New World Notes

Carmack Quitting Corporate Life or Creating AI to Make VR Great? Readers Debate VR Pioneer's Withdrawal from VR

Some interesting thoughts from readers on news that John Carmack is almost completely quitting Oculus to work on artificial intelligence. My take was this:

It's hard to escape the conclusion that Carmack has decided that virtual reality won't or can't be improved, or sufficiently matured into a mass market product, within the span of his career...

The statements also stand in sharp contrast to how Carmack fairly recently described the importance of bringing VR to the masses -- as "a moral imperative"... Somewhere since then, it seems, that moral imperative became less imperative. It's possible he still believes in VR with the same zeal, but just lost interest in developing it on a daily basis. 

In Comments, VR blogger "Grey" has a more quotidian ass theory which is possibly more plausible -- Carmack just got sick of corporate life at Oculus:

What I'm "reading between the lines" is that Carmack feels constrained by the "corporate" culture a Facebook, one in which he's held back from working on truly next gen products.

Take the cancellation of the Rift 2, and all the work going into Oculus Link after it was decided not to put dedicated hardware in the Quest for connecting to a PC.

Carmack admits he's grumpy at work, which is a very good sign it's time to move on.

And with that in mind, given that he likely has a non-compete clause, what can he do?

What is the next most exciting computer and programming technology he could work on?

AI seems like the most obvious choice.

That's certainly likely! However, if Carmack really wanted to quit day-to-day activity at Oculus but still work on truly next gen VR products in the quiet of his own home on his own schedule, I'm sure the company would gladly let him do so. And so I'm not convinced this is the reason. 

VR developer Kim Baumann Larsen believes Carmack's move to AI is actually part of his ambitions with VR:

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including: What Carmack Leaving Oculus Means for VR & Migrating SLers to Sansar (Or Not)

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: When Millenials Turn 80
• John Carmack, VR Pioneer Who Once Described Developing VR As A "Moral Imperative", No Longer Focused On Developing VR
• Roblox Version Of Second Life Sim Translates Well
• Apple's AR Plan Per The Information: Headset In 2022, Glasses In 2023
• How To Connect Second Life To Sansar: It's Not The Engine, It's The Community

Nylon Pinkney is Online: When Millenials Turn 80

Join Sinespace's 3rd Anniversary Party for Fun Live Events, Free Home Design Contest, Gold Giveaways & Much More!

Starting today, NWN partner Sinespace is launching an epic three year anniversary celebration. If you haven't visited the Unity-based virtual world recently, these next 5 days are a great time to join the party, while checking out all the features and updates that have been added.

Highlights include a Parade of Homes Competition, where you can customize and show off your free home region for a chance to win a prize during the Sinespace Anniversary Awards Ceremony. That ceremony happens next Tuesday at 2PM PST, where Sinespace founder Adam Frisby will give a keynote address on the state of the virtual world, and award prizes to the best Sinespace creators.

Go here for the whole schedule of fun, and be sure to join Sinespace's official Discord.

Cajsa's Flickr Pick: Tamary Takes Beautiful, Whimsical Slice of Virtual Life Pics

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

I thought I found a new slice of SLife artist in 3*3, but then I checked the blog link and discovered she is Tamary9, whom I featured in an interview in January 2018. However, it’s been almost two years, so why not a visit again this incomparably gifted Slicer of SLife. In 19112, we catch our subject heading out for the day. I imagine her off to school. It’s sunny now, but the forecast is for rain. She plans ahead! The use of sunlight is beautiful.

John Carmack, VR Pioneer Who Once Described Developing VR as a "Moral Imperative", No Longer Focused on Developing VR

Oculus CTO and VR pioneer John Carmack is stepping almost completely away from the company and virtual reality development in general to go in a totally different direction:

Starting this week, I’m moving to a "Consulting CTO” position with Oculus.

I will still have a voice in the development work, but it will only be consuming a modest slice of my time.

As for what I am going to be doing with the rest of my time: When I think back over everything I have done across games, aerospace, and VR, I have always felt that I had at least a vague “line of sight” to the solutions, even if they were unconventional or unproven. I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn’t in sight. I decided that I should give it a try before I get too old. I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI).

I'm not sure how many people in the VR industry grasp the significance of this move. The announcement comes only days after Carmack said this about the current state of VR:

"I'm often kind of grumpy around the office because I really haven't been satisfied with the pace of progress that we've been making. When I'm in VR I see the magic there, but my brain is always throwing up these giant 'to do' Post-It Notes on top of everything, reminding me of all the work that's yet to be done."

Putting the two statements together, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Carmack has decided that virtual reality won't or can't be improved, or sufficiently matured into a mass market product, within the span of his career. And so instead, he's devoting the rest of his work energies to developing AI.

The statements also stand in sharp contrast to how Carmack fairly recently described the importance of bringing VR to the masses -- as "a moral imperative".

As he explained to me for my Wired article back in 2016:

Roblox Version of Second Life Sim Translates Well (Comment of the Week)

Remember "1867", the Second Life roleplay community which moved to Sansar and then set up a presence in Roblox? Longtime reader and SLer Pulsar, who's familiar with both the original SL version and the Sansar variation, visited this new version in Roblox, and came away pretty impressed:

Very interesting. It even rains! 1867 was fascinating in SL, even if the traffic wasn't high. In Sansar it felt kind of bare to me.

With Roblox you can visit 1867 on your iPad too (or other mobile devices) and it works well. The Roblox version strongly reminds the previous iterations aesthetically. It's still a work in progress, but it looks like it's going to be fun and interactive.

Click here to visit yourself in Roblox. I know among virtual world fans, there's often an "it's just for kids" bias against Roblox (I can be guilty of it too). But as Pulsar adds, citing this analysis from HackerNoon, Roblox and to a certain extent Fortnite, are not just virtual worlds, but essential social spaces for a new generation as they come of age:

Watch: How to Use Black Dragon, the SL Viewer With Great Graphics Options But a Challenging User Interface

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer, has a cult following among hardcore graphics fans, but many SLers complain that its user interface for everything besides graphics is, well, challenging.

"It’s worth noting that while I think Black Dragon is unbeatable for visuals in Second Life, it’s not as easy for just about anything else," as blogger Mericat Ireland notes. "Communicating, getting changed etc. is all a bit more difficult than with other viewers (although entirely possible)." That in mind, Mericat shot this tutorial/walkthrough above, and opened up her blog to questions from other Black Dragon users.

It should be noted that none of the SL viewers, including (especially?) the official Linden Lab-created viewer, are user friendly, which is a key reason why roughly 99.9% of new users quickly leave. So really, we're just talking about which set of complex commands you prefer to learn/tolerate.

As for whether it's worth learning how to use Black Dragon, here's a sample of what it looks like in action, in a machinima created by Black Dragon creator NiranV:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Insociable Shoots Stylish & Insouciant Screenshots

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

Insociable’s photostream is fun and humorous with playful photos such as this one. He has more than one photo with a dog. This one brought to mind the phrase “a boy and his dog” with their mutual grins. I just love the grin and the insouciance of it all.

Apple's AR Plan Per The Information: Headset in 2022, Glasses in 2023

Insider tech industry news site The Information has a great scoop on Apple's plans for augmented reality (subscription required), and given The Information's consistently reliable track record, I'm inclined to believe it:

Apple is aiming to release an augmented-reality headset in 2022 and a sleeker pair of AR glasses by 2023, The Information has learned... Apple’s headset, code-named N301, will offer a hybrid of AR and VR capabilities, according to people familiar with the device. It resembles the Oculus Quest, a Facebook virtual reality headset released earlier this year, but with a sleeker design, these people said. Cameras will be mounted on the outside of the device, allowing people to see and interact with their physical surroundings, they said. Apple wants to make heavy use of fabrics and lightweight materials to ensure the device is comfortable to wear for extended periods of time, executives said in the presentation in October.

... In contrast, Apple’s AR glasses, code-named N421, present bigger technical challenges than the headset and are further from release. They are meant to be worn all day, and current prototypes look like high-priced sunglasses with thick frames that house the battery and chips, according to a person who has seen them.

This report contradicts earlier rumors that Apple's AR glasses were coming next year and would be third party (which seemed believable to me at the time). Then again, Apple pushing an AR/VR headset back to 2022 is a good idea, especially if Oculus Quest sales continue to disappoint in the short term; that gives Apple time to reschedule the release of their own headset, as needed.

Another tidbit from The Information addresses AR's "Glasshole" problem -- i.e., how do you project information onto glasses in a social situation without the user appearing to be a disconnected jerk ignoring everyone around them? Apple's apparent solution:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Kai Wirsing Creates Fantastic Action Roleplay Imagery

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

Roleplay is a vital element of Second Life. I wonder how many sims are devoted to roleplay? What would SL be without all those alternate worlds, the historical, the fantastical, the otherworldy sims of roleplayers? Kai Wirsing’s photos are mostly in roleplay outfits for his blog Blue, action shots such as this exciting one with a rocket launcher in a bright and colorful urban setting. I like how it is canted about 20°, adding a sense of action and movement, even though he is still.

How to Connect Second Life to Sansar: It's Not the Engine, It's the Community (Comment of the Week)

Interesting conversation on the feasibility of upgrading Second Life to the modern age, potentially via Unity. Reader "Seph" proposes an alternative that Linden Lab should seriously consider: Instead of updating the Second Life engine, give the SL community some specific reasons to transition much of their activity into Sansar:  

There's a lot easier ways for Linden Lab to automatically integrate existing Second Life users into a newer, updated platform. They already have Sansar that they could repurpose.

Make it so that all Second Life landowners get as a part of their tier, land/experiences in Sansar as well.

Make it so that premium Second Life members earn perks in Sansar as well.

Have L$ and the Lindex be the one currency and exchange between Second Life and Sansar.

Have a single account, single login between both worlds. Build a 'Linden Lab' launcher that can install and launch the official SL viewer (and third party viewers) and Sansar.

Stop paying Levi's, NASA, Intel, Twitch streamers, Marvelous Designer, eSports organizations, EDM record labels, etc. and redirect that money into offsetting the risks Second Life creators and entertainers would have to take in moving an idea to Sansar. I'm sure they've spent millions on these fruitless things; give a million instead to Relay For Life. In exchange, [Relay for Life] risks less donations by hosting some of their events in Sansar instead.

Just do things to make it easy and obvious instead of intentionally alienating SL users from Sansar, and then SL won't need an updated graphics platform. One's already built, just integrate it.

This all makes sense to me, and I like the last idea in particular. I understand why Linden Lab wants to keep the SL and Sansar brands separate, and to emphasize that Sansar is safe for major real world brands. (No excessive trolling , weird porn, IP theft, etc!) But for some 15 years, the Second Life community has actively and directly supported one of the most well-known and respected real world brands out there:

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including: Serious Sansar Layoffs, Debating SL's Move to Unity, and Twitter Staff's Take on Banning Political Ads

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Somebody Puts Baby In The Corner
• Twitter Employees Strongly Support Ban On Political Ads & Want Facebook To Follow Suit, While Facebook Employees Think Otherwise - Blind Survey
• Could Second Life Slowly Migrate To Unity? Maybe, Says Veteran Developer Adam Frisby, But Here's Why That'd Be A Massive Undertaking
• Second Life Community Moves To Sansar... And Then, To Roblox. Here's How They Compare
• Linden Lab Lays Off Over 20 Members Of Sansar Team, Confirm Insiders; Social VR Platform To Continue Operating With Skeleton Crew

Nylon Pinkney is Online: Somebody Puts Baby in the Corner

Watch: How to Create Great SL Images Even on Low Graphic Settings

Here's a super useful tutorial from Second Life YouTube star Cassie Middles, who shows you how to shoot and then post-process a great Second Life image even with SL settings turned down low. Check out her levels and the resulting pic below:

Win $500 In Week 7 Of Sinespace's Creative Challenge Starting Tomorrow!

Starting tomorrow (November 9), NWN partner Sinespace is opening up its seventh weekly content creation challenge, awarding $500 to the user who creates the best item or scene and submits it to Sinespace's developer server next week. And yes, mesh-based content previously created for Second Life and other platforms can be submitted.  (Above is a cool recent challenge submission by "Hellen", a new hairstyle for Sinespace avatars.)

This is the challenge page. Here's how to apply and submit:

Twitter Employees Strongly Support Ban on Political Ads & Want Facebook to Follow Suit, While Facebook Employees Think Otherwise - Blind Survey

Last week Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced a policy to no longer run political ads on his social network, and according to a survey on Blind, the anonymous messaging app for tech employees, this shift has very strong support among his staff. Not only do 85% support it, a solid majority of 56% say the policy will have a positive effect on the 2020 election. Perhaps even more notably, 82% of Twitter employees who took the survey say Facebook should adopt a similar policy.

This is in striking contrast to a Blind survey conducted last month directed at Facebook employees, and its policy of allowing deceptive or inaccurate political ads: 51% of Facebook staff who took the survey said this policy might change the 2020 election, and only 54% supported having the policy in the first place. This strongly suggests less internal confidence within the Facebook ranks.

However, there's another surprise from this new survey, when Facebook employees were asked about Twitter's new policy:

Cajsa’s Daily SL Flickr Pick: Vic Taur Takes Excellent Slice-of-Virtual Life Pics

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

I like the naturalism of Vic Taur’s photos. He chooses poses that are comfortable and relaxed The settings are from the real world, and he’s always dressed and poses in congruence with the setting. He uses lighting and the focus and blue of depth of field to add to the naturalism. Still, I think it is the poses that really make his pictures stand out. Particularly the care with which he poses his hands. Take this picture. Both hands are relaxed and limp, but they are not mirroring each other, the fingers of each hand are in different relaxed positions. We see more of this thanks to Bento, but it still is a pleasure to see it particularly well done.

Could Second Life Slowly Migrate to Unity? Maybe, Says Veteran Developer Adam Frisby, But Here's Why That'd Be a Massive Undertaking

 

Last week in our conversation about whether Second Life should upgrade to a modern 3D engine, I suggested that Linden Lab could slowly shift toward Unity, the world's most used 3D game engine. But there's what might work in theory, and what is actually feasible. Developer Adam Frisby has been working on a new virtual world platform based on Unity for years, and has a long history developing with Second Life -- he's also a co-founder of OpenSim --  so I asked him to explain if my idea was even worthwhile.

"SL is a very unique beast," Adam tells. "And frankly, they'd gain very little switching to Unity, and lose a lot. It's already a mature product, and SL relies on doing a ridiculous number of very simple things, very fast. Whereas most games rely on doing a lot of very complex things, but at a reasonable pace.

"I think SL has something like a total of 5? very simple GPU shaders. The average game probably has no less than 100-200 complex ones on screen at any one time. The moment you open the potential for any kind of complexity, and SL's performance would tank even harder. Because no one has ever optimized anything, and the only reason it could ever even think of running at all, is because the rendering complexity is somewhere between 'jack squat' and 'nothing'."

But my specific proposal is to add Unity inside the Second Life viewer -- and only switch from SL's legacy OpenGL-based graphics to Unity, whenever a user teleports to a new, Unity-compatible island or continent: 

Cajsa's SL Flickr Picks: Leonorah Beverly Shoots Stunningly Composed Photos

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

I love the drama in Leonorah Beverly’s “The Mask.” with the background half white and half black, each side seems to rise out of the other. It’s striking and remarkably different from her usual landscapes that remind me of old masters and which I will have to feature another day. 

Second Life Community Moves to Sansar... and Then, To Roblox. Here's How They Compare

1867 is an interesting game experience on Roblox with an intriguing backstory. It started out as a Second Life-based community called Pfaffenthal 1867, associated with a real life museum in Luxembourg City. But as I wrote last year, community leader Hauptmann "Cyberpiper" Weyder moved it to Sansar. Yesterday (completely separate from the news of Sansar's recent woes), Cyberpiper posted an update in Comments to that old post, reflecting on his experience -- and his surprising new move:

I miss what we had in SL. But the problem lies in the rather volatile nature of the SL community. You do something new, nice, interesting, and folks will come. In order to keep it up though you have to put in a bug work load, mainly organizing one event after another. But despite our best efforts, traffic waned. Gosh we offered free housing to our 1867 community!! Rare in SL! The contract with the [RL] museum came to an end, and frankly we could not afford to pay 7000.-€ tier to LL a year out of our own pocket!

Sansar has been a disappointment. We managed to do a whole street eventually, but had to start over because of too much lag, trying to figure out ways of more efficient texturing or building. Also Sansar had promised mobile development, which was then taken off the roadmap, a big disappointment for us.  And... we all know it... no traffic in Sansar... for now...

So we have put Sansar development on the backburner, and decided to develop our own MMORPG, starting off by developing a ‘childrens version’ on ROBLOX.... check it out.

Yes, Roblox -- where it's getting way more visits than what it got in Sansar or possibly even Second Life: Nearly 3,500, since its launch last April. (Not a complete surprise, as Roblox has 100 million monthly users.)

"One thing to say is that we are not completely giving up on Sansar," Cyberpiper tells me now by e-mail. "We still like the philosophy behind it, and might continue building there at a later stage, when it is more developed."

Until then, here's how Cyberpiper compares Roblox's building tools and features, to Second Life's and Sansar's own:

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick: Xoyuutaox Vividly Mysterious Second Life Photos

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

I am in love with Xoyuutaox’s. I don’t understand their pictures, but I don’t care. They are exciting and visually interesting. Take this photo with two avatars who seem to be the center of a maelstrom of activity with fish, black ink, and fans. Whether intentional or not, it feels as though the items are coming from their colorful kimonos. The yellow fan on the right seems to reflect the color in the center of the black flower the avatar on the right is wearing while the same is true of the red on the left. In my head, I imagine the kimono print escaping. Perhaps if we come back in 20 minutes they will be plain black kimonos.

Linden Lab Lays Off Over 20 Members of Sansar Team, Confirm Insiders; Social VR Platform to Continue Operating With Skeleton Crew

Confirming a blog post from Ryan Schultz (along with some ominous rumblings I heard last Friday), some insiders tell me that Linden Lab has recently laid off over 20 staffers working on Sansar, the company's social VR platform. Even more tragically, the layoffs include some longtime Lindens who got their start working on Second Life, Linden Lab's core profitable product, but who were moved to the Sansar team.

Asked to comment on these layoff reports, a Linden Lab spokesperson just sent me this response, in its entirety:

"We have no comment at this time, but we're continuing to develop both Second Life and Sansar, and we're excited about the many new partnerships and features on tap for 2020!"

This move is not at all surprising, and follows a round of Linden Lab layoffs last year; more key, Sansar has steadfastly refused to grow its user numbers, with peak concurrency remaining in the low hundreds at most, despite marketing campaigns with major brands like Hello Kitty, Spielberg's Ready Player One, and top esports groups.

My understanding is Sansar will not be closed down, or sold, but will continue operating with a skeleton crew, and in all likelihood, eventually be run as a spinoff company and product separate from Linden Lab. 

In any case, this is a sad turn for a project that began under the leadership of former Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble, when Sansar was conceived as a spiritual successor to Second Life. But between Humble stepping down and Ebbe Altberg taking the reigns at CEO, some management decisions shifted Sansar's direction:

Top 6 Posts from Last Week Including: Exploring Trans Identity in Virtual Worlds, the Rise of VRChat's Embedded Reporter, and Why Second Life Needs a New Engine

• OK Boomer, Halloween Edition - Nylon Pinkey Is Online
• Watch: A Halloween Visit To Cetatea Poenari, Home To An SL Vampire Family
• VRChat Reporter Syrmor, Who Has More YouTube Subscribers Than VRChat Has Users, Steps In Front Of The Camera
• Watch: Trans People Explore Alternate Identities Through Virtual World Avatars
• Watch: A Scary Walkthrough Sim In Sansar -- And A Comparison Of Creating In Second Life Vs. Sansar
• Second Life Really Needs To Switch To A New 3D Engine (Rant Of The Week)

Win $500 In Week 6 Of Sinespace's Creative Challenge Starting Tomorrow!

Starting tomorrow (November 2), NWN partner Sinespace is opening up its sixth weekly content creation challenge, awarding $500 to the user who creates the best item or scene and submits it to Sinespace's developer server next week. Last week's challenge, by the way, went to SecretWeapon Production, who created this rideable, driveable Behemoth Orc Adventurer. And yes, mesh-based content previously created for Second Life and other platforms can be submitted. 

This is the challenge page. Deadline is end of November 8! How to apply and submit: