New World Notes

Watch: Real World Location Virtually Recreated to Scale in Minutes

This is a pretty impressive tech demonstration from 6D.AI, a startup that's creating a 3D mirror world of real life from the input of standard smartphones.

"Building a 3D model of the world means fusing crowdsourced scans into huge models and here's a demo of that in action," 6D CEO Matt Miesnieks explains. "The model is a SLAM map, it improves [with] every scan and map coordinates are real world coordinates." In this particular demo, he goes on, "The ~5000 square foot space took 3 minutes for 4 people to scan.... these are regular phones, no depth cameras involved. Scans can be from one phone doing partial scans over many days, or lots of people scanning at once. The fused model will figure itself out and assemble based on any new scan that overlaps a previous scanned area."

The implications are pretty amazing and open-ended: This potentially means that, say, a whole city block could be slurped up and imported into a virtual world/MMO in a matter of days or weeks. And if the smartphone capture works as well as presented, the potential is far more staggering:

Decentraland Getting Prim-Based Creation System from SL Scripting Veteran

The private beta release of Decentraland, the open standards virtual world which raised USD $25 million in Ethereum sales of virtual land to fund its development, is looking pretty good so far. Even more important, it's starting to see some notable projects from third party developers. For instance, a prim-based creation building block system:

The idea for this scene was simple: I wanted to be able to intuitively build things while actually standing in the scene, not in a separate Builder or with an external text editor and modeling software (as one does with the SDK). Also, I’m not a 3D artist, so it had to be made entirely of primitive shapes... Overall, the scene has a bit of a Minecraft feel, but where most of the blocks are bigger than the grid size, and are carried around in front of you rather than in an inventory. Per my main goal, you can totally build some fun things without ever leaving the scene.

Check out an early web-based version of this project here. Created during a recent Decentraland user hackathon, the prim creation system is currently, well, primitive, but that can quickly change. Also notable:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Angela Kwak Finds Beauty in Unlikely Places, Angles

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

Who knew a skull could be so beautiful? “The skull is nature’s sculpture” is so powerful because of the color. The skull is aged, the color of earth. The flowers grow up and through the skull. It’s a stunning new perspective on what is usually repugnant.

Seed, the Persistent World-Colonizing MMO, Gets $22.3 Million in Funding

Great news for my colleagues at Klang Games:

Klang has raised $22.33 million in funding to develop a massively multiplayer online space colony simulation called Seed. The Berlin-based game studio is making a large-scale, persistent virtual world, hoping to redefine the MMO landscape... Seed is an online life-simulator where each player manages multiple characters. Set far in the future, players work together rebuild society and create a new home in a vast world similar to the Earth. The simulation is persistent and continuous, meaning that when players go offline, their characters will continue to live their lives within the simulation.

Seed's Discord server is here. I've been working with the Klang team on Seed's launch since last year, and I'm pretty psyched (in a very biased way) for their next big announcements coming soon. Until then, here's some of the writing I've done for them, to help set the stage for what they're creating:

No, Virtual World Ageplay By Consenting Adults Is Not Legal (In Many Places)

There's been lots of heated reader discussion about last week's update on the lawsuit against Linden Lab, which alleges the company has not adequately prevented money laundering, sex abuse, and virtual world ageplay in Second Life. Some of these comments, unfortunately, contain a profound misunderstanding of of age play in particular that should be addressed -- for instance, this:

Is it pedophilia when two 45-year-old people using the SL system have pixel sex, and one has a mesh female adult body and the other a mesh child-like body? Is this pedophilia?

Is it pedophilia when two 45-year-old females using the SL system have pixel sex, and one has a mesh male adult body and the other a mesh female child-like body?

Legally speaking, the answer to both questions is yes -- in many countries around the world that are essential to Second Life's survival as a virtual world. To quote this analysis by lawyer Benjamin Duranske from 2007, when the age play controversy as reported by a German TV news story, utterly tarnished Second Life's brand forever:

Top 5 Posts Last Week: Linden Lab Lawsuit Update, Oculus Quest Sales Forecast, Angry Male Gamers & More

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Deep Dark Secrets Of The Angry Male Gamer
• Linden Lab Denies Failure To Adequately Prevent Money Laundering, Sex Offenders & Ageplay In Second Life, As Alleged In Lawsuit -- Security Expert Plaintiff Replies: "[I Have] Written Proof Of Everything That I Am Alleging"
• How To Run The VR Version Of Second Life For Firestorm With A Pretty Great Frame Rate (If You Got A Great PC)
• Oculus Quest Install Base On Track To Surpass 1 Million+ Units By End Of 2019
• New Twist On "Reality Is A Simulation" Theory Just Secularized Rehashing Of Bible's Tower Of Babel Myth

This Sunday at 1pm PST: Join Me & Karsten Rutledge for the Official Launch of Greedy Greedy in Sinespace!

NWN partner Sinespace is launching a huge Summer festival this weekend full of fun live events, including one on Sunday at 1PM PST which I'll host with Joshua "Karsten Rutlege" May, whose Greedy Greedy game is a huge hit in Second Life -- and is officially coming to Sinespace:

Greedy Greedy: Official Sinespace Launch Party With Karsten Rutledge & Hamlet Au, 8PM UTC/1PM PST at the Welcome Centre - Come to play, come to dance, come to show off your style in the official launch of Greedy Greedy, the hit dice game from Karsten Rutledge (aka Joshua May)! Your MC for the show is Hamlet Au (aka Wagner James Au), who’ll interview Joshua and MC the activities.

More events here on the Sinespace blog. That's Karsten above in the middle, playtesting the Sinespace version, which comes with new animations and effects. Here's how to join in on the gaming/dancing/partying mayhem:

Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Deep Dark Secrets of the Angry Male Gamer

Linden Lab Denies Failure to Adequately Prevent Money Laundering, Sex Offenders & Ageplay in Second Life, as Alleged in Lawsuit -- Security Expert Plaintiff Replies: "[I have] Written Proof of Everything That I Am Alleging"

Wired just published a belated story on the wrongful termination lawsuit by a Muslim-American security expert that New World Notes broke last month, but it has some new information on the controversy -- including an official statement by Linden Lab:

The suit alleges company executives retaliated against her for flagging cybersecurity risks and potential violations of anti-money-laundering laws, child exploitation, and data misuse...

“While we will fight her alleged claims in court, we deny any allegations that the company has engaged in any illegal activity,” said Linden Lab spokesperson Brett Atwood. “Ms. [Kavya] Pearlman left the company on March 15 only after she was given the opportunity to improve her work performance. We look forward to all the facts coming out in a court of law,” he said, declining additional comment because of the lawsuit.

I just reached out to Ms. Pearlman, who stands by the security-related allegations in her lawsuit -- and says she has concrete evidence of her claims:

"Having written proof of everything that I am alleging," Ms. Pearlman tells me, "I look forward to discovery of fact and taking those facts to the court of law. Even Linden Lab knows, dismissing these allegations by citing some work performance issue of an industry expert on cybersecurity and compliance is yet another way of potentially attributing 'look away'. This is not new, it happens to security professionals raising security and privacy concerns, only in this case concrete proofs exist and truth is bound to come out."

Earlier this week, an anonymous tipster sent me a link suggesting (if not definitively proving) that at least one of the skilled game applicants is a convicted sex offender. Pearlman confirms that this is a legitimate concern:

"That a sex offender is potentially conducting skilled gaming is an example of Linden Lab ignoring [the] mandated Fincen rule of KYC ( know your customer)", as she puts it.

Notably, the Wired article reports that another former Linden Lab staff member confirmed to the magazine the existence of a likely "smoking gun" memo from the company's former chief compliance officer, one that's mentioned in Pearlman's lawsuit,; in it, she raised these issues, and a related one -- that the existence of age players (i.e. simulated pedophilia) in Second Life remains a constant problem that the company has not sufficiently addressed. It's a problem the CCO reportedly acknowledges in the memo:

Sinespace Unveils New User Interface, Welcome Center & Free Home Region for All Users

Sinespace just launched a huge new updated to its Unity-based virtual world platform (a proud sponsoring media partner to this blog), featured in the video above: A greatly improved viewer UI, a revamped welcome center (coming later this week), and a completely new home region (free for all users, just click "Home" in the viewer to claim/access). Here's how to check out these new changes:

• Create a free Sinespace account here 
• Download Sinespace for Windows, Mac & Linux here, then log-in. 

These updates are part of Sinespace's upcoming Summer Festival, which launches this weekend, with live music and DJs, karaoke and beach party, and much more -- like a Sunday event I'll be hosting with Greedy Greedy dice game creator Karsten Rutledge. More info on that soon, but for now get all the event details from the Sinespace blog here.

Watch this video below for a deep dive look at the new UI:

How to Run the VR Version Of Second Life For Firestorm With a Pretty Great Frame Rate (If You Got a Great PC)

Just got a cool little update to Tuesday's post about installing and running Peter Kappler's VR version of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life from Austin Tate: In response to my suggestion that the frame rate might be too low for this to be usable, Austin did some test runs and some tweaks.

"I tried the Drune IV area on the Second Life Ravine region you mentioned. One other user there (or maybe it was an NPC).

"On Ultra quality and 256m view distance it was a bit too low frame rate and was a bit choppy, but it worked fine at 'High' quality settings and 128m draw distance. On my rig I was getting 40 frames per second in VR mode.  Images attached for 
you." (See above.) 

So those look like the settings for optimal results. To be sure, he got them thanks in great part to very good hardware (see his specs below), but the bottom line is this VR viewer is more or less WYSIWYG compared to the PC-based Firestorm:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Calypso Applewhyte's Fantasia Fashion Photos

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

I may not understand what is happening in this picture, but I think it is badass as all hell. It is from the always original photostream of Calypso Applewhyte. She blogs her unique fashion remixes on her blog, Caly’s Wardrobe.

Oculus Quest Install Base on Track to Surpass 1 Million+ Units By End of 2019

The new VR HMD sales estimate from Superdata* is pretty good news for Oculus Quest: The standalone device sold 347,000+ units in its first two months on the market. (It went on sale in late May of this year.) Safely assuming those sales numbers stay at least as steady throughout the rest of the year  -- and Zuckerberg claims** the Quest is selling "as fast as we make them"-- Oculus Quest will not only continue to sell faster than PSVR, but it'll easily reach an install base over 1 million by the end of this year.

Which is not bad! That would place the Quest second only to PSVR in terms of install base size, which leads the industry by far with about 5 million units sold so far. (Sony reported 4.2 million sales last March.)

Then again, it's not great:

Singularity 6 Building MMO That Emphasizes Virtual Community Building

Singularity 6 is a new-ish startup that's worth keeping an eye on, as it's creating some kind of multiplayer/MMO game with a focus that's not, as it usually is, on player vs. player or player vs. environment or guild vs. guild competition. Specifically:

Singularity 6 was founded in 2018 by Aidan Karabaich and Anthony Leung, former leads at Riot Games, the company behind “League of Legends.” The company hasn’t spelled out exactly what it’s working on but says its first game will be a community-simulation environment that emphasizes multiplayer and virtual community building in a “stylized, high-fantasy world.”

Karabaich told Variety last fall that the Singularity 6 simulation is influenced by games including “Animal Crossing,” “Stardew Valley” and “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.”

“We started Singularity 6 because we knew that games are significant on a personal level, they are more than mere entertainment, but rather a path to community, friendships and a real sense of belonging,” Leung, who serves as Singularity 6’s CEO, said in a statement.

Judging by the games they mention as inspirations, they're working on a title with more focus on cultivation, resource management, and exploration, than raw conflict. Which would be a wonderful relief. Then again, I'm a touch skeptical based on their background:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Just Infinity's Monochrome Imagery Is Just Gorgeous

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

When you hear the word “monochrome”, you probably don’t think of beautiful, fascinating, or innovative, but maybe you should. Take a look at the image results for a search or just look at Just Infinity’s photostream. In “What do you say when words are not enough?” she desaturates and tints her photo a subtle sepia. The photo is brightened and with depth of field blurring the background, the details emerge faintly. This picture asks you to take a closer look, and then asks again and again.

How to Use the VR Version Of Second Life For Firestorm & Steam VR

Austin Tate has a very useful, in-depth tutorial for installing and running Peter Kappler's VR version of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life (which I blogged earlier this year), with bonus points for a how-to on installing an XBox One/360 controller to run with the Oculus Rift installation.

While Second Life isn't social VR per se, it remains the largest, content rich social virtual world space with (relatively) high end graphics that can be explored in a VR rig.

As you might expect, Austin tells me/warns me that graphics performance does take a hit in virtual reality:

Roblox Now Reports 100 Million Monthly Users, With 3x Growth in 3 Years

Amazing new growth and revenue numbers from Roblox, the virtual world creation platform for kids and young teens:

A week after gaming platform Roblox  announced its new milestone of 100 million monthly users — topping Minecraft — the company said at its fifth annual developer conference that its developer community is on track to earn $100 million in 2019. Roblox also introduced a new set of developer tools for building immersive, more realistic 3D experiences; detailed its plans to make its developer software fully cloud-based; unveiled a new Developer Marketplace where creators can set their development assets and tools to others; and more. Over the past decade or so, Roblox has grown to become a $2.5 billion company, with roughly half of U.S. children ages 9 through 12 playing on its platform.

Roblox reported 30 million monthly users at the end of 2016, so this is amazing, strong growth. As Roblox users grow out of their early teens, they're bound to look for a platform with better graphics, more capability, and a more mature outlook. I'm even more amazed that Linden Lab's new ad campaign for Second Life does little to show off its unique capabilities to this potential market.

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: The Marvelous Metaverse Still Lifes of Melusina Parkin

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

Melusina Parkin’s photostream is instantly recognizable. No one else does anything like it. She consistently publishes studies on a theme. The theme can be something as simple as a color, an idea such as symmetry, on a body position, or on the viewer’s gaze. In “Details on Sky 1” is the first of six pieces that consider items against the sky, many with a horizon of sea and sky that is barely discernible.

Senior Citizen Struggles to Compartmentalize Her Second Life from Her Retirement Community Real Life

Last week's post "Only The Young Think The Elderly Want To Live Their Last Years In Virtual Worlds" provoked an intriguing conversation, highlighted by some charming thoughts from Stephanie Meyer, who writes this really helpful new SL user guide blog, and has direct and very personal experience on the topic:

In RL, I am happy to live in a retirement community with many social activities.

In SL, I am happy to be able to explore and create without anyone thinking I'm weird.

In RL, I seldom talk about what I did that day in S, because I have found that it results in a lot of eyeball rolling.

In SL, I am not going to tell anyone about the RL Ice Cream Social with music by the International Philharmonic Ukulele Orchestra.

In a way, I feel compartmented. Just as sometimes I feel a disconnect in SL when changing alts and avatars, in RL I have to remind myself "Everyone act normal".

I'm hoping that by the time I am 100 there will be more integration of the realities.

With online game worlds growing larger and VR headsets getting cheaper every year, I suspect she'll get what she's hoping for soon. In the meantime, you know what they say: Second Life is for people who don't have ukulele-themed ice cream socials in real life.

Picture credit: "My Ukulele" by Susanne Drechsler, who rocks the virtual uke well.

New Twist on "Reality is a Simulation" Theory Just Secularized Rehashing of Bible's Tower of Babel Myth

Fascinating twist to the much-discussed "reality is a simulation" hypothesis featured in last weekend's New York Times. Many scientists are now trying to prove the theory is true, but philosopher Preston Greene argues that that's a really, really bad idea:

[I]f our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation. If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world.

Of course, the proposed experiments may not detect anything that suggests we live in a computer simulation. In that case, the results will prove nothing. This is my point: The results of the proposed experiments will be interesting only when they are dangerous. While there would be considerable value in learning that we live in a computer simulation, the cost involved — incurring the risk of terminating our universe — would be many times greater.

This pretty much illustrates my point that the simulation hypothesis is essentially indistinguishable from traditional religion:

Top 6 Posts Last Week: Second Life's New Ad Campaign & Deathbed Escape, Trump's Violent Videogamers, a Steampunk Reference Guide & Much More

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online - Visiting Second Life On Second Life's Death Bed
• Visit In SL: A Tropical Post-Apocalypse City Called Drune IV - Aftermath
• Linden Lab Launches New Second Life Ad Campaign Heavy On Fashion, Romance, Exploration... But Little Of What Makes SL Unique
• Guide: How To Tell Steampunk, Dieselpunk & Cyberpunk From Other Punks
• Trump’s Own Campaign Helped Radicalize A Violent Video Game Community
• Only The Young Think The Elderly Want To Live Their Last Years In Virtual Worlds

Watch: Sinespace Launches New Avatar Customization Experience Now Available for Free Download -- Here's a Walkthrough!

Sinespace, a proud sponsoring partner to this blog, just launched a new, totally improved user interface for character customization, hopefully making it easier and more fun to create an endless variety of looks, and the look that's right for you. This is part of a major update coming soon, but in the meantime, I hope you check it out, and give the Sinespace team feedback in Comments below or in their Discord. Here's how:

• Create a free Sinespace account here 
• Download Sinespace for Windows, Mac & Linux here, then log-in. 

Watch the overview above presented by Sinespace team member Hannah, with the features she covers including (in this order): Outfit list, Zoom camera option, Wardrobe of worn items, Body shape presets, Head sliders, Body sliders, Skins, Skin color/shininess adjustments, Morphs (Tutorial coming soon), Accessories, Body items, Full avatars, Outfits, Eyes, Makeup/Tattoos, Inventory (for all user items) and Inventory search.

Then onto specific her demos:

• 4:15 onward: Watch Hannah freeform customize her female avatar from head to toe.
• 5:55 onward: Hannah does the same with Harry, her male avatar.

Nylon Pinkney Is Online - Visiting Second Life On Second Life's Death Bed

Visit in SL: A Tropical Post-Apocalypse City Called Drune IV - Aftermath

Here's a walkthrough of a quite amazing Second Life sim: Drune IV - Aftermath (SLurl teleport here), a rusted-over city on a small, tropical island, which somehow survived after an unspecified calamity. (Hey, maybe a new kind of twist on cyberpunk: Tropicalypse!)

Your host in this video above is Ayla Pants, a fun and chatty guide accompanied by a friendly drone, who is immediately greeted by an incredible avatar, who compliments Ayla on her fashion choices. The sim comes with great ambient sound (crashing waves and seabird song, to contrast with the rusting skyscrapers), and, Ayla tells me, looks great throughout the day cycle:

Decentraland Looking More & More Like a Virtual World -- But Maybe Less Than What Investors Hoped

Ryan Schultz has an in-depth, in-world look at Decentraland, which in 2017, raised USD $25 million In Ethereum to fund development of the open standards virtual world. In the two years since, many have speculated that Decentraland might be vapor or mere tulip-mania over virtual land that with no actual world. But Ryan's embedded reporting reveals it looking more and more like a thriving virtual world -- though maybe not as full-featured as its many investors expected: