New World Notes

Listen: Philip Rosedale Interviewed by Linden Vet About Building Virtual Worlds

Here's a great podcast interview of Philip Rosedale on the podcast show Stayin' Alive in Technology hosted by Melinda Byerley, former Head of Marketplaces at Linden Lab, and known in SL as Pink Linden. And because she is a Linden vet, this is a much more substantial, in-depth interview, and brings up some points I've not heard Philip discuss before. (Streamable above.) It's also an important companion piece to the recent bombshell video where Philip announced scaling back High Fidelity content and making it more desktop client-focused.

Byerley is now founder of Timeshare CMO, a data marketing firm where Catherine Smith, another Linden Lab veteran, also works. "It's a recap of Philip's history, his thoughts on the 3D web and the future of VR," Catherine told me, when sending over the podcast. "What he's learned over the years. It was very Philip and made me laugh and smile and miss working for him!" So this is an interview with the founder of Linden Lab, speaking with a Linden, which was promoted by a Linden, and is now being blogged by a Linden. 

Here's the key highlights -- my favorite being what he says about "the 3D web" as a term -- with my biggest point of contention being what he says about the original goal with Second Life:

Top 6 Posts from Last Week: Mourning Notre Dame at Its Virtual Copy, Making Minecraft Run On Solar Power, Real Fitness as VR's Killer App, Plus Second Life News & a New Album from an SL-Originated Pop Star

• Listen: Keiko Takamura's Long-Awaited Fablewave Deluxe Drops -- Full-Length Album Inspired By Video Games, Fairy Tales, And Pop Culture
• How To Run Minecraft On A Rasberry Pi From The Rays Of The Sun - New Mixed Reality Human Wellness Project From Jeff "AM Radio" Berg
• PowerBeats VR Embraces Virtual Reality's Likeliest Killer App: Getting Your Actual, Real Life Body In Shape
• EEP, Second Life Environmental Enhancement Project, Makes Acclaimed Developer Say EEK!
• Second Life Hires Second Life's Top Influencer To Help Promote Second Life
• As Notre Dame Burns, Avatar Crowd Spontaneously Appears At Second Life Recreation To Mourn Cathedral's Destruction

Listen: Keiko Takamura's Long-Awaited Fablewave Deluxe Drops -- Full-Length Album Inspired by Video Games, Fairy Tales, and Pop Culture

At long last here is Fablewave Deluxe from Keiko Takamura, the Bay Area-based popstar who (as longtime NWN readers know) first launched her singing career over a decade ago by performing in Second Life. And as you would expect, it's sharp and smart, dazzling pop music for geeks -- inspired by games The Path, Alice: Madness Returns, and speed-running platformers, plus The Little Mermaid and Batman: The Animated Series.

"Fablewave Deluxe is my attempt to connect listeners to my experiences through video games, fairy tales, and pop culture," as she puts it. "You don't know me, but you probably vaguely know the story of The Little Mermaid. So you can connect to 'She's Got Legs, You Idiot' when I say, 'This world is so new and/ I almost feel human'. You don't know me, but you probably know what happens to Batman's parents. So when I write a love song called 'Martha Wayne', you can guess that it's bittersweet.  Musically, I wanted each song to be its own vignette. Each song exists in a separate environment where the song has the best chance to tell its story, uninhibited by genre. My biggest influences going into this were Shiina Ringo, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and the SF Bay Area chiptune scene."

And yes, her SL fans will connect with one song on the album in particular:

Sinespace's $5000 FPS Map-Making Contest Deadline Extended to May 31st!

Update on the first-person shooter game design contest from Sinespace (a proud NWN partner) being judged by Valve veteran Erik Wolpaw  (Psychonauts, Portal 1/2, Team Fortress 2): The deadline has been extended to May 31st.

The contest challenge is to create customized FPS maps for Sinespace using its new Unity SDK and its open source combat system (read all about that on Unity's blog). Erik will choose the submission with the most unique gameplay, impressive level design, and inventive use of Sinespace features, with the winner getting $5000 and a bunch of other benefits. (All the details here.)

Nylon Pinkney Is Online - How to Know When Your Data's Being Harvested

How to Run Minecraft on a Rasberry Pi from the Rays of the Sun - New Mixed Reality Human Wellness Project from Jeff "AM Radio" Berg

Behold, minecraft powered by the sun. Digital isn't just code. "We don't need a generation of coders. We need a generation of digital thinkers..." -Block Breaker @mraspinall pic.twitter.com/GH6PHhlnYX

— Jeff Berg (@parametricshape) April 16, 2019

This is a gloriously geeky project from artist/coder Jeff Berg, famed for many years as the virtual world innovator known only by his avatar, "AM Radio". It's also a virtual world project with a decided mixed reality twist: Running Minecraft purely from solar energy. This is possible with the Rasberry Pi, the single-board computer, which comes pre-installed with Minecraft, and some savvy hacker fu from Berg, who figured out how to do it for well under $200 (price list below).

While running Minecraft from the sun's rays is a cool project in itself, Berg's ultimate goal is to use Minecraft's display environment to indicate the health level of plants in the office, which in turn, will also suggest the wellness levels of the people in the office too. "Plants thrive in a good environment," as he puts, "People thrive in a good environment." (Which is why, in the video, you see sensors hooked up to a plant.)

"I suppose it would end up in charts, spreadsheets and databases," he allows. "With Minecraft however we have the chance to allow anyone at any skill level to explore data in 3D, in context of the spaces they occupy, in a simple and inviting interface for any age that promotes exploration, Design Thinking in spatial contexts, and scenario building." (More on that later in a follow-up post.)

Formerly a UX designer with IBM during his virtual world days, Berg is now digital skills leader for North America at Arup, an engineering and design consultancy. This side project of his is directly connected: "My AM Radio work in Second Life in large part was an exploration in this direction and is related," as puts it. "I have applied for a grant for this research, but will likely to continue on my own with or without funding."

Here's his full step-by-step parts breakdown, with an illustrated schematic:

Cajsa’s Daily SL Flickr Pick: Color-Saturated Virtual Home Decor Pics by EXIS

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

EXIS  is a Second Life decor blogger whose work is instantly recognizable by her rich, saturated colors. “Times Are Changing” sets a Bohemian mood. I confess that as much as I love these decor-rich photos I would have the jimjams with the degree of clutter. My preference in decor is fire inspection-ready with clear walking space, nothing on the floor, and nothing too close to outlets, lamps, and heat sources. As pretty as this is, for me it’s pure fire hazard. I guess that is the byproduct of losing everything to a house fire, which by the way, had nothing to with clutter.

PowerBeats VR Embraces Virtual Reality's Likeliest Killer App: Getting Your Actual, Real Life Body In Shape

PowerBeatsVR, a new indie game for Oculus, Vive, and WME available in Early Access on Steam starting tomorrow at 11:00AM PT, is a fitness game with a lot of dodging and punching and it looks so goddamn fun. And with the blockbuster success of Beat Saber (lots of weaving and chopping) and SuperHot VR (lots of twisty turny tai chi John Wick-ishness), it solidifies my opinion formulated six years ago while jogging on the hotel treadmill in China, looking down at Beijing's horrific smog: The killer app for virtual reality is real life physical fitness.

Because the thing with mass market killer apps is, they have to replace an existing consumer service in an incredibly compelling way. And right now, the only candidate for VR doing that is physical fitness. You could spend say $700 on a bike, $500 on an annual gym membership, $300 on a used exercycle, $200 on running shoes/fitness wear... or you could get a standalone VR rig within that price range and stay physically fit no matter what the weather outside, no travel time needed. And anecdotally, the calorie burn for active VR games like Beat Saber holds up well, compared to traditional fitness options.

PowerBeats VR team member Niklas Weber tells me that the game wasn't actually inspired by Beat Saber, but more my Dance Dance Revolution:

EEP, Second Life Environmental Enhancement Project, Makes Acclaimed Developer Say EEK!

Example of reported EEP display problems featured in Niran's post

I haven't been closely following Environmental Enhancement Project (known as EEP), Linden Lab's bid to greatly improve legacy WindLight environments while introducing new inventory objects for defining the environmental settings. However, SLer NiranV Dean, creator of Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following due to its amazing graphics, has been following EEP quite closely. And according to him in an epic, before-and-after illustrated rant he recently posted on the official community board, EEP as it currently exists is an L of titanic proportion:

I am absolutely speechless what a pile of broken mess you want to sell us. This has been by far the worst experience i have had in Second Life so far, it was a displeasure from login to logout and i could cry tears, that is how much this hurt me... [Rendering is] absolutely, totally and completely broken from back to front. Shadows, let's start with shadows. Shadows have become noticeably worse, they are ugly, pixelated, bad, inaccurate and constantly bug out, clip away and shadow blur is at a point it basically starts destroying itself when i turn around the camera and that's with the minimum draw distance...

And so on like this, except with more salty language. He's not the only one: Among the follow-up reader questions I just sent to Linden Lab after my talk with Ebbe Altberg is this one: "EEP has ruined teleports and region crossings for a lot of people."

Fundamental to Niran's objections is a monetization option for EEP, at the expense of users being able to edit WindLights:

Cajsa's Flickr Pick: Immersive Hunting Game Repurposed for Peaceful Landscape Photography

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

What can I saw about “Relaxing Rain and Focus on the Moon” by SandyJ-Black that isn’t superfluous? Are words necessary to explain why this picture is so arresting and beautiful? Well, since it is my remit, the moon lies in the sweet spot of the Golden Mean. The horizon is placed one-third of the way from the top. Then there are the two main colors are complementary, directly opposite each other on the color wheel and similar in intensity. It’s just perfect and is from the immersive simulator The Hunter: Call of the Wild.

Will High Fidelity's Short Term Focus on Desktop Change the Future of Social VR? Readers, Users & VR Experts Debate

Lots of interesting conversation on Philip Rosedale's bombshell news late last week that High Fidelity would close down nearly all its hosted sites and devote much more attention to supporting its desktop clients -- both from readers and users, and experts in the VR industry. First, from readers and HiFi users in Comments:

Been saying this for years. There is no real uptake for the general population (gamers excepted.) How do we use social media? We 'dip' on our phones as we go about our day. Wearing a VR headset everywhere is not feasible, to access a system where many of our social circle may not even be... We keep trying but flat screens continue to win the game. - Dirk

Even gamer uptake is still remarkably slow. by the way. SuperHot VR sold 800,000 copies across all VR platforms but that and a few other hits are pretty much the high end. Now from some High Fidelity users:

High Fidelity's reputation wasn't helping itself either. The fact that some people have had no idea they can log in without a VR headset illustrates a major issue: failure to communicate that it does work fine without an HMD. This is just a single example out of many where things aren't communicated as well, and honestly that heavily lead to the downfall in the video. - FlameSoulis

I've been in High Fidelity since it went alpha (over five years ago), and I am sad about this turn of events. It feels as if people are pulling up stakes although we are still in there every day, the alphas, doing stuff, building stuff, and hanging together. We are a small group who believe in the vision.  Yes, Philip is correct. VR is not happening the way it seemed it might.  Will it? I think when the hardware is easier to use, and less restrictive, a few years away, I bet. - DrFran

On Twitter, there was a fair amount of conversation about this move from VR experts like Chet Faliszek (who helped Valve launch the Vive), Kent Bye (who hosts the influential Voices of VR Podcast), and Tipatat Chennavasin (a venture capitalist with the VR Fund). Roughly summarized, I think it's fair to say they think the problem is not social VR per se, but High Fidelity's approach to it:

Second Life Hires Second Life's Top Influencer to Help Promote Second Life

Remember that Linden Lab job posting for a Second Life content marketer? To no one's surprise, that job went to Strawberry Singh, who over the years, has created a network of social media influence around her Second Life content that is almost as large as key official company channels:

• Strawberry has 11,000 followers on Flickr; the official SL Flickr account has just under 13,000.
• Strawberry has 14,000+ followers on YouTube; the official SL YouTube account has about 27,000.

"Hopefully I'll continue to do what I did before, in terms of tutorials and images and exploration videos," she tells me. "The only thing that will stop is the promotion of brands." (When she announced her hiring, she also published some policies distancing herself from SL brands she's formerly worked for and/or blogged.) Lucky for her, she's not relocating to be near Linden Lab's HQ in San Francisco (where rent would eat up most her salary) but working from her home office in Florida:

Cajsa’s Daily SL Flickr Pick: Kevin XI Russo's Perfect Composed Duotone Pics

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

“The Old Skatepark Revisited” by Kevin X Russo is a composition masterwork. A duotone, the contrasting light and dark spaces give him all sorts of edges. The dark wall on the roof lines up exactly a third from the bottom. The top of the subject’s head is exactly two-thirds from the bottom, and the subject is placed just to the right of where exactly one-third from the right would be. He is looking down at his feet and his shadow that intersect that line. The choice of making this a duotone rather than full-color made its geometry the most forward element. It’s a fascinating picture. The longer you look at it the more you see.

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg インタビュー後にNWN筆者が感じたこと（日本語要約

By request from Japanese SLer @fennel2, New World Notes alum Sanny Yoshikawa wrote this Japanese language summary of my interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg:

自分が読んだついでにざっくりと要点をまとめました。対訳ではなく要約です。 LindenのCEOインタビューの後、SansarとSLの将来についてどう感じたか尋ねた読者調査に79人が投票した。そのうち約51％が記事を読む前よりも信用が高まったと答え、あまりポジティブな印象を受けなかった人は1/4以下だった。そして筆者自身もCEOの情熱や知識に感銘を受けた。インタビューで聞いたことの中から筆者が考える良い点と悪い点を挙げる。

As Notre Dame Burns, Avatar Crowd Spontaneously Appears at Second Life Recreation to Mourn Cathedral's Destruction

Notre Dame recreation in Second Life (click here to teleport) - photo by Eminy Roddenham

Since news broke that Notre Dame in Paris is being consumed by fire, Second Life users have been spontaneously appearing at the virtual world replica, gathering there to grieve with others. When I visited moments ago, people were gathered in the church, some sharing updates from Paris in text chat, others passing on links to songs and video about the legendary cathedral. 

"I am watching the lifestream on YouTube and I am shocked that it burns down and I wanted to see if people in Second Life [had] heard, and pay tribute," one visitor, Penny December, tell me while standing silently at the entrance.

"And maybe," she adds, "to be there in spirit."

Ysabelle Stewart was among the first to arrive at the cathedral, and by then, the Second Life sim was already approaching full capacity.

"Some people were kneeling. At least one person was passing on news from someone who lives near the building, as far as I can tell... Some people just talking about being hopeful things can be saved."

This is just the latest emergence in a long running social phenomena: Since so many real world landmarks exist in virtual form in Second Life, it's quite common for community members to converge at that location, whenever it's in the news, so they can grieve together in an immersive context:

Top 5 Posts Last Week: Linden Lab CEO Interview Analysis, Philip Rosedale Goes Bearish on Social VR in the Short Term, Magic Leap CEO Insists Families Who AR Together Stay Together

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online - How To Hang Out IRL If You're Into VR
• My Take & Reader Reaction To New World Notes' Chat With Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg -- Three Good & Not So Good Takeaways
• Virtual Reality Bombshell: Philip Rosedale Says Social VR Not Sustainable With Slow HMD Sales, Drastically Scales Back High Fidelity Hosted Content, Moves Focus To PC/Mac Clients
• Do You Want A Future Where Family Members All Wear AR/VR HMDs, Alone Together In The Same Room?
• Watch: How To Apply Make-Up To Hide The Red Lines Caused By "VR Face"

Nylon Pinkney Is Online - How to Hang Out IRL If You're Into VR

My Take & Reader Reaction to New World Notes' Chat With Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg -- Three Good & Not So Good Takeaways

Results from my survey of readers asking how they felt about the future of Sansar and Second Life after watching my interview with Linden Lab CEO. (Which you can watch below, if you missed it, or watch again because why not.) With 79 people voting, almost 51% said they were more confident after hearing Ebbe Altberg speak, with less than a quarter saying they were less positive. Voters also submitted several really good questions, which I'll follow up on with Linden Lab and his communication team.

Now that readers have weighed in, here's my own take: I was definitely impressed by Altberg's passion and deep dive knowledge about managing and planning for the future of Second Life and Sansar, and overall, his ebullient Swede engagement. (Linden staff tell me his enthusiasm has boosted internal morale, which floundered as CEOs before him came and went.) Some key pros and cons and stood out to me:

Positive:

• Openly admitting SL land tier is Too Damn High: Specifically saying, "We've been over-monetizing land". Previous CEOs and Linden staff have been loathe to admit the obvious, even as sims disappeared all around us. 
• Acknowledging that launching Sansar as a VR-centered product was fueled by hype: We were at hair-pulling levels of frustration when it looked like Sansar was being promoted as a VR product even when VR sales prospects were so small (as they still are).  During the peak, Palmer Luckey-on-the-cover-of-Time hype period when Sansar launched, Ebbe says, "It was all hot and hip and interesting to talk about VR so we kinda rode that a little bit". Hopefully there's still time to change Sansar's focus to be PC -- similar to what Philip Rosedale just announced with High Fidelity. 
• Announcing plans to add game mechanics to Second Life's first time user-experience: Something I've been pleading for, for fricking years. I'm a bit disappointed the apparent plan is to confine those mechanics just to the first-time user experience, instead of applying them to all users. But it would be a good start.

On the negative side of the ledger, in my view:

Cajsa’s Daily Flickr Pick: Ultra-Violent Far Cry 5 Turned Into Setting for Beautiful, Bucolic Photos of Rural Life

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

BravoSoap’s pictures from Far Cry 5 speak to the teeny-tiny part of me that gets homesick for country life. While it may be a politically charged game about a Montana doomsday cult, Far Cry 5 is set in a bucolic countryside that invites great photos.

This beautiful image of a field with front-mount cultivator on a tractor in the field is nostalgic, reminding us of family farms. Of course, on real farms, farmers don’t leave their machinery out in the field to get rained on and rusty. They also drive along the lines of the planting, not perpendicular to them, but that’s getting picky and is the game creators’ issue. Perhaps our farmer is having a picnic off-screen. The leading lines of the fence and road lead our eyes into the picture.

Virtual Reality Bombshell: Philip Rosedale Says Social VR Not Sustainable With Slow HMD Sales, Drastically Scales Back High Fidelity Hosted Content, Moves Focus to PC/Mac Clients

Last week at High Fidelity's regular community meeting, Philip Rosedale stood before dozens of assembled robots, anime girls, and other assorted avatars, and dropped a couple fairly large bombs that are likely to have an industry-wide impact: The company is closing down nearly all its own hosted domains (users can still host their own), and devoting much more attention to supporting its desktop clients -- both PC and Mac. (Watch above.)

"Social VR in HMDs won’t really work until we can do everything in them, including work and messaging," Philip explains to me by e-mail. "We can’t multi-task in VR yet, and that’s a real challenge."

 

Until then, says Philip, desktop will dominate High Fidelity's future: "[W]e are going to improve desktop PC and Mac performance, look for that over next quarter."

 

As for no longer hosting most High Fidelity domains: "[I]t is time for everyone to take over from us, if we are to have a decentralized Metaverse," he tells me. "We can’t be regulating the community if it is going to get big.  We are building something a lot bigger than a social VR chat experience."

His reasoning won't be surprising to anyone who follows social VR Steam stats or VR sales figures:

Watch: NeosVR, Patreon-Funded Social VR Metaverse Platform with Robust Tools, Major Updates

If you haven't yet taken a look NeosVR, an impressive indie social VR metaverse project backed by Patreon funders, now is a good time. Supporting Vive, Oculus, and Windows Mixed Reality, here's the latest update introduced by lead developer Frooxius. Includes robust in-world building and scripting, an ICO-backed virtual currency (Neos credits), and robust physics -- robust enough, as you'll see above, to create a multiplayer tributes to Portal and (as below) Beat Saber. And as you'll also see, it's notably furry-friendly, so it's got that going for it (if you go for that).

Lots of impressive elements for such a low budget project, so it's well worth keeping an eye on: Steam account here, Discord server here. They also just announced a content creation contest:

Cajsa’s Daily SL Flickr Pick: Candy Gunpowder Uses Fashion & Decor Shot to Tell Intriguing Stories

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

“Ｉ ｓｏｌｅｍｎｌｙ ｓｗｅａｒ ｔｈａｔ Ｉ＇ｍ ｕｐ ｔｏ ｎｏ ｇｏｏｄ" from Autumn Rose (who signs her images with her SL name, Candy Gunpowder) is a creative homage to Harry Potter’s Marauder’s Map. How appropriate that her blog is called Her Wild Free Heart. She tells an entire story with just two items, worn out shoes and a map. A bokeh overlay add a bit of fantastical whimsy.

Do You Want a Future Where Family Members All Wear AR/VR HMDs, Alone Together in the Same Room?

In a family setting: one person may use a Magic Leap One to watch movies (giant screens, no atoms); another may play experiential games (like Dr. G), another may learn how to code (Unreal, Unity), and another may start building the volumetric internet with Helio.

— Rony Abovitz (@rabovitz) April 9, 2019

Fascinating tweet last night from the CEO of Magic Leap Rony Abovitz, which now has well over $2 billion in funding to bring augmented reality to the mass market; in it, Abovitz sketches out a future when AR has become mainstream:

In a family setting: one person may use a Magic Leap One to watch movies (giant screens, no atoms); another may play experiential games (like Dr. G), another may learn how to code (Unreal, Unity), and another may start building the volumetric internet with Helio.

Which strikes me as a fascinating vision for the future. Abovitz may well be right -- and in a decade or so, it's likely that the price of AR headsets will come down enough that each member of a middle class family could feasibly own a pair. But I suspect this forecast makes a common but false assumption that many technologists make: Assessing the value of a product only by its technical features, while not giving any consideration to how the product might change the social dynamics of its users.

Because direct eye contact, especially among close friends, lovers, and family members, seems to be a deeply ingrained human need or reflex:

Our sensitivity to eye contact begins incredibly early. Infants of just two days of age prefer looking at faces that gaze back at them... Whether or not other people make eye contact with us changes the way that we think about them and their feelings. For example, we are more likely to remember faces with which we’ve experienced mutual gaze, and we consider displays of anger and joy to be more intense when shown by a person making eye contact. In fact, when a person or human-like entity (such as a human face morphed with a doll) makes eye contact with us, we assume that he/she/it has a more sophisticated mind and a greater ability to act in the world, such as to show self-control and act morally, and a greater desire for social contact.

That's quite a lot to override with a new technology. And of course, it's true that we spend far too much of our time on the digital devices we have now. But that brings up another feature, best expressed in visual terms:

Cajsa’s SL Flickr Pick: Nefekalum's Transgressive Fantasy Fashion Photos

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

I love Nefekalum’s photostream. Relentlessly inventive, exploring the boundaries of fashion and gender, Nefekalum’s photos are never boring. “Sweet as Honey” is beautifully constrained in its colors and has an initial impression of glamour, but with a closer look, the smears of honey taken on a transgressive feeling. There is a wildness there that is not obvious at first sight.

Watch: How to Apply Make-Up to Hide the Red Lines Caused by "VR Face"

Here's a fun video and tutorial from Jazmin Cano, a User Engagement Manager at High Fidelity, which addresses a major problem with virtual reality that's little addressed by the virtual reality industry in general: The deep lines created by wearing an HMD for extended periods, i.e. "VR Face". Jazmin's solution: Apply blush and other make-up so that the red lines look more like a healthy sun-dappled glow.

"I do this no matter what HMD I'm going to wear," Jazmin tells me. That's because it's a universal problem for VR: "I've worn PSVR, Vive, and Oculus and get a similar result on my face. Redness on top of my cheeks and around my eyes."

As you might guess, her makeup tip varies based on user skin tone: