New World Notes

New in Sinespace: Massive 20 Square Mile Region With Free-to-Play, Physics-Enabled Vehicles for Up to 100 Simultaneous Drivers & Pilots

The new Archipelago region in Sinespace (a proud New World Notes media partner) recently opened up, and it’s a whole massive mini-world for people who love vehicle sims of all kinds:

• It’s about 20 x 20 square miles of land/water mass -- completely seamless from end to end. (Yes, with no region crossings.)
• Up to 100 people can simultaneously explore and socialize in it at the same time.
• It comes with free-to-play demos of physics-enabled vehicles: A jeep, and a very realistic stunt (last featured here.)

To play, download the latest Sinespace viewer here and search “Archipelago” in Explore. I just gave it a whirl myself, and was pretty impressed by the region design and the vehicle physics -- it’s just fun to go blasting around the island chain at top speed, seeing the sights, crashing a lot, and it will be even more fun when large groups of players are doing so. (There’s also vending machines to buy copies of the vehicles to use anywhere in Sinespace, of course.)

Built by Carsten Stark, who creates Sinespace experiences with his real life wife who he first met in-world, the Archipelago is his vision to create vehicle-loving social groups in Sinespace:

Look: More Fun Turning Avatars Into "Real" People With Artbreeder AI

In case you missed it, here is Ugleh Ulrik's tutorial for using the AI-driven platform Artbreeder to transform avatars. If you have questions about his tutorial, clickthrough here to ask him on YouTube.

On Second Life Friends, a large Facebook group for SLers have been using this tutorial t0 turn their avatars into "real" people. With permission, here's some of my favorite before/after pics:

New From Dutchie at Fameshed: Outdoor Shower For RP & Photography Fun

Dutchie, the much-loved creator of virtual houseware/lifestyle items and proud NWN media partner, has a fun new item now available at this month's Fameshed event: An outdoor shower with many customizable options.

Click here to demo it in-world at Fameshed. More details below:

Fashion Friday Blog: Visit Nymphanium for Stylish SL Shopping Tips!

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

“Crush on You” is such a delightfully sassy picture and outfit, I could not resist checking out the rest of EunWoo’s [Astrearosu] blog Nymphanium. It’s the sassy pose that really makes the look for me. 

• Hᴀɪʀ﹕ Sᴡᴇᴇᴛᴇsᴛ Hᴀɪʀ ﹟Rᴀʀᴇ [AMITOMO]
• Bᴇʀᴇᴛ﹕ Bᴜɴɴᴇʜ Bᴇʀᴇᴛ [STOIC]
• Eʏᴇs﹕ Aᴅᴀ Eʏᴇs﹣Lɪɢʜᴛ Gʀᴇʏ [S₀NG]
• Eʏᴇʟᴀsʜᴇs﹕ Rᴇᴛsᴜᴋᴏ Lᴀsʜᴇs [EVERMORE]
• Sᴋɪɴ﹕ Sᴇʀᴇɴᴀ Sᴋɪɴ﹣Gᴇɴᴜs﹢BᴏM [AVOIX]
• Cʜᴏᴋᴇʀ﹕ Rᴇᴅ Fʟᴀᴠᴏʀ﹣Lᴏɴɢ Cʜᴏᴄᴋᴇʀ [MIWAS]
• T﹣sʜɪʀᴛ﹕ Eᴠᴇ T﹣Sʜɪʀᴛ Lᴇᴍᴏɴ [ASTEROIDBOX]
• Sᴋɪʀᴛ﹕ Vɪᴄᴋʏ Sᴜᴇᴅ [ADDAMS]
• Pʜᴏɴᴇ﹢Pᴏsᴇ﹕ ISᴛᴜɴPʜᴏɴᴇ [STUN POSES]

For a look to run away in, click here:

Can Second Life Ever Grow Again? A Veteran Game Designer Has Some Very Good Insights

Pictured: Alexia in High Fidelity (as a cloud)

Rather than write yet again about what went wrong with Second Life way back when, I recently asked veteran game designer Alexia Mandeville what could go still go right.

She's in a very good position to offer her perspective: An SL user herself back in the day, she's now a designer at Niantic (creator of Pokémon GO, the massive AR-based virtual world), and a designer on the early iteration of Horizon, Facebook's social VR world. Even more pertinent, she was also a UX designer at High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's follow-up virtual world to Second Life. She sees a shared corporate culture to that startup and SL developer Linden Lab, which has hampered consumer adoption of both their virtual worlds:

"[A]cquisition was never a strength at these places," as she puts it. "You need a strong aesthetic style (Minecraft/Roblox/Fortnite) and the ability to communicate your use case articulately to attract mainstream people."

So what are her recommendations to Linden Lab, to grow the Second Life userbase when so many previous attempts by the company have failed?

Ms. Mandeville makes four key suggestions:

These Urban Landscape Photos Are Actually Screenshots from Second Life

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

Some people concentrate on shooting raw, unprocessed screencaptures in Second Life. There are groups that feature unprocessed photos, though I think in some of those groups, people misunderstand the meaning of “raw.” There is no such problem with SL Unedited where I discover Thierry Tillier’s lovely “Landscape.” For someone from farm country, that sky is a harbinger of disaster. With the bare trees it must be late fall so the fields should be ready to harvest and at the most vulnerable to hail storms. I am crossing my fingers the hail passes by. 

The next picture is literally named SL art, if you can’t resist that, click here:

Watch: New Gameplay Tests of Seed MMO Gives Us Glimpses of Building, Fighting, Exploring -- And Unexpected Social Emergence

Here's a new look at the latest gameplay test of Seed, the ambitious planet colonization MMO from Klang Games, featuring resource-gathering, world exploration, combat, and more. I'm somewhat biased but so far I'm admiring the streamlined elegance of the user interface and the art. Klang's Sabrina Seltenreich tells me the team is already seeing some interesting, unplanned player emergence, even in these early play trials: 

"We had put several people into the same world, and asked them all to work towards an individual goal of processing resources and building certain machines for their own progression," she tells me. "Everybody had their own little base and a container, which other players couldn't access or interact with. Still, after a short amount of time, they figured out that they could put items into the Kernel and other people could take them -- so they started to share resources, which wasn't something we had planned for or expected." (That was during a previous test, not the one featured in this new video.)

 Seed's Discord server is also becoming an integral part of players' experience of Seed: 

Whiskey Renaissance: After a Long Absence, the Acclaimed Metaverse Artist Returns. In a New World Notes Exclusive, She Speaks on Her Latest Works

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

Editor’s note: After a hiatus that lasted most of last year, acclaimed metaverse artist Whiskey Monday recently returned to Flickr by storm, creating and uploading dozens of amazing images. 

“I usually work through creative stuff by writing,” she says of her relative absence. “When I hit a writer's block, I turn to photos in Second Life to kind of play around with some ideas and clear the junk from my head. So if you see that I take long periods of breaks between photos, it’s usually because my writing is going well. When you see me in SL taking pictures, you can be sure I have writer's block.” 

Cajsa appraises Whiskey’s latest work, and speaks with the artist below. - Hamlet Au

I love Whiskey Monday’s “Calm and Sunny” (above) in part because it is such a shift in tone and color from her usual work. Change can be exciting. However, I perceived it as part of a theme of revealing the facade or piercing the fourth wall because there were other unmasking pictures such as “Present Tenses,” “Painted Deserts,” and “Touched in the Head.” 

I asked Whiskey about the fourth wall. Well, what I saw and what she said were very different: 

“Was there ever a fourth wall? My intent is now, and has always been, to express something I'm having trouble expressing in other ways. My work is selfish; it's less for the viewer and more for me. I get a phrase or a quote stuck in my head and sometimes it makes its way into my writing and other times I can only get it out in SL photos. Sometimes the subject is more universal than others, but always it's me me me.” 

In literature, there is much debate about whose perspective matters when considering an author's work. Some look to the author’s biography and the historical context of their work. Semioticians look at the meaning and symbolism of the words, Marxists ask who benefits, Postmodernists ask us what the language really means and can we trust they mean what we think they mean. I was always with the Reader Response critics who recognized that everyone brings their own history to a text and that history influences their perception. I think that works in art criticism, too. We bring our Self to the task of appreciating a picture and our Self determines our reaction far more than the creator’s intent. That does not make our perception more accurate, but without readers, a book is forgotten, so it does make our perception important. I take that view when considering art as well. 

For another example of artist saying and viewer seeing very differently, click here:

Facebook Beating Valve on Valve's Own Platform (But I Doubt Valve Cares)

Well this seems unexpected:

Nearly 5 months after launch, Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 is the most used VR headset on Steam.

That is according to the February 2021 results for the Steam Hardware Survey.

Valve finally started counting Quest 2 headsets in its own category at the beginning of January. Quest 2 jumped from 17.40% of total VR usage in January to 22.91% in February, overtaking the Oculus Rift S, which fell to 21.58%. Valve’s Index headset comes in at third with 16% and the original HTC Vive follows at 13.05%.

The Valve Index is the VR headset that came bundled with one of the most anticipated games of recent years: Half-Life: Alyx, also from Valve. And while it was seemingly designed as Valve's killer app to sell the Index, sales have been decent but not great: Roughly 2 million sold as of last December. (Compared to 10 million+ for Half-Life 2.) I was hoping Alyx's modding community would be the Index's killer app, but that doesn't seem to be the case either.

All that to one side, I doubt Valve cares that Facebook is beating Valve on its own platform:

Philip Rosedale Proposes Clever Tweak to Yang-Style UBI: Payments in Cryptocurrency that Quickly Decays in Value If Not Spent

Virtual economy pioneer Philip Rosedale recently unveiled a simulation which suggests that a universal basic income -- the kind recently popularized by Andrew Yang -- cannot ultimately prevent widening divides between rich and poor. 

However, that’s not the end of the story.

In a new simulation just posted on his newsletter, Rosedale proposes a pretty ingenious tweak to the UBI concept -- basically, fund the UBI with a transaction tax, and then pay out the UBI itself in a cryptocurrency that decays over time:

To simulate an ideal wealth tax in this simulation (which would have the appealing property of being easy to actually enact and impossible to avoid), you simply make money decay and fund a uniform dividend to everyone...

Using transaction taxes to fund a basic income is supported by real economists as well. This proposal from Economist William Gale at the Brookings institute is to use a 10% VAT tax to fund a basic income, for example. This Cato Institute Study agrees with the idea that consumption taxes are a better way to manage equity than wealth taxes. And political candidate Andrew Yang’s proposed ‘Freedom Dividend’ is funded by a combination of a 10% VAT and a carbon tax.

Creating a cryptocurrency for UBI that decays in value -- let’s call it “UBI Coin” for short -- incentivizes everyone to spend their UBI on goods and services as quickly as possible. This in turn plows more money into the economy, and prevents growing the rich/poor divide that a standard UBI model can cause. 

You can see this in Rosedale’s latest simulation of economic transactions which factors in UBI Coin, where the wealth of each economic player is represented by size and color (Green = rich, Blue = middle, Red = poor). Look:

Compare that to Philip's previous simulation of traditional UBI, where with every transaction, a handful of Greens rapidly become gargantuan, as most everyone else is impoverished. Watch below:

Rosedale, who supported Yang during the primacy race, tells me he’d love to present his proposal to UBI/cryptocurrency advocates like him -- especially as Philip's approach doesn’t necessarily require government approval or resources:

Really Needy HUD Brings Sims-Like Roleplay Gaming to Second Life

Above: Really Needy HUD in stow-away mode

I’m thrilled to welcome a new sponsoring media partner to New World Notes: The Really Useful Scripts Corner, devoted to fun and useful gadgets that make Second Life more like real life.

“I love roleplay and how Second Life gives you the ability to immerse yourself (as your avatar) into it,” store owner and lead developer Grace7 Ling tells me. “I started making my own things to facilitate roleplay when I could not find such items in SL, and that’s how I picked up scripting. I love how a script can make things ‘come alive’ in SL, and well-designed producs really add another dimension to the feeling of immersion.”

One of her latest products is a heads-up display that layers a fun roleplay gaming widget on top of users’ Second Life activity:

SL Flickr Pick: Beautifully Composed Pictures of Virtual World Outdoors Life

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

I love Metanoia’s “Therapy”, and the name made me laugh. Of course, science agrees that being outdoors is good for your mental and physical health. Science even suggests that virtual outdoors can help your health, too. So “Therapy” is therapy. It’s also a beautifully-composed picture. His avatar is centered on the vertical line that marks the golden mean and his foot is right on the sweet spot. He also used the geometry of diagonal lines to get us to follow the avatar’s line of vision. 

Equally beautiful composition ahead:

Where Did Linden Lab Go Wrong With Second Life? (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: Official 2009 commercial for Second Life which very briefly shows the in-world creation tools in the background only once -- and doesn't mention them at all in the captions

Reader "Pulsar" posted a comment last week that touches on one of Silicon Valley's greatest mysteries that fascinates me to this day: How did Second Life, which received massive mainstream media coverage from 2006-2008, even showing up in several popular TV shows and movies, still steadfastly refuse to grow much beyond its existing userbase of some 600,000? Pulsar's answer:

Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2021年2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.

