New World Notes

Watch: SL Machinima Makes Most Literal Music Video for "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" Ever Made Possible

From Tiara Ashley comes this fun and visually impressive SL machinima music video to The Beatles' hallucinogenic classic "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (as covered by Elton John). I've seen other music videos which attempt to capture the headtrip lyrics of "Lucy" with abstract or evocative imagery, but because Tiara shot it Second Life, she was able to be incredibly literal with nearly every other line.

So, say, when you hear about being on a boat on the river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies, those skies are literally marmalade,  or about rocking horse people eating marshmallow pies -- you see actual rocking horse people. And yes, for newspaper taxies which appear by the shore...

Watch: Gender Bending in Second Life Leads to Hilariously Inevitable Results

Soda Gnome is back with his raciest, Star Trek-iest SL video yet! Last episode, the beloved helium-voiced adventurer put aside his garden gnome avatar to become a bodacious babe in a bikini, gender bending across the Second Life grid for comedic fun... until he bumped into another female avatar, and fell head-over-gnome-heels in virtual love. (Watch below.) Which means, of course, Soda now has to get his girlfriend to fall out of love with Soda's female alt avatar while also getting her to fall for Soda's male alt avatar. (Whew.)

Find out what happens above. Content warning: Excessive underwear dancing.

The end result is inevitable as it is hilarious (spoiler warning):

WATCH: Soda Gnome Gender Bends SL Avatars With Hilarious Results

Soda Gnome! The hilarious, helium-voiced avatar adventurer is back after a brief hiatus in which his old YouTube account was nuked for unexplained reasons -- and he's back with a vengeance. Watch his attempt to gender bend as a blonde babe avatar, attracting acclaim wherever he goes, contrasted with the utter fail when coming across as a normal male avatar. Things get intense (but still funny AF) when the ruse works a bit too well on another female avatar.

Speaking of Soda, he's got an open casting call for avatars of all kinds for an epic sci-fi production he's putting together -- watch:

SL Machinima Classic: Mysterious Virtual World Music Video for "Farrah Fawcett Hair"

A few years ago, someone named Trace Osterham uploaded this truly impressive video to YouTube -- a virtual world music video of Capital Cities' "Farrah Fawcett Hair" -- with great photography and editing, impressive visual effects, spectacular imagery... and then, as far as I know, promptly disappeared. (Trace's apparent Flickr also went silent around the same time.) Then again, sudden ghostings are in the nature of virtual worlds. But he or she left behind this incredible gem, easily among the best Second Life-based machinimas ever made, for which we should be grateful.

Watch: Impressive Trailer for SL's New City Sim Inspired by Cyberpunk 2077

Hey remember Drune, that amazing homestead sim with a whole cyberpunk city built with minimum prims? Hera, the creator, commissioned a trailer for it inspired by the recent viral trailer for the upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077. Shot and put together by SuperiorGurl, it's got some of the most amazing visuals I've seen in an SL machinima, with some post-production assistance via Adobe, Poser, and After Effects. (NSFW warning: While it has no graphic nudity, it's very male gazey throughout and gets decidedly porny toward the end.)

A fan of the 2077 trailer, Hera thought, "I wonder if I could come anywhere near that with SL. SL takes so much flak for having bad graphics when that is rubbish." Rubbish indeed -- watch above, and show your gamer friends.

Watch: Top Winners of 2018's UWA's Second Life Machinima Contest

The winners and finalists of University of Western Australia's annual Second Life-based machinima contest have just been announced, and here's my favorite above: "Serendipity", from machinima master Tutsy Navarantha, a frequent winner in SL machinima contests like these, a montage of gorgeous metaverse imagery and quotes from masters of the imagination. (Here's another Tutsy classic.)

Top winner is the one below - Glasz Decuir's Adaptive ResonanceTheory (ART) and Intrusion Detection System(IDS):

WATCH: Sweeping Single-Shots Through Spectacular Second Life Locations

Put your headphones on and click play:

Update, 3:00PM: Erik explains his technical and artistic process for creating these after the break.

Shot by longtime SLer Erik Mondrian, it's The Centaurs' Hall, a Second Life build by Haveit Neox. (Direct teleport here.) Erik's been using his SpaceNavigator to document SL's most beautiful places like this in a way that's rarely seen in person. Here's a couple more favorites:

If You're Still Struggling to Log Into Second Life You Can Watch This Second Life Music Machinima ft. Drake & PartyNextDoor Instead

With You - Drake, PARTYNEXTDOOR (Second Life) from Tyus Deonn on Vimeo.

No update to today's DDoS attack on Second Life as yet, so why not watch this super-stylish machinima music video by Tyus Deonn. Bonus points for the gorgeous lighting effects, the clever meta shot (you'll see what I mean when you see it), and, of course, featuring Drake and PartyNextDoor at their vibey best.

Watch a Dutch Dude Walk a Single Second Life Continent in 90+ Minutes

With an angel avatar appropriately called "HowBigisTheMap", my man starts at one edge of Sansarra, sets his map arrow to the other side, and Just Starts Walking. Unfortunately this guy's PC performance isn't super optimized so Second Life looks like it did maybe 8 years ago, but I appreciate his fortitude.

This is just a single SL continent, mind you, and actually shows how large Second Life is in relation to other open game worlds. To see what I mean, watch other videos on HowBigisTheMap's YouTube account, conveniently called "How Big is This Map?", devoted to long hikes across open game worlds. But that usually takes  30-90 minutes. (The entire region depicted in Skyrim, the grandmaster of open world games, which feels like an entire nation, is actually much smaller than San Francisco.)

I love videos like this and would love to see many more (hint hint). I'd especially love to see some with running commentary, vehicles, wackiness, and most of all, with the graphics settings turned up to full. Back when SL had a streaming service, I tried doing one on a motorcycle which ended in disaster:

Watch: SL Machinima Adaptation of Poe's Tragic Romance "Annabelle Lee"

Just in time for Valentine's, here's a pretty impressive Second Life machinima adaptation of "Annabel Lee", the tragically romantic (or romantically tragic) poem by Edgar Allan Poe. (Shot entirely in the Bella Pace sim.)