New World Notes

Meta / Linden Lab Veteran: Metaverse Platforms Which Don't Learn the Lessons of Previous Virtual Worlds Are Doomed to Repeat Them

With episode three of the Wall Street Journal's podcast "How to Make a Metaverse" dropping tomorrow, Linden Lab/CCP Games/Meta developer veteran Jim "Babbage" Purbrick (who spoke with the podcast team for the show) has thoughts on Episode 2 (listen to it here), and the disasters which were unleashed when Second Life's early community management policy was simply, "Be Nice". Citing some highly memorable Not Nice examples, here's the problem as he sees it:

 A Rape In Cyberspace was already 10 years old when Second Life launched and Linden Lab were talking to many of the pioneers who worked on early virtual worlds. Philip should have known better, but pursued a wishful, naïve approach to moderation and Second Life ended up learning a lot of lessons that had already been learned the hard way...

When I first visited San Francisco I hosted a party on Russian Hill to get to know my colleagues only to end up huddled in the living room with other engineers battling a plague of grey goo spreading across the grid that was enabled by an over-permissive API. The API allowed scripted objects to self-replicate and so exponentially overwhelm regions until firewalls of shut down simulators limited the spread and space lasers were able to delete scripts to purge the world of the menace.

Shortly after I returned to the UK I woke up one morning to my first encounter with the infamous Goatse image which a resident had pasted across the world so that it would show up on the live map that had been naively been added to the front page of secondlife.com without enough thought about how it might be abused.

If you don't know what Goatse is, don't Google but click the Wikipedia link above for the love of god.

At any rate, Jim recommends that metaverse platform developers not just read Snow Crash (or forget the dark side of the Metaverse that Stephenson writes about there), but points people to this very helpful list of non-fiction books on the metaverse/virtual worlds.

As regular readers will remember, Purbrick was previously at Meta, begging the team to read  A Rape In Cyberspace and consider the implications. But people at Meta didn't prioritize it, and... here's what happened.

He's also concerned other metaverse platforms may not be learning the lessons of community management. For instance, he tells me, VRChat:

Today's Flickr Pick: Ross5 Turns SL Screenshots Into Amazing Comics Panels

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

Ross5 Comics is a photostream full of comic book hero/antihero adventures. What could be more apt to present their work than the opening of their in-world Comic Shop. [Click here to teleport]

As you can see in the window, The Vampire Elf is a featured comic strip adventure that you can explore in this Flickr album. All of this is just teasers, though, for their YouTube comic strips where you can find twenty-five episodes of The Vampire Elf as well as two seasons of The Vampire Letters. 

For more comics, click here:

New World Notes Seeking New Sponsoring Media Partner - Here's Details!

In the run-up to the publication of Why the Metaverse Matters, we're looking for a new media partner! If you're reading this post, chances our your customers and potential customers are too. Our ideal partnership are brand(s) active in Second Life, VRChat, Roblox and other metaverse platforms featured on New World Notes, along devices / software that virtual world/sandbox/immersive PC gamers are most likely to use.  

Here's details:

Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2022年9月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan

Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します

Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.

 

 

These Stunning Second Life Landscape Images Blur the Virtual & Real

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

Just Hanna is a Second Life traveler, exploring and documenting her adventures visiting beautiful places. The picture [Celestine] is simply gorgeous. I love the mist rising reminds me of living in the Cascades where the mornings were foggy until the sun burned it off. It was a lovely way to start the day. I love how the trees frame the bridge and divide the picture in thirds. Teleport here.

For more stunning landscapes with teleport links, click here:

BREAKING: Second Life Again Available on Browsers & Mobile... For Premium+ Subscribers; UPDATES: Added Pic of Current SL Streaming Experience

As teased back in July, Linden Lab just announced an option to access Second Life on a web browser and mobile devices for people willing to pay:

Second Life Premium Plus members already get many benefits that help them get the most out of Second Life…and now we’re partnering with SpeedLight to add even more value!

The Speedlight mobile app is already popular with many of our community members since it enables Residents to stay connected with Second Life while on the go, and now Premium Plus subscribers get access to additional Speedlight benefits: no online time limitations along with prioritised online support. Now you can enjoy Second Life on your mobile devices (or in a web browser) with the freedom to stay connected as long as you like! To get these benefits, all you need to do is access Second Life using SpeedLight with your Premium Plus account.

Premium Plus costs $25/month. When I surveyed readers in June, asking how many were interested in upgrading to that for added benefits, only 1 in 4 said yes. With a long-awaited mobile/browser option added to that mix, I suspect many more will upgrade.

I haven't yet tried Speedlight, by the way, but did help a company called OnLive launch a short-lived streaming option for Second Life in 2014. Back then, it cost $9.99 a month for unlimited use or metered service at $1 per hour.

So an unlimited streaming option via SpeedLight as another add-on to Premium Plus at $25/month is a pretty good deal.

As to whether you would like it, here's what it currently looks like running Second Life:

I Tell CNN Why Realistic Avatars Bring Real Prejudice to the Virtual World

"Virtual body-shaming: Why the metaverse won't fix our IRL beauty standards" is a thoughtful CNN article partly inspired by a New World Notes story from 2017, about full-figured avatars protesting a fat-shaming Second Life store. I largely lay the blame on the arrival of mesh-based avatar enhancements, which placed a premium on realistic human appearances. Because the more realistic human avatars become, the more our offline prejudices around physical appearance are provoked. As I told reporter Oscar Holland:

"Up until then, there was definitely much more tolerance for diversity of avatar types... But putting a premium on highly realistic, beautiful avatars amplified existing prejudices that we took from the real world into the virtual world." For those users whose avatars fall "outside the norm," incidents of harassment still happen "all the time," Au added. "Anyone with a large avatar is going to get at least a few nasty comments."

It's the reverse side of the "Proteus effect" first observed and coined by researcher Nick Yee: The more attractive our avatars, the more confident the avatar's owner becomes. But by the same token, the more those attractive avatars are realistic, the more our real world biases can come roaring into the virtual world.

 

Here's the full article I wrote back in 2017, excerpted below:

Sign-Up for the Open Metaverse Conference In LA Next February Featuring Neal Stephenson, Philip Rosedale, Many More Luminaries

In case you missed it, Neal Stephenson's Lamina1 is hosting an inaugural Open Metaverse Conference featuring the author, Philip Rosedale, and other metaverse luminaries next February in Los Angeles -- sign up for updates here.

While the jury is very much still out on just how much web3 has anything to do with the Metaverse (if at all) -- a topic I just discussed with Stephenson himself last week -- this conference aims to bridge that conversation:

Watch: Second Life Image Creator Wins Award in Flickr's Photography Contest!

Watch: Virtual photography award announced at 24 minutes in

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

Angelika Corral recently won Flickr/Smug Mug’s World Photography Day category for virtual photography with this photo at right, “I’m not just what you see.” You can watch the contest announcement here or above, cued to the Virtual World Photo award 23 minutes into the video, but the other images are wonderful so you might want to watch the whole thing, especially where the hosts talk about Linden Lab's participation in the awards, and how impressed they are by the genre's overall quality.

This category included gaming, 3D graphic arts, and, of course, Second Life. There was an interesting discussion of the complexity of judging the category. I certainly understand why she won. The portrait is exquisite with great care. Look at how she used depth of field fading into shadow. Of course, this sent me to her stream to discover her experimenting with her SL shots. 

For more images from Corral, click here:

Top 5 Posts Last Week Including My Interview With Neal Stephenson About the Fictional & Real Metaverse and More!

• Listen: Sex, War & Griefing Come To Second Life In Part 2 Of The WSJ's Podcast, "How To Build A Metaverse"
• Watch: We Explore Second Life Sites Featured In WSJ's Podcast While Chatting About Metaverse Topics Like Neal Stephenson, Dual Universe & Linden Lab WTF Moments
• Neal Stephenson On Making The Metaverse With Lamina1: The Snow Crash / Cryptonomicon Author Tells Me Why The Time Is Now To Make His Vision Real
• Dual Universe, Dark Horse Contender To Become The "True Metaverse" Launches Today -- And I Have Access Codes For Five Readers!
• NVIDIA Already Launching AI Model To Generate 3D Objects: Think Midjourney Meets The Metaverse

Listen: Sex, War & Griefing Come to Second Life in Part 2 of the WSJ's Podcast, "How to Build a Metaverse"

Streamable above or at the links below, part 2 of The Wall Street Journal's "How to Build a Metaverse" podcast mini-series just went up, and it's incredibly fun listen back to the Wild West days of Second Life. I appear on the show talking about the War of the Jessie Wall (which I wrote about here), while fellow Linden veterans Daniel Huebner and Peter Alau discuss the behind the scenes activity they did to manage the wildness. Including, of course, virtual sex.

• Stream on Spotify here
• Get it on Apple Podcasts here
• Stream on the web and read the transcript here
• Links to Part 1 here

I also love the segment featuring Baccara Rhodes, the glamorous socialite who built a cottage in the war zone -- read my story about the zany and actually rather adorable hostage situation that transpired here. 

And if you're curious about what the Jessie Wall looks like now (well, or what's left of it), watch my latest New World Video below, which also includes a visit the giant beanstalk from Part 1:

Watch: We Explore Second Life Sites Featured in WSJ's Podcast While Chatting About Metaverse Topics Like Neal Stephenson, Dual Universe & Linden Lab WTF Moments

New video from Isabelle and me! Please like, subscribe, and leave comments/suggestions/complaints/etc. below. Here's some links to topics we touch on:

• Steller’s beanstalk
• The War of the Jessie Wall 
• Dual Universe launches
• Cory Doctorow autographs his book in SL 
• Midjourney meets mesh 
• Isabelle's high altitude video 

 And don't miss my L$10,000 challenge! Info below:

Friday Fashion: Fantasy & Old West Roleplay Styles from Over the Rainbow

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

Rainbow’s charming blog Over the Rainbow is full of fantasy and roleplay fashion. Just Like an Angel is a lovely Snow White from the August round of Enchantment that featured Twisted Fairytales. The event is over so you will have to go to the store. I love this picture, the sunlight is perfection. 

• Dress → //R3D// Dress Bianca + Scarf – Perky by Layene Yatsenko
• Coffin → LOVE – GLASS COFFIN – ETERNAL SLEEP by Krystali Rabini

For Rainbow taking on the wild, wild West, click here:

Today's Flickr Pick: Photos From Second Life's Thriving Mermaid Roleplay Community -- Including Riffs on the Disney Versions

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

With Disney's Little Mermaid reboot upsetting people who think it’s okay to completely alter the storyline and the message of an old fairy tale so long as you leave the skin color alone, I thought it might be interesting to see what Second Life’s photographers are doing with mer-culture lately. Madame Chaos’ “Little Mermaid - Alternate Ending” made me laugh out loud. Yes, perhaps this is the only ending that can satisfy everyone. 

For a more Disneyfied query into SL’s mermaid community, click here:

Neal Stephenson on Making the Metaverse With Lamina1: The Snow Crash / Cryptonomicon Author Tells Me Why the Time is Now to Make His Vision Real

Lamina1, the new Metaverse-as-a-Service startup co-founded by Neal Stephenson, more or less got its start because it got to the point where people wouldn't stop asking him about the topic:

"[It] was clear, in late 2021, that I was going to spend the next year answering emails and phone calls and messages about the M word anyway," as he put it to me during a video chat last Summer.

"So, I just made the decision that I would basically put my novelist career on hold for this calendar year and see what I could do to try to make something of the opportunities that have emerged from all of this."

I talked with Stephenson just before Lamina1 published this whitepaper outlining the company's vision, which also revealed that Neal Stephenson himself was building a virtual world on its platform, cheekily called THEE Metaverse.

After the break, highlights from our chat, including some concrete examples of how Lamina1 will work, how it will overcome the failure of other blockchain-based metaverse platforms to get user traction, Neal Stephenson's own definition of the Metaverse, the status of the long-awaited Snow Crash movie and/or TV show, and much more.

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Dramatic Virtual World Images in Black & White

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

Arbit Delacroix’s photostream is mostly black and white and absolutely stunning. “Reliquaries of the State” is haunting. He uses the rule of thirds to place his avatar. I also love how there are three (Rule of Threes) that form a line from dark to light. It’s perfection. Taken at Veroznia [teleport here.]

For more black and white magic, click here:

Dual Universe, Dark Horse Contender to Become the "True Metaverse" Launches Today -- And I Have Access Codes For Five Readers!

At long last, Dual Universe has officially launched on Steam for PCs. While on the surface it may seem mainly like a sci-fi MMO of the Eve Online/Star Citizen variety, the breadth of its creative possibilities and scale does make it a contender for arguably becoming the Metaverse. Originally crowdfunded and developed by Novaquark ("Building the metaverse, one voxel at  a time"), it was very much conceived with that goal in mind.

