New World Notes

WATCH: A Virtual Winter Wonderland in Second Life

You know in the Winter how people without actual fireplaces sometimes stream video recordings of fireplaces on their screens? This is a bit like that, except for virtual world fans who aren't living in actual snow (including, fortunately, me.)

Virtual Winter wonderful travelogue by talented machinima creator Huckleberry Hax, last seen surviving on a deserted virtual Mars colony:

Watch: SL Machinima Beautifully Captures Late Japanese-Themed Sim

Pepa Cometa created this marvelous machinima that she shot in a sim once called Follow Your Bliss -- which sad to say, is now defunct, though a Flickr group devoted to the Japanese-themed island still exists here. Pepa enlisted the dulcet voiceover talents of Japan SLer Miu Miu Miu (who is also an excellent SL artist in her own right), and used the Firestorm viewer to capture the impressive visual effects you see throughout, especially the shadows and reflections on the water:

Watch: The Hilarious Hell of the Second Life Noob Experience

This is fairly witty and fun in an in-your face way: Longtime SLer Lexy Nexen creates a new avatar named BasicAzzBecky (because of course she did) and then tries out the new first-time user orientation for Second Life noobs, semi-trolling fellow noobs who are actually noobs. We were just talking about how the SL experience of those who left is as valid as those who stayed, so here's an F-bomb heavy illustration of why that is. To paraphrase Sartre or maybe Kim Kardashian: Hell is other people's avatars.

An SL Machinima to Watch This Weekend - And an Open Forum!

Some icy and moody SL machinima from 2010 by a man named BobE Schism, based on a true story recounted by author Paul Auster in The Locked Room, almost entirely shot using in-world physical effects.

And after watching that, here's an open comment thread to say or promote anything about VR and virtual worlds, from machinima to beyond:

Watch: How to Stream Second Life as a Facebook Live Video

Today around 4:30pm SLT click here to watch a pretty cool Halloween-themed demo of an impressive video hack -- streaming Second Life as a Facebook Live video. It's a fun way to interact with Second Life content both for existing users who might not be able to log in, and to show virtual world content to the billion-plus people on Facebook every day.  A virtual window into the virtual world, in other words, from within the real world social network.

This hack comes thanks to metaverse evangelist James T. Reichert (SL name Illiastra Ascendent), who's doing this via a free program called Open Broadcaster Software. (Via Joyce Bettencourt, here's a step-by-step tutorial for using OBS,) I just did a trial run with James T.,  who's still optimizing the stream to be as lag-free as possible, which was still fairly fun. 

Via James, here's a step by step guide to using OBS for Second Life, along with a general YouTube tutorial for OBS:

Watch "Harbinger", the Scariest Second Life Machinima Ever Made

Since it's Halloween, here's "Harbinger" from 2010, one of the very best Second Life machinimas ever made, and for me by far the freakiest. Turn down the lights, put on some headphones, and click play. Created by Phaylen Fairchild, it's got great voice acting and a solid screenplay, playing off the tension of real life impinging on the virtual world. As Phaylen told me back then:

New Babbage Still Stands: 10th Anniversary Tribute to SL's Steampunk City

Victor1st reminds us in this stately montage that it's the 10 year anniversary of New Babbage, the legendary steampunk city of Second Life. To compare and contrast, here's what NB looked like in 2008, in a machinima by Loki Elliott that's among my very favorites:

Watch: Moody SL Machinima Inspired by Elon Musk's Mars Missions, Blade Runner 2049

Speaking of making excellent machinima, "Pioneers" by Huckleberry Hax has mood, style, and excellent photography in spades. It was inspired, he tells me, "Partly [by] Elon Musk's announcements about Mars colonization (it got me thinking what that would actually be like) and partly Blade Runner 2049!" But as you'll see after you see "Pioneers", Hax's Mars trip isn't as cheery as Musk might want:

Metaverse Protips: How to Make Better SL Videos With the Joystick Flycam

Brookston Holiday has been building in Second Life for 12 years. You can view his work on the SL Marketplace here and his ProMaterials brand.

There is a big problem that Second Life machinima makers run into as soon as they begin to record scenes from the virtual world. No matter how hard one tries, it’s almost impossible to make smooth camera movements using a mouse and keyboard.

If you want better quality machinima, you have a few options. You can spend upwards of a hundred dollars on a SpaceNavigator or other “3d mouse.” You can use a scripted option that may or may not yield the results you are looking for. Or you can use a built-in Second Life feature and a controller you probably already own. Here’s how:

Second Life Comedy King Soda Gnome Has a New YouTube Channel You Should Totally Binge Watch

Important PSA for fans of helium-voiced hijinx in Second Life: the avatar known as Soda Gnome (an NWN favorite) recently let me know he's moved all his wacky adventures in SL to a new YouTube which is right here and you should subscribe while you're there. He's been making SL videos for many years, so there's dozens of hilarious videos like this one above, shot in 2015 and is actually his smartass entry in a serious-minded university-minded machinima contest. Lately Soda Gnome is also taking his what-the-frick-ness to other game worlds, including League of Legends and The Sims -- as below (somewhat NSFW):