engagement, making Roddenberry history feel instantly more immediate, more accessible, and more tangible than ever before. Inspired by the futuristic environments Star Trek once made famous, the space lets visitors view and virtually interact with never-before-seen artifacts from the show’s development – everything from props to costumes and artwork – across three distinct levels, with original voice-over content to offer guidance. Anyone with a link to the Sansar experience can step directly into TV and movie history; whether just to take a private tour, or to attend one of the many fan events planned in the space in coming months.
“We really do see VR as a new frontier for fan engagement,” says Jason Gholston, Head of Sansar Studios. “We’re not just tapping into fans’ collective nostalgia; we’re actively empowering them to reach out and touch television history, in a way that might not be possible in the real world. We’re thrilled to be able to preserve these pieces for future generations, and to find such amazing collaborators in Roddenberry Entertainment.”
Experience the Roddenberry Nexus in Sansar today. And make sure to check out the upcoming special events, including a guided tour led by hosts from Roddenberry Entertainment (August 16 at 7 PM PT/10 PM ET) and a screening of Roddenberry’s Instant (August 30 at 7 PM PT/10 PM ET).
I personally would have been quite happy about Discovery looking like the ‘Planet of the Titans’ Enterprise if it resembled what is shown in the lounge.
The ‘Nexus’ certainly looks like a fun virtual museum to explore.
Seriously? That final design model is garbage, hence why it wasn’t used.
The initial concept from McQuarrie was solid: the big flat secondary hull was interesting, but it needed a lot more development that it never got until Discovery. I think the space/gap in the saucer is a problem of over-design, but otherwise I really like the final ship in the show. Like the Enterprise D and Voyager before it, the ship has a very different look from what has come before while still being unmistakably Star Trek.
I like that design. It clearly must have influenced the design of the Enterprise D. IMO on this pics it looks like a TOS-version of the Enterprise-D. But I wouldn’t have liked it as a refit version of the original Enterprise too.
Probert was quasi-mentored by Ralph McQuarrie, who worked up the TITANS design from a (much nicer) charcoal by Ken Adam, so it figures that the -D has a bit carried through (personally, I dislike stubby nacelles on any starship.)
I’m running a fully optimized quad core box here at my desk, and in all my 20 years in IT, I’ve never seen a more constipated, seizure-inducing pile of bloatware than that Sanstar software. It bogged down my hardware and OS so badly, it took fifteen minutes to get the Task Manager to load, and another five for it to respond once I terminated the processes. I took great pleasure in going into my control panel and stabbing through the eye with an ice pick.