Here's my long conversation with founder J.C. Baille back in 2019, who painted his vision for Dual Universe becoming the Metaverse.

And here's my 2018 chat with Will Burns, Vice-Chair for IEEE's Virtual Worlds Standard Group, who made a case this way:

“I'm not saying [Dual Universe is] the Metaverse. But I will say they and projects similar have the best chance of actually evolving into it... It all arises not because you arbitrarily placed them there. But because you created a system that fosters it all naturally. That's what I see in things like Dual Universe or No Man's Sky. Not that they are a Metaverse, but that they begin with the right premise to build on that soundly to create a virtual universe that fosters all those things naturally and not arbitrarily. Those I see as most likely to evolve into the Metaverse. Solid foundation and bigger picture thinking.”

As for getting started, Novaquark CEO Nouredine Abboud has this advice for fans of metaverse platforms:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Goodcross Uses Light & Shadow To Make Avatars Come to Dramatic Life

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

When I saw GOODCROSS’ photo “Color Theory” I literally gasped aloud. I love this photo, I love the way the blue light colors the skin and makes the stocking almost glow as though lit from inside. This is just so striking, it completely captured me. 

For more examples of lighting making picture magic, click here:

NVIDIA Already Launching AI Model to Generate 3D Objects: Think Midjourney Meets The Metaverse

Sooner than you might have expected and probably quicker than you were planning, NVIDIA just announced GET3D an AI model for generating virtual world objects -- think Midjourney meets the Metaverse:

NVIDIA is looking to take the sting out of creating virtual 3D worlds with a new artificial intelligence model. GET3D can generate characters, buildings, vehicles and other types of 3D objects, NVIDIA says. The model should be able to whip up shapes quickly too. The company notes that GET3D can generate around 20 objects per second using a single GPU... The model can create objects with "high-fidelity textures and complex geometric details," NVIDIA's Isha Salian wrote in a blog post. The shapes GET3D makes "are in the form of a triangle mesh, like a papier-mâché model, covered with a textured material," Salian added.

The NVIDIA blog post doesn't mention anything about rigging these 3D models to character/avatar skeletons, so that might not be part of the AI's purview. In any case, this is the kind of thing that metaverse artist and technologist Jeff "AM Radio" Berg was anticipating only two months ago:

Monday Memories: The Story of the Second Life Beanstalk, Featured in The Wall Street Journal's New Podcast

One of the highlights in the Wall Street Journal's new podcast series on the founding of Second Life is when the reporter visits Steller Sunshine's beanstalk, the oldest user-made object in Second Life. And you can still visit and try to claim it yourself:

[Click here to teleport]

Created on March 13, 2002, over a year before Second Life even existed, it was imported from the pre-Beta Linden World. I told the story of its creation in my first book, The Making of Second Life:

Top 7 New World Notes Posts: Neal Stephenson Making a Metaverse Platform, The WSJ Launches a Podcast on Second Life & Much More

• Listen: Wall Street Journal Launches Epic Four Part Series On Second Life!
• BREAKING: Neal Stephenson Himself Is Making His Own Virtual World Called... THEE Metaverse
• This VRChat Explorer Photographs Beautiful Worlds Like These -- But The Most Popular One Here May Surprise You
• This Flickr Creator Makes Second Life Look Like Paintings You Can Visit
• How To Play With Second Life's Puppetry Project -- If You're Hardcore!
• Second Life Users: Media On A Prim Griefer Exploit Discovered; Update Your Firestorm Viewer!
• Midjourney Solely Credited As Article Illustrator In Major News Publication

Listen: Wall Street Journal Launches Epic Four Part Series on Second Life!

Been looking forward to this for months (it's been that long in the making, I did my 2 hour recording with the podcast team in July) -- The Wall Street Journal's podcast on the founding of Second Life:

We’re in a metaverse déjà vu moment. Companies are spending billions of dollars creating new metaverses, imagining a 3D virtual future. But there’s a metaverse that’s already been around for decades. In this world, people have started businesses, built homes and fallen in love as avatars. In a new four-part series from The Journal, producer Annie Minoff heads back into that largely forgotten metaverse – Second Life – to tell the story of the metaverse we already have and what it can reveal about the one that’s coming.

Stream on Spotify above, or listen or read the transcript for Part 1 here; also available on Apple Podcasts here.  

BREAKING: Neal Stephenson Himself is Making His Own Virtual World Called... THEE Metaverse

Lamina1, the Metaverse-as-a-Service startup co-founded by Neal Stephenson, just published a white paper adding much more detail to the platform that they are building -- join their Discord to get it. 

The core announcement, however, is this: Neal Stephenson himself is making a virtual world:

 

 

Neal Stephenson’s THEEE METAVERSE

Under active early-stage development, Neal Stephenson’s THEEE METAVERSE promises a richly-imagined interactive virtual world with an unforgettable origin story. Built on the Lamina1 chain, creators will come to experience Neal’s vision and stay to develop their own. Stay tuned for more details.

This might surprise people who assumed the Metaverse was simply a fictional conceit from his 90s novel Snow Crash, but most of his subsequent books and career have been building up to this point. As he told me in a long interview recently, when I asked him how his novels influenced Lamina1:

“After I wrote Snow Crash I got to know people in the tech industry who had read the book and who had been working on projects like Habitat…  and they had figured out long ago that you couldn't build these kinds of virtual communities without basically, other people's code running on your hardware. So they've gotten really interested in the problem of how do you do that without letting them take over your computer and then began to look to cryptographic solutions as a way to create that kind of controlled execution environment.”

Some of his other novels have also explored and  expanded on the original Metaverse concept:

“If you look at the Diamond Age, that is a book whose entire plot makes no sense unless you assume the existence of a worldwide network that can transfer money anonymously. So now that the girl in that book, Spence, and Miranda know each other through a virtual environment for years, but they have no way to establish each other's real world identities, because of this anonymous system. The whole plot story basically revolves around that….

“In REAMDE, that’s explicitly about a video game in which real world money can be used, to carry out financial transactions and about the kind of various complications that arise from that. Fall is kind of in a sense a sequel to REAMDE, to re-engage some of the same characters and sort of takes that to the wildest possible extreme.“

As for this white paper, much of it delves deeply into how it will integrate with web3 technology (blockchain, crypto, etc.) For virtual world/metaverse developers, here’s some of pacific technology Lamina1 is creating:

This Amazing Machinima of a Tiny Cosmic Void Was Made With No VFX -- Because You Can Actually Get a Tiny Cosmic Void in Second Life

This short experimental but seriously cool machinima by rising star creator Vrutega (read his SL spotlight profile here) looks like it was made in After Effects or some other post-production platform, but it was actually recorded entirely in Second Life.

"Everything was shot in-world," he tells me. "No VFX was used for this. I used an interactive skybox and changed the WindLight to match the hue of the DarkStar Pocket item I was holding."

And yes, you can get a copy of your own DarkStar Pocket this weekend at the Tokyo Zero event in SL - [click here to teleport].

Self-taught, Vrutega did later add the sharp audio effects:

Second Life Fashion Blogs Are Overwhelmed By Lingerie & Swimsuit Spreads. Artifex Silence Is a Stylish Break from That.

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

Artifex Silence is an SL fashion blog by Artifex1 Voxel. This is Post 61. Artifex is minimalist blogger. No fancy titles, no descriptive text, no details on what appealed to her, but she takes great pics and offers complete, well-organized credits. This appealed to me because it’s something someone might actually wear. It also perfectly captures this time of year. It’s starting to get a bit chilly in the morning, so a light sweater is a comfort but it’s hot in the afternoon and you know legs don’t feel the cold the way arms and shoulders do. So there it sits halfway between summer and autumn. Perfection in dressing for the season. 

• Zenith| Sadie- Black
• Betrayal| BLANC Graffiti Bag
• Kibitz| Kyla’s earrings
• Kunglers| Jaiska ring
• Gos| Hi Top
• MINIMAL| VIBE Backdrop 3

I like Artifex Silence, I like Artifex’ style. She’s not flashing bits and boobs to draw your attention. She’s getting attention with taste and style. I confess I am sick to death of blogs with nothing but lingerie and swimsuits. Do these avatars not have lives outside their bedroom? Artifex is no prude but she knows clothes express more about you than your lingerie. Fashion is story-telling. Lingerie is the preface. Clothing is the novel. There are too many unfinished stories in fashion blogging. 

For more fashion perfection, click here: