New World Notes

VRChat Guide: Five of the Best Brain-Melting Worlds to Explore

Originally published on my Patreon 

You know a virtual world is compelling when its inhabitants kick against the walls of reality until they finally succeed at bursting through. Here’s five of my favorite VRChat worlds which create what’s seemingly impossible on the platform to totally rewrite the limits of our virtual experience.

While I can’t claim these are the absolute most boundary breaking worlds, many were recommended by some of the most popular and beloved creators on the platform:

Fractone (pictured above)

VRChat website landing page here

Created by Japanese player “Raii”, Fractone is a fully realized simulation of a music synthesizer replete with all the controls you’d expect from one in real life, which also generates music in real time as you play it. (Watch a demo basic here; watch a live concert, complete with a light show, right here.)

Beloved VRChat game developer Jar considers it among the most technically ambitious worlds on the platform.

“To me that’s impressive because by all means that shouldn't be possible to make and yet there it is,” as Jar puts it. “Also not many digital synthesizers are multiplayer/collaboratively compatible, even outside of VR, so that’s cool.”

Four more below!

Casja's Choices: Eripom Moonwall Stylishly Showcases the SL Weapons That She Creates

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

Eripom Moonwall is the kind of weapons designer and arms manufacturer I can get behind - a virtual weapons designer. We last visited her armory / Flick stream in 2021, and now with the Combat 2.0 system coming to Second Life, we thought we'd check in again. I am constantly amazed by her stunning pictures and videos and the fabulously realistic sims she has created when not at her day job as a Tokyo security analyst.

Personally the only rifle I have ever had was an 1873 Winchester Octagon Barrel. It was my grandfather’s and given to me when I was around twelve. It was longer than I was tall. I can’t quite imagine shooting an automatic rifle, but if I were to take it up, it would be in Second Life. 

For more action-packed pics, click here:

Second Life Mobile Update: Latest Version Fixes Android 13 Issue -- And Now Allows Access to All SL Sims of All Maturity Ratings (UPDATED)

Update, 9/12: Added some additional background around Maturity rating access and App Store rules at the bottom of this post!

Pretty big update to the Second Life mobile app project posted by Linden staffer Bridle recently. First off, support for the app on Android iOS 13 has been restored, a problem that popped up (reported by "0xc0ffea") last week. 

Even more notable, notes Bridle: "Premium Plus, Premium, and Plus members now have freedom to explore ALL of Second Life -- including regions across all maturity ratings!"

So that's something! Here's the direct downloads for Premium users:

• Second Life for iOS on the App Store.
• Second Life for Android on Google Play.

As for the recent problem with Android 13, my guess the previous build had some kind of compatibility issue that was updated?

Anyway, the all region access is quite notable:

Roblox to Offer Steam-Like Revenue Share to Game Developers for Their PC-Based Roblox Experiences

Roblox the company's seriously one-side monetization split for creators on the platform (75/25, in favor of the publicly traded corporation) has been a canker on its truly massive user base for quite some time. So lopsided is it, that more users creators in Second Life still make more revenue from that virtual world's vastly smaller consumer pool.

The latest update announcement from Roblox's CEO, however, promises some fairer revenue splits (with strings):

We are announcing new economics, where developers will be able to price their paid access experiences for purchase in real currency value¹ on desktop and earn a higher revenue share. Experiences selling at $9.99¹, $29.99¹, $49.99¹ will receive 50%, 60%, and 70% revenue share, respectively. We’ll roll this out for people to purchase on desktop this year, with plans to later expand to other supported devices.

The footnotes in that excerpt, by the way, warn that only direct revenue purchases in cash from the PC edition of the platform get that share.

Emphasis theirs, which seems intentional. This will make Roblox PC experience rev shares (on the high end) on par with Valve's Steam, which also pays out 70% to game devs on that platform. (Which also happens to mostly be a PC-based platform.) This makes me wonder if Roblox is also hoping this revenue offer is appealing to PC game devs who want an alternative to Steam.

Overall, the big catch is this:

Cajsa's Choices: The Charmingly Oddball Photos of Cocolinox Fhang

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

Cocolinox Fhang (DeCuir) says he’s not a photographer, “just a big kid coloring.” Well, maybe so, but he colors outside the lines with verve and imagination. Who else looks at a power line and thinks tightrope? Here we have a daring funambulist daring not only gravity, but electricity. There should be some disclaimer, though, that says “no avatars were harmed in the creation of this picture.” 

For more coloring outside the lines, click here:

Primfeed Stats: In First 2 Months, Social Network for Second Life Users Getting 10K+ Weekly Visits from 35K+ Registered Users -- Who Post 4,000 Images Per Day!

Primfeed, the new social media platform for Second Life users (positioned as an alternative to Flickr at launch) is seeing some pretty impressive user activity since launching in June.  By July, according to SimilarWeb, it reached nearly 1 million total visits for the month (938K, to be more exact); then in August, traffic fell only slightly, to 842K/month.

"The growth is stable," Primfeed creator Luke Rowley tells me, "not as much as the first month's, since there is a limited number of SL residents. But the usage is 100% stable."

As evidence of that stable activity, Luke shares some solid user stats with me (along with some interesting insights on usage trends, and clickthrough rates):

Cajsa's Choices: Some Spectacularly Scary Clown Avatars of Second Life

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

First Snow recently posted “Do You Want Me to Give You a Balloon?” which made me think of the movie It even if this isn’t the same clown. I guess It's the red balloon. I like this picture quite a bit. It is very moody and evocative of scary things that go bump in the night. OR perhaps I have a different scary clown in my head. 

For more scary clowns in the run-up to spooky season, click here:

inZOI Publisher Responds to Controversy Over Generative AI in Its Upcoming Life Simulation: It's Proprietary & Only Trains On Our Content

There's continued buzz for inZOI, the upcoming life simulator/character creator game from South Korean-based company KRAFTON -- but also some gamer grumbling over reports that inZOI reportedly includes content created by generative AI. Such as this rant:

It’s unclear if the database used for these tools draws from stolen work, or if it’s an internal database created entirely with Krafton’s work, but blog posts and videos from the company have said that they use tools like Midjourney and Diffusion to create art, at least in the development process. Either way, it still largely negates the need for the studio to employ 3D modellers, essentially making those jobs redundant, and generative AI also has a well-documented environmental cost that further muddies the ethics of these tools.

There's been enough grousing, in fact, that someone at KRAFTON posted an official announcement on inZOI's Discord:

Metaverse Interoperability Across Multiple Platforms Was Tried By IBM & Linden Lab But Didn't Catch On -- Here's Why.

Why the Metaverse is Beating Gen AI https://t.co/0CegcGDiSk

— Open Metaverse Interoperability Group (@open_metaverse) September 6, 2024

Thanks to everyone from the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group especially host @jimmy6DOF for the fun and spicy conversation last Friday -- you can listen to the whole thing above (starting around 4 minutes in), with some particular spiciness around 36:30, where I mention that metaverse interoperability of virtual objects has been tried before and fairly failed, a topic I go into at length in my book. So below is a somewhat edited excerpt on that subject:

 

Gizem & The Battle to Make Virtual Money Real: Free Excerpt to Making a Metaverse That Matters on My Patreon!

My in-depth interview with Gizem Mishi Akin of Blueberry fame is coming soon, but meantime, I've posted an excerpt of Gizem's incredible Second Life story from my book Making a Metaverse That Matters on my Patreon, free for all members:

Once upon a time, a girl sitting by herself in an ancient city traveled through a looking glass full of lightning and changed her life forever. 

Gizem Mishi was a college student in Istanbul when she came across a YouTube video of “Skye Galaxy”, a bohemian-looking avatar with a powerfully resonant voice, performing in a virtual world to a throng of swaying fans. This was how Gizem first discovered Second Life. By the time she attended her second Skye Galaxy performance, she had learned the world’s creation tools sufficiently well enough to create a polka dot dress for herself -- her first item of avatar clothing for the platform...

Join for free to read the rest. Featuring an amazing photo of Ms. Mishi in Turkey! Plus read New World Notes' 2009 profile of Skye Galaxy here.

Top 5 Posts Including: Why the Metaverse Works, New Combat Game In Second Life, and Ted Chiang vs. AI-Made Art

• Here's Why the Metaverse Works, Leading to Massive Platforms Like Roblox, Fortnite & Many More
• Linden Lab Launches "Combat 2.0", Red vs. Blue Team FPS Map in Second Life. Featuring Fiercely Fighting Furries. UPDATE: It's a Showcase of LSL Combat2 Now Rolling Out Across SL.
• Ted Chiang, Acclaimed Literary Author & Microsoft Technical Writer, Succinctly Explains Why AI Can't Create Art
• Readers: What Special Second Life Sims Are Still Standing? Please Report Your Favorites Here!
• Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2024年8月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan

Ted Chiang, Acclaimed Literary Author & Microsoft Technical Writer, Succinctly Explains Why AI Can't Create Art

UPDATE, September 9: Added link to Chiang's novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, which is included in his book Exhalation.

Can AI create art? Ted Chiang is quite possibly the best qualified person in the world to answer this question, being both a technical writer for Microsoft and also an acclaimed literary writer, whose incredibly thought-provoking and moving science fiction stories transcend the genre. (One of his stories is the basis of the great 2017 movie Arrival.) 

In the New Yorker, Ted Chiang has an incredibly succinct way of explaining that, no, AI in itself probably can't create art:

Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices. This might be easiest to explain if we use fiction writing as an example. When you are writing fiction, you are—consciously or unconsciously—making a choice about almost every word you type; to oversimplify, we can imagine that a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices.

If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making. There are various ways it can do this. One is to take an average of the choices that other writers have made, as represented by text found on the Internet; that average is equivalent to the least interesting choices possible, which is why A.I.-generated text is often really bland. Another is to instruct the program to engage in style mimicry, emulating the choices made by a specific writer, which produces a highly derivative story. In neither case is it creating interesting art.

Chiang allows that there might be enough creator-driven intentionality and choice for a human artist to leverage AI into actual works of art -- I'd cite Nettrice Gaskins here, for visual art -- but if it's a matter of making an AI prompt more and more (and more) detailed, you might as well skip ChatGPT and just write the goddamn story yourself.  

Speaking of Chiang, his 2010 novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects (link below) is a brilliant if disturbing weave of virtual world avatars and AI:

Readers: What Special Second Life Sims Are Still Standing? Please Report Your Favorites Here!

I recently posted about seven spectacular Second Life sims to see on my Patreon, a report which took longer than I originally expected.

Why? Because going through my list of sims that I've visited/admired/written about over the years -- most filed under New World SLurl -- I discovered that many or even most are completely gone. As in, you click the SLurl now, and either it's a completely different place, or just completely gone from grid.

Like the one above: Steelhead Bay, a very cool seafaring steampunk sim that was restored in 2017. Sometime in the last several years (I didn't get the memo), it's gone to digital aether. I know that sims and sim owners come and go all the time, but these are places created with a lot of love and dedication, and tend to have dedicated communities around them.

So I'm asking readers, if you're so inclined, to explore the world and check in with your favorite sims, see if they're still standing -- and if so, report back here! 

And speaking of which, here's my list of favorite/noteworthy sims, and here's seven that are definitely still standing. (At least they were last week.)

Linden Lab Launches "Combat 2.0", Red vs. Blue Team FPS Map in Second Life. Featuring Fiercely Fighting Furries. UPDATE: It's a Showcase of LSL Combat2 Now Rolling Out Across SL.

Update, 9/6: Just heard from Brett at Linden Lab: The combat sims are a showcase demonstration for a system upgrade: "This is our expanded/improved combat system that is rolling out on the grid. Here's a wiki page that discusses it in a bit more detail."

When Linden Lab posted this video about an hour ago, I first assumed the company was highlighting a user-made combat game in Second Life -- but no, it's very much a Linden operation:

Step into the action with Combat 2.0, where players join either the blue team at Concord or the red team at Lexington. Engage in dynamic PVE and PVP battles, perfect for beginners and veterans alike. Equip yourself with free weapons and experience thrilling, fast-paced combat in this ever-evolving combat destination owned and run by Linden Lab.

So that's surprising! I believe the Lindens haven't launched an official game in SL since its Pokemen Go-esque Tyrah & the Curse of the Magical Glytches game in 2017.  I just gave Combat 2.0 a shot, and it's fairly fun if  traditional team-based FPS.

Here's the official teleport links, which nudge you to create a new account:

• Join the blue team at Concord  
• Join the red team at Lexington  

If you're having trouble with those entry points, just click here to teleport directly into Concord.

Along with red vs. blue team combat, there's a free-for-all zone. Since I didn't enter through the official links, I might have missed a HUD to track scores and hitpoints (beyond the default damage meter) but I'll give it a proper play later.

I'm not seeing any background on the game from official Linden channels, so I'll ping them now. Kudos for launching a game that could draw in new users, though I am surprised they're going with FPS as the genre to grab gamers:

Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2024年8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.

 

 

Tomorrow at 11am on X/Twitter: Join Me & OMI on Spaces to Chat Metaverse vs. Gen AI!

Join Wagner James Au @slhamlet with us on Friday!

Open House & Talking all things Metaverse -- what it was -- what it is -- what it could be -- and why he thinks it's beating GenAI !!!

Here on X starting :
11AM(PST) 2PM(EST) 6PM(UTC) pic.twitter.com/3OQTiPIAzO

— Open Metaverse Interoperability Group (@open_metaverse) September 4, 2024

I'm on an X/Twitter Space tomorrow at 11am PT co-hosted by the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group, where we'll be getting punchy about the continued vitality of the Metaverse and metaverse platforms, especially as compared to the (largely) unsustainable hype of generative AI. Get your questions ready and join the fun! 

Afterward (around Noon PT), we'll be hitting a virtual world after party in the web-based NOWHERE, in a space co-hosted by the Virtual Worlds Museum -- will share the link when we're there! 

Cajsa's Choices: Mimi Soleil Makes Hilariously Kitschy Pics in Second Life

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

Mimi Soleil is the Queen of Camp and her photostream is a rollicking adventure. From movie posters like “Part 92?” mocking all the Sharknado titles to magazine covers and comic books, she turns Second Life into the mediums of popular culture pre-internet. She often tells a little bit about how she created a picture. In the description of a recent pic, she wrote, “Sandbox fun! No post-effects. All transparent prims. Actually, the only post effects I usually do are lens-flares or cleaning up intersecting meshes.” According to her description, this Sharknado film capture was also shot in a sandbox.

For more hilarity, click here:

Here's Why the Metaverse Works, Leading to Massive Platforms Like Roblox, Fortnite & Many More

The growth of leading metaverse platforms in 2024 is now nearly 700 million active users -- increasing by 140 million people since Making a Metaverse That Matters came out last year. (See chart.)

But why are platforms like Roblox and Fortnite -- or for that matter, Second Life -- so successful?

Plainly put: Because the Metaverse, more or less as Neal Stephenson originally conceived it, works.  

As described in Snow Crash, the Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world that's simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools that are integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology. 

Each of these elements contributes to the strong/steady growth of leading metaverse platforms:

 

Equimake Adds Embed Codes & Social Sharing to Its 3D Web-Based Creation Platform -- Check it Out Here!

There's a huge raft of new features/options to Equimake (a proud NWN partner!), the web-based, multi-user 3D creation platform for learners and creators:

• Embed Equimake worlds on the web. Compatible with WordPress, Wix, and most blog services, including New World Notes. (Click above to demo!)
• Social sharing. Instantly share a world link to X/Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc.
• Massive world storage. Get 2 gigs of free space with the free Starter account, and 50 gigs with a $6.99/month Maker subscription account. (By comparison, Sketchfab, which has similar features to Equimake, charges $15/month but for just 5 gigs of space limited to 50 uploads/mo.) 

You can start creating your own worlds here. Since launching, Equimake has attracted some 1600 users, pretty impressive for a small startup (in my highly biased opinion). One option readers have discussed is using Equimake to prototype virtual world designs -- see the fashion display below for an example: 

Flickr Has a Whole Huge Group Devoted to Photographing the Virtual Fowls of Second Life

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

Bella Blackheart recently posted “Family Portrait” to Fowl Deeds, a Second Life Flickr group with nearly 300 followers devoted to photographing “chickens and their eggs, geese, ducks, swans and turkeys” by the thousands. The kind of birds you find on farms and in people’s backyards in some municipalities, geese are not my favorite fowl. I like them just fine flying in the air, but  on the ground, these are the bullies of the barnyard. If you have a goose, you don’t need a guard dog. But here we have a family of five. 

By the way, this image above is an example of the Rule of Odds. The weird thing is as viewers, we spend more time looking at pictures with an odd-numbered group because we’re busy trying to pair them off and we can’t. This makes pictures with odd numbers appeal to us more. We like them better. 

For more Fowl deeds caught on screen, click here:

Coming Soon to My Patreon: The Mystery of Gizem Mishi, from Blueberry & Beyond

Join my Patreon for free to read a story I'm excited to tell (very soon):

What's been happening with Gizem Mishi since launching a successful cross-platform metaverse company which she grew from Blueberry, her beloved Second Life brand? Readers have been wondering about her mysterious absence from SL in recent months, what will become with Blueberry in SL, and how that relates to her new plans in SL. 

After a long and heartfelt chat with Gizem recently, I'm happy to tell all that and more, expanding on a story I first told in Making a Metaverse That Matters, beginning with her time as a teenager in Turkey, who first happened upon the virtual world to attend a Skye Galaxy concert, but wound up changing her entire life's direction.

Sign up to my Patreon for free to be first to read about Gizem's new chapter. 

Cajsa's Choices: Mari Seesaw Beautifully Photographs Second Life Like Polaroid Pictures

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

Mari Seesaw is a black and white tuxedo cat who explores Second Life and shares her unique Polaroid-style photos. She ran into a bit of trouble in Walsh County, though she obviously returned from her adventure none the worse for wear. I have a soft spot for the Second Life Walsh County though having survived a couple tornadoes in the real Walsh County, the one in SL is safer even with UFOs. (Also featured in Hamlet’s recent seven sims to visit guide.)

For more of a cat’s eye view of Second Life, click here:

 

Top 4 Posts Including Metaverse Platform Leader Chart & an inZOI Intro

• Which of These New-ish Second Life Brands Do You Like Most? Nominate TWO in Comments!
• Metaverse Platform Leader Chart Has Nearly 700M Active Users in 2024
• Interested in inZOI? Powerful Life Simulator / Character Creator Goes Viral in Wake of Life By You's Cancellation
• Survey Results: Nearly Half Experience Motion Sickness Visiting Second Life's New Homepage

Which of These New-ish Second Life Brands Do You Like Most? Nominate TWO in Comments!

After digging through reader suggestions, here are the first five new-ish Second Life brands to check out this weekend -- and if you like nominate favorites in my reader straw poll! 

In alphabetical order, they are:

Aardvark (Marketplace)

“Aardvark makes some pretty funny stuff. Their items always makes me smile. I was riding around on a balloon dog! They started out in decor and have been making a lot of animals lately.” (Recommended by “Jessie”) Flickr feed here.

ADD (Marketplace)

“I make clothing for women, casual and playful. Second Life has become a real second home for me, where I can realize my creative aspirations. I am very grateful to my customers for their support and the opportunity to continue making beautiful clothes.” (Alex, owner) Flickr feed here.

The Discord Experts (Marketplace) 

“Simply put, we interface Second Life with Discord, and offer a wiiiiide range of tools for private homes, shops, clubs, roleplay sims, communities etc. The product range is modular and requires a Base (sold at 5 L$) and then any number of add-ons suiting the needs of the individual user. In terms of social media, you find out very vivid user community, support and product info at Discord (of course) (Peter Strinberg, owner)

Dope Pixels (Marketplace)

 "We make beautiful, scene-changing skyboxes from real-world photos, renders and AI, but mostly AI lately! It's gotten so good," says owner Adrienne Lowe (Andi Ayashi, owner) Facebook feed. 

Limited Addiction (Marketplace)

“Limited Addiction was created to house all my original mesh under one brand. It took quite a few years to teach myself how to model, rig, and render textures! But it was all worth it and I absolutely love my little brand and hope others will enjoy it as well! As for style....it is kind of all over the place just like me. Some days its a goth mood, others kawaii, or just a cozy casual fit!” (limitedaddiction, owner) Flickr feed here.

Take a look at their Marketplace and social pages -- even consider buying some of their items -- and nominate your favorite two among these in Comments below:

Friday Flickr Follow: Ali H Photographs & Blogs Her SL Adventures

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

Ali H is a Flickr microblogger, but she’s not blogging travel, decor, or fashion. She blogging about her adventures in Second Life. I liked this picture of the bakery she found while looking for wine and her encounter with a Second Life burglar. 

“Well, it’s not wine. But doughnuts are an acceptable backup plan. A bakery! Happy twirls! There was also a small yacht moored nearby which a random passerby was trying to coerce me into stealing with him. Swanky neighborhood. Only in SL, right? Of course this is kinda why we love it. I derendered him quickly, (oh, the joy) grabbed my pastries and headed back to the farm.”

For more adventures, click here: