New World Notes

Watch: "Let's Play Sims 4" as Streamed by... Someone's Second Life Avatar

There are copious YouTubers who stream "Let's Play Sims 4" videos and there's a small but passionate group of YouTubers who stream "Let's Play Second Life" videos, but this is a first for me: A YouTuber who streams "Let's Play Sims 4" videos through her Second Life avatar. (Watch above to see what I mean.)

"I’ve been working the last couple of months to create a platform (blog/YouTube) to experience both SL and learn about gaming through the lens of this online personality," explains YouTuber Meela Vanderbuilt. "My interest in gaming and even virtual platforms is so starkly opposite my RL career/life, so it’s just been fun to mix my interests and experience in content creation with SL... as Meela anyway!"

She does see quite a lot of overlap between how she plays Second Life over the last 7 years, and how she plays Sims 4 now:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Alma Berta Creates Pics of Epic Kawaii Cuteness

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

Alma Berta’s “Clear Blue” is a great example of Second Life anime avatars and the Kawaii aesthetic. The pose is cute and the clothing, hair, and accessories exude the femininity and amplified romanticism of Kawaii culture. I also love the blue color story, a useful reminder to the kawaii world that blue is not just for boys.

Xiola Linden's Farewell Address to the Second Life Community: Be Open To Change, Be Informed, Be Welcoming

I told you last week that the tech worker formerly known as "Xiola Linden" recently left her role as Community Manager at Linden Lab to take a similar role with mixed reality startup Ubiquity 6. As she did, I asked her if she had any last message for the Second Life community she loves so much. I put it to Xiola this way:

If the SL community asked you the best way to improve itself and make it stronger, what would you suggest?

And this is what she told me -- her farewell address as a Linden, so to speak. 

"Be open to change, but never stop questioning it. Constructive criticism is always going to be received more enthusiastically than attacks. It is very easy to get emotional about something that means so much to us. I know, from my own experiences with Second Life, that it's sometimes difficult to keep calm and Second Life on -- but I also witnessed that sort of emotional response grow into a lot of misinformation and unnecessary panic. So, it's a balance. But it is important and key, I think."

The community should also strive to be more of a community in the best sense of the word, because there's still so much potential in Second Life:

Watch: Oculus Quest Demo Virtually Recreates Developer's Apartment at 1:1 Scale, Adds Interactive Surfaces

Unity Labs developer Greg Madison created this seriously impressive Oculus Quest demo in which he mapped out* his real life apartment with a virtual, 1:1 scale recreation of that apartment -- including the flat surfaces. That way, if you're wearing the Quest, any surface can instantly become an interface for games or other interactive apps:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Sunset Theas Takes Beautifully Impressionistic Pics

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and style

Sunset Theas’ photostream is an exploratory journey of what you can do with WindLight and depth of field. The title of this shot, “they were on top, standing one in front the other, the moment before they realized there were no more floors to climb” is indicative of the way he works, integrating words with his pictures to create a deeper connection.

A Black Woman in Real Life Reflects on Being Black in Second Life

Martin Luther King Jr. day should not be the only day we think about addressing racism as it occurs in virtual worlds, so these thoughtful videos from SL blogger Emuna Zamani, a black woman in real life, are worth a watch today or any day. Emuna has a warm and chatty presence, even through her avatar, which helps her broach potentially touchy subjects in a gentle way, including:

• She argues that it's not necessarily offensive when SL skin makers don't offer black-skinned avatars, as they can take time and special effort to make well -- while getting them wrong can cause offense.
• It's not offensive "blackface" for non-black SL bloggers to depict black-skinned avatars in their images -- but it can be disrespectful/borderline blackface when those images incorporate stereotypical aspects. (Which, unfortunately, she's encountered within the SL blogging community.)

In Part 2, she addresses reader comments, including one who insists that there's no racism in virtual worlds (very much not the case), then goes on to discuss other provocative topics:

Treasure Trove for Creators: 100,000+ Classic Art Images for Free Use

Here's a treasure trove for art lovers and creators of new art including digital remixes and reboots of old art, including virtual world platforms: Over 100,000 digital photographs of great art from Paris Museums, including works by Monet, Picasso, and Cézanne,  licensed for free use and re-use. As the press release announces:

Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, and the Catacombs. Users can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work, and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image.

“Making this data available guarantees that our digital files can be freely accessed and reused by anyone or everyone, without any technical, legal or financial restraints, whether for commercial use or not,” reads a press release shared by Paris Musées.

Link via Jason Kottke, who has some wonderful examples of the art available for download and use.

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including: Avatar Smiles, VR Hype & Moore's Law

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: How To Socialize With Your Second Life Friends
• Bullet-Time Gameplay Cleverly Created In VRChat With In-World Features
• Was VR Hype Largely Driven By The End Of Moore's Law? (Spoiler: Probably)
• Why Linden Lab's Beloved Community Manager Joined Mixed Reality Startup Ubiquity6
• Second Life Avatar Smiles: Some Come From FaceApp, Others Are "Natural"

Nylon Pinkney Is Online: How To Socialize With Your Second Life Friends

Win $500 in Sinespace's Free Home Region Customization Contest!

Sinespace has a new home region customization contest that starts tomorrow, with the winner (or winners, if you work with a group) getting a cash prize of $500 from the NWN media partner.

 

Every Sinespace user starts out with a free home region, which can then be completely modified by region templates that instantly turn it into a futuristic nightclub, floating city, etc. From there you can further customize your home region by uploading your own furnishings, or buy them from the shop.

 

Here's all the details, and don't forget to share pics and video of your submission on Twitter, Instagram, or Flickr, and tag @sinewavespace. By the way, to help get you started shopping, New World Notes still has some exclusive redemption codes for 500 Gold in Sinespace -- details below:

This Weekend: SL's Legendary Wasteland Celebrates 13 Years of Post-Apocalyptic Creation & Roleplay

Photo credit/location: Teh Mayo in The Junkyard

Starting today and running throughout this weekend, Second Life's beloved and beautifully ugly Wasteland roleplay zone celebrates 13 years as a roleplay community: Here's all the details, with links to live DJ/music events and assorted fun.

The Wastelands is among the best and most creative communities of SL, and while the virtual world might seem overwhelmed by fashion and the latest mesh skin, the fact that this realm inspired by Mad Max, Fallout, and freshly deranged dystopia still thrives is a testament to its members. Here's some of my favorite Wasteland-based projects over the years:

Cajsa's Friday Fashion Foto Choice: Male Style Blogger MattNight84

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and style

I love SL’s fashion blogs. I appreciate the ones that provide information and describe the clothing, but I also love the ones that are just photos -- like this one from MattNight84.

Matt blogs men’s fashion and his blog is LGBTQ friendly, not just Frankenfurter friendly. The blog post is called Insomnia and is a serious fashion photo, but it also reminded me of something that the true star of Rocky Horror Picture Show might wear. It features a single photo with a small song lyric that suits the photo. In this case, from “Insomnia” by Caroline Polachek: 

Dreams of dried fields

That once were green

Burnt by someone just like me

The credits include all items, but I wanted to highlight what might be on Frankenfurter’s shopping list. 

• Harness and Strap Briefs:  Wilder Set by Matova
• Ripped Fishnet Tights by Bossie
• Kinky Boots by L’Emporio & PL

Next up, a great double photo from Matt!

Bullet-Time Gameplay Cleverly Created in VRChat With In-World Features

Many people assume that VRChat's creation tools are rudimentary at best, and that the world is mostly for, you know, being in VR and chatting. But young game developer Lakuza first created this pretty impressive gameplay you're watching above, with a bullet-time movement feature, as far back as 2018. It's located in a hidden portal in his music hangout world, Lakuza Lounge. (You have to complete a series of puzzles, to unlock it.)

"So the goal with this world is to be able to say that everything in this trailer is made by people in VRChat," Lakuza tells me. "In this case, every single visual thing is modeled, textured, rigged and animated by me."

 

And yes. that includes the bullet-time effect, thanks to a clever workaround:

Watch, Listen: Second Life Podcast on the Magic of the Mainland

After a hiatus, Erik Mondrian's YouTube podcast "The Avatar's Voice" is back with a thoughtful conversation with longtime SLer Bizi Pfeffer, who's been in-world since 2007:

We spoke about his travels on the SL mainland and how having a contiguous world can help foster a sense of community and discovery, especially when the spaces there are user-created; the rewards, and occasional challenges, of sharing that world with a diverse population of people from around the globe; and the impact of decentralization & open-source software development (or a lack thereof) on a virtual world platform's evolution and survival.

Funnily enough, during their interview, Erik mentions the commercial for OnLive's late-lamented streaming service for Second Life -- watch below:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Shika Chan Makes SL's Chibi Community Come Alive

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

Shika Chan has had a lot of fun with the Chitbit avatar. This is a fairly simple picture; a backdrop, a ladder, and some balloons are all there is to draw us in. That makes the avatars the focus and these avatars are particularly fun. The Chibit avatar is made by Guaran-Dou and has produced a small market of creators producing hair and accessories based on the Chibi characters first pioneered in Japan. There is a Chibit group in Flickr which is where I found Shika Chan.

Was VR Hype Largely Driven By the End of Moore's Law? (Spoiler: Probably)

I've written a lot over recent years about how the hype over VR has failed in the face of modest consumer interest, but one question has been flickering in the back of my mind since then: Why did the hype start up again in the first place, after waning in the 90s? The Oculus Kickstarter got the momentum going, but that crowdfunder didn't even raise $2.5 million -- hardly an indication of mass market interest. And to be sure, there are many powerful applications of VR for training, therapy, and prototyping, but that alone doesn't justify the billions of dollars companies like Google and Facebook have poured into the technology.

Cory Doctorow recently suggested a likely explanation that surprised me at first -- that the hype was impelled in part by the end of Moore's Law:

The period in which Moore's Law had declined also overlapped with the period in which computing came to be dominated by a handful of applications that are famously parallel -- applications that have seemed overhyped even by the standards of the tech industry: VR, cryptocurrency mining, and machine learning...

It's possible that this is all a coincidence, but it really does feel like we're living in a world spawned by a Sand Hill Road VC in 2005 who wrote "What should we invest in to take advantage of improvements in parallel computing?" on top of a white-board.

Specifically, Cory expanded to me, "GPUs! Any 3D rendering." And for that matter, offloading most VR rendering to a connected PC, or through the cloud. "And the cloud," as Cory notes, "is mostly low-cost parallel processors!"

My working theory has always been VR hype was powered by the desire to create a successor to smartphones and the Valley's attachment to Snow Crash and other cyberpunk classics depicting virtual reality as The Future. But now I think Cory's explanation is a big piece of the puzzle. After all, some VCs who've invested in virtual reality, not to mention executives involved in VR, have made a similar point about the end of Moore's Law. For instance:

Create Amazing SL Images? Share Your Creative Process With Cajsa!

This is an amazing image created in Second Life by a guy called The Friend Otter on Flickr. Was it completely taken "in camera" or does it have heavy post-processing? Is there a specific WindLight setting at play, or maybe an in-world projector? I have no idea but I'd love to know -- and I bet many readers will too!

Starting soon, Cajsa Lilliehook will start featuring more about the creative process behind the many amazing SL image makers she covers in her column. (Just like she did in yesterday's post about avatar smiles.) So if you create these images, or know someone who does, let her know! Post links in Comments or feel free to message her on Flickr.

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Luane Meo Makes Lovely Storybook-Worthy Images

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

Luane Meo produces beautifully romantic photos in Second Life that could illustrate contemporary book covers. Take “Cozy Evenings” for example, it could easily be the cover for a book about, I don’t know, a doctor settling in an inclement rural village, maybe to pay off her student loans. The furniture shows its age, but it is cozy inside despite the snow and cold outside. The candle illuminating the scene could be purely for romantic effect or a blizzard could have knocked out the power for the eleventy millionth time this month.

Why Linden Lab's Beloved Community Manager Joined Mixed Reality Startup Ubiquity6

What you're looking at above is a demo of Display.Land, a mixed reality app from San Francisco-based startup Ubiquity 6, which just hired a new Community Lead: The tech worker formerly known "Xiola Linden", who was Linden Lab's much-loved Community Manager for many years. Just settling into her new office now, Xiola sees much possibility to create unique varieties of virtual social experiences with this technology:

 

"In my experiences with the communities I've had the opportunity to work with," as she puts it to me, "I've talked to a lot of creators who have explained to me the pain points of doing photogrammetry the old way. Seeing how the Displayland app can create a 3D representation of physical spaces and items with the use of a smartphone is so exciting to me.

 

"I think about the possibilities for social experiences within those spaces and I get a little giddy. When I saw the demo [above], I was struck by the idea that artists and professionals can revitalize their workflows with this app. When I got to play with the app, I started to think about what it could mean for creative and creator communities. You can already export your captures from Display.land as a 3D model and use them in compatible 3D software -- which is very exciting for creators of all levels.

 

"Now I am obsessed with the idea of capturing vignettes of my life and how amazing it will be to experience those memories in a three dimensional way... I've already seen some community people from SL checking it out -- which is such a delight to me. I'm really looking forward to so much to come!"

 

Speaking of which, she sees much overlap between the corporate culture of Linden Lab and this much younger startup:

 

Second Life Avatar Smiles: Some Come From FaceApp, Others Are "Natural"

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

Last week in my column, I featured this photo above by Jarla Capalini. The naturalistic smile captivated me. I know mesh heads are doing wonders with improving expression in Second Life and made the mistake of assuming that was how this smile was created. However, when Hamlet posted it to the Second Life Friends group on Facebook, several people objected and insisted it had to have been done with FaceApp. I checked with Jarla Capalini in-world and she confirmed that she used FaceApp. 

So, there is an app that creates a beautiful smile, at least in this photo. However, the majority of the other FaceApp examples I’ve seen were not nearly so successful. When I talked to Capalini she explained she tried it with several photos that did not work. The original photo from her blog produced the best result -- comparison below:

Naturalistic SL facial expressions are hard to produce, but they have come a long way from the days when we would turn on talk and slow down animations to catch a smile by saying something other than cheese. If you follow that link, there is a little gif of me saying cheese with my old legacy avatar. 

But that is from SL’s Bronze Age. In the modern era, there is the Lelutka Axis HUD that allows you to move the many individual bones in the face and head to create individual facial expressions. Nastaya’s photo here (right) has a lovely natural smile.

Cassie Middles did a video that shows exactly how completely you can control facial expressions with even more control than FaceApp. She also made a video demonstrating how it works with other mesh heads. So while Jarla made her smile using FaceApp, she also could have used the Axis HUD.

Did you know there is a Flickr group for SL smiles?

That’s where I found this gorgeous smile by Peasant:

 

Why Sony Needs to Discount PSVR to $99 (Comment of the Week)

Reader Tyler D., who clearly knows their stuff, has good suggestions for Sony in the face of slow sales of the PSVR:

There's just no way around it: $299 is a lot for a console peripheral (it's more than the cost of the base PS4). Until Sony slashes the MSRP to $99 impulse buy / bundle pack-in pricing, I don't think they'll move many more units.

For people willing to spend $300+ on mid-range VR, the Quest now offers more flexibility and functionality (in an arguably better ecosystem) for ~$100 more-- as a complete standalone package.

That said, it's worth remembering that the PS4 is the 2nd best-selling console of all-time so a 5% install base isn't shabby in terms of units sold.

That all strikes me as true, and frankly I'm surprised Sony isn't so far willing to take a loss up front by deeply discounting the PSVR. (Though I wouldn't be surprised if a price cut is announced this year.) I think Tyler's right that anyone in the market for VR per se are going to consider Oculus Quest, not PSVR -- while PS4 owners not in the market for VR might still consider buying a $99 PSVR, if only because it gives them more life to the PS4 that they spent so much money on.

Bonus suggestions from Tyler for Microsoft, which has been floundering with its own VR efforts:

Top 6 Posts Last Week, Including: The Second Life of Prince Harry & Meghan

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Virtual Friends, Real War
• Prince Harry & Meghan Markle Spend First Week Of Independence Looking At Art Made In Second Life
• Watch: Trailer To Stömol, A Feature-Length Machinima Shot Completely In Second Life
• Watch: Brain-Melting Unity Demo Turns Polaroid Photos Into Slices Of Interactive, Manipulable Reality
• PSVR Sales Not Growing Much In Relation To Playstation 4 Install Base
• VRChat & Rec Room See Some Steam User Growth; Sansar, Not So Much

Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Virtual Friends, Real War

Open Forum: What Events Should We Attend This Weekend, and What News Should I Cover Next Week?

The mic is open! (Hot mic! Got a hot mic here. Check!)

Sinespace's $12,000 Prize Challenge Deadlines: Submit Out of This World-Themed Entries By Jan 15 & Mini-Game Entries By Feb 10!

NWN partner Sinespace is awarding up to $12,000 total in cash prizes in two upcoming content creation challenges, and yes, creators are free to submit content previously made for other virtual worlds like Second Life, OpenSim, etc:

• Due January 15: Create an "Out of this world"-themed interactive experience (sci-fi, fantasy, etc) for a chance to win $3000 or $2000 plus a 1 year of Exclusive Creator membership.
• Due February 10: Create carnival-type mini-games in LUA for Sinespace for a chance to win $5000 or $2000 plus a 1 year of Exclusive Creator membership. Games can be single-player, PVP or PvE, and should emphasize easy-to-play instant fun.

This is the challenge page. Here's how to apply and submit: