New World Notes

This Artist Uses Light, Framing & Casual Poses to Make SL Avatar Photos Come Alive

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

Jena Lynn is a slice-of-life photographer, a Second Life Vivian Maier except of course she is shooting herself in the process of living, not other people. I love the appearance of spontaneity, the idea the camera was just raised at that very moment. There is no sense at all that the picture was planned and staged, but of course it was. And that is genius! 

The next picture shows how powerful framing can be.

Does the SL Community Care Enough to Clamor for Well-Optimized Mesh?

Pictured: Slink Redux body bundle, a rare example of popular SL mesh avatar content that's also well-optimized

Last Friday I wrote about the new Black Dragon viewer update which checks whether a mesh avatar is well-optimized or not. Reader "Down With Underboob" (LOL) tried it out in SL over the weekend, to see how much mesh content was poorly optimized, and came away shocked:

So I took Black Dragon out for a spin at a fairly busy club. There's only one avatar in the place who is "decently optimized" per the report. This guy is wearing a system avi and system clothes... I like what BD offers, but please get real. Nobody wants to go back to looking like an avatar from 2008. Photographers like to use BD's capabilities, but again, they're not going to use system avatars to pass these complexity tests.

Show me some mesh bodies, heads, and clothes that pass these tests and don't look like they're from 2008, and I'll consider trying them. Does he think we're all going to run around bald? I don't want Warcraft hair in SL. Until then, I'll stick with what I have. I'm satisfied with the 15-20 fps I get at this club and I can get upwards of 100 FPS when I'm hanging out on my platform at home in Bellisseria.

I'd also point out that he's tilting at windmills if he thinks designers are going to start posting complexity/triangle counts in their vendor ads.

I'd say it's the responsibility of the many SL bloggers and YouTubers to report on the complexity/triangle counts of the content they feature, warning them that high poly items will likely cause lag. Failing to do so would be like a real life fashion reporter failing to mention the clothing items they're recommending are made of toxic materials.

As to her request for optimized mesh to try out, Slink is among the few mesh body creators well-known for optimization.

But is there a market for good optimization in general? Reader "Seph" thinks not so:

Top 5 Posts Last Week Including an NSF-Funded Study of SL During the Pandemic, and How Oculus' Facebook ID Requirement Harms VR Developers

• New Black Dragon Feature Shows Your Much Lag Your Second Life Mesh Avatar Is Causing (Likely A Lot)
• VRChat User Survey: Will You Buy The New Plus Subscription?
• Roblox's Jaw-Dropping IPO Filing: 31 Million+ Daily Users, $589M+ In 2020 Revenue, Most From Mobile; User Creators Earned $209M+, Up 3X From 2019
• Acclaimed VR Game Developer Locked Out Of Oculus Platform Due To Facebook's Mandatory ID Policy -- Warns Of Its Dangers To Developers In LGBT & Other Vulnerable Communities
• SL Users: Please Take This Survey From UC Irvine's Tom Boellstorff On Your Virtual World Usage During The Pandemic

New Black Dragon Feature Shows Your Much Lag Your Second Life Mesh Avatar Is Causing (Likely a Lot)

Pictured: Niran in a Belleza 5.2 Bento mesh body -- which has over 1.5 MILLION triangles

There's a new update to The Black Dragon viewer for Second Life, and it comes with a great new feature: An option to check how well-optimized your mesh avatar is -- and shows you via a color code whether it is (green) or poorly optimized (yellow/orange/red):

So rather than confusing the user with an artificial "maximum" it now clearly states that it is simply recommended to stay below a certain point. Reaching this point also no longer immediately results in the "super bad" red rating but rather gives you the "eh" yellow/orange rating, see it as warning. As before you get a summary of all ratings together, right now its still very simple but i might actually add a 3-point answer that takes the 3 worst offenders and gives you hints and possibly even guides (or links to those) how to solve these.

As previously reported, most of the top-selling mesh bodies in SL are very poorly optimized, and a key culprit for Second Life's poor performance in general. Linden Lab refuses to do anything about this -- the CEO basically told me "So what?" when I asked him face to face -- but Black Dragon creator NiranV is a passionate advocate of optimization, and wants to improve SL's environment:

Carmen King Explores Sansar as Only Carmen Can -- And Has Tips for Making It Better

After basically becoming the queen of Second Life YouTubers, Ms. Carmen King reluctantly donned her dusty Vive headset --"I get insane motion sickness... [and] "normally can't last 10 minutes in VR", she says -- to re-visit the social VR world of Sansar.

"First time I tried,"  she casually notes, while getting strapped in, "I saw people trying to fuck in the middle of the ocean."

No such luck this time, but she does narrowly avoid an alien probing and inevitably wields some dildo-shaped hand controls. Further Carmen-esque NSFW hilarity ensues, so just watch.

"Sansar seems really fun and I love how smooth the game runs," she tells me now.  "Virtual Reality makes it a lot more exciting as you feel like you’re actually in the game!"

Sansar was originally developed by Linden Lab before its acquisition by Wookey; but does she prefer it to Linden's original world, Second Life?

VRChat User Survey: Will You Buy the New Plus Subscription?

NOTE: If you're viewing this on a mobile device you might need to tap-slide-scroll on the survey below to view and take it:

After many years in free-to-play Beta and seeing impressive growth, VRChat is finally offering a paid subscription option (details here and summarized below). But are VRChat players actually interested in paying? Please take this survey, even if you're a very casual VRChatter -results shared next week!

Friday Fashion Tips for Tween Avatars from SL Style Blogger Arti Love

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

I love Arti Love’s self-named blog. I also love the pun, “Art I Love” whether intentional or not. He has a young teen/tween blog that is great fun. I mean, I didn’t know I needed “The Little Prince” in Second Life, but now I see Arti’s Little Prince, I sure do. Mostly I need the asteroid and the stars. 

• ::C&P:: Asteroid B-612
• REALISTIC ROSE DECOR – RED by Mad Match
• {anc} nebra beads [Heavenlyblue]
• {anc} nebra beads [sungold]

More for boys who never grow up ahead. 

Roblox's Jaw-Dropping IPO Filing: 31 Million+ Daily Users, $589M+ in 2020 Revenue, Most from Mobile; User Creators Earned $209M+, Up 3X from 2019

Above: Image from ROBLOX's stock filing, data from the first 9 months of 2020

ROBLOX just filed its Form S-1 in preparation for going public, giving us a good glimpse at the virtual world platform's metrics. And they're pretty amazing! I'm still digging into it, but its 2020 standout stats for me so far:

31 million daily active users in 2020, nearly doubling since 2018:  "Daily active users, or DAUs, on Roblox grew 47%, from 12.0 million DAUs in 2018 to 17.6 million in 2019, and grew 82%, from 17.1 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 to 31.1 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2020."

52% of Roblox's revenue now from mobile apps: "For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, 34% of our revenue was attributable to Robux sales through the Apple App Store and 18% of our revenue was attributable to Robux sales through the Google Play Store..." The vast majority of Roblox's activity is from mobile usage too: "[D]uring the same period 68% of our engagement hours on the platform were from users who signed up through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store." 

With nearly $600 million in 2020 revenue for company by September, total annual revenue could exceed $800 million or (with the new pandemic quarantine and people indoors during the holidays) even reach toward $1 billion. But how much of that revenue is shared with Roblox's user creators, who make the bulk of the games and other interactive entertainment on the platform? That brings us to another interesting point:

SL Flickr Photographer of the Day: Banana Lecker

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

Banana Lecker’s photos are fun and often light-hearted microblog. I love this picture with her enjoying a hot cocoa at an outdoor food stand. It’s a wooden handcart, a rare sight today. Living in a city of over 500 food carts, though, it’s nice to see the culture honored in Second Life. 

More fashionable photos ahead:

Watch: New Video from Yasushi Watanabe, Top J-Pop Composer Who Created a Spinoff Project Based Around Second Life

Dropping on YouTube just an hour or so ago, here's the latest music video of BYNORAL, aka Yasushi Watanabe, a major figure in the J-Pop world (he's composed songs for top girl groups AKB48 and Nogizaka46) who earlier this year spun off a side project creating music videos in Second Life. Video summary:

This track is a sentimental song that incorporates various elements of electro, chill, and pop with the theme of light and darkness of modern society.

Not quite seeing the dark side of this beautifully shot, candy-colored video, but maybe the lyrics are where the shadows reside.  He was actually active in SL ten years ago, so this side gig represents a return to the virtual world.  (His new brand "BYNORAL”, by the way, is a play on "binaural stereo system."

Stunning SL Images With Disciplined Use of Color and Light

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

Kalliope’s “Not a Wish-Granting Factory” is a fun visual play on the idea of wishing upon a star. Of course, it’s not a star she is perched upon, it is a moon. But that is a petty quibble for a lovely and fun photo. I love her color story, all in blue including the light leak overlay that gives it a flash of moonlight. 

More stunning photos with intriguing and fun titles.

Acclaimed VR Game Developer Locked Out of Oculus Platform Due to Facebook's Mandatory ID Policy -- Warns of Its Dangers to Developers in LGBT & Other Vulnerable Communities

Guess if @Facebook disabled my account for no reason and there's no way to have it reviewed I won't be developing VR anymore? Good thing I haven't opened the shrink wrap on my Quest2. #VR

— Nicole Lazzaro #RBG #BLM #Harris2024 💪🏾🗳🌈 🥞 (@NicoleLazzaro) November 16, 2020

Nicole Lazzaro is an acclaimed game developer, named by Fast Company as among the top 100 women in tech and by Gamasutra as among the top 20 women working in games. But now there's one kind of game platform she currently can't develop on: The Oculus Quest. Which is a shame, because she was developing her quite impressive VR game "Find the White Rabbit" for Oculus, but it looks like there's going to be a delay (if not a permanent pause).

This is due, as you probably guessed already, to Oculus' recently imposed mandatory Facebook log-in policy:

This Artist Turns Virtual World Landscape Screenshots Into Beautifully Dramatic & Whimsical Imagery

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

Uma Fae Dust‘s picture is called “Open Spaces” but it really makes me think of the Reata Ranch outside Marfa, Texas and the fabulous, ahead-of-it-time movie, Giant. I love the stark isolation of the house without a tree to soften its alienation from the environment. It’s just plopped down, so out of place, that it stands on the line between ludicrous and beautiful, not committing to either. 

Up next, a picture to make you smile:

SL Users: Please Take This Survey from UC Irvine's Tom Boellstorff on Your Virtual World Usage During the Pandemic

Here's a fun short survey for SL users for a study on virtual cultures during the COVID-19 pandemic. (One of the questions above.) The study is led by my pal Tom Boellstorff of UC Irvine, who's easily among the most preeminent academics with a focus on virtual worlds. (He's the author of Coming of Age in Second Life, among many other related works.)

"I’ve been conducting various research projects in Second Life for almost 17 years now," Tom tells me, explaining the genesis of this study. "A couple years ago, I completed a study of disability in Second Life, and after that wonderful research experience moved on to some other projects (I’m actually finishing up a book on the Intellivision video game system from the early 1980s, which is great fun!) But then when COVID-19 hit, I decided to return to Second Life to see how COVID-19 is reshaping online interaction. I was lucky enough to get support from the National Science Foundation that means I have three wonderful graduate research assistants. Until next April we are conducting research in both Second Life and Animal Crossing. It’s a wild ride, setting up research with very little warning, but it’s been a great experience for all of us."

Here's the key questions Tom and his team hope to answer:

"The basic idea behind our project is that what people call 'social distancing' is really physical distancing. Online, new kinds of connections are being created. What are they, how are they working, and what lessons can we learn as it’s happening? In particular, the Internet isn’t a unified entity. Virtual worlds share some things with social network sites like Facebook or Instagram, with mobile devices, with online games, and so on, but there are distinctive features as well. What do virtual worlds specifically offer? What is the potential and what are the dangers? How can learning from what people are doing in virtual worlds help us better respond to the transformed lives we’ll all be living in the wake of COVID-19?"

Even better, Tom will share the results with New World Notes. More about the study here, excerpt below:

How Virtual Worlds Can Benefit Senior Citizens (Comment of the Week)

My "How avatars change who we are" article for Samsung EDGE's Components mentioned a study suggesting that being Einstein in VR seems to improve a user's IQ, and longtime reader Luther Weymnn notes that this phenomenon also seems to happen in non-VR virtual worlds:

Over the past decade, I've chatted with dozens of SL content creators who are between the ages of 65-85. Previously, I thought that I was in a tiny group of senior citizens using SL, but I was wrong. In my 70's having SL as a hobby and creating content a little bit every day has been a powerful method to keep my retired from business brain sharper than most other activities. And this is what all of the senior citizen's content creators I've chatted with agreed upon. Having to creatively think our way through SL product content creation is a terrific way to keep old brains thinking creatively and staying sharp. I attempted to tell my neighbor about the benefits of building in SL. He is also my doctor for the past 35 years. But, all I could get out of him was, "uh-huh, ok, now let's talk about getting you to exercise more." Oh well.

Pulsar concurs, suggesting a reason why the Einstein experiment works, and how it might translate to non-VR worlds:

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including Four Seasons Landscaping in VRChat, and an SL Fashion Blog Bigger Than Many Top RL Fashion Sites

• Looking For Lumiya, The Android App For SL? It's Still Available On SlideME
• Seraphim Secrets: How A Second Life Fashion Blog Earned 60 Million+ Views
• NeosVR Makes User-To-User File Sharing An Immersive Social VR Experience
• Being Einstein In VR Can Raise Your Actual IQ, And Other Fascinating Examples Of How Avatars Change Who We Are
• Four Seasons Total Landscaping Rapidly Recreated In VRChat For Post-Election Furry Fun; UPDATE: Dildo Store Addition TBD

Mandalorian Made on Massive LED Screens So Actors Reflect The Virtual Light

You probably know already that the visuals for the Disney streaming show The Mandalorian are created in the Unreal 3D engine, but this Vox explainer video shows you how those virtual spaces are integrated with the actual, physical cast: Not through green screen but via giant, curving LED displays, which effectively wrap the actors in a virtual world. Technically more efficient than green screen, another advantage of this approach is that the actors in these shots are illuminated by virtual light. So if the cast is, say, standing there watching a twin star sunset on Tatooine, the warm light on their faces really is cast by the virtual suns. (Also super important when an actor is already wearing a costume with reflective surfaces, as with Mando in the show that bears his name.)

SL Fashion Blog Friday: Nadja Baxter Has the Stylish Shopping Tips You Need

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

Nadja Baxter has been blogging since at least 2007; Old Guard, indeed. Her original blog was called GermanStyle but now she has an eponymous blog, Nadja Baxter. It’s important to know that her blog has more pictures than her Flickr stream and her photostream has pictures that never make it to the blog. There are a few candids, shots of friends, and microblogs on her stream. The blog posts have several photos the better demonstrate the outfits. You really need to follow both to see her prodigious output in Second Life. I like the outfit in this recent post. 

• Mimikri - Cropped Cardigan / Gloria Fatpack At Uber
• Mimikri - Flared Pants / Gloria Fatpack At Uber
• Mimikri - Fur Scarf / Gloria Fatpack At Uber

This next outfit has a coat for taking names and cashing checks:

Looking for Lumiya, the Android App for SL? It's Still Available on SlideME

Lumiya, the popular and impressive SL viewer for Android devices, was removed from Google Play last year, apparently due to a change in Google's policy around apps' use of SMS messages, but it's still available on SlideME, a curated market for Android apps. Since I haven't heard from Lumiya creator Alina Lyvette in many years (despite many attempts to reach her), I checked with SlideME that the app is still indeed available in their store. A rep with the company just confirmed with me that Lumiya is currently "active with downloads" on the platform.

You can buy it here, but as with any app, buyer beware. It was last updated in 2017 so that Lumiya supports Bento-based technology and its complex, highly articulated avatars for Second Life.

Official trailer below. And if you do know Alina, let her know that we'd love to hear from her, at least to know she's OK -- and to make sure she knows that she's still making money from her app on SlideMe.

Seraphim Secrets: How a Second Life Fashion Blog Earned 60 Million+ Views

Seraphim, the massive Second Life shopping blog, recently opened a Cuban-themed shopping sim in SL itself -- click here to visit.  This virtual island is a long time coming since the web site launched in 2011, going on to become the largest user-run SL blog by far. Raking in nearly 61 million reported pageviews since then, currently on track to exceed over 12 million in just this year alone, Seraphim is, as I've noted before, more popular than many professionally run MMO news sites. (New World Notes, for instance, has only attracted a distant ~15 million views!) With pageviews like this, it's likely that well over half of Second Life's ~600,000 active user base visits Seraphim on a regular basis.

Or to make another comparison: Seraphim SL gets about as many visits as Fashionista, a top real life fashion blog.

Despite this wild popularity, Seraphim founders and co-owners Kess Crystal and Awylder1 still hold full-time jobs in real life -- in the healthcare sector, Kess tells me. "So 2020 has been particularly challenging for us," she notes, "both managing Seraphim and dealing with the ramifications of COVID... we have an amazing management team in place and we simply could not do it without them."

But if you think those millions of pageviews translate into millions of dollars in profit, you may be mistaken: 

"We're often amused by the wildly optimistic assumptions we've read on social media and our reaction is often 'I WISH!'," as Kess puts it, when I ask her about Seraphim's revenue. "We are a cost heavy business in terms of payroll and the amount we have to pay for hosting such a resource heavy site is not insignificant either. As business owners, we reinvest monthly into a fund for new services, scripting, innovation and then draw a salary from the remaining profit."

Kess shares some Seraphim secrets to becoming so big, and future plans with the sim, after the break:

These Gorgeous Decor Images Are Not Paintings But Actually SL Screenshots

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

Fliegenbeil Resident (aka anc aki) is a creator of dreamy, romantic decor objects. It’s completely fitting that his Second Life images are the dreamiest and most romantic on Flickr. Take “Hydrangea” for example. Doesn’t it look like a watercolor sketch? I love the neutral wall and stairs behind the flowers so the only “color” is the blue of the hydrangeas. It feels more like a painting than a screenshot.

When vendor pictures are art:

NeosVR Makes User-to-User File Sharing an Immersive Social VR Experience

 NeosVR, an impressive indie social VR metaverse project backed by Patreon funders  (featured previously here) continues to impress. In the latest update, lead developer Frooxius shows off its latest feature: the ability to import files and share them with other users. And rather than accomplish this with a 2D pop-up menu (the obvious solution), Frooxius makes it truly immersive: The files are 3D objects that can be manipulated, moved around, and given to other users in VR. You know, the same way file sharing has been depicted in fiction about the metaverse forever.

SL Flickr Photographer of the Day: Doesselle Destiny

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

Doesselle Destiny’s picture is emotionally powerful, even though by leaving it titled simply with a number, she leaves its meaning up to us. This is a woman looking forward, with a man in her rear-view mirror. Is she leaving him? Yes, but for the day or forever? We don’t know. If feels like forever to me, the result of the implacable certainty in her forward-looking eye. 

This next photo made me think of Goya's La Maja Desnuda:

Being Einstein in VR Can Raise Your Actual IQ, and Other Fascinating Examples of How Avatars Change Who We Are

"How avatars change who we are" is my new article for Samsung NEXT's Component magazine, exploring some fascinating examples of how avatars (both in VR and on flatscreens) seem to influence the user, as much as the other way around. I talk with several top academics in the field who've been studying this under-appreciated phenomenon years, including one of my favorites:

Post-doc researcher Domna Bankou and her colleagues at the University of Barcelona... recently created a VR simulation where the test subjects would see themselves as Albert Einstein, standing authoritatively in a lab coat. They did this, Bankou says, with assumptions about what would then transpire.

“To be honest with you we weren’t expecting anything to happen,” she said. “But VR changes where you are, [and] it also changes who you are.”

In fact, after volunteers completed the Barcelona VR experiment and took a cognitive performance test, those with lower IQs saw their test scores substantially improve. The act of virtually embodying the smartest human in history apparently made them more intelligent in the real world — at least temporarily.

Much more here.

Dual Universe: Traditional Game or Metaverse? One Virtual World Scout's Take

Here's a recent walkthrough of Dual Universe, the would-be metaverse from J.C. Baille and team that launched last September, from renowned virtual world explorer Luca (previously here and also here), mostly featuring its ship-building capabilities.

Luca's initial take on Dual Universe overall, with an interesting point on whether it plays like an online game or a full-fledged metaverse: