New World Notes

SL Fashion Friday: Style Ideas for Home Décor & Dinosaur Hunting

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Clau Dagger SL is Clau Dagger’s fashion blog, though since she often decorates the scene that provide the backdrop for her fashions, it’s a decor blog, too. I like this picture for 2020 0407 a lot. I especially like the fire hazard decor. I am always conflicted by decor full of piles of books and candles. It looks so romantic and cozy, but having once lost everything but the clothes I had on in a fire, I can’t help but I also think fire hazard. I am obsessive about fire hazards. In real life, this would give me anxiety, but in Second Life, I like it! 

Scene Item Sources:

• DISORDERLY. / Delicate Blooms / Frames / Pink (Collabor88)
• DISORDERLY. / Delicate Blooms / Books / Pink (Collabor88)
• DISORDERLY. / Delicate Blooms / Birdcage / Pink (Collabor88)
• DISORDERLY. / Sugar Berries / Cranberry Cake Slice
• DISORDERLY. / Flower Bunnies
• DISORDERLY. / Cozy Piles / Tea & Cookies
• DISORDERLY. / Cozy Piles / Donuts & Pictures
• DISORDERLY. / Marie's Treats / Scones
• DISORDERLY. / Marie's Treats / Tarts
• DISORDERLY. / Green Hedges / Loose Papers
• DISORDERLY. / Book Magic / Magical Potions
• DISORDERLY. / Book Magic / Magical Birdcage
• DISORDERLY. / Book Magic / Magical Suitcase
• DISORDERLY. / Enchanted Extras / Beast's Library Papers
• E.V.E Sunny Spells M02 - w/o Glitter
• E.V.E Flowers of the Mist

For an exciting role play scene, click here:

Multiplayer Beat Saber Becomes Gesture-Based Social VR Community

FlipperPA has a good analysis of multiplayer Beat Saber, which has evolved to become a supportive social VR community that reminds him of Second Life in its early "small town" years -- except instead of communicating via text, socialization is through real gestures:

It may be by complete accident, but it seems like they may have made the friendliest online community I have ever been a part of:

• All players can create avatars and have a name.
• Players can gesture with their hands, and you can see their heads move as well.
• There is no voice interaction
• There is no chat window.

This has led to a rich language of gestures evolving: players enthusiastically wave hello when a new player joins the game. It is common to see people clapping to the person who won the round, and the winner graciously taking a “namaste” bow. People wave goodbye, and gesture up to the center board in between songs to encourage a newcomer to select the song they would like to play next. It is incredibly friendly and warm. Has Beat Saber accidentally stumbled on a wonderful way for us to communicate in games? 

I enjoyed the solo Beat Saber for awhile but after it began to feel repetitive, gave up on it. Clearly a community of players has remained, and evolved:

Where Can NFT Art Go Now That the Gold Rush is Gone?

Above: The Mirage Gallery's display room in SpatialWeb

Here’s a question about NFT art that I’ve been thinking about lately, even before the value of the market took a huge hit: 

What will owners of NFT art actually will do with it, to justify the prices they just paid? 

With real life art, after all, people hang it in their home so they and their friends/family can enjoy it -- or on the high end, lend it out to a gallery or museum to share with the public, either for a fee, or for the kudos for their contribution. The art work is special because it's one of a kind, and people have to go to a specific place, to enjoy it. But because NFT art is usually just a copied digital image like any other copied image on the Internet, what will make it special to their owners over time?

Come to think of it, the NFT art market probably plummeted in part because that question doesn’t have a great answer. Also, because that market’s been overwhelmed by speculators who don’t really care about art as such -- a point made in this excellent essay by technologist Anil Dash, who literally co-invented the NFT.

Anil isn’t sure there's a way that NFT can remain relevant to artists, as opposed to speculators.  

“I genuinely don't know, but I hope so,” Anil tells me. “Thing is, if an artist has an audience and interest, they can usually just sell to their fans, regardless of whether the blockchain is involved. It feels like that only adds complexity.”

There may be a sustainable market for NFT art which better fits the virtual medium. For instance, the virtual portraits of great Black artists that Nettrice Gaskins creates using Deep Dream algorithms as her paintbrush:

Occupy White Walls Adds Music Streaming to Its Real Time, Collaborative Creation Art MMO

I've only casually followed Occupy White Walls, a sandbox creation MMO for PC and Mac, but now that the platform just added music streaming (trailer above, more on that below), here's a brief snapshot courtesy from Yarden Yaroshevski, CEO of OWW creator StikiPixels, via Mario Gerosa, the company press officer (who was heavily involved in the Second Life art world back in the day):

People build galleries with over 2,500 architectural building blocks, we don't allow uploading of 3D meshes.

 

Building galleries is collaborative and in real time, players can invite others to build with them.

 

We don't have [concurrency] limits 'per room'. Galleries can easily hold up to 100 players simultaneously.

 

We don't release monthly active user numbers but they are in the tens of thousands range.

As for my crux question, "Why should someone create in OWW when they could do so on a larger platform like ROBLOX or Fortnite?", Yarden's answer:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Stunning Virtual World Landscapes

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Sometimes just a spot of color can make a good picture amazing. “Even In the Rain You Can See the Colors” is just that sort of picture. The picture itself is good with beautiful clouds, that lovely line of trees and their reflections, the adorable elephants with the umbrella. But Jaguar Black did not just make it black and white. He left that splash of red and amplified everything. 

For more stunning landscapes, click here:

VRChat Now So Popular With Devs, Thousands Are Using a Compiler That Converts C# to the World's Internal Scripting Language

As another sign of the VRChat community's growing strength as a creator ecosystem, here's another fairly mind-boggling factoid:

• Like many virtual worlds, VRChat has an internal scripting language. (Called Udon, in this case.)
• However, many developers (especially those who work on a professional level), prefer to code in C#, which already runs natively in Unity (the game engine underneath VRChat).
• So much so, a VRChat community member named Merlin has created UdonSharp, a C# to Udon compiler, which he built and open sourced on a voluntary basis to serve other VRChat creators, and has a Patreon in hopes that he can keep doing that full time.
• Based on the latest GitHub stats, the UdonSharp Unity package from GitHub has been downloaded around 20,000-25,000 times.
• Which suggests, based on recent stats, as much as 10% of VRChat's total monthly active user base have tried using UdonSharp at least once.

Varneon, creator of this impressive VRChat driving sim, estimates that the vast majority of VRChat worlds using Udon were actually scripted originally in UdonSharp:

Watch: This Bento-Based Hoverboard With Sick Maneuvers is Seriously The Coolest Item I've Seen in Second Life for Some Time

Maybe I'm jaded or more recently out of the loop, but this hoverboard by Val'More using the latest Bento-based avatar skeleton tech is among the most eye-popping pieces of Second Life content I've seen in some time. I reached out to Val'More about how they created it and its amazing flip tricks, and haven't heard back. But if you want to check it out first-hand now, it's on sale in the Engine Room, a steampunk-themed shopping bazaar that's about as impressive: Click here to teleport.

Iconic "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" Photo Recreated in Second Life

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Adam Cayden and friends recreated the famous “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” by an uncredited photographer doing publicity for Rockefeller Center in 1932. This made me think of David Trumble’s “Feminism at Work” that was the desktop illustration on my MacBook until it died. I began to wonder who else had done something similar. 

And sure enough there are more, click here:

Second Life Wesbite Traffic Down Nearly 50% Since 2018, According to SimilarWeb, Likely Reflecting Strong Decline in New User Sign-Ups

Surprising stats from SimilarWeb, especially given recent Linden Lab reports that Second Life was enjoying a quarantine upsurge:

• This February, SecondLife.com earned 9.4 million visits, and in the five months prior to that, peaked at 12.7 million visits in December 2020, and averaged visits in the 11 million+ range in other months. 
• In December 2018, however, monthly visits to the site were nearly 21 million, and earned similar traffic numbers in the previous five months.
• As a more distant comparison point: In 2014, SecondLife.com was averaging monthly visits in the 16 million range.

Unlike other social virtual worlds, most of which have a mobile app and/or run on consoles and/or Steam, Second Life is still heavily dependent on its website for shopping, account management, community activity, and -- perhaps most notably -- new user sign-ups. So web traffic on the official site provides a pretty strong indicator of overall user activity, including new users.

This doesn't, however, necessarily mean in-world user activity is also down:

Watch, Listen: Minecraft Integrated With High Fidelity 3D Spatial Audio

Earphones on to hear a whole new way of experiencing Minecraft -- integrated with High Fidelity's 3D audio API. This not only makes it possible to talk with players around you on the same Minecraft server, but also experience the world itself in immersive audio, so when Creepers are groaning behind you, it will sound as if they are actually behind you, and when you're walking along a river, it'll sound like the river is literally right beside your computer, and so on: 

Today's Flickr Pick: Zynthea's Stream is a Dazzling Break from Same-Old Second Life Screenshots

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Wow! Here I was just slow-paging down again and again past competent but same-old same-old snaps of avatars in lingerie or less, when “Sans Titre” popped out with its vehement black, white, and reds and the bold avant-garde style. It was so fresh it woke me up. It is one of many intensely editorial pics from Zynthea. 

The next pic is all about the lips, check it out here:

Core Has Half a Million User-Created Projects & Over 1 Million User Accounts... But How Many Active Users?

Almost missed this tidbit in the announcement last week that Core received $100 million in funding to create a "multiverse":

After just a few months in Alpha, Core already offers more than 20,000 free games in every genre imaginable, has had roughly half a million projects started on the platform, and has amassed over one million player and Creator accounts globally.

Emphasis mine. "Accounts" are not the same as active users, and a spokesman for the company told me the company is "not revealing Monthly Active Users or Daily Active Users at this point." My guess is they're saving that reveal for a major milestone, and aren't in any particular hurry to publicly compete with ROBLOX's insanely huge user numbers.

However, we can make a fairly reliable guess of Core's Monthly Active User numbers based on how many people visit the Core web portal:

More Tips on Running Second Life on an Oculus Quest 2

Reader David Cheney recently tried out these detailed instructions for running Second Life on an Oculus Quest 2 via Firestorm ("This is a lot of fun and works pretty well!"), and added some further tips in Comments:

On my cabled Quest 2 I had to take a couple of steps I found at the VR Firestorm viewer page:

- To fix a black HMD display I created a profile for the viewer in your graphic card settings and enable FXAA. Other types of Anti-aliasing can be disabled.
- To get the stereo images to align I followed these directions using F5, F6, and F7: Set IPD to 0 (zero), adjust Texture Shift until image is sharp and focused (I ended up with 15.0 on a 4k display and 30.0 on a 1k display); adjust IPD to get a good 3D effect.
- On a 4k display the visuals are gorgeous but the mouse/hand controller/pointers are not aligned and so operation is really tough; on a 1k display the visuals are lower rez and aliased but the mouse/hand controller/pointers are aligned and operation is practical.

Kudos to the developers!

Kudos indeed. I'd love to see more VR videos of Second Life beyond the one I posted above(from Redditor "IDontUseAnimeAvatars", who helped get the VR/SL ball rolling)--if you've seen any or are shooting some of your own, please post links in Comments below!

Top 6 Posts Last Week Including: Core Gets $100M to Make a Multiverse, VRChat Gets a Crossover Game, Second Life Gets Soviet Housing

• Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2021年3月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan
• Linden Lab Unveils New Soviet Tenement-Themed Homes For Second Life Players -- Visit Now!
• Why Core Is Spending $100 Million To Make A "Multiverse" (Not A Metaverse)
• Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 Sales Claims Probably Don't Mean What You Think They Mean
• User-Made Game In VRChat Becomes So Popular It's Being Turned Into A Standalone Game For Oculus & Steam
• Catwa Head Mob Crush Perfectly Encapsulates Current State Of Second Life

Virtual Pet Rabbit Designed With Behavior-Based AI Born in Sinespace; New Addition to Growing Bestiary of Artificially Adorable Creatures

Just in time for Easter, you can buy a pet rabbit in Sinespace (a media partner to New World Notes), and unlike most virtual world pets, Buddy Rabbit is special, built on a complicated AI architecture. As seen above, Buddy can inquisitively explore an area, flee from trouble -- even doing flying spin-leaps to get away from pursuers -- and follow its owner.

Well, somewhat follow: “You see the rabbit is a wild animal and is difficult to control him exactly,” Buddy’s creator Kokostar warns me, grinning. (He's Kokostar #1902 on Discord.)

A leader in the Swiss Society of Virtual and Augmented Reality, Kokostar has been creating virtual pets in Sinespace for over a year: “I have always been interested in agents which simulate human or animal behaviors.” 

His first attempts at pets were rather mechanical, however, so he turned to a sophisticated back-end structure, to give them more life:

How to Summon Storms & Other Amazing Weather on Your SL Land

Standard weather options above -- click here for fun weather including a rain of literal cats and dogs

The Mega Weather Maker from The Really Useful Scripts Corner (a proud sponsoring partner to NWN) is a handy device for unleashing all kinds of weather scenes on your Second Life property -- including, as the creator puts it: “Blizzards, raining cats and dogs (literally), falling cherry blossoms, an Aurora Borealis, and even striking intruders on your land with lightning bolts!” 

There’s an in-world location to try her Weather Maker before you buy: Click here to teleport, and read the sign for step-by-step instructions.

Now in its 6th edition, store owner Ms. Ling was inspired to create this system, she tells me, because there were hardly any others in SL that could generate weather effects sim-wide -- and those that did exist tended to be too script or prim heavy. 

Also, she adds, “the rain always fell through the roof of your house as particles are not affected by prims.” It’s why the version 6 of the Mega Weather Maker comes with a free Really Useful Rain Resistant Roof -- see below, along with some of the fun weather effects, including cherry blossoms and the literal rain of cats and dogs:

Fashion Friday Blog: Virtual Style & Houseware Ideas from Noel Heartsong

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

“Feel Up” from Noel Heartsong’s blog gets its title from Pia Mia’s track. I love the outfit with its soft spring pastels and casual comfort that avoids looking even one bit sloppy. Everything looks so natural with the pose, her hand in her pocket, the iced latte. I love the dropped sleeve detail on the jacket, too. It probably makes it less useful in cold weather, but it’s cute. The hair clips are adorable, too. 

• Hair: DOUX - Yves Hairstyle New! @Dubai Event
• Hairclips: Aurealis. Jennie Hair Clip.
• Shirt: Palette - Foodie Tee New! @ACCESS
• Cardigan: `M.BIRDIE / Lozo Look. Cardigan RARE (Gacha) New! @Kustom9
• Pants: `M.BIRDIE / Denber look. Pants 4 (Gacha)

Noel also blogs decor as in this lovely post, click here:

Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2021年3月 Sanny Reports for Virtual Japan

Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します。

Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.

Actual Recent New World Notes Stories Too True to Be April Fool's

• Avatars without bodies riot in frantic search for new heads
• Academic speculates on appeal of mirrors in virtual worlds, ignores "To look at own boobs" hypothesis
• Milestone in AI achieved: Make Will Ferrell's Steve Butabi seem more human by comparison
• Adorable purple cloud delivers important corporate advice on UX design
• Exiled monarch starts second life with Second Life

New at Fameshed: Beautifully Detailed Waterfront Cottages (No Fooling!)

Click here today to teleport to the Fameshed event to take a look at the new offering from  acclaimed SL houseware creator (and proud NWN sponsoring partner) Dutchie: Loosdrecht waterfront cottages, which are, as Dutchie explains, "named after a beautiful lake area nearby my hometown Utrecht with marshes, grasslands & reed beds, popular for swimming and water sports."

More Dutchie details:

Linden Lab Unveils New Soviet Tenement-Themed Homes for Second Life Players -- Visit Now!

In Ebbe Altberg's Second Life, Linden Homes live IN YOU.

Click here to get your piece of the Soviet dream in the highly desired mainland sim of Milbank -- rubles or Linden Dollars accepted. Better hurry, though, avatars are streaming in by the boatload as I write this.

Official (unofficial) announcement below.

Today's Flickr Pick: Ass-Kicking Women & Amusing Ad for Avatar Skincare

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Cadwyn Daffyd is having fun. Her photostream has several adventures. I think “The Blood Rose” is a perfect exemplar of her work, telling a story over time, role-playing, having fun, and kicking ass. This seems to be part of a series of pictures that tell the story of a ronin warrior character of hers she's dubbed Lady Yoshikawa. Some are in color, some in black and white cartoon form. All are fun. 

For more ass-kicking, click here:

Why Core is Spending $100 Million to Make a "Multiverse" (Not a Metaverse)

Manticore,  the startup behind Core, a kind of Fortnite-meets-ROBLOX UGC platform, just announced $100 million in venture funding from Fortnite publisher Epic and other investors. That's not a surprise in itself, especially since ROBLOX's recent IPO made that UGC platform more valuable than top traditional game companies like Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software. What's more surprising to me is that the announcement describes Core not as a metaverse nor as a "a digital playground and community" (the company's original description for itself)... but instead, as a "creator multiverse".

Why the term change?

"We have been talking about the multiverse for a long time but didn’t use that word until the last year or so," Manticore CEO Frederic Descamps tells me through a spokesperson. "We see Core as a multitude of universes, connected or not, depending on what the users decide. Players and creators are ultimately the ones who will determine how all these worlds and universes are connected."

It's why, Descamps adds, they're not calling Core a metaverse:

Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 Sales Claims Probably Don't Mean What You Think They Mean

Quick tip on spin detection: When a company spokesperson claims their figures have "doubled" or even "quadrupled", but decline to give you specific, absolute numbers, make sure your antennae twitches furiously. So it is with Facebook's Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, recently making this claim about Oculus Quest 2 sales which are being breathlessly repeated by VR enthusiasts:

In response to [BusinessWeek reporter Emily] Chang’s question about when VR will begin to see mainstream traction, Bosworth said:

“If you look a little closely, I think it’s starting to happen right now. The fact that Oculus Quest 2—in just a few months on the market—has outsold not just its predecessor, but all of its predecessors combined, is a tremendous indicator that we are now at that point where we have broken through from the early adopter crowd to an increasingly mainstream crowd.”

This is indeed a significant milestone, especially considering that Quest 2 has only been on the market for five and a half months, while the company’s first headset launched five years ago. 

Is it though? The thing is, what a company says to a reporter is often different from what they're legally obligated to accurately state in their earnings report:

Today's Flickr Pick: A Male Ophelia & Other Delights from Hwan

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Hwan’s “My World of Make Believe” took me by surprise. When I looked at it, I immediately thought of Ophelia, the woman who drowns herself in Shakespeare's Hamlet. She has been painted many times, though often gathering flowers before drowning herself. I sometimes think painting Ophelia was a prerequisite for pre-Raphaelites. But Hwan’s picture made me think specifically of John Everett Millais’ Ophelia. In both of the pictures, the person is still alive with their necks bent back and their bodies arched. While he is more pacific, his eyes closed, they both are accepting their fate. They both lie in still waters with flowers floating around them. 

Seeing a picture reminiscent of Ophelia but with a man made me think how rare that is. There are so many Ophelia artworks, but what about drowned me? There are some, but notably, in those pictures the water is turbulent as though only high seas could drown a man unlike the still waters of a quiet pond and the many Ophelias. There are even many photographic Ophelias.

The next is a bold red, yellow, and green, click here: