New World Notes

Weekend Read: Real Life Black People Reflect on Being in Second Life & Experiencing Virtual Racism

This is an epic, thought provoking new article in the latest SL-focused ECLIPSE magazine on real life Black people in the virtual world, reflecting on Black Lives Matter and their experiences in SL. It's written by New World Notes contributor Cajsa Lilliehook. She interviews many Black SLers, who discuss racism in SL -- everything from avatar skin color discrimination, to coming across people roleplaying in a plantation.

Read an excerpt below:

Watch, Discuss: Strawberry Linden Interviews Philip Rosedale! UPDATE: Added Questions Covered In Her Chat

Update, August 7: Bumped up for viewing and discussion. Post title changed accordingly!

Update 2 , August 7: Courtesy Strawberry, here's the main questions she asked Philip:

• Do you still log in to Second Life? If so, what communities and experiences do you enjoy exploring?
• Are you surprised that Second Life is still around 20 years after founding Linden Lab?
• Your avatar look has become very well known and perhaps even iconic - can you tell us a bit about what inspired you to create your unique look in Second Life?
• Let’s go back to the beginning of Linden Lab and Second Life: Can you share some stories about the origins of Second Life?
• Tell us what inspired you to create Linden Lab and eventually Second Life? There are rumors that you originally were focusing on virtual reality with a prototype hardware device called “The Rig” - is that true? If so, what happened to “The Rig”?
• What were the early days like at Linden Lab? Some in the community may not be familiar with this, but you led some corporate innovations that helped to shape and inform the culture at Linden Lab - such as the Love Machine. You also published the Tao of Linden. Can you speak a bit about both of those.
• If you could do one thing differently when creating Second Life, what would it be and why?
• As you know, Linden Lab recently announced that an agreement was signed for it to be acquired by an investment group led by Randy Waterfield and Brad Oberwager. While I know that you aren’t in a position to say anything specific about the terms of the deal, I wonder if you can share any thoughts about what you think it means for the future of Second Life as I know that you have known Brad personally and professionally for many years.
• Your career spans much more than just Second Life, of course. Prior to Linden Lab, you were a key executive at RealNetworks - a pioneer in audio and video streaming. Can you tell us a bit about your work there and how that might have helped to influence your decision to form Linden Lab?
• About a decade or so ago, you left Linden Lab to explore other entrepreneurial efforts - can you tell us why you chose to move on at that time?
• You are now involved with High Fidelity - can you share a bit about what High Fidelity is and how we can check it out?
• What’s next for High Fidelity?
• Do you have any other entrepreneurial endeavors that you want to share?
• The concept of a social virtual world was so ahead of its time -- and it feels like the pandemic has caused new respect and recognition for the value and utility of shared virtual world and VR platforms. That must be so affirming! Has the pandemic caused you to have any shift in your vision for the future of virtual social networks?

SL Spoon: A Whole Blog Devoted to Virtual Food & Cooking (Really!)

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

Mac Massimo’s The SL Spoon is a virtual cooking blog, featuring the best of SL foodstuffs and cuisine. As a food blogger myself, this really appealed to me. I particularly loved “How to Make the Best Mediterranean Wild-Caught Fish on the Grid” as it contains a recipe along with fabulous food photos like the one above. 

• DRD – Hunters Retreat – Bench LI:4
• DRD – Hunters Retreat – Hearty Meal A LI:2
• DRD – Hunters Retreat – Table LI:1
• DRD – Hunters Retreat – Tin Cup Empty LI:1

In the next post, Mac introduces us into a whole new genre of Second Life.

Rosie's Rift Rips a Rift Into Reality

Rosie Summers recently wandered into a neighborhood park, and casually dropped this black hole into the grass.

"Soon as I saw its colossal size in an area of familiarity," she wryly notes, "the fear set in."

This rip of existence was made possible through several pieces of technology, and her own artistry:

Génesis Rodriguez Turns Second Life Screenshots Into Profound Art

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

Génesis Rodriguez’ “Your Name Makes Me Think of Good Memories” is a beautiful and emotional resonant composite photo, overlaying a photo of a “memory” with a headshot. I love how the memory is in color while the person remembering is not. It shows us how memories can bring things and people to life long after they are gone.” 

Rodriguez has a light touch, even with the macabre as in the next picture.

Tim Sweeney: More 3D Engines Means Multiple Metaverses -- But Interoperability Might Still Be Possible

Here's a really interesting "Economy of the Metaverse" conversation with Epic's Tim Sweeney and game exec Joseph Kim. A lot of its focus, of course, is on how Epic's Fortnite might be a future model for the metaverse. But much of it is actually about the current platform ecosystem (Apple's App Store, Google Play, Amazon, etc.), which Sweeney finds too closed and prohibitive to birth the metaverse:

I think the most plausible way the Metaverse is going to rise isn’t from one company even Epic building this thing and forcing everybody to use it. It’s going to be from more and more companies and brands connecting their products and services until you have a much, much more open thing that everybody participates in... I think interconnecting systems is a great way to to to move forward with this. I think, you know, a lot of the big game companies and even many of the ecosystem companies have come to the realization that they’re never going to be the one monopoly that dominates the whole thing. And so it’s in everybody’s interest to really interconnect and standardize over time. And to build this more connected world and to all benefit from it side by side with no one company dominating. 

Which is a great vision, but while reading this interview (actually a transcript, video the actual video below), I kept thinking about the biggest barrier to building THE Metaverse -- a coming competition between the 3D engines required to build it. Sweeney more or less alludes to this:

Is Patreon-Powered NeosVR the Best Social VR Platform Now Out There?

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Here's the latest update from NeosVR, an impressive indie social VR metaverse project backed by Patreon funders that we featured last year: Customizable UI, so Neos users can create a user interface that's ideal for whatever they do most in the social VR world. (For instance: Content creation, socialization, gaming,  and -- to judge by everyone in this video -- multiple furry avatar quick changes.)

Really, though, I'm posting this because NeosVR seriously seems like the most graphically robust and feature-rich social VR platform on the market. (And I'm not sure NeosVR counts as being "on the market" since it's not an actual company. but three developers splitting $7328 a month in Patreon donations.)  But you look at the graphics with dynamic lighting, the responsiveness of the avatars -- especially integrated to a full VR rig -- not to mention the content creation tools and so on, and it certainly seems many years ahead of, say, VRChat.

Will be keeping closer tabs on them. Meantime, here's NeosVR's latest Creator Community Showcase, featuring 2 hours of user-made geeky coolness:

SL Flickr Pick: Dramatically Powerful Avatar Portraits by Geyer Schnyder

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

Geyer Schnyder’s “Just a Nightmare…” is well named. A nightmarish picture of a desperate man with a serious looking military knife. The background lighting suggests a car is off to the left but without certainty. This captures how when you are frightened your vision narrows to the essential, how everything else just disappears. 

Schnyder enjoys illustrating the gritty side of life. More below.

Watch: Sansar's Pivot as Enterprise Platform for Live Music Seems Complete

As far as I can tell, this is the first official platform demo on YouTube for Sansar since it was taken over by Wookey, and it's pretty striking: Where once Sansar was promised to be a successor to Second Life and a WordPress for virtual worlds, it's now positioned as a "turnkey virtual venue platform" for "record labels, artists, festivals, creative agencies, and brands" (their words). 

Not a criticism! It's a smart move to target the live music/concert market in the COVID age. And I do like a lot of the functionality they are showing off in the video, especially avatar-to-avatar VR meet-and-greets for artists.

SL's Top User-Run Shopping Site Larger Than Many MMO News Sites

Estimated visits to Seraphimsl.com via analytics site Similar Web

While Second Life might be smaller than many other virtual worlds, do not underestimate how passionate and engaged its core userbase is. As an example of that, consider SeraphimSL, one of many hundreds of user-run sites and blogs advertising SL fashions and housewares. (And Seraphim is probably the very largest, at least in the English-fluent Internet.)

According to SimilarWeb, Seraphim rakes in over half a million pageviews a month. As I was telling someone else in the SL business recently, that's more than enough eyeballs to make a six figure income in real dollars, via advertising.

In terms of unique eyeballs every month, 500K+ probably translates to roughly 100,000 actual people. (Way back in the day, unsurprisingly, metaverse expert Gwyneth Llewellyn estimated 100,000 as the approximate number of SL's most engaged community members.)

The number is pretty impressive even when you pull outside the userbase of Second Life: Seraphim's page views are larger than many news sites about virtual worlds/MMOs, like this one. It's even about as large or on par with some fairly well known tech news sites and blogs.

What's this mean?

SL Flickr Pick: Avatar Headshots With Amazing Personality by Linda Ronstadt

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

"Linda Ronstadt" sure looks a lot younger than when I saw her in concert in college. “I hope you get all that you want cause I didn’t.” is a cleverly titled self-portrait that is arresting. I love how her eyes capture the viewer with a challenge. You can see how depth-of-field is used to make her eyes the center focus, as though anything else could be. 

I love how she can create such different characters, see below.

Sinespace New Feature Launch Party With the Virtual World’s Founders, August 5 at 9am PT -- RSVP for Exclusive Access!

Click here for exclusive access to a new Sinespace feature launch party for Sinespace community members and all other virtual world explorers/creators. The event opens August 5 at 8:30am PT, then starts at 9am PT. You don’t need a Sinespace account to attend, but it will be held in a secret virtual world location, so you must RSVP here for access. 

As a media partner to Sinespace, I’m highly biased, but I think what the development team has created is pretty amazing, and if you’re a regular New World Notes reader, you’ll want to join the fun. 

Adam Frisby and the other founders of Sinespace will host the event, and talk about what this new feature means for the future of the virtual world. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get the first glimpse of some other impressive features about to go live very soon.

This launch comes after a period of relative quiet for the Sinespace development team, as they’ve been deep in the launch of Breakroom, and perfecting this feature they’re about to unveil. As Adam puts it to me:

Why Elder Scrolls Online's Bugs Are More Enraging Than Bugs in... Second Life (Comment of the Week)

Lots of conversation last week around what it would take to upgrade 17 year old Second Life, with an intriguing point of comparison made by longtime virtual world user Jumpman Lane, who contrasts SL's performance with that of a 6 year old virtual world:

I just recently returned to Second Life after 3 years of playing The Elder Scrolls Online (fun game). I'll say this about the performance of SL vs that of ESO:

I really don't mind SL's issues, lag, whatever.

In ESO I [played] player vs player and it was a highly competitive environment. Death is frowned upon to say the very least. Killing someone involved tbagging, hours of arguing, 1v1's, and feuds that lasted YEARS.

But that's not why he's taking a break from Elder Scrolls Online for SL. Here's why:

Top 6 Posts from Last Week, Including Oculus Quest Finally Reaches 1M Install Base, And ROBLOX's Massive Popularity Compared With Steam

• Visit In SL: Amazing Sim With Multi-Varied Themes -- With An Open Call For SL Artists Who Want To Freely Host Their Works There
• Watch: Will Second Life's New AWS Cloud Deployment Improve Performance?
• VR's Pandemic Winter: Oculus Quest Only Now Reaches 1 Million Unit Install Base, According To SuperData, Which Downgrades HMD Sales Forecasts
• If COVID-19 Kills Off The Hands-On VR Demo, How Can VR Grow?
• Top User-Made Games On ROBLOX Played As Much As Top Company-Made Games On Steam
• What It Would Take To Truly Upgrade Second Life

Want to Try IMVU? The Mobile Metaverse Has Weekend Extra Credit Offers

My recent post on the massive growth of IMVU, the mobile-based metaverse, provoked a lot of conversation and curiosity. And so if you're interested in trying it out -- or you already have an account, and want to see what's new -- Lindsay at IMVU just let me know about two special Credit offers this weekend. (Click below for details.)

To be sure IMVU is a fairly different experience than traditional virtual worlds like Second Life, but some readers have found value in both:

"I started in IMVU, after being given a writing assignment for the Metaverse Tribune as Allen Eppenberger a few years back," longtime reader Joey1058 says. "At first I couldn't see how it was useful. But it grew on me. And I actually spend more time in IMVU than SL. I will say there is more drama in IMVU as opposed to SL."

Now to the offers, first for existing users:

Buy a 10,000 Credit package for $9.99 and get an extra 2,000 PROMO CREDITS*.

*One bonus credit package reward per account. Purchase must occur on IMVU’s app before 8/2/20, Sunday, 11:59 PM PST. Bonus rewarded within 24 hours.

Offer good from Friday, 12am PST - 8/2/20, Sunday, 11:59 PM PST

 And below, details for new IMVU users:

Visit in SL: Amazing Sim With Multi-Varied Themes -- With An Open Call For SL Artists Who Want to Freely Host Their Works There

This SL sim called Sinful Retreat (saucy) is a worthwhile explore this weekend, whether you're in search of an artful location -- or you're an artist who wants a location to show off your work. Click here to teleport.

First the location: "[I]is a land of incongruent realities," owner and lead creator Chuck Clip tells me. "A Victorian town built on a bridge leads to a gothic Basilica. all of it looking over a post apocalyptic trailer park, with a portal that leads into a story book forest." Sounds like a club Stefon would visit... with his mom.

And now the opportunity for artists:

Find SL Sites to Visit By Visiting the SL Blog, Living in a Modem World

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

“A Touch of Dim Sum Gardens in Second Life” is one of many travel posts from the prolific historian and explainer of Second Life, Inara Pey. Here she explores a beautiful Asian-inspired full sim with gardens, statues, and so much to see she discovered new things on her second visit. There are several photos and a well-explained travel tour of the Gardens in her post. 

• Dim Sum Gardens (Malrif, rated General)

Another post with what seems a fun challenge below the cut:

Watch: Will Second Life's New AWS Cloud Deployment Improve Performance?

Linden Lab is starting to test a new deployment of Second Life running on the Amazon Web Services cloud, beginning with a copy of Blake Sea on the Second Life Preview Grid (known as Aditi)  -- and virtual world explorer Nodoka Hanamura just arrived from the sea with this video, putting the cloud through its paces in many vehicles. (Action starts at around 1:30 in.)

The most notable result? Near-seamless sim crossing, a much-desired but near-elusive goal. As you'll see in the video, there's a split-second pause when traveling from one sim to another, resembling what it looks like in many open world games -- as opposed to the several seconds or more rubber band-ing mess it's usually like in SL.

Frame rate, Nodoka tells me, what's fairly decent: 

Real Life Video Rendered Into Beautiful Fractal-Like Art Via Multiple Programs

Filmmaker and animator Chadrick Scott (a fellow Linden Lab alum from back in the day) has been posting some seriously gorgeous computer animated clips like this to his Instagram. They began as real life video, but as Chadrick tells me, evolved into these fractal-like videos through some heavy post-processing via multiple programs.

"Starts with a [RL] model, but I use everything from After Effects to random apps. My favorite is Mirror Lab or Glitch Lab for the Android, but I don’t use that solely. Sometimes a piece of work will go through 5-6 programs before I put it up on Instagram."

His advice for achieving an affect along these lines:

SL Flickr Pick: Emi's Beautiful Beach Photos Drenched by the Virtual Sun

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

“Blinding” is the word not just for this picture, but for Emi’s stream of sundrenched photos. She has a love of the sunlight that cannot be denied. We see her from the back, lit by a blinding sun and framed by fiddlehead ferns and other foliage. It’s well done and shows her uniquely sunny style. 

More sunny pics ahead:

VR's Pandemic Winter: Oculus Quest Only Now Reaches 1 Million Unit Install Base, According to SuperData, Which Downgrades HMD Sales Forecasts

The numbers from Nielsen analytics company SuperData seem to welcome us to VR's winter season:

The growth outlook for augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) headsets has been revised downward due to Q2 setbacks for consumer AR/MR. We now estimate that AR/MR headsets will only account for 23% of XR revenue by 2023, down from a prior projection of 36%. Magic Leap experienced mass layoffs after it failed to appeal to consumers or developers of consumer software. The company has now pivoted to focus on enterprise customers. Similarly, smartglasses maker North was acquired by Google, reportedly for less than the firm had raised in venture funding. There are reports Apple is testing AR devices, and a product from the company will certainly grow the consumer AR market overnight. However, we believe a consumer AR headset from Apple will not arrive until 2022 at the earliest and will take some time to reach true mainstream adoption. 

More here. While SuperData also reports that the Quest outsold the PSVR in Q2 2020 (the second quarter since Q4 2019 that this has happened), the Quest install base remains surprisingly now:

SL Flickr Pick: Gwin Leshelle Creates Kawaii Pics to Brighten Your Day

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

If you want to feel happy, just go to Gwin LeShelle’s photostream where a bright, cheerful world of kawaii pastels and brights wait to brighten your day. I love her photos because they make me feel happy. She manages to deal with a Flickr trend I don’t like, framing the photos sideways to make them good for group banners, in a way that does not drive me nuts. As you see, there is enough of an angle to make this a picture I can enjoy without turning my head or my screen. Seriously, folks, everyone and their cousin is turning their photos 90°, be original and turn it °45 to 60° or even not at all. 

More kawaii happiness below:

If COVID-19 Kills Off the Hands-On VR Demo, How Can VR Grow?

Earlier this year when the pandemic hit for the first time, my family and I were fairly well-prepared, in the sense that we had a huge supply of sanitary wipes on hand, even when store shelves had been completely wiped out of every bacteria-killing product.

Why? Because late last year, I had been spending quite awhile doing VR demos. Which basically means wiping down the equipment with sanitary wipes, every time another person steps up to give your VR product a try.

It's really the paradox of virtual reality: Convincing people it's a powerful technology means spending quite a lot of time physically touching them in real life. "Eye condoms" like the one here -- popular at VR conferences, often handed out right at the entrance -- are a laughably thin level of sanitary protection. They might help prevent infection from bacteria on the VR headset, but you're still in close contact with one or more strangers throughout a typical VR demo, sharing the controllers, holding and positioning people around so they're tracked properly, often literally holding hands with them, so you can make sure they're properly clicking the proper controls. 

I thought about all this after Upload VR's Ian Hamilton made a very astute point:

Top User-Made Games on ROBLOX Played as Much as Top Company-Made Games on Steam

Pictured: Today's top played games on Steam via SteamDB; inset is today's top played game on ROBLOX, Adopt Me

I get the impression many virtual world enthusiasts don't quite grasp how massive ROBLOX is, so here's a comparison:

• Adopt Me, a user-made roleplay pet care game on ROBLOX, created by a small team of grassroots-level prosumer developers, has been visited over 10 billion times, and today at this writing, is being played by nearly 700,000 concurrent users.
• Which means Adopt Me is being played today by more people playing games on Steam like Grand Theft Auto V and PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS, created by international companies worth billions which employ hundreds of developers and staffers to make and serve these games.

See the data above. While ROBLOX is generally pigeon-holed as a "kids game", the company behind it very much has building the metaverse as its ultimate goal, and are paying its user creators fairly well to make that happen:

SL Flickr Pick: Gorgeously Ambiguous Female Avatar Photos by Bee

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

Bee’s D.U.S.H.A. caught my eye with its brilliant chiaroscuro effect. It has the tone of light and shadow from the old Dutch masters, but really what it reminded me was an old SCTV sendup of Ingmar Bergman. If you watch it, you will understand. It must be the heat making me lightheaded. If you get a kick out Ingmar Bergman satires there is none better than De Dűva.I must confess my friends and I took to saying “H2Oska” for water for far too long.

More of her striking use of lighting that seems to add subtext to her photos.