Post Pics of Favorite Virtual World Locations to Feature on NWN's Banner

Want to feature an impressive virtual world location on New World Notes' revolving banner? Post some images of it in Comments with some information on the place, the host platform/world -- Second Life, OpenSim, VRChat, Sinespace, Rec Room, Minecraft, ROBLOX, basically any world I have or should feature on New World Notes -- along with details for accessing it.  

And yes, self-promotion is encouraged (but that does raise the bar on requisite coolness).

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including Andy Baio's Playful New Virtual World for Events, Slow Sales of Oculus Quest 2, and "Realifying" Avatars via AI

• Tutorial: How To Turn Second Life Avatars Into "Real" People With Artbreeder
• Can Second Life Catch Up With VRChat's Creation Tools? A Graphics Pro Explains The Problems -- And Offers Some Partial Solutions
• SuperData: Only 1M+ Oculus Quest 2 HMDs Sold In First Quarter Of Launch
• Andy Baio On Skittish, His Charming New Animal Crossing-Esque Space For Online Events And Collaborative Creators
• Monday Memory: How Second Life Roleplay Wound Up In Hot Tub Time Machine With John Cusack & Clark Duke

Tutorial: How to Turn Second Life Avatars Into "Real" People With Artbreeder

Want to turn a Second Life avatar pic into the "photo" of their real life analog? Watch this Artbreeder tutorial from Ugleh Ulrik, the SL creator who first started the whole buzz around using the AI-driven platform to transform avatars.

"I do a lot of experimenting with new AI tech," Ulrik tells me, "and once I saw Artbreeder my first thought went to Pixar characters but then after that I realized making Second Life avatars more real was a possibility and I tried it out on a few close friends and it worked well."

Here's his key tips to keep in mind when using Artbreeder on an avatar:

This Weekend in Sinespace: Fashion, Fun & Poker on the Creative Community’s New Discovery Island

Starting tomorrow (February 27) at 9am PT, the community of Sinespace (a media partner to this blog) are unveiling Discovery Island with a grand opening festival. Hosted by Mimi Marie, it’s a weekend of fun events (schedule below) featuring many of the best creators and designers working on the platform, and prize giveaways worth up to 10,000 in Gold.

To join the festivities, simply launch Sinespace, search Discovery Island in Explore, and teleport to the action. 

Mimi tells me she plans to host regular events on the island:

SL Fashion Friday: The Glorious Diva Blog Has Brilliant Shopping Tips

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

Katien Erin’s “The Glorious Diva” goes full Seventies in her post “70’s Vibes.” I love the glasses, the bold natural, the fabulous yellow top. It’s all brilliant. 

• Neck tie / LaGyo_Road Trip -  Neck Bandand - DELUXE gacha
• Necklace / Kibitz - Lucia's necklace - gold
• Glasses / -MONCADA PARIS- Huncho 
• Hair / Unorthodox - Power Afro
• Top / Addams // Jamila Tassel Knit Top
• Jacket / Addams // Jamila Denim Fringe Jacket 

I’m not fond of blue hair, but this changed my mind:

Can Second Life Catch Up With VRChat's Creation Tools? A Graphics Pro Explains the Problems -- And Offers Some Partial Solutions

Right: The same avatar made by Krample selling to VRChat users for $40 and (below) for SL users for L$550 (under $3)

I recently told you about a 3D creator called “Krample”, who has been an SL merchant for many years. Listed in the SL Marketplace as Orange Nova Avatars, he’s now finding far more success selling his avatar content to the VRChat market. That’s partly because the VRChat userbase will pay much more for his avatars -- $40 USD, versus a handful of USD in Linden Dollars.  But more than that, the switch was motivated by the creation tools VRChat has, versus what Second Life offers -- especially as Krample is a professional graphics artist in real life. 

“I've been making content in Second Life for the past decade or so,” as Krample told me last month, “but it's increasingly brutal to be working in an engine that's just so... old. Especially ever since I got a day job working in Unreal.” (If you've watched the Super Bowl in recent years, you've probably seen visual effects he helped create.) “[I] get to have a daily reminder about how much better things could be!”

He might not even still be creating SL content, he tells me, but for the pandemic: 

“If it hadn't been for COVID keeping me at home,” as he puts it, “it'd be flat out impossible to work on ANY new SL content. My spare time just wouldn't allow it, it'd take me years to finish anything. Several of my SL avatars have taken years to put together, as a matter of fact, just ask any of my disgruntled customers.”

I asked him to compare Second Life and VRChat’s creation tools -- and what Linden Lab might do, to catch up:

SuperData: Only 1M+ Oculus Quest 2 HMDs Sold in First Quarter of Launch

Based on a recent Facebook' revenue report, it looked like the Oculus Quest 2 had sold 1.5 million to 2 million copies in its first four months on the market, starting last October. Nielsen analytics company SuperData, however, recently asserted sales were significantly less than that:

Over 1M Oculus Quest 2 headsets were sold in Q4, breaking records. The Quest 2 sold more units in a single quarter than any VR device that is not powered by a smartphone. (The Samsung Gear VR holds the overall record and sold 1.4M units in Q4 2016.) The Quest 2 benefitted from a lower price than its predecessor and also from pent-up demand among those interested in joining the VR audience. The original Quest was sold out during much of 2020 due to the impact of COVID-19 on supply chains. The Quest 2 was also the first Oculus headset to launch around the holiday season, so its addressable audience included gift givers in addition to VR enthusiasts.

It's only a "record", to be sure, relative to the niche of VR, but not in the overall addressable market for interactive entertainment; in contrast, for instance, the Playstation 5 sold over 2 million units in its first two weeks on sale.

In any case, if SuperData's estimate is accurate, it does suggests a small amount of good news for VR developers: Facebook reported "other" revenue of $539 million in Q4 2020. So if it only sold 1 million Quest 2s then, that accounts for roughly $300,000,000 of this revenue --  with the remaining $239 million not from Quest sales.

And you know what that means:

SL Flickr Pick of the Day: Marlboro x-x Makes the Metaverse Come Alive

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

This photo contest entry is breathtakingly beautiful. I love the light and colors. It is so romantic and reminds me of the pre-Raphaelite portraits of gods and goddesses of myth though in much bolder colors. The dead tree with the ribbons with the man singing to it makes me imagine some enchanted princess changed into a tree. Will the music bring her back? I guess we have to wait for the next picture. 

The next from Marlboro X-X could be a movie:

I'm Mesmerized by These Avatars Turned Into "Real" People Via ArtBreeder AI

My post last week on Artbreeder, which uses Generative Adversarial Networks to create "children" of an original image, generated a mini-burst of excitement among many in the SL community, who started experimenting with the process to turn pictures of their avatars into "real" people. And the results are pretty mesmerizing! Above is one by Devin Vaughn, whose avatar looks in real life, I guess, like the clone of Ronan Farrow blended with Anderson Cooper?

Some more below:

Mimi Bunny Makes the Metaverse Look Like Movie Posters of Many Genres

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

This picture from Mimi Bunny makes me think of a movie poster for an adventure film. You know the kind, the hero and allies all rushing forward to save the world and the day. I love the colors and the wild frenetic energy. 

And now for something completely different...

Andy Baio on Skittish, His Charming New Animal Crossing-esque Space for Online Events and Collaborative Creators

Skittish is "a playful virtual space for online events" now in closed beta, the brainchild of beloved tech veteran Andy Baio, a longtime advocate of Internet-driven creativity. As the video teaser above suggests, it combines the whimsical charm of online games like Animal Crossing, with video sharing and other features associated with platforms like Zoom, along with virtual world-type user creation tools and spatial audio chat.

As Andy explains on his blog, it's his bid to create a new kind of virtual event platform for the pandemic age and beyond, synthesizing the online experiences many of us found joy and relief in during the quarantine:

As depressing as most virtual events were, there were three bright spots of creative experimentation happening over the last year:

1. Experimental Events. The brilliant MUD-like environment created for Roguelike Celebration and the ongoing series of LIKELIKE events showed how event spaces could draw inspiration from games to great effect.
2. Proximity Chat. Second Life has supported spatial voice chat for nearly 15 years, but a crop of experimental new platforms started using spatial/positional audio and video to make virtual parties feel more real.
3. Social Games. Approachable games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Among Us, and Fall Guys were breakout stars of the pandemic, giving us new ways to connect to with friends when we couldn’t be together in person.

There are some amazing projects out there, but I started outlining a hybrid of these ideas: an online event venue for large-scale gatherings that used spatial audio, didn’t assume people were comfortable being on camera, with real-time customization of the space, and built in a 3D engine for a more immersive game-like feel.

Go here to apply to become a beta tester. Andy tells me he and his development team are architecting Skittish to host events with very large concurrencies: