Click here to visit, but maybe take a shower beforehand. SL artist Kaiden Tray made this faithful recreation of the classic cinema location, complete with four free motel rooms (date night, anyone?), and the Bates mansion on the hill. Impressively, he made it from scratch, mainly using the recent TV show spinoff of Psycho for reference.
I know you're wondering if Mother is in the basement, or what happens if you step into the shower, or walk like a stupidly curious detective up the mansion stairs. Kaiden declines to answer any of that, but tells me that he plans to turn this into a full Psycho experience on its own sim.
As for now, there's some social activities.
"We have karaoke sometimes," says Kaiden, "or anyone can have their own events they just need to let me know." Because one thing you don't ever want to do is do something on the Bates estate without the owner's permission.
More pics below, including Kaiden Tray himself doing a halfway decent Anthony Hopkins impression:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
TinTin Tuxing’s “Little Daisy” just took my breath away. It is a marvelous headshot that vividly displays how showing less gives us more. Only a portion of her face is visible, but we can feel her mood and understand something about her. The use of layers to age the photo and its black and white all add to its effect. But lest you think it’s all romance and flowers and sentimentality, she provides a link to a song for her picture. And if you don’t click through to see it, you will miss half the fun.
If you are building a Metaverse which connects every possible virtual world how do you start? How do you please the person who wants to have the perfect tall dark stranger avatar rendered in 3D as well as everyone else? This was the challenge facing Linden Lab when building the avatars for Second Life at the turn of the millennium. While the default avatars could be manipulated into a huge variety of shapes and sizes using the available parameters, the results were often crude and the available wardrobe never strayed far from geeky teen hangout chic. Luckily for Linden Lab the inability of the avatar system to satisfy every whim was a huge opportunity for the entrepreneurs of Second Life.
Builders quickly realized that they could fashion shoes, hair, clothes and accessories from primitive 3D objects which could be attached to avatars to dramatically increase the gamut of styles that could be realised. Linden Lab enabled another wave of innovation by allowing animations to be uploaded which as well as allowing every conceivable dance move to fill the nightclubs of Second Life also enabled tiny avatars which either folded up the default avatar geometry inside cutely sculpted animal models or moved the default avatar under the floor so it was completely hidden and just served as a platform for a tiny replacement avatar standing on its head. Many years later Linden Lab finally allowed people to entirely replace the default geometry and textures so now it is common for not a single triangle or texel in a Second Life avatar to have been defined by Linden Lab.
But If a new virtual world is just launching, what avatar options should be available for early adopters? Jim's advice:
"In my opinion developers should make sure they provide realistic body shapes (not 2 meter tall avatars with impossibly large breasts) and diverse skin tones and facial features so that every potential user can easily build an avatar that looks like them if they choose. Some basic clothes should be provided, but these can be largely left to the community to develop."
Adding non-human avatar options open up some additional, interesting concerns. As Jim puts it:
For a user-created virtual world that's nearly 20 years old, it's difficult for anyone to create the first something in its category, but Zatch Ixchel has probably done just that: "MESHONME" is the first rap song inspired by Second Life that I'm aware of. And it's actually damn good, with a solid trap beat matched to Zatch's staccato rapping of uniquely clever rap lyrics that only SLers will understand:
I come thru with a lil sum suttin
You come thru with a Ruth to the function
Boy, you better poof, better move it or somethin
I'm bout to blow thru the damn roof with the dumb shit
Got a new suit with the HUD shit too
Only shed blood with a new tattoo
They're so on point, I thought he must also rap in real life, but he tells me no.
"I choose to do it in relative privacy/anonymity, even in real life," as he puts it. "I suppose this is because I see it as a character I am playing. To put my face on something like that would feel inauthentic. In Second Life, I don't have that issue."
"MESHONME" is very much about SL culture: "I guess I was inspired by the inherent materialism of Second Life," Zach tells me, "which complements the Hip Hop genre rather well. I also thought it would be funny to watch someone try and flex that sort of bravado and wealth in the context of a virtual world."
Nailed it. As does the video, which stars his RL wife Lucie. Full lyrics below courtesy Mr. Ixchel, who's originally from New York -- in case anyone wants to get an East Coast/West Coast avatar rivalry going.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“I Was Just a Bad Dream” is such an emotionally affecting snapshot. His shoulders are slumped, his hands are clasped, and he looks down in deep reflection. The title comes from a line in the song he links to, “Goodbye” by Apparat:
“Fold out your hands/Give me a sign/Hold down your lies/Lay down next to me/Don't listen when I scream/Bury your thoughts (doubts)/And fall asleep/Find out/I was just a bad dream.”
As you browse Freakshow Zsun’s stream, there is a strong thematic focus on heartbreak and despair. One thing about art, it is a powerful way to express and process your emotions.
A great example of music and photography complementing each other next.
A majority of Facebook employees do not believe the company is responsible for preventing misinformation about the US election on its platform. That's at least according to an anonymous survey launched last week by the development team of Blind, an anonymous messaging app for tech company staffers. With about 1500 replies registered by employees across many technology companies (100 from the social network), an overwhelming majority of 68% placed the responsibility on Facebook. But only 47% of Facebook employees placed the responsibility on their own company.
While the survey sample size is small, the response is consistent with recent reports that Facebook staff are largely not responsive to election interference on its platform unless it becomes a major PR issue:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Scylla Rhiadra’s “Queen of May” is a lovely example of light creating mood. I love how she divides the picture into three diagonals with projected light and shadow. The background is simple and abstracted into black and white so the focus is on her and the colors. It’s really a great fashion photo.
Honestly, keep social networks and virtual worlds separate. People want to keep their social networking/RL private for personal reasons while losing themselves in virtual worlds for a few hours a day/night depending on where one lives. Remember that there are people who have been stalked online by naively giving out personal info about themselves; or have been doxxed by a vengeful person seeking to create trouble for their victim(s) wherever they are.
I can attest to that last point, having interacted with several people (all women, actually) who've been stalked in virtual worlds by men who figure out their account name. Always important to remember.
However, a social network doesn't necessarily have to be a real name-driven one like Facebook -- in many case, it's better that the social network just be avatar name-driven, a great way to drive and maintain user activity.
When he was still at Linden Lab, as Jim told me recently, "The friends online page on SecondLife.com was the most visited by orders of magnitude." That is probably one of the reasons, by the way, that Facebook is integrating Oculus with its social network -- so people can tell when their friends are online in VR. (I.E. it's not just about personal data mining.)
In any case, Alicia agrees with Babbage's point that virtual world companies need to focus on player-to-player communication, if only because players tend to consume the game content incredibly quickly:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“She’s the Most” is a recent post in the Just Be You blog from Romanthomas.I love how he gave it that retro look that totally suits the style. His blog is very visual with several photos including a hilarious 1950 calendar, just in case you didn’t catch his message. He also includes lyrics to a song that suits his theme and a YouTube video embedded. In an unusual but clever move, he adds vendor pics of the items he highlighted.
Gargoyle presents his chair design to students and instructors
Industrial designer Robb Godshaw was recently set to co-teach a class in rapid prototyping at San Francisco State University, when a somewhat inconvenient global pandemic broke out.
As originally planned, students would first learn how to use CAD software, and then learn how to use to computer-aided manufacturing software to actually create a full-size wooden chair via 3D printing and CNC machining. So at the end, each student would literally get to leave class with the chair they’d created from start to finish.
That was supposed to be the “satisfying and empowering” portion of the semester, as Godshaw puts it to me, but the problem was, the university was (back last May) still in lockdown. “This made COVID especially frustrating,” he goes on. “I thought hard of what lessons students had learned in the previous semesters, and tried to find a way that some of those lessons could be learned virtually.”
But where Zoom or another online video conferencing platform might work for most other subjects, his class needed some level of in-person teaching:
“There are students whose chairs suffered from serious structural issues, craft issues, aesthetic issues, ergonomic issues, and simple scale issues, as it is very difficult to know how large the chair you are designing on a computer screen is.”
That meant “finding a tool that would allow people to move in real space with human sized avatars that would allow for sitting and chatting”, but also didn’t necessarily require a new gaming PC or a VR headset.
The online learning alternative he ultimately landed on, as you can see below, just turned 17 years old:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Siobhan Muintir recently created “Dancing With Herself” from a picture she took at a Moulin Rouge dance performance. When I highlighted her work last week, I asked how she did it. Siobhan did keep track of her steps in making it to share with readers. This was all done using the online photo editor at Ribbet.com. Siobhan does not usually track her steps. In fact, she describes her process as “oh, I’m in a rabbit hole, let’s see where this one leads.”
"The Conversation Around Content" is a new blog post from Linden Lab veteran Jim "Babbage" Purbrick, who recently left a leadership role at Oculus to spend more time supporting XR, along with many other personal pursuits. Lucky for us, he's also publishing a series of blog posts that crystalize what he's learned over the last 14 or so years, developing virtual worlds. (Including a stint consulting with CCP, the developers of Eve Online.)
This new post, he tells me, is "inspired by conversations at Facebook about how to bring virtual worlds in to social networks and by conversations at CCP and Linden Lab about how to bring social networks in to virtual worlds. The same conversation, but starting at opposite ends."
For instance, here's Babbage on the importance of player-to-player conversation in MMOs, a feature that's often overshadowed by graphics, gameplay features, and so on:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
D’Cuir “I’ll never look into your eyes again ” is such a cinematic shot, the landscape of heartbreak. And the field is fallow, though it could be the senescence that feeds the soil for future growth. She stands there in the midst of what is fallow, but I can’t help but notice that she is looking forward to a field filled with wheat for a future harvest.
Reading the Terms of Service [it] is clear that political signs are only banned on mainland advertising networks. They are not banned on private-owned parcels where the parcel owner does not act as an advertising network across multiple regions
So if I have a mainland parcel I can stick a Vote For Whoever sign on my front lawn. I can't do this on multiple parcels across multiple regions.
A road trip on mainland shows this. People continue to put yard signs out on their home parcels which is OK for them to do.
Irihapeti goes on to add this interesting if contentious point:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Justen Tyme’s Second Life is a harrowing adventure from one danger to the next if you check out his Flickr stream. Here “The Angel of Joy Attempts a Rescue” we see existential battles for life and death. Not quite the excitement of changing clothes on a platform (my Second Life) but needs must.
Next up, a negotiation with a seriously creepy corvid.
Reached just a couple hours ago at NovaQuark's studio in Montreal, lead creator J.C. Baillie confirms that the Dual Universe that’s playable now is the Dual Universe that will permanently remain -- the key features are activated, the gameplay is locked down, and there are no plans to reset its reality.
“It’s been 6 years since we’ve been working non-stop to get this baby out,” Baillie tells me, somehow sounding both haggard and enthused. “It’s very rewarding.”
Even shortly after launch, gamers are already plowing deeply into it, especially on Twitch, where one player even streamed his Dual Universe experience for 13 hours straight. (While he declines to report total user numbers, J.C. Baille tells me that “thousands [are] connected at any given time.”)
The fact that it’s persistent has actually created interesting interactions between Dual Universe streamers and players.
Unlike a traditional MMO like World of Warcraft, as J.C. points out, “where there’s sort of an invisible wall” of many different shards, someone watching a live Dual Universe stream can log in, travel to the streamer’s in-world destination, and join them on camera. (A feature Second Life users are already quite familiar with, but pretty unique to MMO fans used to sharded worlds.)
Baillie likens that to watching Game of Thrones and then somehow being able to teleport into the show and become a player in it while it’s still being broadcast. “This is a very powerful thing that’s not been explored.”
But is this metaverse for you? Here’s some assorted notes -- on avatars, system requirements its similarities to Second Life, and tips for getting started from the lead creator himself:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I Would Rather Be Overdressed! Is Ananda Heart’s blog about fashion and decor. “Davinia” is her most recent post and is very typical of her fashion posts. She likes more formal wear and is usually shown wearing gowns and avant garde fashions. She creates a composite on Flickr, but you can see the individual pictures at a larger size on her blog.
Jumo Davinia dress, new release for WIP! And Lizandra eyebrows, shown in BOM brown, new release for The Makeover Room!
In the infamous Milgram’s Experiment from the 1960s, test subjects willingly followed an instructor’s orders to apply increasingly lethal shocks on a screaming victim in another room -- despite their concern for the person’s welfare, and their own stress over having to do such a horrible thing. (Both the “instructor” and “victim” were only actors, of course, secretly working for Dr. Milgram.)
Dr. Mar Gonzalez-Franco at Microsoft Research and Dr. Mel Slater at the University of Barcelona recently recreated the Milgram Experiment in virtual reality -- but this time, instead of ordering their test subjects to shock a human victim in another room, they were instructed to electrocute an avatar displayed right in front of them. And even knowing that the victim was just a simulation, the test subjects were still traumatized:
Unlike in Milgram’s test, our participants were not deceived regarding the actual harm to the subject when his answers to the memory test were wrong—since he wasn’t a real person. Using this setup, we could ethically test how humans respond to authority.
The participants in the experiment nevertheless had difficulty with shocking the avatar: Although 85 percent of them completed the task, they exhibited measurable signs of stress. However, when we looked more closely at the actual interactions that people had with the virtual victim, we found that participants were trying to cheat, even if unconsciously, by giving cues to the avatar, signaling the right answers with a louder voice tone.
These findings were summarized in Scientific American last year, but I’ve since been talking with Dr. Gonzalez-Franco about its extraordinary implications. How is it even possible for people to feel empathy for a digital avatar?
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Rita Glad’s pictures show the same joie de vivre as this delightful astronaut among sunflowers. “I would love to live in Maud Lewis’ paintings” is a whimsical homage to the Canadian folk artist whose beautiful paintings of birds, animals, and flowers showed a spirit that was not brought down by her constant struggle with pain and poverty.
Watch SL cyberpunk doyenne Ayla Pants and her pink particle-spewing pet drone (previously on NWN here) take you on a personal tour of a new scene she recently created. It's mostly cobbled together with existing assets from other vendors, but working with 1400 land impact, she's fashioned a moody cyberpunk environment rich with implicit stories.
Her favorite element is something that's often missing from SL builds: Ambient sound.
Specifically, as she tells me, "[T]he music I was able to have playing in the little bar. I really liked the idea of localizing the music without having to separate that square of the parcel from everything else. Also being able to hear the music grow louder as you approached the bar was a really important element of realism I was trying to attain. You can't get that by having streaming music on the parcel, or separated square. The best you get there is silence to full volume once you cross that border."
Hopefully other SL creators are inspired by this to add more ambient sound. Speaking of which, here is Ms. Pants' general advice to builders on creating a great scene while working within land impact limits:
News on the future VR from Germany to keep an eye on, albeit poorly translated via Google:
Oculus glasses: Facebook stops sales in Germany
The VR data from Oculus would add a new data dimension to the aforementioned super profiles - further problems with the cartel office and European data protection would be inevitable.
In addition, there is a coupling ban in Germany, which means that the use of one product must not be coupled with the use of another product from the same company if this is already dominant in the market. In the above-mentioned judgment of the BGH, the court also confirmed Facebook's dominant position in Germany. In this context, the German market for Facebook has a unique selling point in Europe.
If the EU as a whole follows suit, imposing similar protections on data usage on its half a billion citizens, I don't see how Oculus could sustain its Facebook log-in requirement.
That might seem far-fetched, but have you noticed how, when you visit a website, you now have to click Accept to share your personal data? Even if you're in the United States, and even if it's a US-owned website? That's due to recently imposed EU regulations.
Siobhan Muintir’s photostream is a pop art lover’s delight. I guess I have to check out Misfits Dance Company and the Kul Katz. Siobhan uses layers, filters and color balancing to turn this into fabulous pop art.
Irihapeti goes on to add this interesting if contentious point: