New World Notes

Watch: Celebrity YouTuber Bored With The Sims Quickly Becomes Queen of Second Life, Basically

Ms. Carmen King is a gaming YouTube celebrity with nearly 1 million subscribers, and earlier this month, an amazing thing happened.

"If you've watching my channel lately," she announces, "I've been talking about how bland the Sims 4 has been getting -- that Star Wars pack did not make it any better, bitch."

But rather than switch to a recent game, she reaches all the way back 17 years to launch Second Life:

"I'm not here to troll or make enemies or anything I like that," she begins, in a nod to YouTube's many a-hole SL trolls, "I genuinely want to do stuff in SL like create myself in Second Life, go shopping, find me a man, go to a strip club, get pregnant -- and I'm not even kidding, you can literally get pregnant in Second Life and literally deliver a baby, like straight out your cootchie deliver, I'm not even joking,"

... which should give you a taste of her girl gamer-meets-Cardi B charm and NSFW Rabelaisian patois. What follows is more or less the "WAP" of game streaming, adventures in avatar enhancement, apartment hunting, and later on, road rage in a diamond pink car. Yes:

Shopping Tips from an SL Fashion Blog -- And Blogging Tips from Me

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

Live, Love, Laugh is MetteKenzo Nagy’s blog. She focuses on fashion and I was drawn to her work by her colorful, bright pictures. “Ooh Na-Na” really appealed because it was a successful example of turning a picture on its side. She didn’t do a full horizontal. Even though the diagonal is very acute, it still allows us to make sense of the picture without turning our laptop on the side. I have been baffled by these pictures for quite some time, but Gogo explained the rationale and now it makes sense. Many of today’s blogs have such big pictures they fill more than the screen, by going diagonal, they can get the whole picture in your window without scrolling. Now it seems obvious. I like the dress, though it’s only for the body made by the same creator. 

• KALHENE // Kate Dress Fatpack [Group Gift] For Kalhene Anya Mesh Body Only! Available at Mainstore

A bit of rockabilly in the next post -- along with my personal advice for fashion bloggers:

University Of Western Australia's Second Life Art Sims Closing This Year -- But Artists Can Feature Their Work There in a Grand Finale Festival

The University Of Western Australia's virtual campus in Second Life has been among the most active and longest lasting educational presences, hosting regular art festivals like this one featuring cinema great Peter Greenaway But after years of hanging on, I'm told the UWA regions are finally being closed at the end of this year.

That's disappointing news. The good news is UWA is going out with a digital bang, hosting a huge final art festival on a massive platform above the campus. Curated by longtime virtual art advocate Chuck Clip (above) and Mariposa Upshaw, with the blessing of UWA's Jay Jay Zifanwe, this is meant to be, as Clip calls it, "one last thank you to the men and women of the institution that touched all of our lives." 

If you're a 2D or 3D artist who wants to feature your work in this space, the submission details from Mr. Clip are below. And I do mean "massive", take a lot at its scale:

Founder Hubris Led to Magic Leap's Fall -- But Valley Hubris Enabled Its Rise

Bloomberg News has a great long feature on the rise and fall of Magic Leap, which raised $3.5 billion on the prospect of transformative AR technology, only to lose nearly all of that money in the fires of hubris. The company is still operating, but mainly now as an also-ran competitor to Microsoft's HoloLens/AR for enterprise use business. The hubris of Magic Leap's founders is not surprising -- it's pretty much par for the course for any startup that attracts that much funding so fast -- but the story doesn't cover another variation of hubris. 

Specifically: Why did so many major tech companies and VCs invest so much money on a product -- i.e., a head-mounted display -- with no successful track record whatsoever? Especially when one of the Internet's largest companies (Google) recently demonstrated the social disasters inherent in AR glasses -- i.e. "Glassholes"?

But invest they did, and took great pains to do so:

Fabulous Photos Shot in the Virtual World Rain

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

It’s raining today here in Oregon and it is such a relief after all the smoke from the wildfires. I know we had a big storm on the 18th, but it was at 3 A.M. and most people missed it. I thought I might feature great photos of virtual rain since that glorious torrent stopped between the beginning and the end of this paragraph. 

“True love isn’t Romeo and Juliet; it’s Grandma and Grandpa who grow old together” is a lovely (Up-inspired?) picture by Angel Roxley whose June and Jonathan pictures were featured a while back. 

Next: Is it real or is it Second Life? 

Is the Ideal Metaverse a Network of Linked Places, or a Seamless World?

Continuing his blog series on what he's learned as a lead developer/consultant at Oculus, Eve Online, and of course Linden Lab, Jim "Babbage" Purbrick has a new post arguing that the architecture of the metaverse should be a network of linked, small spaces:

As the Second Life continued to expand and change at an ever faster rate it became increasingly important to have ways to find the good stuff. Bookmarks, searches and external blogs indexed the expanding world helping people find things. Rather than walk, fly or sail around the world people would teleport from place to place or event to event. Even if you wanted to walk it became increasingly hard to do so: more and more parcels of land became private, restricting entry to both people and any scripted fish unlucky enough to try to swim across the boundary... Technologically, Second Life also began to split at the seams. The addition of Second Life URLs (SLurls) allowed blogs to link to locations in Second Life and people increasingly wrote scripts which published out to the web and Twitter or pulled data in from the web to visualize in 3D....

[I]t was incredibly encouraging to see some of the earliest experiments in social VR at Oculus try something similar by linking Oculus Rooms to other experiences via coordinated app launch (CAL). While the first CAL implementations linked Oculus Rooms to a fixed set of published experiences it’s easy to imagine people using similar technology to build environments which link to their favorite locations around the Metaverse just as early web sites curated links to favourite content around the web.

I understand Jim's reasons for wanting the Metaverse to act more like the web -- but then that means the Metaverse acts less like a world. Or as I put it to him:

"Don't linked small spaces create a sense of discontinuity and hurt immersion and a feeling of being in a 'world'? In your post, you mention some virtual worlds that link with small rooms (Metaplace, Whirled and Sansar), but they're all small in terms of user bases. The biggest virtual worlds, Minecraft and Fortnite, are huge contiguous spaces."

Babbage's reply to that:

Epic Invests in Core to Expand Unreal's Metaverse Potential -- And Increase Its Competitive Advantage Against Apple

I've previously called Core, the new Unreal-based, user-generated game development platform from startup Manticore,  as a kind of Fortnite-meets-ROBLOX concoction. So I wasn't surprised at yesterday's news that Epic, publisher of Fortnite and developer Unreal, directly invested in the company:

[Core] is getting an injection of $15 million, thanks to a funding round led by Fortnite creator Epic Games, in order to expand even more. “At Epic we believe the industry is ultimately headed to games becoming more like open platforms where creators can build their own worlds,” Epic president Adam Sussman said in a statement. “Built in Unreal, Core exemplifies this future and goes one step further by providing the environment for anybody to create great multiplayer games, and a metaverse playground where players discover endless entertainment.”

This investment adds some financial heft to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney's ongoing battle with Apple, which he's described as a war for the future of the metaverse. If Core is successful, it'll become an alternate marketplace for Unreal-based games beyond Apple's control -- and a potential candidate for an Unreal-based metaverse.

Virtual World Fire Photographed in Memorial to Real World Wildfires That Devastated the West Coast

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

Eoleon Elcano posted “World on Fire” when wildfires were spreading throughout the West. My own state lost a million acres to fire and some 40,000 people have been evacuated. The house I rented when I first moved here was burned to the ground. The smoke that permeated the air in Portland was so intense, I could taste it if I licked my lips despite having the doors and windows closed. This picture brilliantly captures that wild intensity and is so timely. In her “About” page she says she uses Black Dragon, PhotoShop CS6 and a graphic tablet for editing. I am always intrigued and impressed by Second Life artists responding to first life crises. I think she captured the intensity of our wildfires. 

More extraordinary pictures ahead:

Content Creator Goldmine: Studio Ghibli Releases Hundreds of Movie Images for Free Use, Including Stills from Miyazaki's Masterpiece Spirited Away

If you're reading this blog you're probably both a virtual world content creator on some level and a fan of Studio Ghibli films, so this news should come as an incredible gift:

Now the studio is making another unprecedented move, by announcing they’ll be releasing hundreds of images from their movies for the public to use free-of-charge, with one caveat: they’re to be used “within the scope of common sense.”

That includes stills from Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece Spirited Away (like this one above). Click here for all the free images.

There's already quite a lot of Studio Ghibli tributes in virtual worlds, of course, like this Second Life recreation inspired by Laputa: Castle In The Sky. So I'm excited to see what's created with this trove of legit content.

As for using it "within the scope of common sense”... I'm pretty sure that's a polite way of saying, "No hentai, you freaks." 

Anyway, here's another from Tales from Earthsea:

This Artist Uses Second Life Screenshots to Tell Whimsical Stories of Robots

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

“Nannybot Portrait” is a striking picture of Nannybot with a bird. Created using overlays to simulate painting, I like how anachronistic this is, the futuristic robot with the bird in the style of a Renaissance painter. It made me smile. It is part of a series conceived and executed by Samanta Yates in some epic role-play storytelling. Samantha is a naughty angel whose mother needs some help to manage her and the house. Enter Nannybot, “The latest innovation in domestic assistance and childcare for the busy homemaker from Sirius Cybernetics Corporation! Equipped with extensive GPP (Genuine Person Personality) the Nannybot 4000 is mostly unlikely to be the result of fatal injury.”

Mary Poppins has nothing on Nannybot...

Linden Lab Needs to Punish Poorly Optimized Mesh -- Or Reward Well-Made Mesh (Comments of the Week)

Good reader thread responding to my somewhat tossed off remark that, "While you should definitely encourage users to customize their avatars, you also want to impose optimization restrictions so avatars don't become a bloated lag-inducing disaster like they have in SL."

The problem, as Alicia observes, is the company behind Second Life has enabled (encouraged?) poor optimization:

Linden Lab has set the maximum for textures at 1024x1024, and most creators end up making their textures too damn big (any texture size over 1024x1024 max), which then will be forced to the max of 1024x1024; but, remember that LL never set limits on how many verts/faces a mesh item should have. The textures issues, on the other hand, can easily be fixed if people simply went with the allotted sizes (64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512 and the 1024x1024 max) SL can manage.

Also, knowing how to keep the MB down on the textures also helps if the person knows what their doing in GIMP, PhotoShop, or any other photo manipulation program. When it comes to mesh, you still have mesh hair that shoots an avi's complexity near or past 100k, and the same thing can happen with jewelry, clothing, etc. Verts/faces counts also increase/decrease when you resize any mesh object (trees, shrubs, etc.) All of these individual issues ultimately becomes a huge problem that never gets handled as LL only wants to continue working as is...

Everyone knows that LL will never impose restrictions on how maximum number of verts a mesh item can have.

Pulsar argues that Linden Lab should set out rewards and/or restrictions around mesh:

Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass Becomes Biggest Cloud Streaming Service by Far, Acquires Bethesda to Become Even Bigger

I'm pretty convinced cloud streaming is going to be the future of online games, especially virtual worlds, so today's acquisition by Microsoft of Skyrim developer Bethesda is worth keeping an eye on:

As the gaming industry transforms from a device-centric era to a player-centric era powered by new technology that provides the freedom to play with friends anywhere on any device, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) on Monday announced plans to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, one of the largest, privately held game developers and publishers in the world. Creators of critically acclaimed and best-selling gaming franchises including The Elder Scrolls and Fallout among many others, Bethesda brings an impressive portfolio of games, technology, talent, as well as a track record of blockbuster commercial success, to Xbox. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will acquire ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in cash.

The very announcement hints at streaming as the future: The end of buying expensive gaming PCs and consoles, and rather, using cloud streaming and edge competing to jump into virtual worlds from any device, even an old laptop or mobile phone. And with this purchase, Microsoft has a huge content advantage to add to its fast-growing subscriber base:

Top 6 Posts from Last Week, Including Avatar Creation Advice from a Virtual World Veteran & A Slapping Rap Song Inspired by SL

• Zuckerberg Wants Oculus Quest 2 To Sell 10 Million Units. The First Quest Hardly Sold 1 Million.
• There's A Playable, Physics-Enabled Tribute To Fall Guys In Second Life
• Someone Made The Bates Motel & Mansion Of Hitchcock's Psycho In Second Life
• How To Create Avatars For Virtual Worlds -- An Oculus/Linden Lab Vet's Advice
• Watch: Someone Made A Rap Song About Second Life And It Fricking SLAPS
• Poignant Images Of Sadness Created From Virtual World Screenshots

Weekend Shopping Tips from a New SL Blog called Kirinyth

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

Kirinyth has a self-named blog that combines visiting beautiful sims, fashion, and decor. “Riding a Sky Whale” is an outstanding blog post that thoughtfully asks us to look at the world anew. I love it when bloggers write more than credits, sharing more of themselves than an outfit. 

• Top: DEAD DOLL by Kiddoh Oh Knotted Shirt (free gift at Uber)
• Jeans: Maitreya by Onyx LeShelle Zipper-Skinny Jeans
• Shoes: REIGN  by KenadeeCole Arianna Sneakers

Click through to see why her blog is very different from the usual.

Zuckerberg Wants Oculus Quest 2 to Sell 10 Million Units. The First Quest Hardly Sold 1 Million.

Admittedly I haven't been following the unveiling of Oculus Quest 2 and all of Facebook's other VR/AR-related announcements this week as closely as I once did. (Owing to, you know, their sheer and total Facebook-itude.) But I should note this interesting point CEO Mark Zuckerberg made in an interview with The Verge's Casey Newton:

Casey Newton: So where are you on this long road to making VR mainstream?

Mark Zuckerberg: VR, I think is well on its way. We had this milestone in our mind that first we needed to get the technology to the place where you could have a standalone headset, it could be portable, it could be high quality — do the tracking and all that. And Quest was the big milestone on that. Then, from an ecosystem perspective, we believed that if we get to 10 million units active, then that’s kind of a critical magic number.

At that point, you have a self-sustaining ecosystem. That’s the next big push: how do we get the technology to be more accessible to more people? A big part of that was driving it to be more affordable, and making it more portable. ... And we’re not at 10 million yet, but I’m optimistic that over the next few years, we’ll get there. And that will really be a new stage of VR.

Emphasis mine, because, wow. 10 million active users isn't even large compared to a single video game console. (Total sales of Nintendo Switch, after 3.5 years on the market: 61 million.) Even more key, the first Oculus Quest barely reached 1/10th those numbers:

There's a Playable, Physics-Enabled Tribute to Fall Guys in Second Life -- And You Can Play It With a Group at 1pm PST Today!

Heres the result https://t.co/2gH8vyYnqX

— LokiEliot (@Demonkid) September 18, 2020

UPDATE, 2:30pm PT: Added video from today's session of peak wackiness above!

Click here to teleport to the starting point at or right before 1pm PT today, when the creator and some of his pals are getting together for a match.

Fall Guys, if you haven't heard, is the massively popular mini-MMO that came out recently -- think Fortnite, but way less shooty and far more goofy -- and the Second Life-based tribute has the same colorful charm. Created by acclaimed 80s boy genius Loki Eliot, it looks like a fun way for SLers to get interested in the original -- and for fans of the original to get interested in SL.

Compare and contrast with the trailer below: 

Someone Made the Bates Motel & Mansion of Hitchcock's Psycho in Second Life and Hosts Karaoke Parties There

Click here to visit, but maybe take a shower beforehand.  SL artist Kaiden Tray made this faithful recreation of the classic cinema location, complete with four free motel rooms (date night, anyone?), and the Bates mansion on the hill. Impressively, he made it from scratch, mainly using the recent TV show spinoff of Psycho for reference.  

I know you're wondering if Mother is in the basement, or what happens if you step into the shower, or walk like a stupidly curious detective up the mansion stairs. Kaiden declines to answer any of that, but tells me that he plans to turn this into a full Psycho experience on its own sim.

As for now, there's some social activities. 

"We have karaoke sometimes," says Kaiden, "or anyone can have their own events they just need to let me know." Because one thing you don't ever want to do is do something on the Bates estate without the owner's permission.

More pics below, including Kaiden Tray himself doing a halfway decent Anthony Hopkins impression:

TinTin Tuxing Takes SL Photos & Turns Them Into Distinct & Original Images

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

TinTin Tuxing’s “Little Daisy” just took my breath away. It is a marvelous headshot that vividly displays how showing less gives us more. Only a portion of her face is visible, but we can feel her mood and understand something about her. The use of layers to age the photo and its black and white all add to its effect. But lest you think it’s all romance and flowers and sentimentality, she provides a link to a song for her picture. And if you don’t click through to see it, you will miss half the fun.  

To see her range, click on through.

How to Create Avatars for Virtual Worlds -- An Oculus/Linden Lab Vet's Advice

Avatar pic by Ella Pinellapin

Continuing his blog series on what he's learned as a lead developer/consultant at Oculus, Eve Online, and of course Linden Lab, Jim "Babbage" Purbrick has a new post on the importance of avatar customization tools in open-ended virtual worlds:

If you are building a Metaverse which connects every possible virtual world how do you start? How do you please the person who wants to have the perfect tall dark stranger avatar rendered in 3D as well as everyone else? This was the challenge facing Linden Lab when building the avatars for Second Life at the turn of the millennium. While the default avatars could be manipulated into a huge variety of shapes and sizes using the available parameters, the results were often crude and the available wardrobe never strayed far from geeky teen hangout chic. Luckily for Linden Lab the inability of the avatar system to satisfy every whim was a huge opportunity for the entrepreneurs of Second Life.

Builders quickly realized that they could fashion shoes, hair, clothes and accessories from primitive 3D objects which could be attached to avatars to dramatically increase the gamut of styles that could be realised. Linden Lab enabled another wave of innovation by allowing animations to be uploaded which as well as allowing every conceivable dance move to fill the nightclubs of Second Life also enabled tiny avatars which either folded up the default avatar geometry inside cutely sculpted animal models or moved the default avatar under the floor so it was completely hidden and just served as a platform for a tiny replacement avatar standing on its head. Many years later Linden Lab finally allowed people to entirely replace the default geometry and textures so now it is common for not a single triangle or texel in a Second Life avatar to have been defined by Linden Lab.

But If a new virtual world is just launching, what avatar options should be available for early adopters? Jim's advice:

"In my opinion developers should make sure they provide realistic body shapes (not 2 meter tall avatars with impossibly large breasts) and diverse skin tones and facial features so that every potential user can easily build an avatar that looks like them if they choose. Some basic clothes should be provided, but these can be largely left to the community to develop."

Adding non-human avatar options open up some additional, interesting concerns. As Jim puts it:

Watch: Someone Made a Rap Song About Second Life and it Fricking SLAPS

For a user-created virtual world that's nearly 20 years old, it's difficult for anyone to create the first something in its category, but Zatch Ixchel has probably done just that: "MESHONME" is the first rap song inspired by Second Life that I'm aware of. And it's actually damn good, with a solid trap beat matched to Zatch's staccato rapping of uniquely clever rap lyrics that only SLers will understand:

I come thru with a lil sum suttin

You come thru with a Ruth to the function

Boy, you better poof, better move it or somethin

I'm bout to blow thru the damn roof with the dumb shit

Got a new suit with the HUD shit too

Only shed blood with a new tattoo  

They're so on point, I thought he must also rap in real life, but he tells me no.

"I choose to do it in relative privacy/anonymity, even in real life," as he puts it. "I suppose this is because I see it as a character I am playing. To put my face on something like that would feel inauthentic. In Second Life, I don't have that issue."

"MESHONME" is very much about SL culture: "I guess I was inspired by the inherent materialism of Second Life," Zach tells me, "which complements the Hip Hop genre rather well. I also thought it would be funny to watch someone try and flex that sort of bravado and wealth in the context of a virtual world."

Nailed it. As does the video, which stars his RL wife Lucie. Full lyrics below courtesy Mr. Ixchel, who's originally from New York -- in case anyone wants to get an East Coast/West Coast avatar rivalry going.

Poignant Images of Sadness Created from Virtual World Screenshots

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

“I Was Just a Bad Dream” is such an emotionally affecting snapshot. His shoulders are slumped, his hands are clasped, and he looks down in deep reflection. The title comes from a line in the song he links to, “Goodbye” by Apparat:

“Fold out your hands/Give me a sign/Hold down your lies/Lay down next to me/Don't listen when I scream/Bury your thoughts (doubts)/And fall asleep/Find out/I was just a bad dream.” 

As you browse Freakshow Zsun’s stream, there is a strong thematic focus on heartbreak and despair. One thing about art, it is a powerful way to express and process your emotions. 

A great example of music and photography complementing each other next. 

Survey: Most Facebook Employees Don't Believe Company is Responsible for Preventing Misinformation About US Election on Platform

A majority of Facebook employees do not believe the company is responsible for preventing misinformation about the US election on its platform. That's at least according to an anonymous survey launched last week by the development team of Blind, an anonymous messaging app for tech company staffers. With about 1500 replies registered by employees across many technology companies (100 from the social network), an overwhelming majority of 68% placed the responsibility on Facebook. But only 47% of Facebook employees placed the responsibility on their own company.

While the survey sample size is small, the response is consistent with recent reports that Facebook staff are largely not responsive to election interference on its platform unless it becomes a major PR issue:

Watch: Half-Life Alyx Running in an Open Source AR Headset (Kinda Sorta)

Half-life Alyx running on #ProjectNorthstar,

Lots of improvements to do with the steamVR driver itself, but it's so cool seeing it progress this far. pic.twitter.com/BP9QtFxLSq

— Bryan Chris Brown 🚀 (@BryanChrisBrown) September 12, 2020

One moment you're in your apartment, and then the next, boom, your reality gets merged with City 17. This clever hack from Bryan Chris Brown, community manager at North Star, an open source AR HMD from Leap Motion.

"Lots of improvements to do with the SteamVR driver itself," he reports, "but it's so cool seeing it progress this far."

And yes, you can even control Alyx with hand gestures.

Scylla Rhiadra Uses Virtual Light & Shadow To Turn SL Screenshots Into Art

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

Scylla Rhiadra’s “Queen of May” is a lovely example of light creating mood. I love how she divides the picture into three diagonals with projected  light and shadow. The background is simple and abstracted into black and white so the focus is on her and the colors. It’s really a great fashion photo.

Wow! The next picture is a stunner:

The Promise and Perils of Adding Social Networks to Virtual Worlds

Good comment from Alicia, responding to Jim "Babbage" Purbrick's thoughts on the importance of bringing social networks in to virtual worlds and vice versa:

Honestly, keep social networks and virtual worlds separate. People want to keep their social networking/RL private for personal reasons while losing themselves in virtual worlds for a few hours a day/night depending on where one lives. Remember that there are people who have been stalked online by naively giving out personal info about themselves; or have been doxxed by a vengeful person seeking to create trouble for their victim(s) wherever they are.

I can attest to that last point, having interacted with several people (all women, actually) who've been stalked in virtual worlds by men who figure out their account name. Always important to remember.

However, a social network doesn't necessarily have to be a real name-driven one like Facebook -- in many case, it's better that the social network just be avatar name-driven, a great way to drive and maintain user activity.

When he was still at Linden Lab, as Jim told me recently, "The friends online page on SecondLife.com was the most visited by orders of magnitude." That is probably one of the reasons, by the way, that Facebook is integrating Oculus with its social network -- so people can tell when their friends are online in VR. (I.E. it's not just about personal data mining.)

In any case, Alicia agrees with Babbage's point that virtual world companies need to focus on player-to-player communication, if only because players tend to consume the game content incredibly quickly: