Linden Lab, the creator of the world’s most popular and prolific virtual world Second Life, released its newest creation, the virtual reality world of Sansar, to the public today.

Sansar’s open beta gives creative access to developers and artists with the tools needed to create and market immersive, social 3-D experiences. The objective of the virtual world is to provide a platform for social interaction in VR for individuals, communities, schools, studios, corporations, brands and others.

Visitors to Sansar can use the two major personal computer-tethered VR headsets — the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive — to enjoy their experience or simply view the experience through a 3-D client on Windows PCs.

It’s not an easy business despite the rapid rise of virtual reality in the last couple of years. Another social VR service, AltspaceVR, is shutting down Thursday after suffering “unforeseen financial difficulty.” The exit raises questions about the commercial viability of social VR experiences.

But Linden Lab hopes to make it easier for developers to create cutting-edge experiences. “Until now, complexity and cost has limited who could create and publish in this medium, and Sansar dramatically changes that,” said Ebbe Altberg, chief executive officer of Linden Lab. “It’s been inspiring to see the thousands of virtual creations that have already published with Sansar during our limited preview, and I’m looking forward to the explosion of creativity we’ll see now that we’ve opened the doors in beta.”

To enable these experiences, Sansar’s Atlas directory already features hundreds of immersive VR experiences. Users can find a Zen garden filled with soothing sounds, a surreal cartoon city named Valencia with colorful wobbling skyscrapers, a narrative about a child giant named Lily, and even an underwater experience with a submarine searching for lost treasures. Experiences include stories told by immersive experiences and social areas designed to look like exotic and strange locales — including a hangout spot called Omega Station for futuristic gatherings and a grand baroque hall for refined audiences.

Sansar also includes immersive experiences that mimic real-world locales or activities such as a 360-degree movie theater, an oddly realistic conference room (pictured) furnished with uncomfortable seating, and a Zen garden filled with sand plots and bamboo. Other settings and experiences include multiplayer games, recreations of historic sites, landmarks, museums and much more that can be explored, interacted with and used to build new creations.

For creators, Sansar delivers what Linden Lab calls a simplified creation and cross-device distribution service. Using an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface for editing, creators can generate social and interactive scenes using assets imported from common 3-D modeling tools or those purchased from Sansar users via the virtual-world store.

As a social VR world, Sansar currently supports around 35 concurrent avatars in each instance, with the ability to scale to an unlimited number of instances to allow creators to reach bigger audiences.

To bring avatars to life, Sansar uses a unique integration with Speech Graphics’ technology provides accurate avatar lip-syncing and facial animations, driven in real time as users speak. With motion-tracking technology and software, users will also convey body language and gestures that will be realistically mirrored by their avatars using IKinema middleware.

Just like the virtual world of Second Life, users of the Sansar social VR world can create and sell their own virtual models and designs. In the future, users will be able to create, sell and rent their created experiences through the Sansar Store.

Access to the Sansar virtual world and tools is free, but subscriptions are also available for creators starting at $9.99 a month that add additional capacity and access to customer support.

Image: Linden Lab