New World Notes

This Artist Uses Second Life Wireframe & Layering to Create Amazing Images

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

“The Magician” seems so perfect for a 1970’s roch concept album. I love the psychedelic exuberance of the picture with the mirror-like shards exploding outward from the epicenter where the Magician has materialized from some hole in the stage before some dramatic opening riff during which the rest of the band arrives. This is one of the many creative and exciting pictures by Hermes Kondor. 

Hermes is an experimenter, for more, click here:

Reddit's /SecondLife Gains 10,000 Subscribers; Great Community & Resource

/SecondLife, the largest SL-related subreddit, recently grew past 10,000 subscribers. Over the years (it had only 2,000 subscribers back in 2015), it's evolved into a solid go-to hug for interesting and informative SL/virtual world-related content and conversation. Since it's on Reddit, the participants tend to skews towards SL veterans, especially developers and scripters, and unlike most (all?) social media hangouts for SLers, isn't an unceasing cascade of fashion pics and shopping announcements. (Though there's still a lot of that!)

Some recent stand-out threads:

• Robin (Sojourner) Wood has passed away, after an extended struggle with cancer (phyllodes tumors)
• Through fire, Iron becomes Legend
• Has Second Life improved? 2008/2009 - 2020/2021
• Metaverse - Our Existence, Our Reality, a Second Life Existential Machinima
• Explore 10 tranquil and artistic Second Life destinations!

Much more here. And thanks to u/TrinityDejavu, u/zebragrrl, and u/0xc0ffea for their moderating skills!

This Artist Elevates Virtual World Screenshots With Unexpected Angles

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

I like pictures that confound me. “Snapshot 45” is confounding. She’s standing on a wall for a house that looks like it’s built on a dock and there are fish swimming by. It makes no sense which is perfect because I can imagine the fish are actually taxis swimming from fare to fare or the house is underwater and people have gills. On the side of being underwater, there is the seagrass and the sandy bottom. On the side of being aboveground, there is the electric pole with the isolators. Is it both? In Second Life it can be anything. 

I love her way with angles, for more, click here:

Why Bill Maher's Snarky Takedown of Cryptocurrency Isn't Snarky Enough

Setting aside Bill Maher's usual "Old Man Yells at Woke Millenial Cloud" tone, this is a pretty good and funny takedown of cryptocurrency hype, mostly hitting the right targets, such as its Ponzi scheme nature, for instance, and the absurdity of Tesla CEO Elon Musk promoting Bitcoin despite the fact that its environmental costs utterly undermines any green advantages achieved by Tesla the company.

Maher's rant, however, fails when he notes that major companies like Microsoft, Etsy, and Starbucks accept Bitcoin as a currency... without noting that hardly anyone uses Bitcoin to buy goods and services. As I wrote in 2015:

According to Linden Lab stats, Second Life has about 1 million monthly users, and about 125K+ hardcore users (i.e. in SL over an hour a day). Insiders tell me about 400,000 users regularly spend Linden Dollars. So with all that activity in mind, it's safe to estimate 100K Linden Dollar individual users a day. (Conducting a lot more total transactions.) Contrast with Bitcoin: The much-hyped currency -- lauded weekly in the tech and mainstream press for the last 4-5 years, with over $400 million invested in Bitcoin-related startups since 2012 -- is still used only about 100K times a day. (Which means unique users are significantly less than 100,000.)

The wild thing is, Bitcoin's daily transaction rates have not grown that much since then, fluctuating between 200,000 and 400,000. In another words, a daily transaction rate of a small city, and still less than Linden Dollar transactions in Second Life.

As usual, fellow HBO comedian John Oliver had a better take on the topic, back in 2018:

According to Linden Lab stats, Second Life has about 1 million monthly users, and about 125K+ hardcore users (i.e. in SL over an hour a day). Insiders tell me about 400,000 users regularly spend Linden Dollars. So with all that activity in mind, it's safe to estimate 100K Linden Dollar individual users a day. (Conducting a lot more total transactions.) Contrast with Bitcoin: The much-hyped currency -- lauded weekly in the tech and mainstream press for the last 4-5 years, with over $400 million invested in Bitcoin-related startups since 2012 -- is still used only about 100K times a day. (Which means unique users are significantly less than 100,000.)

Top 5 Posts Last Week Including VRChat Passes the Virtual World Godfather, and Oculus Quest 2's Install Base Reaches 3-4 Million

• Binge Watch: A Second Life Machinima Team Not Only Produced A Full-Length, Tarantino-Esque Detective Series, It's Now On Its Third Season!
• Oculus Quest 2 Install Base Now Likely 3-4 Million, According To Facebook's Coy Earnings Reports
• Life Screenshot As NFT Art? Probably, But Beware Second Life's "Gray Interesting Mysteries" Around User IP Rights
• A Beautifully Illustrated Travel Guide On Flickr To Wonderful Second Life Locations -- Teleport Links In Every Description
• Milestone: VRChat Peak Concurrent User Numbers Start Surpassing Second Life's

Binge Watch: A Second Life Machinima Team Not Only Produced a Full-Length, Tarantino-esque Detective Series, It's Now On Its Third Season!

With its arresting visuals, sardonic dialog, and music like the ironic Sinatra throwback heard above, the LANG series is something Quentin Tarantino* might make, if he was in the mood to make a comedic neo-noir machinima in Second Life. Created by Zatch Ixchel and company, I wrote about LANG last January, and it's not only kept up its solid pace, but is now teasing Season 3 as coming soon. 

"At this point, I’m inspired by the characters themselves, the world we’ve built here," Zach tells me, when I ask how he keeps inspired to keep creating episodes. "I want to know what happens to these people. I want to know why Lang is the way he is. I want to know if Sadie will ever be satisfied."

Watch Season 1 and Season 2 below so you're all caught up before S3 drops:

SL Fashion Friday: Two Stylish Looks from Two Shopping Events

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

Chic at Phil’s Place has been keeping us informed of the best in fashion since 2008. As one of the old guard, she has kept going while many others have taken long sabbaticals (ahem, me!) or quit altogether. I love how she focuses on one item in Unseelie, the fabulous foot jewelry from Lassitude & Ennui. 

Lassitude & Ennui’s Unseelie foot jewels are at the Chronicles and Legends event -- click here to teleport. 

For a mod look, click here:

Oculus Quest 2 Install Base Now Likely 3-4 Million, According to Facebook's Coy Earnings Reports

Original chart via UploadVR, annotated with Quest 2 sales estimates by me

Facebook's latest earnings report is once again playing the coy game of referring to Oculus device and software sales "as non-advertising revenue" without giving any specifics, so we must continue the coyly make install base estimates. And based on some rough but reasonable assumptions*, Facebook probably sold 1.4 million to 1.9 million Quest 2 units in the first quarter of 2021, a slight decrease in the estimated 1.5 million to 2 million Quest 2 units sold in the first quarter of its launch, in Q4 2020.

Or to put it another way: The Quest 2 probably has a total install base somewhere between 3 million and 4 million. Which isn't bad! That still trails PSVR's install base in absolute numbers, but then again the Quest 2 has been on the market for far less time. The next test is whether this revenue remains steady; if it does, by end of 2021 it'll hit the 10 million install base that Mark Zuckerberg arbitrarily set as the target for mainstream adoption. (10 million is still far smaller than leading game consoles, but that's another topic for another time.)

Can You Sell a Second Life Screenshot as NFT Art? Probably, But Beware Second Life's "Gray Interesting Mysteries" Around User IP Rights

With hype over NFT digital art still hyping, Second Life users are asking the next inevitable question:

Is it possible for an SL photographer to sell their digital photos as NFTs? Lately, selling NFTs is a hot topic. We see digital art selling at marketplaces like Nifty Gateway for obscene amounts. Obviously, that's rare. Still a number of photographers have come to me lately asking if photos taken in Second Life are saleable as an NFT for a profit -- even a small profit -- on marketplaces like Nifty Gateway or Rarible. The TOS is so confusing. 

The short answer is Yes, but the actual answer is much, much more complicated. That's because Linden Lab the company allows users to retain ownership to anything they make on the Second Life platform, which has led to game companies, book publishers, TV networks, movie studios, even fashion brands, creating and profiting from content that was originally made in SL -- all totally permissible, from Linden Lab's point of view.

However, the very fact that SL users retain the IP rights to anything that they make in the virtual world leads to many "gray interesting mysteries" -- in the words of Fred von Lohmann, who said them when he was staff attorney for the Electric Frontier Foundation:

A Beautifully Illustrated Travel Guide on Flickr to Wonderful Second Life Locations -- Teleport Links in Every Description

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

Second Life has hundreds of sims so a travel guide is a useful person to know or at least to follow. Anthony Gartner is just such a person. Posting single snaps as he travels from sim to sim, he gives you an idea of what you will see and he kindly provides a SLURL to each location. I love this picture from A Little Bit of Soul. (Click here to teleport.) I think he does a great job of capturing the essence of the place. 

For an out of this world experience, click here:

Anonymous Artist Made Amazing Virtual World Images Like These Then Mysteriously Disappeared from Flickr

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

Update, 6:00pm SLT: While Ms. Shilova is no active on the featured Flickr account, SLer Vince JB Striker points out that she won an SL-based competition earlier this year. I've changed the title to reflect this. (WJA)

Catchafire Shilova is no longer active on Flickr, but I only discovered her today, so she is still new to me. Her pictures are so original and surreal, it would be a shame not to highlight them just because they are old. In “Scarcity Generation” we have Mickey and Minnie figures in punk tartans and safety pins. There’s blood on her hands and feet, she’s holding a knife, has Shilova killed Minnie? Is the answer in the linked song “There Will Be No Next Time?”

Can cats do the mambo? To find out, click here:

Milestone: VRChat Peak Concurrent User Numbers Start Surpassing Second Life's

Source: This user-made VRChat concurrency tracker by @OhNoItsFusl

It's been building for many months, and last weekend, it finally happened: Social VR/virtual world VRChat surpassed Second Life's concurrent user rates, probably for the first time: When 40,540 people were logged into SL, VRChat counted 42,513 online users.

This news via longtime virtual world explorer Adeon Writer, who's been tracking VRChat-versus-Second Life CCU numbers for quite some time. (Second Life's current usage rates are published via this API.)

What's striking, as Adeon tells me, is that there wasn't any particularly special event in VRChat happening last weekend that drove up user log-ins :

"Just your average Saturday peak in VRChat," as he puts it. "It's just growing, I think. I just thought it was interesting as I've never seen VRC's online count be higher than SL's at any given time."

Me too. For the longest time -- i.e. well over 15 years -- Second Life has attracted daily peak CCU rates in the 40K+ range, often approaching 80K at its apex of concurrent activity, around 2007-2008.

Now, a much younger virtual world (VRChat was launched in 2017) is finally starting to attract those usage numbers too.

This isn't to say VRChat's CCU is always higher than SL, because Second Life's 40K+ CCU happens at a very steady rate:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: The Incredibly Detail-Rich Pics of Teej Timaaj

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

I love the abundance in this picture by Teej. While generally people recommend not placing your subject in the middle of a picture, rules do not apply to goddesses. Moreover, Teej does not make the mistake of centering everything. Notice the flowers are much closer and bigger on the right, giving perspective and dimension to the picture. I love that she uses flowers the same color as her skin, making the subject blend into the picture. While many seem to stand out with contrasting colors, one way to get people to look closely is with an avatar that stands out by blending in - like a chameleon. 

No goddesses in the next picture:

This Week's Featured Banner: The Mass Effect-Inspired World Created in SL

This week's banner above was featured in my recent post on BluShock, a group of dedicated Mass Effect roleplay fans who have created an entire experience in Second Life inspired by their favorite game. Sample:

“It's our largest and most ambitious/compact base of operations yet,” BluShock leader Fazzy Constantine (above) tells me. “We have over 25 rooms and multiple elevators with 8 levels each, a huge arboretum dome, which is inspired to look like the Presidium Commons, on the Citadel, from the Mass Effect games, which our roleplay group has been inspired by, since 2010.”

But the base is only the beginning:

“The asteroid will be our base of operations in our fictional star system. Vanaheim, which is set in the Milky Way galaxy, in what would be known as the Beta Quadrant, if you were into Star Trek. We have three more main worlds we'll be creating, over the course of 6 to 9 months.”

Teleport link to start exploring yourself, but be sure not to interrupt any Mass Effect roleplay already in progress.

Submit your own favorite virtual world locations here or in Comments below:

Top Posts Last Week Including: An Oddly Real Homepage for a Virtual World

• Second Life Unveils Strange New Homepage Featuring Real Life Model, Other Odd Non-Second Life Marketing
• SL At The End Of Major Innovations After Uplift? (Comment Of The Week)
• "The" Metaverse Isn't Happening (Comment Of The Week #2)
• Twitter Usage Back Up To 2020 Levels Despite (Because Of?) Trump Ban

SL Fashion Friday: Stylish Shopping Tips from Ara Voxel

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

Ara Voxel is the rare blogger who does a fair amount of black and white pictures. Most people shoot in color, but sometimes the form of the design is most important and black and white keeps us from being distracted by the color. Black and white is often more dramatic. You can see that in her blog post Look #953.

• BOOD'UPOSES  Bring me Peace bento pack poses ( butterfly included ) @MIIX EVENT
• Sweater, joggers and sneakers by RKKN
• Hair Katy by DOUX
• Scene :  [My Roof Top Life]  by SOY

For another casual look, click here:

Really Useful Aquarium Features Mesh Fish That Feed, Low Land Impact, Multiple Customization & Sizing Options (NWN Partner News)

The Really Useful Aquarium is a cool product from New World Notes media partner Really Useful Scripts Corner -- lead developer Grace7 Ling gracefully demonstrates its many features in the video above. Available in her Really Useful Scripts Corner on the Marketplace and at her SL store (click here to teleport), Grace’s fish tank is fairly unique among other virtual world aquariums:

“Many of the older aquariums are using flat textures of fish that cycle around in a fixed way,” Grace notes. “The Really Useful Aquarium has mesh fish which swim randomly around the tank. The swim speed and turning speed of each fish can actually be customized if you know how. Secondly, if you are not using the display shelf, the tank is actually quite versatile and can be resized to rather surprising dimensions, and the fish will adjust automatically to the new dimensions of the tank.” (Watch below.)

On top of that, aquarium owners or their guests can feed the fish:

Twitter Usage Back Up to 2020 Levels Despite (Because of?) Trump Ban

Twitter usage last month hit 6.42 billion total visits, according to SimilarWeb, with US-based traffic up 4.18% from February. This after traffic had dipped somewhat from January's  6.3 billion visits. March 2021 traffic is about on par to Twitter's traffic in November-December 2020 and actually a touch higher than traffic in October 2020 (6.3B), right before the last US Presidential election.

Which is more or less a definitive answer to the following question that frequently came up, especially after the January 6th insurrection, when Twitter finally banned Donald Trump from the platform for inciting violence: Won't Twitter traffic collapse with Trump and all his roiling, news-grabbing tweets, not to mention all the bots amplifying those tweets, are gone?

So far, looking at the data, that doesn't seem to be the case. 

Second Life Screenshots Cleverly Converted Into Manga Comic Images

At the risk of stepping on Cajsa's Flickr toes, I'm totally in love with these images by Cadwyn Daffyd which turn SL screenshots into frames from a manga comic. Compare above with the original screenshot below:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Vivid Stories Told Through Virtual World Screenshots

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

Bambi Foxdale’s “And In Our Hearts There Is a Boat” drew me in with its nostalgic emotional effect. I love how she shows that a picture can move someone so profoundly. 

What is an autumn hug? For the answer, click here:

Second Life Unveils Strange New Homepage Featuring Real Life Model, Other Odd Non-Second Life Marketing

Either this is a belated April Fool's joke, or this is the new official homepage for Second Life. Which is an online virtual world with 3D graphics, but for some reason, now features not an avatar, but a real life model.

Yes, really: The flying elf is from an upcoming promo that Linden Lab teased late last year (watch below), featuring many more non-avatar models pretending to be avatars. Suggesting an implicit marketing pitch on the order of, I guess, "Sign up for Second Life so you can be a flying elf... but not the one here, as she's not 3D graphics, but you'll feel like this in your mind."

The explicit messaging on the new homepage also feels as if it emanated from a marketing company with no actual first-hand knowledge of Second Life, or virtual worlds in general:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Outdoor Images So Lovely, Even a Virtual Outhouse & a Prison Yard Look Picturesque

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

Ifollow Rivers makes fabulous pictures of Second Life homes and landscapes such as this charming cottage by a river. They all remind me of the Romantics like Thomas Cole and John Constable. Her pictures represent the pastoral and picturesque aesthetics of Romanticism that include the human element such as this cozy little home. 

To find out how even an outhouse can be picturesque, click here:

"The" Metaverse Isn't Happening (Comment of the Week #2)

Good points from reader "Kyz", reflecting on Core's mission to build a "multiverse" versus Epic's mission to build "the metaverse":

There isn't going to be a metaverse or multiverse in the sense that fiction foretold. That global environment we think of as the metaverse already happened. It's called the Internet. Within it are worlds and nearly endless content.

But one global 3D platform? Not happening. If it was going to happen it would have already. The market doesn't want it any more than it wanted VR on a global scale.

I think this thing with Core is just wordplay. They're close to Epic because they're built on Epic tech, but other than that, they're basically a dumbed down way to create games. If you want better games, you'll use the Unreal Engine itself.

Personally I find Core far too limiting compared to using the Unreal Engine directly and I don't see them overcoming the big problems like delivering the customers and buying power. The more customers, the more games and the more people trying to grab enough foot traffic to make a small bit of money before it becomes so saturated no one is making anything.

At any rate, it's still a good time to be a creator and you go wherever your skill level and determination gravitates you to. But if any entities are the metaverse tools? It's the game engines, few people are writing all this from scratch these days like SL did.

That sounds right. There's multiple popular web browsers and multiple smartphone devices running iOS or Android, so it's hard to see anything like a singular Metaverse dominating. It might not even be a matter of competing game engines (i.e. Unreal vs. Unity), so much as many metaverses for non-competing demographics:

Second Life's World Map Working After 5 Month Outage, CEO Announces

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg announced last weekend on Twitter that Second Life's world map is, after an outage that started last November, finally working.

I'm fairly fascinated that it took so long to update this issue, and how it is (or isn't) related to Project Uplift, moving SL to the Amazon web cloud.  ("Now that Uplift has finished," the incident report read in January, "we are working to restore the map tile functionality.") I've reached out to Linden Lab for an official response and will update this post when/if I get one.

Also notable: Ebbe Altberg announcing something about Second Life on Twitter after a long absence from Twitter -- his last tweet before announcing the world map had been fixed was also from last November.

Hat tip: Gogo, whose tweets get results!

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Thought-Proving Images By Sheldon Bergman

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

I discovered Sheldon Bergman by checking out Roseleiya’s favorites. When I paged down and saw “Losing Their Heads for Love”, I laughed out loud. I love how he made the metaphorical literal. His photostream is not very big. There are 31 photos, but all of them are thought-provoking and thoughtful

More thoughtful pictures are up next, click here: