New World Notes

SL At the End of Major Innovations After Uplift? (Comment of the Week)

My post on Jim "Babbage" Purbrick's long-ignored C#-in-Second Life integration provoked many "Oh what could have been" responses, both here and across social media. (Especially poignant to read posts by other former Lindens, remembering this project fondly, if bittersweetly.) For example, this comment from reader Pulsar, who not only bemoans the loss of this C# feature, but who also sees it as a sign of Linden Lab's waning interest in innovation:

I can imagine what SL could have been with C# and many other things.

Second Life instead has been a story of poor decisions, missed opportunities, half-baked new features, that also introduce new serious, user-experience hampering, bugs... that get fixed after ages if never.

Now Linden Lab can't even fix the world map, broken since several months ago. Preview grid (Aditi) inventory can no longer be synchronized since November 2020. Screenshots still tend to fail to upload to my.secondlife, teleport failures, objects not showing up in the viewer until you right click and so on. All stuff that shouldn't have passed any serious QA check in first place.

"It kind of works and it doesn't explode entirely" seems the way to go for Linden Lab.

It would be great having C# in SL, but, yeah, VRChat allows that indirectly. I don't expect anything competitive coming out from Linden Lab anymore. Other virtual worlds are implementing anything that Linden Lab should have done, never did and probably will never do. People used to SL would be amazed to try out any other virtual world and see that it just works without falling apart. None of those can fully replace SL for now (in general, while subjectively it depends on what you do), but the strong points are getting fewer and fewer, while SL is being surpassed in so many other areas.

My strong sense is Second Life is now basically in maintenance mode, and that the user base shouldn't expect any major innovations that might drastically impact the existing ecosystem or hurt the world's steady profit, now that it's going directly into the hands of a massive holding company.

Anyway, the ironic thing about all these recent technical shortfalls is that they're happening after the completion of moving SL to the Amazon web cloud, dubbed "Uplift" -- perhaps the last major innovation to the platform.  As reader Sally Crofton notes:

Top 7 Posts Last Week Including Epic's Metaverse & Multiverse, VRChat Breakthroughs & Updates & the Second Life Scripting That Could Have Been

• Watch Life 2.0, The Best Documentary On Second Life Now Available On Netflix -- And My Interview With The Director Below
• Mass Effect Fan Community Creating Massive Roleplay Experience In Second Life Inspired By The Game
• Core Games Joins Epic's Store -- But Not Necessarily Epic's Metaverse
• VRChat Announces User Monetization, Enhanced Avatar-To-Avatar Dynamics, Webcam/Mobile Face Tracking, And Many More Upgrades Coming Soon-Ish
• Watch: Juggling VRChat-Based Objects From Real Life Via Motion Tracking!
• The Metaverse Wars Are Here: Epic Gets $1 Billion From Sony & Other Major Players To Build Unreal-Based Metaverse
• Watch: Scripting In Second Life With C#, A Feature Once On Linden Lab's Roadmap But Apparently Forgotten

Watch Life 2.0, the Best Documentary on Second Life Now Available on Netflix -- And My Interview With the Director Below

Click here to watch before Netflix pulls it from the streaming library (as the company often does): Life 2.0, the acclaimed 2010 documentary on virtual world life, love, business, and identity -- and how they all bleed over into the real world. And I do mean acclaimed: After premiering at Sundance, the film had a good run in the arthouse circuit, garnered 89% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes*, a great review in the New Yorker, and then Oprah Winfrey picked it up for her new cable network,

I interviewed the director, Jason Spingarn-Koff, when the movie played at South by Southwest -- watch below:

How to Add & Customize an Audio Reactive Display to Your Sinespace Scene

Click here to get a free copy of a Sinespace furniture item that shows off a cool feature to the virtual world, a proud sponsoring partner to New World Notes: 

An audio reactive display that dynamically responds to music being streamed into a scene. (Watch above for a club scene demo.)

Sinespace staffer Xu (Xulain #4636 on Discord) has some tips for installing the Display in your region:

"Sometimes when you place objects in room edit [mode] the object cannot find a collider to line up against but just place at any rotation and edit after with the "e" key to rotate.

Apart from that you just needs some music a radio or anything that uses an audio source." For instance, this free oldtimey radio, also by Xu.

 

At the last Sinespace office hours, Xu recently gave an in-depth tutorial for creating and customizing your own audio reactive displays, -- watch below:

SL Fashion Friday: Style Tips from a Glamorously Grumpy Fashionista

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

Kouralee’s post asks “Where’s the Beach?” and I am here for her grumpy question and very grumpy face. In a world of RBF and FaceApp smiles, it’s wonderful to see someone with a serious grump on. I love her avatar! 

• Shiny Stuffs|Underneath it all [bom] LeL|Ebento
• Duckie|Cruel Gacha [bom]|The Epiphany
• Kiru|Baby Shark Gacha|The Epiphany
• Kitcat|Somdae Gacha|The Epiphany
• Sakura|Pastel Dreamer Gacha|The Epiphany
• Marti|Tessa Gacha|The Epiphany

For more frowns and a very cute outfit, click here:

Mass Effect Fan Community Creating Massive Roleplay Experience in Second Life Inspired by the Game

Click here to visit something fairly amazing in Second Life: A massive roleplay game world inspired by Mass Effect. It’s the creation of BluShock, a fan community that’s been creating entire worlds and experiences in Second Life based on the videogame franchise for over a decade. I recently made a small visit to the asteroid base, just a small part of the larger experience, and was duly impressed.

“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.” Here's further details on the group's in-game news site.

Anyone can visit their worlds, but the group is serious about maintaining their roleplay narrative, even in their Discord server: People can join, he tells me, "Through application, and then we hold an induction. If they have roleplay experience, great. If not then it's pretty easy to pick up. If they want to just observe and become explorers of the asteroid and worlds then they can choose to do that and still get invited to the Discord server."

More from Fuzzy below, and some pics from BlueShock’s Flickr group:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Perfectly Photographed Virtual Coffee & Other Images of Minimalist Masterpieces

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

My best friend’s husband is a coffee perfectionist. He has a thermometer to measure the temp of the coffee to ensure it’s 180° when poured into the Aeropress. He measures meticulously. I recently found an Aeropress attachment that requires 210° water and more fussiness and sent my friend the link, suggesting it is the perfect birthday gift for him. It really is. So when I saw this picture from catNap, I had to laugh. Now this is the set up he needs. 

I love the delightful minimalism of the catNap photos, for more, click here:

Core Games Joins Epic's Store -- But Not Necessarily Epic's Metaverse

Core, the ROBLOX-meets-Unreal "multiverse" funded in part by Epic is now, to no one's surprise, now available in Epic's store. Trailer above, announcement snip below:

By combining the power of Epic’s Unreal Engine with accessible tools that require no coding experience in a single platform, Core makes game creation, publishing and play available to everyone for free. Core also offers the most creator-friendly economy of any gaming UGC-platform with a 50% revenue share, allowing creators to make money and build businesses on Core. 

I got early word that this would happen right about when I was writing about Epic's new $100 million funding deal with Sony and other partners to build a metaverse, and assumed Core Games would be an integral part of that project. 

But not necessarily: When I asked Core CEO Frederic Descamps how does Core Games fit in with Epic's just-announced metaverse plans, he answered with this Delphic statement:

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: