New World Notes

Strawberry Singh's Latest Educational Meme Offers Insights Both To And From SL Bloggers

 
Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

SL fashion and photography blogger Strawberry Singh routinely shares (and even starts) some of the most interesting blogger challenges and blogging memes that circulate in the Second Life community. Last weekend she got the ball rolling on yet another inspiring challenge, but this one looks like it will be producing much more than just eye-candy...

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Philip Rosedale & Team Developing Avatar Controllable with Google Glass App

This open job posted to Worklist by Philip Rosedale and Ryan Karpf of High Fidelity reveals a very interesting thing (as MIT's Technology Review first pointed out): The founders of Second Life have developed "an app for Google glass and Android phones that lets you animate your avatar by sending UDP packets to the interface client over wifi, which uses the received gyro/accelerometer data to move the avatar head and/or joints." Emphasis mine. (Because dude, whoa.) We already knew Philip and team were working on this technology for smartphones (as you can see right here), but that this is also an app for Glass opens up even more possibilities. For instance:

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Materials-Ready Second Life Fashion from FATEwear, Coming Soon to a Virtual Poolside Near You

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you're eager to take a piece of materials-enabled mesh fashion for a spin in Second Life, FATEwear is a brand worth paying attention to. Designer Damien Fate has been sharing some of his experiments with SL's Materials Project Viewer (I wrote about one of these early demonstrations/tests here), and last week he announced that his upcoming releases, starting with the supremely sexy men's swim trunks shown above, would include materials-ready versions for those interested in trying them out.

Curious? You should be...

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Oculus Rift Makes Virtual Reality a Shared Group Experience

This is a pretty funny Oculus Rift demo which illustrates a very important point about the VR technology -- it's at its best as a group experience. Watch:

I don't just mean "group" in the sense of several people experiencing the same virtual reality at the same time. I mean several people experiencing the reaction to the VR experience. Because the Rift headset is relatively compact, and because it can run on consumer-level computer hardware which also displays what the person using the Rift is seeing, people can stand around and vicariously enjoy what the person wearing the goggles is experiencing.

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Share the InWorldz Objects You Create on the Web

Dreamshare is a cool new feature by Tranquility Dexler, one of the owners of the OpenSim-based virtual world called Inworldz, and it lets you share objects that you created in-world on a web browser, like so:

Ms. Wizzy Gynoid, who told me about this bit of metaverse niftiness, explains further how it works:

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Top Seven New World Notes Posts from Last Week

• Rod Humble: Linden Lab Already Integrated Oculus Rift with Second Life, Fine Tuning It Now, Videos Coming Soon
• Why WeChat is Wonderful: The Cross-Platform Mobile Chat/Audio/Video/Social Network That'll Change the World
• Downton Abbey meets The Sims 3, Snowflake Day Special Part 2: It Takes Two to Igloo
• Linden Lab Hastily Launches Authorized Linden Dollar Reseller Program to Allow (Highly Regulated) Third Party Selling of L$
• New MMO Marvel Heroes Has Its Fair Share of Problems
• I Keep Coming Across Chinese Hotel Workers Playing MMOs
• Firestorm's New Alt. Cloud Maps Make SL Skies Awesome

Learn All About Famed SL Animator Abramelin Wolfe in the Latest Episode of The Drax Files: World Makers

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Famed SL machinima artist Draxtor Despres has released a new episode of his ongoing series, The Drax Files: World Makers, which highlights the work of virtual builders, designers, and artists from Second Life. This latest episode is all about Abramelin Wolfe, a name that should sound familiar to anyone with a taste for well-crafted avatar animations... Or Blade Runner.

The sim for Abramelin's animation store, Abranimations, is one of the first locations in SL that ever made a real impression on me. It was also one of the first to use clever building and texturing tricks to simulate reflections in puddles, which contributed to a bleak and rainy feel -- accurate to its Blade Runner inspiration -- back at a time when most of SL still felt like little more than blue skies, grassy fields, mini-malls and beaches. It was an awe-inspiring experience, and an incredibly influential build.

Abranimations remains an excellent ressource for animations and animated gadgets, so this episode is an absolute must-watch.

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Rod Humble: Linden Lab Already Integrated Oculus Rift with Second Life, Fine Tuning It Now, Videos Coming Soon

Jo Yardley has a great scoop: Rod Humble recently told her all about Linden Lab's efforts to integrate the Oculus Rift with Second Life, and they're going great:

It is up and running right now within SL but we want to make it excellent. The new work is on integrating the mouse/cursor/UI support within the Rift, this is important because real VR requires rethinking the way you interact with the world and UI to take advantage of head tracking. Hopefully we will be sharing some vids within a few weeks then get into testing after that.

Read more here, including Rod Humble's pretty enthusiastic description of the experience.

Linden Lab Hastily Launches Authorized Linden Dollar Reseller Program to Allow (Highly Regulated) Third Party Selling of L$

As earlier indications suggested, Linden Lab has just announced an official Linden Dollar (L$) Authorized Reseller Program. Currently, Resellers include AnsheX, Bulido, vForEx, VirWoX, ZoHaIslands, but the company is taking applications for others. These are no longer third party vendors indepedently handling Linden Dollars vendors freely on their own. Rather, as the announcement explains:

These sites are authorized by Linden Lab to purchase L$ on the LindeX and then resell those L$ using a variety of international currencies and payment methods. To be clear: per the Terms of Service, these resellers will not be allowed to purchase L$ outside of the LindeX (i.e. they will not be able to buy L$ back from users and cash people out). The list of Authorized Resellers participating in the pilot program is available here.

This comes less than a week after Linden Lab updated Second Life's Terms of Service to forbid trading of Linden Dollars on exchanges other than the LindeX, Second Life’s official L$ exchange. The whole thing feels very hasty and ad hoc. Here's why:

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Linden Lab Reportedly Working on Compromise to Allow Some Third Party Exchange of Linden Dollars

According to Hypergrid Business, a compromise may be in the works that will allow some third party groups to buy and sell Linden Dollars again:

Meanwhile, while some exchanges were being kicked out of Second Life by force, others received a communication from Linden Lab which also hinted at better things to come, also without any specific details. “We have approached several organizations to discuss a potential solution that would allow them to serve their customers within the bounds of the updated Second Life Terms of Service,” said the letter. “We’ll soon blog to share more information about this solution, which we plan to extend more broadly as well.”

Stay tuned, and until then, read more here.

Downton Abbey meets The Sims 3, Snowflake Day Special Part 2: It Takes Two to Igloo

Iris Ophelia's ongoing effort to simulate Downton Abbey in The Sims 3

Winter has been bleak and unforgiving at Sim Downton Abbey. The family is nearly destitute, and the biggest holiday of the year, Snowflake Day, is just around the corner. It wouldn't be Snowflake Day without a gift-giving party, but parties aren't cheap -- the cost of a proper holiday tree or even a few modest plates of cookies would put the family in the red.

But where there there's a will, there's a way... No series-appropriate pun intended.

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Firestorm's New Alt. Cloud Maps Make SL Skies Awesome

So this is not a realist painting, but an untouched screenshot from Second Life -- yes it is, yes it is:

The artist known as Whiskey Monday sent it to me, because it's the original of this image she posted on her blog right here, which is much more dramatic, because she ran it through the Photoshop paces. But don't you agree, the original looks great too? This is because she's not using the standard Second Life viewer to take the screenshot. For as she tells me:

"Firestorm introduced Vincent Nacon’s alternative cloud maps in this last release. There are four cloud tga files to choose from, and they're far more realistic and robust than the normal viewer clouds. Ziki Questi did a great blog post with examples of each type of cloud.

She's using these clouds to create a new series which is on-view in-world soon:

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Sunny Machinima About an SL Island Called Baja Norte

It's a cold and rainy night in right Shanghai now, so how about some lovely sun-dappled machinima about a virtual island called Baja Norte, which you can visit right now if you click right here. Shot by Erythro Asimov, whose tools, he tells me smiling, were "Firestorm, FRAPS and love."

New MMO Marvel Heroes Has Its Fair Share of Problems (And Nearly None of Them Were Caused by Dr. Doom)

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Last weekend I had the chance to play Marvel Heroes, an MMO that combines Diablo-esque play with a litany of characters from the Marvel universe. It'll be free-to-play right from its June 4th launch, complete with an in-game store bursting at the seams with premium content like extra characters, costumes, and powerups.

I really enjoyed playing Marvel Heroes at first, but unfortunately it didn't take long for the veneer to fade. Fans of Marvel comics (even just the movies to be honest) may be thrilled to play what's been described as a much improved version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance, but for poseurs like me who merely have vague and/or nostalgic interest in the characters this game leaves a lot to be desired. For instance...

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Linden Dollar Third Party L$ Exchange Survey Results: 28% Report Moderate to Heavy Impact on Their SL Usage. Also, SurveyMonkey Sucks.

Here's the first 100 votes from yesterday's survey on the impact of Linden Lab forbidding third party exchanges trading in Linden Dollars. Of those who took the survey, 28% say this policy change signifies a "Heavy" or "Moderate" impact on their Second Life usage. That represents a significant minority of the userbase. Based on reader Comments (and common sense), users who stand to suffer most are in areas where PayPal is inaccessible (such as much of Europe), since this is the service Linden Lab uses to cash out Linden Dollars on the official exchange. As one reader, vandamian, writes:

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Why WeChat is Wonderful: The Cross-Platform Mobile Chat/Audio/Video/Social Network That'll Change the World

"WeChat is going to change the world!", says my colleague Lisa Hanson, renowned expert on China's virtual goods market, and I tend to think she's right. It's a cross-platform mobile chat service first launched in China now rolling out to the rest of the world, but just saying that doesn't quite convey how big it already. Now with about 200 million active users, it's rapidly gaining on its closest rival, Whatsapp -- but like I said, it's not just a chat service. I started using it in China because most of its users are here, and it's already kind of a social necessity. When you meet people socially in Beijing and Shanghai, likely as not you'll pull your mobile phone out, launch WeChat, and show your WeChat QR code, so they can automatically add you to their communication network. (Speaking of which, I'm "wjamesau" on WeChat, if you want to connect.)

Besides text chat, it also has asynchronous audio chat -- meaning, you can send audio and messages to people in your contact network. This is better than texting in many cases, and opens up more use cases beyond chat -- for instance, I've used WeChat as a English/Chinese translation tool.

Wechat also has a social network so you can share updates and photos with your friends, and most NWN readers will love the fact that you can create an account without having to share your real world details. (Far as I can tell, you don't have to display your real name, or even show a real photo in your profile.)

And oh, did I mention WeChat has a booty call? I'll let my friends Andrew Leonard and Henry Fong explain:

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Upcoming Puzzle Game Road Not Taken Might Look (And Sound) Familiar to Fans of Defunct Virtual World Glitch

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Spry Fox, the indie publisher behind the addictive multi-platform puzzle/strategy game Triple Town, has been working with two Tiny Speck alums to put together Road Not Taken, a puzzle game inspired by Robert Frost coming later this year. If the aesthetic style in the image above looks familiar, it's because the game's art has been in the hands of Spry Fox's art director Kukubee (a.k.a. Meowza), who also helped realize the distinct and darling visuals of browser-based MMO Glitch.

It's not just the art that should inspire nostalgia in the hearts of Glitch-lovers, though...

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Survey: Is Linden Lab's New Policy Forbidding Third Party L$ Exchanges Affecting Your Second Life Usage?

Update, 5/15: Survey is over, thanks to all who took it!

Linden Lab's new policy forbidding third party exchanges from trading in Linden Dollars (apparently for US Treasury regulatory reasons) has led to over a dozen such services closing down, with the company reportedly sending out warnings to them that begin, "As an operator of a third party exchange, you should cease facilitating L$ trades on your exchange immediately to comply with the Terms of Service". The move has definitely caused some user anger(see this comment thread), but I'm curious how widespread the impact is being felt. Here's a snapshot survey to measure just that.

Results published next week, but please discuss now in Comments below!

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These Historical Second Life Headdresses from Illusions Are Fit for a Virtual Queen

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Whether you enjoy decking your avatar out in historical fashion or you just like keeping a stock of fantasy-chic items on hand, Siyu Suen's latest release at Illusions should be of great interest to you. Siyu's just come out with two mesh headdresses (French Hoods, to be precise) which until now have been surprisingly hard to find in Second Life. They're a staple of Tudor-inspired costuming, but I bet even a particularly inventive Gothic Lolita fashionista could make these pieces work, especially with all the different scripted color and styling options available.

Siyu has had a very high output lately as she's been working on a series of commissions, including these hoods, most of which are also being released at her shop. Her Plurk feed has been full of tantalizing sneak peeks of the gorgeous work that's still to come, so anyone with an eye for the unusual should be paying close attention to Illusions in the weeks to come. You can pick up the french hoods (and much more) there right now [SLURL] [SL Marketplace]. 

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I Keep Coming Across Chinese Hotel Workers Playing MMOs

I was on my way to a bar in the sky above Beijing when I came across this guy in the hotel's very posh lobby playing an MMO like his life depended on it. When my friends and I left the bar, he was still there, going at it. This might not seem totally strange, except to judge by his tie and badge, I'm guessing he was actually a member of the hotel staff. Then again, it was quiet in the hotel by then, so why not get in 15 minutes of grinding during the downtime? Except this was more like an hour, because after we had a drink and were on our way out, he was still there, grinding away. (To judge by the UI and art, it was World of Warcraft. Guess someone didn't tell him WoW is supposed to be losing users in China.)

Even all this would not seem totally strange, except when we got back to our hotel, the clerk there who was supposed to be working the front desk was also grinding away on another MMO. (On a hotel computer, no less.)

Now, I know MMOs are extremely popular in China, with active users in the 20-40 million range (yes, really), but it's something to see this first hand, so right out there in the open, while even on the job. I could have just randomly ran into two extremely hardcore gamers in the space of 30 minutes, I suppose, but I doubt it. Instead I'm more inclined to see this as a sign of the genre's continued, incessant popularity in China. (Even as mobile MMOs quickly begin to gain in this category.)

And the bar in the sky? It really is, because it's on the 80th floor, and your ears pop in the elevator while you're going down. You can seemingly see just about all the mad glory of Beijing from that height, even from the urinal.

Yes, the urinal. Look:

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Top Seven New World Notes Posts from Last Week

• Did Linden Lab Change Its Terms of Service Around Second Life Currency to Comply With US Treasury Guidelines?
• Dear Internet: If You Must, Harass me for What I'm Doing -- Not for What I Am
• I Avoided Second Life Drama and Met My Real Life Fiance Instead
• Nian Design's Affordable Solution to One of SL's Oldest Avatar Issues
• Virtual Currency Legal Analyst: Linden Lab Has to Comply With New US Treasury Guidelines or Face Criminal Penalties
• Strangelings Virtual Pets Auction for Up to $30 in Real Cash
• Downton Abbey meets The Sims 3, Snowflake Day Special Part 1: A Song of Ice and Fire Alarms

State of the Av: The Virtual Future's So Bright, I Need to Wear Cybershades

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

This month an item I'd been waiting ages to get finally came out. Even better, something I didn't even know I needed came out alongside it... Lucky me, the pair happen to coordinate perfectly together. I've mixed them in with some oldies-but-goodies for my SL avatar's current look, so here's the full breakdown:

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Second Life's 10th Birthday has an SL Photography Contest

Second Life is nearing its official 10 year anniversary (even I can't believe it's been that long), and the SL10B team is running a photography contest to help celebrate. Theme is “Looking Forward, Looking Back”, which tempts me to go through my screenshots of 2003. Go here to read all the rules and submission guidelines.

Virtual Currency Legal Analyst: Linden Lab Has to Comply With New US Treasury Guidelines or Face Criminal Penalties

Virtual currency legal analyst Alex Kadochnikov adds more context to Linden Lab's apparent move to comply with new US Treasury guidelines by forbidding the trading of Linden dollars (L$) on exchanges other than the official LindeX. As part of the guidelines, the company must register as a Money Services Business, and the penalties for not doing so are pretty steep:

Any company that issues or exchanges virtual currency must register with FinCEN, either by themselves or through their agent. Linden Lab will have to register. Linden Lab issues virtual currency. No surprises there... Once the statutory six month period for when virtual currency money transmitters must register, the government will be able to start prosecuting people who do not comply.

Here come the penalties, stated right in the regulations:

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Dear Internet: If You Must, Harass me for What I'm Doing -- Not for What I Am

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a charity streamathon, an event where people essentially play games for an online audience to raise money. I was playing and watching others play alongside a slew of outstanding guests. We raised a hell of a lot of money for an incredibly worthy cause, and the whole thing was a resounding (if exhausting) success. I'm not going to name the event here -- though it's not hard to figure out -- because this post isn't about the streamathon. We contributed to something amazing, and nothing can or should change that.

This post is about the creeps and the jerks; the ones who donate under names like "JanineMakeMeHot", who look for any opportunity to embarrass a woman no matter what the context, who may even think they're being flattering. The people who left their bitter little marks on an otherwise amazing event.

For all I know, this post may be about you.

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Strangelings Virtual Pets Auction for Up to $30 in Real Cash

Strangelings, the cross-platform virtual pet game from Linden Lab veterans, has gained nearly 2,500 players since launching last month, and recently launched an Auction House where players can sell their pets for real money. Most recently, one pet went for USD$30.

"The Auctions run live with real-time chat and live bidding with the seller making money from their animals," Strangelings head developer Chris Collins tells me. "Strangelings could be the first casual game that offers this kind of capability." (Offhand, I think that sounds right.)

As I said, Strangelings was founded by Linden Lab vets, most especially Collins, who was an executive during Second Life's salad days. And he's learned a lot from those times that he's applying to Strangelings, he tells me:

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Chinese Art Installation Makes Virtual Worlds Real

Yesterday at Beijing's famed 798 art space, I stopped by the Long March gallery expecting to find an installation or two, and walked into a virtual world instead. Movement Field by Xu Zhen turns the entire warehouse-sized space into a virtual world, with hills covered in real grass and stone trails, topped by virtual fires, psychedelic Buddhas, and other strange sites, which are actually images taken from the Internet, blown up extra-large, and put on foam boards. So basically, it's a material version a virtual world that remains virtual all the same. Or as the program calls it, a "utopian space composed of multiple real movement-related itineraries... a memorial, which questions past and future commemorations... a place for infinite spiritual quests."

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Downton Abbey meets The Sims 3, Snowflake Day Special Part 1: A Song of Ice and Fire Alarms

Iris Ophelia's ongoing effort to simulate Downton Abbey in The Sims 3

Winter is coming.

... Actually, it's already here; the abbey grounds were enveloped in a thick layer of snow almost overnight. The scenic ponds and rivers may have frozen over, but the heat is on at Sim Downton. Although things seemed to be going relatively well a series of unfortunate events have put the Crawleys in crisis just in time for the holidays, and even I'm not sure they'll be able to escape it unscathed.

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Did Linden Lab Change Its Terms of Service Around Second Life Currency to Comply With US Treasury Guidelines?

Linden Lab has updated Second Life's Terms of Service regarding Linden Dollars, the world's official currency, in a way that will impact third party sites which exchange L$ for real money or other virtual currency, including Bitcoin. In the new Terms of Service, however:

[T]o better protect Second Life users against fraud, the updated Terms of Service make it clear that trading of Linden dollars (L$) on exchanges other than the LindeX, Second Life’s official L$ exchange, is not authorized or allowed.

The given reason seems strange on its face, because Second Life users have been able to exchange Linden Dollars for real currency on third party sites since 2004. (See Gaming Open Market.) If fraud was really the concern, why do so only now? According to SL blogger Vaki Zenovka (who describes herself as a lawyer IRL) Linden Lab is really doing this to comply with new guidelines on the regulation of virtual currencies by the United States Treasury department, which I blogged about last month. Here's the problem, as Vaki puts it:

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Ink Innovation: Nian Design's Affordable Solution to One of SL's Oldest Avatar Issues

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

For nearly a decade, SL tattoo makers have had to respond to one irritating and ignorant request day after day, week after week. "Can you make a single-arm tattoo?"

No, they couldn't. They really couldn't. The limitations of the avatar itself stood in their way. But mesh has opened a lot of doors and solved a lot of problems for SL creators, including this one.

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Strange and Beautiful SL Machinima from William Weaver an Egyptian Artist

OK this is among the most excellent Second Life machinimas I've seen in quite some time, so you should darken the lights and just click play:

It's shot by an SLer named William Weaver Eslam T2 (known as TheT2Day on YouTube)... at least I think so, because the video description is in Arabic and Mr. T2 is apparently Egyptian. I've never seen any of his machinimas before, but this is someone with talent and technical skill to burn. To wit:

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Cloud Party Marks 1 Year Anniversary With $1K Art Contest

Cloud Party is marking its first year of operation with a 3D virtual art contest, which is being judged by the editor of Artinfo magazine, with the winner taking a cash prize of $1000. Read all the details here. With that kind of money, the winner could rent a 500 meter x 500 meter Cloud Party island for almost an entire year. (Or alternately, they could spend that $1000 to cover about three months rent of a Second Life sim.)

Looking Forward to This Month's Collabor88? Here's Why You Should Be!

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

The 8th might be my favorite date, because that's when Collabor88 throws open its doors for a new round of cleverly themed shopping every month. Collabor88 May will be open to the public this Wednesday, but many creators are already teasing what they'll have on offer for this round's Rain or Shine theme. Keep reading to see what's in store!

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I Avoided Second Life Drama and Met My Real Life Fiance Instead (Comment of the Week)

Second Life social drama and negativity can drive people away, as illustrated by last week's Comment of the Week, but in response, Sylea Sygall offered her own very contrary perspective, which is just as worth sharing if not moreso:

"I joined Second Life strictly out of curiosity in May 2008, very quickly met an excellent group of people who showed me how to navigate around the world, and in June of 2008, unexpectedly met the man who became my fiancee and after 5 years of long distance romance, facilitated by our 'life' in SL, I am marrying (in real life) this September.

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Top Five New World Notes Posts Last Week

My post on the open source artificial life project known as OpenWorm got a nice mention in Boing Boing, where it was picked up by the BBC and also PopSci. Other posts especially worth reading (if you haven't already):

• Linden Lab Looking at the Oculus Rift for Second Life Now: One Insider Weighs Its Pros & Cons
• Google's Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen Think Virtual Reality Will Become More Commonplace, Online Identity Less Anonymous - They're Half Right
• There's a Lot to Hate About Ultra-Trashy Sci-Fi MMO Scarlet Blade, So Why Don't I Actually Hate It?
• I Largely Left Second Life to Avoid the People of Second Life (Comment of the Week)

Watch It This Weekend: The Drax Files: World Makers Meets SL's Live Music Scene in Episode 5

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you're looking for a little light viewing this weekend, the latest episode of talented machinima-maker Draxtor Despres' ongoing series is up and ready.  

The Drax Files: World Makers offers you a look at the faces behind the avatars that have made he virtual world of Second Life what it is today. From builders, to designers, and even bands like Engrama, the subject of newly released episode 5:

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Whiskey Monday Depicts RL Milestones With Her SL Art

In some of her latest blog posts, the SL artist known as Whiskey Monday (who I profiled here), illustrates important real life events through her medium of finely crafted and choreographed Second Life screenshots elevated to pop art. I won't spoil her story by saying what those milestones are, but you can read the first here, and the second here.

There's a Lot to Hate About Ultra-Trashy Sci-Fi MMO Scarlet Blade, So Why Don't I Actually Hate It?

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Today I want to write about something I've been wrestling with for a few weeks, a new MMO for mature audiences that makes me feel very... conflicted. I'm not quite sure where I stand when it comes to Aeria Games' Scarlet Blade. So far most of the coverage of this game has either focussed on how appalling the avatars are or how awesome they are, but few people have tried to engage with it beyond that. The avatars certainly are... something else... but they're barely the tip of the iceberg.

I played Scarlet Blade for the first time a few weeks ago, and since then I've been struggling to form a solid opinion about it. I feel almost guilty about my continued ambivalence. There are a lot of reasons to hate Scarlet Blade... So why don't I? (NSFW)

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Linden Lab Looking at the Oculus Rift for Second Life Now: One Insider Weighs Its Pros & Cons

Linden Lab is planning to integrate the Oculus Rift VR headset with Second Life, as I reported last week, and staffers just received a dev kit. Some developers like it, an insider told me, "others do not." As for Linden CEO Rod Humble? "I hear that Rod falls in the 'like' category." So now, my source adds, "I expect we'll try to get it working in SL just to see how it looks."

So far, this insider went on, some Linden developers are seeing some pros and cons with the Oculus Rift, especially related to Second Life. It does cause dizziness in some, for one thing, but rendering quality is good, for another. Here's the full breakdown:

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"Second Life", LA Art Gallery Show Inspired by Second Life

"Second Life" is the name of a new show at the CB1 gallery in Los Angeles by Lisa Adams, a painter of some renown, and yes, it's inspired by Second Life itself -- or more specifically, as the gallery write-up explains, "the performance art of Jon Rafman, whose avatar Kool-Aid Man bedevils the simulated online game, Second Life." You can also see the paintings from the series online here; they're pretty striking. Rachel Kennedy, editor-in-chief of digital arts site Moholy Ground and the art scholar in our household, puts it more eloquently than I ever could:

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Game Dev Tycoon Offers Surprising Insight into Game Development... Especially If You've Pirated It

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

There's a new indie game in the spotlight this week, but it's not there for the reasons you might expect. At first blush, Game Dev Tycoon by two-man team Greenheart Games might seem like a simple clone of Kairosoft's wildly successful Game Dev Story (which is not quite fair, for reasons I'll discuss later) but it's the game's anti-piracy measures that have been turning heads more than the game itself.

This isn't the first time that developers have added entertaining features to their game specifically to punish pirates, but in this case it's the sheer irony that makes it stand out. Pirates of Game Dev Tycoon may not notice any difference in their game at first, but gradually software piracy increases until their studio will inevitably go bankrupt from dwindling prices and insurmountable theft rates. Of course Greenheart Games only tipped their hand on this recently, sharing forum posts from players ironically lamenting the effects of piracy in their games, and even asking if they can research DRM. It's well worth reading Greenheart Games' own post on the subject for a full summary.

However, with so many people talking about Game Dev Tycoon, not many of them are really talking about Game Dev Tycoon. Is it any good? Is it just a Game Dev Story clone? Here are my thoughts:

An Open Source Artificial Life Project Called OpenWorm

OpenWorm is a very cool project that also scares me a little bit: a collaborative, open source attempt to construct an artificial life form -- a simple worm, computationally created from the cellular level to a point where it's sophisticated enough to solve, as the site explains, "basic problems such as feeding, mate-finding and predator avoidance". This would be the first digital life form of its kind, but if the project is successful, more sophisticated species are sure to follow.

I first heard about this open source project because OpenSim pioneer John Hurliman recently joined OpenWorm's development team, helping with improving the code's deployment processes. "In the future I'd like to help with the physical and neural simulation aspects," he tells me. "It strongly overlaps with the simulation research I did at Intel, even though we were virtual world/avatar focused, for the implementation the theory is equally applicable to a project like this."

How's progress on the worm itself going?

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Google's Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen Think Virtual Reality Will Become More Commonplace, Online Identity Less Anonymous - They're Half Right

This is a thought-provoking trailer to The New Digital Age, an upcoming book by Google execs Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, and it's very interesting that they describe the future of the Internet as a "virtual world":

One point seems off to me:

Five billion people are expected to come online during the next decade as information technology becomes even cheaper and more widely available. At the same time, virtual reality will become more commonplace and online identities will become less anonymous and more valuable.

Emphasis mine. They're probably right that VR will be more common, though my money is on technology like the Oculus Rift versus the augmented reality of Google Glass, which still has the a-hole problem to contend with. In any case, the idea that online identities are moving toward more anonymity seems wacky on its face. Here's why:

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Why Do I Blog? SL Blogging Community Meme Asks The Big Questions

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

There's a new meme working its way around the blogging community right now that has writers answering the big questions about why they do what they do. Strawberry Singh brought it to the SL community last week after spotting it on a RL blog, and since then there has been an explosion of responses. Several so far stand out, including Anya Ohmai (easily one of my top 3 favorite SL bloggers), and Opal Lei (writer and photographer behind adorable snapshot blog "Where's Dim Sum?").

It's tempting to make this a post listing my favorite responses to this meme, but that would ignore the question altogether...

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Oculus Rift + Kinect = Awesome Real Time 3D Environment

So a dude called "PlayerDuce" on YouTube recently uploaded this video which shows him using the Oculus Rift in conjunction with the Kinect. He uses the Rift's sensor for head rotation, while his Kinect generates a 3D point cloud environment around him. Watch:

I haven't quite wrapped my head around how he does this, but it seems to create a 3D world (abstract though it may be) in real time, displayed around the user. Mr. PlayerDuce sees some interesting applications to this tech:

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Mr. Bones' Titanic Machinima Will Make You Laugh Your Bony Ass Off

When we last saw Ole "Mr. Bones" Etzel, everyone's favorite skeleton was singing bluegrass. This time, he's stranded on the arctic sea, and Leonardo DiCaprio is nowhere near to saving him. But hang on, help is on the way, or something:

See many more Mr. Bones episodes here. "The fifth episode of Mr. Bones," Mr. Etzel tells me, tongue-in-skull, "was strongly inspired by a classic of messed up navigation:

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Build Up Your Real Vocabulary to Match Your Virtual Wardrobe With This Awesome New Fashionista Blog

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you've ever wanted to know the difference between a pleat and a pintuck, there's a new project by a group of experienced SL fashion bloggers that might be worth your time. The A to Z of Fashion Writing, a blog spearheaded by Cajsa Lilliehook among others, aims to inform fellow fashionistas and bloggers alike with illustrated lessons on crucial fashion vocabulary. Why is a solid fashion vocab so vital even when all the items in question are virtual? Well...

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I Largely Left Second Life to Avoid the People of Second Life (Comment of the Week)

Discussing her reasons for minimizing her use of Second Life, reader Savoree LeDesir offered one I often hear from others: Exhaustion with the negative social experience in Second Life. Here's how she describes it:

"Part of the appeal of Second Life was that it promised to fulfill that lifelong dream of many - the ability to 'reinvent oneself,' and, at least for a moment, to escape reality and experience the fulfillment of one's ideal self. After several years of dealing with trying to deal with constant technical difficulties, in-world politics, relentless cyber-bullies (as it turns out, a lot of people reinvented themselves into the kids they hated in high school), and a 'community' of people who are all trying to be something other than who they really are, many have become disillusioned with the whole premise of this type of virtual experience...or perhaps they've simply outgrown it.

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I Like That Reddit's Oculus Rift Group Likes the Idea of Second Life Running the Oculus Rift

Nice to see the folks in Reddit's Oculus Rift group enjoying our post on the Rift coming to Second Life. (It was even a top post in the subreddit last week.) Reading through the comments, it occurs to me that this might be a way for hardcore gamers to give Second Life another try (if they've given it any try at all). SL has never performed well enough to attract a large group of FPS or MMO gamers, but the gamers interested in the Oculus Rift, like this guy, might be willing to see it as a virtual reality platform: "I've never tried SL, but this might cause me to give it some thought. I want this to be OASIS, but I suspect I'll be pretty let down." Another Redditor, more bullish:

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