New World Notes

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:

Looking for Lumiya, the Android App for SL? It's Still Available on SlideME

Lumiya, the popular and impressive SL viewer for Android devices, was removed from Google Play last year, apparently due to a change in Google's policy around apps' use of SMS messages, but it's still available on SlideME, a curated market for Android apps. Since I haven't heard from Lumiya creator Alina Lyvette in many years (despite many attempts to reach her), I checked with SlideME that the app is still indeed available in their store. A rep with the company just confirmed with me that Lumiya is currently "active with downloads" on the platform.

You can buy it here, but as with any app, buyer beware. It was last updated in 2017 so that Lumiya supports Bento-based technology and its complex, highly articulated avatars for Second Life.

Official trailer below. And if you do know Alina, let her know that we'd love to hear from her, at least to know she's OK -- and to make sure she knows that she's still making money from her app on SlideMe.

Seraphim Secrets: How a Second Life Fashion Blog Earned 60 Million+ Views

Seraphim, the massive Second Life shopping blog, recently opened a Cuban-themed shopping sim in SL itself -- click here to visit.  This virtual island is a long time coming since the web site launched in 2011, going on to become the largest user-run SL blog by far. Raking in nearly 61 million reported pageviews since then, currently on track to exceed over 12 million in just this year alone, Seraphim is, as I've noted before, more popular than many professionally run MMO news sites. (New World Notes, for instance, has only attracted a distant ~15 million views!) With pageviews like this, it's likely that well over half of Second Life's ~600,000 active user base visits Seraphim on a regular basis.

Or to make another comparison: Seraphim SL gets about as many visits as Fashionista, a top real life fashion blog.

Despite this wild popularity, Seraphim founders and co-owners Kess Crystal and Awylder1 still hold full-time jobs in real life -- in the healthcare sector, Kess tells me. "So 2020 has been particularly challenging for us," she notes, "both managing Seraphim and dealing with the ramifications of COVID... we have an amazing management team in place and we simply could not do it without them."

But if you think those millions of pageviews translate into millions of dollars in profit, you may be mistaken: 

"We're often amused by the wildly optimistic assumptions we've read on social media and our reaction is often 'I WISH!'," as Kess puts it, when I ask her about Seraphim's revenue. "We are a cost heavy business in terms of payroll and the amount we have to pay for hosting such a resource heavy site is not insignificant either. As business owners, we reinvest monthly into a fund for new services, scripting, innovation and then draw a salary from the remaining profit."

Kess shares some Seraphim secrets to becoming so big, and future plans with the sim, after the break:

These Gorgeous Decor Images Are Not Paintings But Actually SL Screenshots

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

Fliegenbeil Resident (aka anc aki) is a creator of dreamy, romantic decor objects. It’s completely fitting that his Second Life images are the dreamiest and most romantic on Flickr. Take “Hydrangea” for example. Doesn’t it look like a watercolor sketch? I love the neutral wall and stairs behind the flowers so the only “color” is the blue of the hydrangeas. It feels more like a painting than a screenshot.

When vendor pictures are art:

NeosVR Makes User-to-User File Sharing an Immersive Social VR Experience

 NeosVR, an impressive indie social VR metaverse project backed by Patreon funders  (featured previously here) continues to impress. In the latest update, lead developer Frooxius shows off its latest feature: the ability to import files and share them with other users. And rather than accomplish this with a 2D pop-up menu (the obvious solution), Frooxius makes it truly immersive: The files are 3D objects that can be manipulated, moved around, and given to other users in VR. You know, the same way file sharing has been depicted in fiction about the metaverse forever.

SL Flickr Photographer of the Day: Doesselle Destiny

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

Doesselle Destiny’s picture is emotionally powerful, even though by leaving it titled simply with a number, she leaves its meaning up to us. This is a woman looking forward, with a man in her rear-view mirror. Is she leaving him? Yes, but for the day or forever? We don’t know. If feels like forever to me, the result of the implacable certainty in her forward-looking eye. 

This next photo made me think of Goya's La Maja Desnuda:

Being Einstein in VR Can Raise Your Actual IQ, and Other Fascinating Examples of How Avatars Change Who We Are

"How avatars change who we are" is my new article for Samsung NEXT's Component magazine, exploring some fascinating examples of how avatars (both in VR and on flatscreens) seem to influence the user, as much as the other way around. I talk with several top academics in the field who've been studying this under-appreciated phenomenon years, including one of my favorites:

Post-doc researcher Domna Bankou and her colleagues at the University of Barcelona... recently created a VR simulation where the test subjects would see themselves as Albert Einstein, standing authoritatively in a lab coat. They did this, Bankou says, with assumptions about what would then transpire.

“To be honest with you we weren’t expecting anything to happen,” she said. “But VR changes where you are, [and] it also changes who you are.”

In fact, after volunteers completed the Barcelona VR experiment and took a cognitive performance test, those with lower IQs saw their test scores substantially improve. The act of virtually embodying the smartest human in history apparently made them more intelligent in the real world — at least temporarily.

Much more here.

Dual Universe: Traditional Game or Metaverse? One Virtual World Scout's Take

Here's a recent walkthrough of Dual Universe, the would-be metaverse from J.C. Baille and team that launched last September, from renowned virtual world explorer Luca (previously here and also here), mostly featuring its ship-building capabilities.

Luca's initial take on Dual Universe overall, with an interesting point on whether it plays like an online game or a full-fledged metaverse:

Artist Expresses His Real Life Pain Through Shocking Images of His Avatar

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

When I wrote to Nath Baxton about SLAUGHTERHOUSE, his recent project, Nath’s response was so honest and generous, I hope I can do him justice. I have featured his earlier work, with a pop art aesthetic, bold deconstruction of his own photos, always filled with bright colors.

His new work shifts to black and white, with splashes and flashes of red that are visually shocking. 

The change in virtual aesthetics, he tells me, were inspired by challenges he recently faced in real life:

Four Seasons Total Landscaping Rapidly Recreated in VRChat For Post-Election Furry Fun; UPDATE: Dildo Store Addition TBD

Among the many moments in the 2020 Presidential that left us wondering, "Is this real life?", the topper must surely be the day when the Trump campaign announced a press conference at the Four Seasons... which turned out to be Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a yard improvement company literally located next to a crematorium and a dildo store.

And now, as was inevitable, there's a picture-perfect recreation of Four Seasons Total Landscaping in VRChat -- go here for all your post-election virtual world comedy needs.

Created by "Coopertom" and uploaded earlier today, it's already been visited hundreds of times, he tells me. (And to judge by the video he posted, it pretty much looks like a full-tilt furry convention.) And while I first assumed it was just a 3D diorama using photos of the real life location, Tom tells me he mainly he created it from scratch:

Kids Celebrate Biden-Harris Victory in Biden-Harris' Official HQ in Animal Crossing

😭😭😭😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/HrsikjnK1P

— Aisha Saeed (@aishacs) November 7, 2020

Love this Twitter thread from author Aisha Saeed on the day the press began calling the 2020 Presidential race. While many took to the streets to celebrate, her kids (like a lot of others) took to their favorite virtual world to celebrate. As it happens, the Joe Biden has an official island HQ in Animal Crossing, so that's where they went.  (There's also an official Biden-Harris HQ in Fortnite, though no word of impromptu celebrations there.) While it's too early to say if virtual world political headquarters will become more central to campaigns (as opposed to fun side gimmicks), my guess is the Minecraft/ROBLOX generation will embrace them as they reach voting age. 

Top 3 Posts Last Week Including VRChat Concurrency Hits Record Numbers, While a Trump Billboard in Second Life Meets an Inevitably Bizarre Fate

• Why Wait For 2020 Election Results On The Web When You Can Watch Them In A Virtual World?
• VRChat Surpasses Peak Hype Concurrency Of 20,000, About Half Using VR Headsets -- But Only 5,000 Logging In Via Facebook-Connected Oculus Quest Devices
• Trump Billboard In Second Life Immediately Surrounded By Communist Party HQ, Statue Of Liberty & Giant, Dancing, Pink Trump-Shaped Dildo

Friday Fashion Blog: Get SL Shopping Ideas from Maria DellaCroix’s Sweet Art

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

Maria DellaCroix’s blog is called Sweet Art which sounds like sweetheart and that does seem to capture her aesthetic. Post No. 806 is a recent post that drew my eye because of the totally perfect way her jeans and her sneakers work together. It helps they are made by the same store. The playful cat ready to untie those sneakers is a sweet touch. Unfortunately, Kitty is not credited. 

• PANTS: Sono Moto Denim Jeans- Addams Mainstore
• SHOES: Maisei Short Sneakers- Addams Mainstore

A celebratory outfit ahead...

Why Wait for 2020 Election Results On the Web When You Can Watch Them in a Virtual World?

Click here to teleport to the 2020 Election Simulator in Second Life, which as the name suggests, is tracking the 2020 Presidential election in real time. And because there's a good chance that you're already online, obsessively checking Twitter or 538 for election results, why not at least do it with a talking squirrel or a supermodel?

I'm currently there now watching the results come in, waiting for Georgia, Arizona, or Pennsylvania to be officially called for Biden. Sitting with me is Chantal Harvey, who's been shooting streams of election results in various parts of the virtual world.

"I did a live stream, election night, in SL," she tells me. "It got quite fierce at some locations; the Biden location was trolled. The Trump location had quite interesting conversations."

I'm pretty sure it's about to get fierce again soon. Click to join the fun and celebration (hopefully) here, or watch an official SL video about the simulator below. 

This Artist Uses Casual Poses & Dramatic Lighting to Make Her SL Images Come to Life

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

I simply cannot say enough about how much I love B. Tomstone’s photostream. This untitled photo exemplifies so much of what she gets right. Look how casually and realistically people are posed. I love how natural people look in her pictures. She also takes such detailed high-resolution pictures...seriously, zoom in on the lace on the straps of her shirt. Add to that, she uses light boldly and effectively. 

While she didn’t make it today, the next picture sure captures my mood:

VRChat Surpasses Peak Hype Concurrency of 20,000, About Half Using VR Headsets -- But Only 5,000 Logging in Via Facebook-Connected Oculus Quest Devices

Great catch from Adeon -- over two years after VRChat saw 20,000+ concurrent users, which many considered a Ugandan Knuckles (don't ask) meme/streamer-driven fluke, the virtual world just surpassed those usage numbers:

[W]ith more users joining VRChat from Quest and now Quest 2, the app reached a new record of 24,000 concurrent users over the Halloween weekend, CEO Graham Gaylor tells Road to VR. This eclipses the previous record of 20,000 concurrent users in early 2018 when the app went viral on Twitch... Earlier this year in April around 30% of VRChat users were using VR; in October the share of VR users was up to 43%. Among the 24,000 concurrent users specifically, Gaylor confirmed that an even larger share of users—52% or 12,500—were in VR.

If you check VRChat's Steam stats (embiggenate above), usage on Steam last weekend peaked a little over 19,000. So only as estimated 5,000 are coming in via Oculus Quest/Quest's version of VRChat. Adeon isn't surprised:

Artist Turns SL Screenshots Into Dark Re-Imaginings of Classic Fairy Tales; UPDATE: Not Screenshots But Avatar Morphs of Uncredited RL Photos

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

UPDATE, 11/5: While I loved Xhiva's pictures, I don't love that they are morphs of her avatar’s face grafted onto someone else’s work. What’s really depressing is the artists she used do not get any credit at all.  (As readers have pointed out.)

The uncredited image of Snow White is “Hunger White” by Fernando Filho morphed with an avatar’s face. 

The uncredited picture of Red Riding Hood is also a morph with a photo of the actress Blanca Suarez taken for a Spanish television series of adult fairy tales.

Her image called “Bohemian” is also a morph of this photo, a free use Creative Commons permission image, but her Flickr page doesn’t mention its origins, or that the image is not based on an SL screenshot. She added her avatar’s face to the photo, used filters to lighten it and make it look more retro. She has skill which should be better used making original images using the landscapes and decor of Second Life. 

It is one thing to take inspiration and seek to do homage or recreate another work. Kamera Klub even recreated The Garden of Earthly Delights. It is something completely different to take someone else’s photo and stick your face in it. This is morphing, a disreputable sector of SL Flickr images. What is most appalling is Fernando Filho generously provided a tutorial to recreate “Hunger White”, albeit in real life. 

Xhiva is very skilled and while I noted some of her pictures included real life imagery, I thought she limited it to background composites. I was mistaken. Art is not just the skill, it is the idea, and you cannot be an artist with other people’s ideas. Morphing is a technical skill, not an art. She’s very good at it, better than most, which will suit her very well if she wants a career in creating political disinformation deep fakes.

Avatars Create Virtual Tributes to Real World Voting on Election Day

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

“USA Election 2020 - Not voting is not a protest. It is a surrender.” It is Election Day and some Second Life residents are doing their part, not just voting but encouraging others to vote. I love this picture by RyanTailor. It’s heartwarming in a very Norman Rockwell, looking back to a time when people did not wait six hours to vote and social distancing was not something to worry about. 

The “I Voted” selfie is the best selfie there is....

Trump Billboard in Second Life Immediately Surrounded by Communist Party HQ, Statue of Liberty & Giant, Dancing, Pink Trump-Shaped Dildo

In keeping with previous US Presidential elections, selected neighborhoods in Second Life now resemble our collective unconscious, our anxieties and outrage taking on crude 3D form. 2020 being 2020, it isn't simply a matter of Trump supporters putting up small campaign signs outside their virtual homes -- but instead, say, a fifty foot billboard cube blaring out "KEEP AMERICA GREAT" in every direction.

And Second Life being Second Life, the response to that sign isn't simply someone putting up an equally large Biden/Harris 2020 billboard (though that's there, too). But also, people putting up a Communist Party headquarters right across the street, a Statue of Liberty in the yard next door, and floating above it in the sky, a giant, dancing, hot pink, Trump-shaped dildo.

Such is the scene in the region of Arket today, the last day before the last day of voting officially ends. And so as a last look at the waning election season -- and hopefully, of the Trump era too -- read on. (NSFW, obviously, unless I suppose you work at a dildo factory.)

Here's Jeri Ellsworth's Vision for AR That Helped Tilt 5 Raise $7.5M

In case you missed it last week, AR startup Tilt 5 raised $7.5 million in venture funding, a hopeful sign amid a rather bearish market for AR/VR startups. I've been following the underlying technology for Tilt 5's headset since it was spun out of Valve under the name Cast AR seven years ago. Founded by CEO Jeri Ellsworth, one reason her startup won backers is likely her focused approach to augmented reality -- not attempting to make it the Next Great Platform For Everything, but starting first with a very specific use case. As she put it to me last year:

Top 4 Posts Last Week, Including: EFF's Cory Doctorow on the Oculus Jailbreaking Movement & A Soothing Society Simulation for Stressful Times

• Bonfire 2: A Society-Building Game That's Also A Meditative, Flow-State Relaxation Simulator For Our Stressful Era
• Should You Jailbreak The Oculus Quest From Facebook Control? EFF’s Cory Doctorow Has Advice -- And A Warning
• This Halo Lights Up If A Second Life Region You Visit Has Migrated To The Amazon Cloud -- Or Makes A Womp-Womp Sad Trombone Sound If It's Not
• If Games Are Art, And Second Life Is A Game, Then Second Life Is A Work Of Collective Art