New World Notes

VRChat Announces User Monetization, Enhanced Avatar-to-Avatar Dynamics, Webcam/Mobile Face Tracking, and Many More Upgrades Coming Soon-ish

VRChat devs just dropped a ridonkulously huge grab bag of announcements on Twitch, both upcoming and experimental; I pulled some highlights onto my YouTube, and my VRC correspondent Adeon Writer watched live and took copious notes. Most exciting to the user community was probably what's featured above: Avatar-to-avtar dynamics, which enable users to "physically" interact and even manipulate each others' bodies -- that's on the company's roadmap for this Summer.

Also coming out starting this Summer: User monetization options and, finally, a full creator economy: 

"User-to-user subscriptions is the first thing they are adding," Adeon reports, "basically Patreon except in-game directly, and Udon and scripting can react to it." (I.E., monetization options can be embedded directly into interactive experiences.) And while the ability to sell content in-world is on VRChat's roadmap, virtual currency is notably not: "[VRChat devs] specifically said they won't be doing a fake currency; real money only for anything they make."

Maybe most interesting from a cross-platform point of view are upcoming/experimental features that track body and facial movement via webcams and mobile devices:

Today's Flickr Pick: Ms. Nakamori Makes Even a Nuclear Power Plant Pretty

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

I know I featured Nekonuko Nakamori just a little over a year ago in this post but there are just so many great pictures. When I saw Wandering World 1220, though, I just had to share it. Perhaps it is because Fukushima is in the news again with the announcement that they will begin releasing the water in the cooling tanks into the ocean. Nekonuko’s picture with the orange and yellow sky and the twin nuclear power plant chimneys has that foreboding feeling that captured my own emotion reading the news about the Fukushima water. Her avatar is there in the picture, so small and fragile. This also captures that feeling of there being no good solutions, no safety. 

For a more personal picture, click here:

Watch: Juggling VRChat-Based Objects from Real Life Via Motion Tracking!

If I'm describing this video accurately, it's mind-boggling: VRChat YouTuber Mitama Sakumaru (known as "390_JUGGLER" in VRC) is juggling in real life -- but the objects he's juggling only exist in VRChat. 

Yes: The juggled objects in VRChat are physics-enabled and respond to his real life juggling movement via the motion tracking of his VR rig, he tells me.

In a tweet, he reports that juggling virtual objects with no mass is harder than it might seem: "The weight and lack of finger sensation are quite severe, and it is about three times more difficult to do with normal gravity! " 

It's part of his effort, Mitama tells me, to create a new kind of virtual performance, where "the border between props and bodies are more ambiguous":

The Metaverse Wars Are Here: Epic Gets $1 Billion from Sony & Other Major Players to Build Unreal-Based Metaverse

Remember the browser wars back in olden times (by which I mean 2017)? Massive companies competing to own the dominant platform for streaming content to the 2D web? Welcome to the metaverse wars:

This round includes an additional $200M strategic investment from Sony Group Corporation, which builds on the already close relationship between the two companies and reinforces their shared mission to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services. Other investment partners include Appaloosa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, GIC, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Park West, KKR, AllianceBernstein, Altimeter, Franklin Templeton and Luxor Capital.  Epic continues to have only a single class of common stock outstanding and CEO Tim Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder of the company.

“We are grateful to our new and existing investors who support our vision for Epic and the Metaverse. Their investment will help accelerate our work around building connected social experiences in Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys, while empowering game developers and creators with Unreal Engine, Epic Online Services and the Epic Games Store,” said Tim Sweeney, CEO and Founder, Epic Games. 

Epic's vision for the metaverse, of course, is based on its proprietary 3D engine, Unreal. And this comes only a month after ROBLOX, built on the Unity engine, had a massive successful IPO. We are certain to see many more announcements like this in coming months, each a salvo in the battle to win market dominance for the metaverse -- even if the concept is still relatively pretty niche, and hasn't yet been clearly defined for a mass consumer audience. You can see that in Dean Takahashi's recent interview with Sweeney:

Today's Flickr Pick: Avatars in Shock & Ecstasy from a Red Glowing Box

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

I love it when people come up with some photo project that focuses on a novel idea that no one else is doing, and that is what I discovered when I got a FlickMail from Lacie Babenco, asking me to participate in her Shockstasy Project. 

When I arrived, Lacie was looking quite demonic. She explained that she had summoned the red glowing box from “somewhere deep and dark.” 

She continued her explanation: “I honestly don't know what it does but it compels me to bring humans to touch it.” And so I did.

“It radiates an energy but it is so absolutely silent. It draws in mortals to touch it,” she went on. “They each experience something unique to them, I have no idea what they feel, only they know. It's called a mix of Shock and Ecstasy - 'Shockstasy.' So I observe and send you back to your mortal world and someday, hopefully it's revealed what the box is doing....I like to think it's taking into account your soul and who you are.” 

I am in trouble....

For more experiments in shockstasy, click here:

Watch: Scripting in Second Life with C#, a Feature Once on Linden Lab's Roadmap But Apparently Forgotten

My post on UdonSharp, the user-made C# compiler for VRChat, inspired me to reach out to Jim "Babbage" Purbrick. Because when he worked for Linden Lab, he was aiming to make it possible to script in Second Life with C#. Sad to say that didn't come to pass, and he left the Lindens in 2010. As he wrote on his blog then:

Alas, tomorrow is my last day at Linden Lab and Babbage Linden will never get to see C# scripts running in the wild in Second Life, but I very much hope that I do. I hope that C# support is eventually added to Second Life and that I don’t have to wait 170 years to turn the handle. As another Babbage said when he failed to build the Difference Engine: “Another age must be the judge”.

Watch Jim's demo above to see how cool that could have been, with more background on his blog.

"Supporting C# and other modern languages was always the end goal with the work on Mono and we implemented the Mono scripting engine to be language-independent," he tells me now. "Although in production we only ran LSL scripts compiled to CIL we had development builds which would run C# compiled to CIL with normal C# compilers and then processed to inject microthreading support with the same tools that processed the assemblies produced by the Linden Script Language compiler in production."

Bringing C# to Second Life, as he explains, would be an enormous modernizing leap for the platform:

If Virtual Worlds Like Decentraland and Second Life Were Cities, Which Would They Be? (Comment of the Week)

Fun comment from Joey1058, reflecting on the NFT art gold rush, which has led to some NFT art galleries in blockchain-based worlds like Cryptovoxels and Decentraland:

In terms of broader community, I'm starting to see virtual worlds aligning into classifications. Cryptovoxels and Decentraland are similar to the richer cosmopolises, like New York. Here is where you'll find arts and culture. Museums, theaters, gardens, zoos and other venues. All based on an NFT foundation. Places like IMVU, Sinespace, and Second Life are the equivalent of "working man's" towns. Still cultured, but with an everyday foundation in "getting your hands dirty and doing it yourself". AltspaceVR is a corporate lifeline. And VRChat is pure relaxed social freestyle.

I get where Joey's going with the New York analogy, though as I noted in the post, both Cryptovoxels and Decentraland have very small resident user populations and seem to be focused more on financial speculation, than the arts. Maybe a better comparison is Dubai? (Then again, New York is also heavy with speculators.)

Any suggestions for "working man's towns" to compare IMVU, Sinespace, and Second Life?

Top 5 Posts Last Week Including the Post-Gold Rush Future of NFT Art & the Rising Power of the VRChat Creator Community

• Multiplayer Beat Saber Becomes Gesture-Based Social VR Community
• Where Can NFT Art Go Now That The Gold Rush Is Gone?
• VRChat Now So Popular With Devs, Thousands Are Using A Compiler That Converts C# To The World's Internal Scripting Language
• Second Life Wesbite Traffic Down Nearly 50% Since 2018, According To SimilarWeb, Likely Reflecting Strong Decline In New User Sign-Ups
• Core Has Half A Million User-Created Projects & Over 1 Million User Accounts... But How Many Active Users?

SL Fashion Friday: Style Ideas for Home Décor & Dinosaur Hunting

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

Clau Dagger SL is Clau Dagger’s fashion blog, though since she often decorates the scene that provide the backdrop for her fashions, it’s a decor blog, too. I like this picture for 2020 0407 a lot. I especially like the fire hazard decor. I am always conflicted by decor full of piles of books and candles. It looks so romantic and cozy, but having once lost everything but the clothes I had on in a fire, I can’t help but I also think fire hazard. I am obsessive about fire hazards. In real life, this would give me anxiety, but in Second Life, I like it! 

Scene Item Sources:

• DISORDERLY. / Delicate Blooms / Frames / Pink (Collabor88)
• DISORDERLY. / Delicate Blooms / Books / Pink (Collabor88)
• DISORDERLY. / Delicate Blooms / Birdcage / Pink (Collabor88)
• DISORDERLY. / Sugar Berries / Cranberry Cake Slice
• DISORDERLY. / Flower Bunnies
• DISORDERLY. / Cozy Piles / Tea & Cookies
• DISORDERLY. / Cozy Piles / Donuts & Pictures
• DISORDERLY. / Marie's Treats / Scones
• DISORDERLY. / Marie's Treats / Tarts
• DISORDERLY. / Green Hedges / Loose Papers
• DISORDERLY. / Book Magic / Magical Potions
• DISORDERLY. / Book Magic / Magical Birdcage
• DISORDERLY. / Book Magic / Magical Suitcase
• DISORDERLY. / Enchanted Extras / Beast's Library Papers
• E.V.E Sunny Spells M02 - w/o Glitter
• E.V.E Flowers of the Mist

For an exciting role play scene, click here:

Multiplayer Beat Saber Becomes Gesture-Based Social VR Community

FlipperPA has a good analysis of multiplayer Beat Saber, which has evolved to become a supportive social VR community that reminds him of Second Life in its early "small town" years -- except instead of communicating via text, socialization is through real gestures:

It may be by complete accident, but it seems like they may have made the friendliest online community I have ever been a part of:

• All players can create avatars and have a name.
• Players can gesture with their hands, and you can see their heads move as well.
• There is no voice interaction
• There is no chat window.

This has led to a rich language of gestures evolving: players enthusiastically wave hello when a new player joins the game. It is common to see people clapping to the person who won the round, and the winner graciously taking a “namaste” bow. People wave goodbye, and gesture up to the center board in between songs to encourage a newcomer to select the song they would like to play next. It is incredibly friendly and warm. Has Beat Saber accidentally stumbled on a wonderful way for us to communicate in games? 

I enjoyed the solo Beat Saber for awhile but after it began to feel repetitive, gave up on it. Clearly a community of players has remained, and evolved:

Where Can NFT Art Go Now That the Gold Rush is Gone?

Above: The Mirage Gallery's display room in SpatialWeb

Here’s a question about NFT art that I’ve been thinking about lately, even before the value of the market took a huge hit: 

What will owners of NFT art actually will do with it, to justify the prices they just paid? 

With real life art, after all, people hang it in their home so they and their friends/family can enjoy it -- or on the high end, lend it out to a gallery or museum to share with the public, either for a fee, or for the kudos for their contribution. The art work is special because it's one of a kind, and people have to go to a specific place, to enjoy it. But because NFT art is usually just a copied digital image like any other copied image on the Internet, what will make it special to their owners over time?

Come to think of it, the NFT art market probably plummeted in part because that question doesn’t have a great answer. Also, because that market’s been overwhelmed by speculators who don’t really care about art as such -- a point made in this excellent essay by technologist Anil Dash, who literally co-invented the NFT.

Anil isn’t sure there's a way that NFT can remain relevant to artists, as opposed to speculators.  

“I genuinely don't know, but I hope so,” Anil tells me. “Thing is, if an artist has an audience and interest, they can usually just sell to their fans, regardless of whether the blockchain is involved. It feels like that only adds complexity.”

There may be a sustainable market for NFT art which better fits the virtual medium. For instance, the virtual portraits of great Black artists that Nettrice Gaskins creates using Deep Dream algorithms as her paintbrush:

Occupy White Walls Adds Music Streaming to Its Real Time, Collaborative Creation Art MMO

I've only casually followed Occupy White Walls, a sandbox creation MMO for PC and Mac, but now that the platform just added music streaming (trailer above, more on that below), here's a brief snapshot courtesy from Yarden Yaroshevski, CEO of OWW creator StikiPixels, via Mario Gerosa, the company press officer (who was heavily involved in the Second Life art world back in the day):

People build galleries with over 2,500 architectural building blocks, we don't allow uploading of 3D meshes.

 

Building galleries is collaborative and in real time, players can invite others to build with them.

 

We don't have [concurrency] limits 'per room'. Galleries can easily hold up to 100 players simultaneously.

 

We don't release monthly active user numbers but they are in the tens of thousands range.

As for my crux question, "Why should someone create in OWW when they could do so on a larger platform like ROBLOX or Fortnite?", Yarden's answer:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Stunning Virtual World Landscapes

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

Sometimes just a spot of color can make a good picture amazing. “Even In the Rain You Can See the Colors” is just that sort of picture. The picture itself is good with beautiful clouds, that lovely line of trees and their reflections, the adorable elephants with the umbrella. But Jaguar Black did not just make it black and white. He left that splash of red and amplified everything. 

For more stunning landscapes, click here:

VRChat Now So Popular With Devs, Thousands Are Using a Compiler That Converts C# to the World's Internal Scripting Language

As another sign of the VRChat community's growing strength as a creator ecosystem, here's another fairly mind-boggling factoid:

• Like many virtual worlds, VRChat has an internal scripting language. (Called Udon, in this case.)
• However, many developers (especially those who work on a professional level), prefer to code in C#, which already runs natively in Unity (the game engine underneath VRChat).
• So much so, a VRChat community member named Merlin has created UdonSharp, a C# to Udon compiler, which he built and open sourced on a voluntary basis to serve other VRChat creators, and has a Patreon in hopes that he can keep doing that full time.
• Based on the latest GitHub stats, the UdonSharp Unity package from GitHub has been downloaded around 20,000-25,000 times.
• Which suggests, based on recent stats, as much as 10% of VRChat's total monthly active user base have tried using UdonSharp at least once.

Varneon, creator of this impressive VRChat driving sim, estimates that the vast majority of VRChat worlds using Udon were actually scripted originally in UdonSharp:

Watch: This Bento-Based Hoverboard With Sick Maneuvers is Seriously The Coolest Item I've Seen in Second Life for Some Time

Maybe I'm jaded or more recently out of the loop, but this hoverboard by Val'More using the latest Bento-based avatar skeleton tech is among the most eye-popping pieces of Second Life content I've seen in some time. I reached out to Val'More about how they created it and its amazing flip tricks, and haven't heard back. But if you want to check it out first-hand now, it's on sale in the Engine Room, a steampunk-themed shopping bazaar that's about as impressive: Click here to teleport.

Iconic "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" Photo Recreated in Second Life

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

Adam Cayden and friends recreated the famous “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” by an uncredited photographer doing publicity for Rockefeller Center in 1932. This made me think of David Trumble’s “Feminism at Work” that was the desktop illustration on my MacBook until it died. I began to wonder who else had done something similar. 

And sure enough there are more, click here:

Second Life Wesbite Traffic Down Nearly 50% Since 2018, According to SimilarWeb, Likely Reflecting Strong Decline in New User Sign-Ups

Surprising stats from SimilarWeb, especially given recent Linden Lab reports that Second Life was enjoying a quarantine upsurge:

• This February, SecondLife.com earned 9.4 million visits, and in the five months prior to that, peaked at 12.7 million visits in December 2020, and averaged visits in the 11 million+ range in other months. 
• In December 2018, however, monthly visits to the site were nearly 21 million, and earned similar traffic numbers in the previous five months.
• As a more distant comparison point: In 2014, SecondLife.com was averaging monthly visits in the 16 million range.

Unlike other social virtual worlds, most of which have a mobile app and/or run on consoles and/or Steam, Second Life is still heavily dependent on its website for shopping, account management, community activity, and -- perhaps most notably -- new user sign-ups. So web traffic on the official site provides a pretty strong indicator of overall user activity, including new users.

This doesn't, however, necessarily mean in-world user activity is also down:

Watch, Listen: Minecraft Integrated With High Fidelity 3D Spatial Audio

Earphones on to hear a whole new way of experiencing Minecraft -- integrated with High Fidelity's 3D audio API. This not only makes it possible to talk with players around you on the same Minecraft server, but also experience the world itself in immersive audio, so when Creepers are groaning behind you, it will sound as if they are actually behind you, and when you're walking along a river, it'll sound like the river is literally right beside your computer, and so on: 

Today's Flickr Pick: Zynthea's Stream is a Dazzling Break from Same-Old Second Life Screenshots

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

Wow! Here I was just slow-paging down again and again past competent but same-old same-old snaps of avatars in lingerie or less, when “Sans Titre” popped out with its vehement black, white, and reds and the bold avant-garde style. It was so fresh it woke me up. It is one of many intensely editorial pics from Zynthea. 

The next pic is all about the lips, check it out here:

Core Has Half a Million User-Created Projects & Over 1 Million User Accounts... But How Many Active Users?

Almost missed this tidbit in the announcement last week that Core received $100 million in funding to create a "multiverse":

After just a few months in Alpha, Core already offers more than 20,000 free games in every genre imaginable, has had roughly half a million projects started on the platform, and has amassed over one million player and Creator accounts globally.

Emphasis mine. "Accounts" are not the same as active users, and a spokesman for the company told me the company is "not revealing Monthly Active Users or Daily Active Users at this point." My guess is they're saving that reveal for a major milestone, and aren't in any particular hurry to publicly compete with ROBLOX's insanely huge user numbers.

However, we can make a fairly reliable guess of Core's Monthly Active User numbers based on how many people visit the Core web portal:

More Tips on Running Second Life on an Oculus Quest 2

Reader David Cheney recently tried out these detailed instructions for running Second Life on an Oculus Quest 2 via Firestorm ("This is a lot of fun and works pretty well!"), and added some further tips in Comments:

On my cabled Quest 2 I had to take a couple of steps I found at the VR Firestorm viewer page:

- To fix a black HMD display I created a profile for the viewer in your graphic card settings and enable FXAA. Other types of Anti-aliasing can be disabled.
- To get the stereo images to align I followed these directions using F5, F6, and F7: Set IPD to 0 (zero), adjust Texture Shift until image is sharp and focused (I ended up with 15.0 on a 4k display and 30.0 on a 1k display); adjust IPD to get a good 3D effect.
- On a 4k display the visuals are gorgeous but the mouse/hand controller/pointers are not aligned and so operation is really tough; on a 1k display the visuals are lower rez and aliased but the mouse/hand controller/pointers are aligned and operation is practical.

Kudos to the developers!

Kudos indeed. I'd love to see more VR videos of Second Life beyond the one I posted above(from Redditor "IDontUseAnimeAvatars", who helped get the VR/SL ball rolling)--if you've seen any or are shooting some of your own, please post links in Comments below!

Top 6 Posts Last Week Including: Core Gets $100M to Make a Multiverse, VRChat Gets a Crossover Game, Second Life Gets Soviet Housing

• Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2021年3月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan
• Linden Lab Unveils New Soviet Tenement-Themed Homes For Second Life Players -- Visit Now!
• Why Core Is Spending $100 Million To Make A "Multiverse" (Not A Metaverse)
• Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 Sales Claims Probably Don't Mean What You Think They Mean
• User-Made Game In VRChat Becomes So Popular It's Being Turned Into A Standalone Game For Oculus & Steam
• Catwa Head Mob Crush Perfectly Encapsulates Current State Of Second Life

Virtual Pet Rabbit Designed With Behavior-Based AI Born in Sinespace; New Addition to Growing Bestiary of Artificially Adorable Creatures

Just in time for Easter, you can buy a pet rabbit in Sinespace (a media partner to New World Notes), and unlike most virtual world pets, Buddy Rabbit is special, built on a complicated AI architecture. As seen above, Buddy can inquisitively explore an area, flee from trouble -- even doing flying spin-leaps to get away from pursuers -- and follow its owner.

Well, somewhat follow: “You see the rabbit is a wild animal and is difficult to control him exactly,” Buddy’s creator Kokostar warns me, grinning. (He's Kokostar #1902 on Discord.)

A leader in the Swiss Society of Virtual and Augmented Reality, Kokostar has been creating virtual pets in Sinespace for over a year: “I have always been interested in agents which simulate human or animal behaviors.” 

His first attempts at pets were rather mechanical, however, so he turned to a sophisticated back-end structure, to give them more life:

How to Summon Storms & Other Amazing Weather on Your SL Land

Standard weather options above -- click here for fun weather including a rain of literal cats and dogs

The Mega Weather Maker from The Really Useful Scripts Corner (a proud sponsoring partner to NWN) is a handy device for unleashing all kinds of weather scenes on your Second Life property -- including, as the creator puts it: “Blizzards, raining cats and dogs (literally), falling cherry blossoms, an Aurora Borealis, and even striking intruders on your land with lightning bolts!” 

There’s an in-world location to try her Weather Maker before you buy: Click here to teleport, and read the sign for step-by-step instructions.

Now in its 6th edition, store owner Ms. Ling was inspired to create this system, she tells me, because there were hardly any others in SL that could generate weather effects sim-wide -- and those that did exist tended to be too script or prim heavy. 

Also, she adds, “the rain always fell through the roof of your house as particles are not affected by prims.” It’s why the version 6 of the Mega Weather Maker comes with a free Really Useful Rain Resistant Roof -- see below, along with some of the fun weather effects, including cherry blossoms and the literal rain of cats and dogs:

Fashion Friday Blog: Virtual Style & Houseware Ideas from Noel Heartsong

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

“Feel Up” from Noel Heartsong’s blog gets its title from Pia Mia’s track. I love the outfit with its soft spring pastels and casual comfort that avoids looking even one bit sloppy. Everything looks so natural with the pose, her hand in her pocket, the iced latte. I love the dropped sleeve detail on the jacket, too. It probably makes it less useful in cold weather, but it’s cute. The hair clips are adorable, too. 

• Hair: DOUX - Yves Hairstyle New! @Dubai Event
• Hairclips: Aurealis. Jennie Hair Clip.
• Shirt: Palette - Foodie Tee New! @ACCESS
• Cardigan: `M.BIRDIE / Lozo Look. Cardigan RARE (Gacha) New! @Kustom9
• Pants: `M.BIRDIE / Denber look. Pants 4 (Gacha)

Noel also blogs decor as in this lovely post, click here: