New World Notes

Black Friday Sales in Second Life: All Dutchie Adult Items 20% Off!

Update, 11/27: Bumped up for the weekend -- click here to start shopping.

If you're planning your virtual world shopping trips for this Friday, famed SL housewares brand Dutchie (who we're honored to call a sponsoring partner here at New World Notes) will have a Black Friday sale -- 20% off all Adult-rated items. 

 This is actually Dutchie's very first Black Friday sale in SL. "I know a lot of people have less money to spend this year," Dutchie tells me, "so this might give people a chance to buy that adult toy they have had their eye on for a long time. Starting Friday the 27th everything in my adult department inworld is 20% off, even the newest designs, and the sale will last until Sunday."

All sales at her in-world store -- click here to start browsing, and to be first in line with the Friday sales start!

SL Black Friday & Holiday Shopping Ideas from Style Blogger Kurimu Kima

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

“Christmas Is Seeping In” seems like the perfect “Black Friday” post. Kurimu Kima does a great job of kicking off the Christmas season in a fun decor post. Her post is detailed, listing every item. I was drawn to the critters on the table. She explained in her post that she resized the deer to make it a better fit. This kind of care in blogging makes readers trust the blogger. 

Items on center table…

• Table: [KraftWork] Provence . Coffee Table 4Li {@Mainstore}
• Table cover (resized carpet): [KraftWork] Runner Rugs . Boho Set . Red Geometric 1Li {@Mainstore}
• Cupcake on spatula: [Andika] Friandises de Noel Dispenser-B 1Li {@Tannenbaum}
• Yule Log: [RH] Xmas Cake -Deer- 3Li {@Tannenbaum}
• Candy cane and cake: [Disorderly] Bundt Xmas / Candycane 1Li {@Tannenbaum}
• Hot chocolate and cake: [Disorderly] Bundt Xmas / Hot Chocolate 1Li {@Tannenbaum}
• Red bulb on table: [+Half-Deer+] Giant Christmas Bulbs – Single – Red 1Li {@Tannenbaum}
• Mousie holding bauble: [Sorumin] Christmas cuties SET -Baby with bauble- 6Li *resized down* {@Tannenbaum}
• Mousie holding gingerbread man: [Sorumin] Christmas cuties SET -Baby with cookie- 7Li *resized down* {@Tannenbaum}
• Mousie holding a fern: [Sorumin] Christmas cuties SET -Baby with pine branch- 5Li *resized down* {@Tannenbaum}
• Reindeer on table: [+Half-Deer+] Vintage Deer Figurine – Brown – Forward 1Li *resized down* {@Tannenbaum}
• Berry cake on stand: [Andika] Friandises de Noel – Pavlova/decor 1Li {@Tannenbaum

Up next, a kitchen to bake those cakes in...

Virtual World Tributes to Thanksgiving in a Year When Most Are Celebrating Apart

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

Geena Carminucci reminds us with "Friendsgiving 2020" that there is no need to isolate ourselves in our virtual world. There is no virtual COVID to ruin the day, so invite everyone you know over for a big Thanksgiving dinner. Besides, virtual turkey is never dry, virtual mashed potatoes are never lumpy, and virtual pie is never burned. 

More Thanksgiving pics ahead...

Last Chance to See a Collection of Prim Sculptures of Great SL Artists of the Last 15 Years

Above: Mr. Clip posing by a sculpture from the legendary prim artist Starax Statosky

Give thanks to great Second Life prim-based sculpture artists from over the last 17 years by visiting the Gratitude Art show between now and the end of 2020: Click here to teleport.

As I wrote in September, it was curated by longtime virtual art advocate Chuck Clip (above) and Mariposa Upshaw, and hosted in the University Of Western Australia's virtual campus in Second Life, which is finally being removed from the world for the New Year. After putting out an open call for submissions, they were deluged by entries from renowned artists like Chic Aeon, Glyph Graves, and Alpha Auer. Chuck even contributed a sculpture from his personal collection, from the beloved Starax Statosky, who started impressing the SL community as far back as 2005 or so. (Full list of contributors on Clip's blog.)

"I mean," as Clip tells me now. "It's a veritable who's-who of SL art and art history."

It was a labor of love for the curators:

Unready Player 2? Reviews to Influential Metaverse Novel Decidedly Mixed

There's an official ROBLOX experience promoting Ready Player 2, the new sequel to the metaverse novel partly inspired by Second Life and became so influential, it was required reading for employees at Oculus.  (Because why not make a dystopian novel about a future so horrible everyone wants to live in VR a company's frame of reference.)

But is the sequel any good, and worth a read over the holidays? A advance couple reviews below with mild spoilers,  so caveat geeker:

This Flickr Photographer's Dramatic Landscapes Are Actually SL Screenshots

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

Powder focuses primarily on beautifully composed landscapes. It is a remarkable skill to come upon a sim created by someone else and frame a picture as though you could place every item yourself. I loved this picture and the beautiful sky showing through the windows and the lights shining on it from the front as well. She provided a SLURL and I went to check it out, but unfortunately it is now a homestead for sale.  

I love her framing...the next is a great example:

VRChat Survey: Over 1 in 3 Say They'll Pay for a Premium Subscription

Results from last week's not-super-scientific-but-still interesting survey on VRChat's new monthly/yearly paid subscription option. With 175 responses (a solid sample for this site), well over one-third say they will pay to subscribe. That is a minority response, but for a free-to-play virtual world, it's a relatively impressive response.  As a point of comparison, Second Life only has about 60,000 Premium subscribers, which is roughly just 1 in 10 of the active userbase.

And looking at VRChat user concurrency, this suggests a strong potential for good revenue. With 24,000 peak concurrent users, VRChat probably has monthly active users in the low to mid six figures. (A good rule of thumb is to multiply peak concurrency by 10x.)  So if this survey scales with actual subscriptions, that would translate to about $1 million a month in subscription revenue for the company, more or less. (A big "if", to be sure.)

This would be tiny in comparison with, say, what Roblox is reportedly making, but for a virtual world where a third to half of the users are actually using  a VR headset, that's a decent niche.

This Artist Uses Light, Framing & Casual Poses to Make SL Avatar Photos Come Alive

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

Jena Lynn is a slice-of-life photographer, a Second Life Vivian Maier except of course she is shooting herself in the process of living, not other people. I love the appearance of spontaneity, the idea the camera was just raised at that very moment. There is no sense at all that the picture was planned and staged, but of course it was. And that is genius! 

The next picture shows how powerful framing can be.

Does the SL Community Care Enough to Clamor for Well-Optimized Mesh?

Pictured: Slink Redux body bundle, a rare example of popular SL mesh avatar content that's also well-optimized

Last Friday I wrote about the new Black Dragon viewer update which checks whether a mesh avatar is well-optimized or not. Reader "Down With Underboob" (LOL) tried it out in SL over the weekend, to see how much mesh content was poorly optimized, and came away shocked:

So I took Black Dragon out for a spin at a fairly busy club. There's only one avatar in the place who is "decently optimized" per the report. This guy is wearing a system avi and system clothes... I like what BD offers, but please get real. Nobody wants to go back to looking like an avatar from 2008. Photographers like to use BD's capabilities, but again, they're not going to use system avatars to pass these complexity tests.

Show me some mesh bodies, heads, and clothes that pass these tests and don't look like they're from 2008, and I'll consider trying them. Does he think we're all going to run around bald? I don't want Warcraft hair in SL. Until then, I'll stick with what I have. I'm satisfied with the 15-20 fps I get at this club and I can get upwards of 100 FPS when I'm hanging out on my platform at home in Bellisseria.

I'd also point out that he's tilting at windmills if he thinks designers are going to start posting complexity/triangle counts in their vendor ads.

I'd say it's the responsibility of the many SL bloggers and YouTubers to report on the complexity/triangle counts of the content they feature, warning them that high poly items will likely cause lag. Failing to do so would be like a real life fashion reporter failing to mention the clothing items they're recommending are made of toxic materials.

As to her request for optimized mesh to try out, Slink is among the few mesh body creators well-known for optimization.

But is there a market for good optimization in general? Reader "Seph" thinks not so:

Top 5 Posts Last Week Including an NSF-Funded Study of SL During the Pandemic, and How Oculus' Facebook ID Requirement Harms VR Developers

• New Black Dragon Feature Shows Your Much Lag Your Second Life Mesh Avatar Is Causing (Likely A Lot)
• VRChat User Survey: Will You Buy The New Plus Subscription?
• Roblox's Jaw-Dropping IPO Filing: 31 Million+ Daily Users, $589M+ In 2020 Revenue, Most From Mobile; User Creators Earned $209M+, Up 3X From 2019
• Acclaimed VR Game Developer Locked Out Of Oculus Platform Due To Facebook's Mandatory ID Policy -- Warns Of Its Dangers To Developers In LGBT & Other Vulnerable Communities
• SL Users: Please Take This Survey From UC Irvine's Tom Boellstorff On Your Virtual World Usage During The Pandemic

New Black Dragon Feature Shows Your Much Lag Your Second Life Mesh Avatar Is Causing (Likely a Lot)

Pictured: Niran in a Belleza 5.2 Bento mesh body -- which has over 1.5 MILLION triangles

There's a new update to The Black Dragon viewer for Second Life, and it comes with a great new feature: An option to check how well-optimized your mesh avatar is -- and shows you via a color code whether it is (green) or poorly optimized (yellow/orange/red):

So rather than confusing the user with an artificial "maximum" it now clearly states that it is simply recommended to stay below a certain point. Reaching this point also no longer immediately results in the "super bad" red rating but rather gives you the "eh" yellow/orange rating, see it as warning. As before you get a summary of all ratings together, right now its still very simple but i might actually add a 3-point answer that takes the 3 worst offenders and gives you hints and possibly even guides (or links to those) how to solve these.

As previously reported, most of the top-selling mesh bodies in SL are very poorly optimized, and a key culprit for Second Life's poor performance in general. Linden Lab refuses to do anything about this -- the CEO basically told me "So what?" when I asked him face to face -- but Black Dragon creator NiranV is a passionate advocate of optimization, and wants to improve SL's environment:

Carmen King Explores Sansar as Only Carmen Can -- And Has Tips for Making It Better

After basically becoming the queen of Second Life YouTubers, Ms. Carmen King reluctantly donned her dusty Vive headset --"I get insane motion sickness... [and] "normally can't last 10 minutes in VR", she says -- to re-visit the social VR world of Sansar.

"First time I tried,"  she casually notes, while getting strapped in, "I saw people trying to fuck in the middle of the ocean."

No such luck this time, but she does narrowly avoid an alien probing and inevitably wields some dildo-shaped hand controls. Further Carmen-esque NSFW hilarity ensues, so just watch.

"Sansar seems really fun and I love how smooth the game runs," she tells me now.  "Virtual Reality makes it a lot more exciting as you feel like you’re actually in the game!"

Sansar was originally developed by Linden Lab before its acquisition by Wookey; but does she prefer it to Linden's original world, Second Life?

VRChat User Survey: Will You Buy the New Plus Subscription?

NOTE: If you're viewing this on a mobile device you might need to tap-slide-scroll on the survey below to view and take it:

After many years in free-to-play Beta and seeing impressive growth, VRChat is finally offering a paid subscription option (details here and summarized below). But are VRChat players actually interested in paying? Please take this survey, even if you're a very casual VRChatter -results shared next week!

Friday Fashion Tips for Tween Avatars from SL Style Blogger Arti Love

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

I love Arti Love’s self-named blog. I also love the pun, “Art I Love” whether intentional or not. He has a young teen/tween blog that is great fun. I mean, I didn’t know I needed “The Little Prince” in Second Life, but now I see Arti’s Little Prince, I sure do. Mostly I need the asteroid and the stars. 

• ::C&P:: Asteroid B-612
• REALISTIC ROSE DECOR – RED by Mad Match
• {anc} nebra beads [Heavenlyblue]
• {anc} nebra beads [sungold]

More for boys who never grow up ahead. 

Roblox's Jaw-Dropping IPO Filing: 31 Million+ Daily Users, $589M+ in 2020 Revenue, Most from Mobile; User Creators Earned $209M+, Up 3X from 2019

Above: Image from ROBLOX's stock filing, data from the first 9 months of 2020

ROBLOX just filed its Form S-1 in preparation for going public, giving us a good glimpse at the virtual world platform's metrics. And they're pretty amazing! I'm still digging into it, but its 2020 standout stats for me so far:

31 million daily active users in 2020, nearly doubling since 2018:  "Daily active users, or DAUs, on Roblox grew 47%, from 12.0 million DAUs in 2018 to 17.6 million in 2019, and grew 82%, from 17.1 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2019 to 31.1 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2020."

52% of Roblox's revenue now from mobile apps: "For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, 34% of our revenue was attributable to Robux sales through the Apple App Store and 18% of our revenue was attributable to Robux sales through the Google Play Store..." The vast majority of Roblox's activity is from mobile usage too: "[D]uring the same period 68% of our engagement hours on the platform were from users who signed up through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store." 

With nearly $600 million in 2020 revenue for company by September, total annual revenue could exceed $800 million or (with the new pandemic quarantine and people indoors during the holidays) even reach toward $1 billion. But how much of that revenue is shared with Roblox's user creators, who make the bulk of the games and other interactive entertainment on the platform? That brings us to another interesting point:

SL Flickr Photographer of the Day: Banana Lecker

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

Banana Lecker’s photos are fun and often light-hearted microblog. I love this picture with her enjoying a hot cocoa at an outdoor food stand. It’s a wooden handcart, a rare sight today. Living in a city of over 500 food carts, though, it’s nice to see the culture honored in Second Life. 

More fashionable photos ahead:

Watch: New Video from Yasushi Watanabe, Top J-Pop Composer Who Created a Spinoff Project Based Around Second Life

Dropping on YouTube just an hour or so ago, here's the latest music video of BYNORAL, aka Yasushi Watanabe, a major figure in the J-Pop world (he's composed songs for top girl groups AKB48 and Nogizaka46) who earlier this year spun off a side project creating music videos in Second Life. Video summary:

This track is a sentimental song that incorporates various elements of electro, chill, and pop with the theme of light and darkness of modern society.

Not quite seeing the dark side of this beautifully shot, candy-colored video, but maybe the lyrics are where the shadows reside.  He was actually active in SL ten years ago, so this side gig represents a return to the virtual world.  (His new brand "BYNORAL”, by the way, is a play on "binaural stereo system."

Stunning SL Images With Disciplined Use of Color and Light

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

Kalliope’s “Not a Wish-Granting Factory” is a fun visual play on the idea of wishing upon a star. Of course, it’s not a star she is perched upon, it is a moon. But that is a petty quibble for a lovely and fun photo. I love her color story, all in blue including the light leak overlay that gives it a flash of moonlight. 

More stunning photos with intriguing and fun titles.

Acclaimed VR Game Developer Locked Out of Oculus Platform Due to Facebook's Mandatory ID Policy -- Warns of Its Dangers to Developers in LGBT & Other Vulnerable Communities

Guess if @Facebook disabled my account for no reason and there's no way to have it reviewed I won't be developing VR anymore? Good thing I haven't opened the shrink wrap on my Quest2. #VR

— Nicole Lazzaro #RBG #BLM #Harris2024 💪🏾🗳🌈 🥞 (@NicoleLazzaro) November 16, 2020

Nicole Lazzaro is an acclaimed game developer, named by Fast Company as among the top 100 women in tech and by Gamasutra as among the top 20 women working in games. But now there's one kind of game platform she currently can't develop on: The Oculus Quest. Which is a shame, because she was developing her quite impressive VR game "Find the White Rabbit" for Oculus, but it looks like there's going to be a delay (if not a permanent pause).

This is due, as you probably guessed already, to Oculus' recently imposed mandatory Facebook log-in policy:

This Artist Turns Virtual World Landscape Screenshots Into Beautifully Dramatic & Whimsical Imagery

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

Uma Fae Dust‘s picture is called “Open Spaces” but it really makes me think of the Reata Ranch outside Marfa, Texas and the fabulous, ahead-of-it-time movie, Giant. I love the stark isolation of the house without a tree to soften its alienation from the environment. It’s just plopped down, so out of place, that it stands on the line between ludicrous and beautiful, not committing to either. 

Up next, a picture to make you smile:

SL Users: Please Take This Survey from UC Irvine's Tom Boellstorff on Your Virtual World Usage During the Pandemic

Here's a fun short survey for SL users for a study on virtual cultures during the COVID-19 pandemic. (One of the questions above.) The study is led by my pal Tom Boellstorff of UC Irvine, who's easily among the most preeminent academics with a focus on virtual worlds. (He's the author of Coming of Age in Second Life, among many other related works.)

"I’ve been conducting various research projects in Second Life for almost 17 years now," Tom tells me, explaining the genesis of this study. "A couple years ago, I completed a study of disability in Second Life, and after that wonderful research experience moved on to some other projects (I’m actually finishing up a book on the Intellivision video game system from the early 1980s, which is great fun!) But then when COVID-19 hit, I decided to return to Second Life to see how COVID-19 is reshaping online interaction. I was lucky enough to get support from the National Science Foundation that means I have three wonderful graduate research assistants. Until next April we are conducting research in both Second Life and Animal Crossing. It’s a wild ride, setting up research with very little warning, but it’s been a great experience for all of us."

Here's the key questions Tom and his team hope to answer:

"The basic idea behind our project is that what people call 'social distancing' is really physical distancing. Online, new kinds of connections are being created. What are they, how are they working, and what lessons can we learn as it’s happening? In particular, the Internet isn’t a unified entity. Virtual worlds share some things with social network sites like Facebook or Instagram, with mobile devices, with online games, and so on, but there are distinctive features as well. What do virtual worlds specifically offer? What is the potential and what are the dangers? How can learning from what people are doing in virtual worlds help us better respond to the transformed lives we’ll all be living in the wake of COVID-19?"

Even better, Tom will share the results with New World Notes. More about the study here, excerpt below:

How Virtual Worlds Can Benefit Senior Citizens (Comment of the Week)

My "How avatars change who we are" article for Samsung EDGE's Components mentioned a study suggesting that being Einstein in VR seems to improve a user's IQ, and longtime reader Luther Weymnn notes that this phenomenon also seems to happen in non-VR virtual worlds:

Over the past decade, I've chatted with dozens of SL content creators who are between the ages of 65-85. Previously, I thought that I was in a tiny group of senior citizens using SL, but I was wrong. In my 70's having SL as a hobby and creating content a little bit every day has been a powerful method to keep my retired from business brain sharper than most other activities. And this is what all of the senior citizen's content creators I've chatted with agreed upon. Having to creatively think our way through SL product content creation is a terrific way to keep old brains thinking creatively and staying sharp. I attempted to tell my neighbor about the benefits of building in SL. He is also my doctor for the past 35 years. But, all I could get out of him was, "uh-huh, ok, now let's talk about getting you to exercise more." Oh well.

Pulsar concurs, suggesting a reason why the Einstein experiment works, and how it might translate to non-VR worlds:

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including Four Seasons Landscaping in VRChat, and an SL Fashion Blog Bigger Than Many Top RL Fashion Sites

• Looking For Lumiya, The Android App For SL? It's Still Available On SlideME
• Seraphim Secrets: How A Second Life Fashion Blog Earned 60 Million+ Views
• NeosVR Makes User-To-User File Sharing An Immersive Social VR Experience
• Being Einstein In VR Can Raise Your Actual IQ, And Other Fascinating Examples Of How Avatars Change Who We Are
• Four Seasons Total Landscaping Rapidly Recreated In VRChat For Post-Election Furry Fun; UPDATE: Dildo Store Addition TBD

Mandalorian Made on Massive LED Screens So Actors Reflect The Virtual Light

You probably know already that the visuals for the Disney streaming show The Mandalorian are created in the Unreal 3D engine, but this Vox explainer video shows you how those virtual spaces are integrated with the actual, physical cast: Not through green screen but via giant, curving LED displays, which effectively wrap the actors in a virtual world. Technically more efficient than green screen, another advantage of this approach is that the actors in these shots are illuminated by virtual light. So if the cast is, say, standing there watching a twin star sunset on Tatooine, the warm light on their faces really is cast by the virtual suns. (Also super important when an actor is already wearing a costume with reflective surfaces, as with Mando in the show that bears his name.)

SL Fashion Blog Friday: Nadja Baxter Has the Stylish Shopping Tips You Need

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

Nadja Baxter has been blogging since at least 2007; Old Guard, indeed. Her original blog was called GermanStyle but now she has an eponymous blog, Nadja Baxter. It’s important to know that her blog has more pictures than her Flickr stream and her photostream has pictures that never make it to the blog. There are a few candids, shots of friends, and microblogs on her stream. The blog posts have several photos the better demonstrate the outfits. You really need to follow both to see her prodigious output in Second Life. I like the outfit in this recent post. 

• Mimikri - Cropped Cardigan / Gloria Fatpack At Uber
• Mimikri - Flared Pants / Gloria Fatpack At Uber
• Mimikri - Fur Scarf / Gloria Fatpack At Uber

This next outfit has a coat for taking names and cashing checks: