New World Notes

Can Steven Spielberg Do to Virtual Reality in Ready Player One What He Did With New UIs in Minority Report?

So Spielberg is attached to direct Ready Player One, and while he's got his great qualities, he's seriously the last major director I'd have named to make the first major motion picture about the metaverse. (Chris Nolan not available?) It's certainly a challenge:

With this news, a question arises about how they will bring a key element of the book’s virtual world to life for the big screen. After all, it seems imperative for the audience to feel like they were dropped into the middle of a video game.

At first I was skeptical Spielberg could pull that off. And then I thought about this other movie scene he did (thoughtfully annotated by an analyst):

Will Improbable Transform Virtual Worlds? With $20M in New Funding & DayZ Creator on Team... Probably?

Improbable is a new UK-based startup led by some extremely bright alum from Cambridge, and even if you haven't heard of it now, you likely will very soon. Here's their mission:

Improbable is developing an operating environment that makes building simulated worlds possible. Worlds which can be run in real time, simulating the behaviours and interactions of millions of entities. Spaces with their own rules and properties that a multitude of people can simultaneously change, explore and visualise in as many different ways as developers can imagine.

That's a bold statement, about as bold as anything Philip Rosedale has said about High Fidelity. But some very smart people are backing them, including venture capitalist Chris Dixon, who just led his firm to invest $20 million in Improbable:

Developers who use Improbable can write code as if it will run on only one machine (using whatever simulation software they prefer, including popular gaming/physics engines like Unity and Unreal), without having to think about parallelization. Improbable automatically distributes their code across hundreds or even thousands of machines, which then work together to create a seamlessly integrated, simulated world.

This actually sounds a lot like Philip's plan to deploy High Fidelity via distributed network, but leave that to one side. Point is $20 million is a lot of money, and Chris Dixon led his firm's investment in Oculus VR before Facebook bought it. And as compared to High Fidelity, Improbable has the lead on content creators so far. Take this endorsement by DayZ creator Dean Hall, who's now creating his game with Improbable:

'MM' Versus 'TSR': The Feud That's Tearing The Sims 4's Fashion Modding Community Apart

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Every community has seams, and video game modding communities are no different. Each modder has their own priorities and its easy enough to see the borders that form around like-minded groups. Maybe one forum focuses more on visual mods, or a certain blog prefers to talk about systems mods. There's no harm in either. These borders don't really isolate anyone, nor do they indicate any inherent animosity between groups; in essence they just paint a line down the middle of the room, creating a superficial and generally unspoken divide.

That's how it's been in the modding community surrounding The Sims series for some time now, particularly when it comes to fashion mods. The principal divide between Sims modders exists between those who prefer crisp photo-realism and those who embrace a softer and more stylized look that blends into the vanilla game (like the dress pictured above from modder Anubis Under the Sun). But following the release of The Sims 4 this divide has only widened, and now things might be coming to a head. Here's why:

SL Flickr Stream of the Day: Apollo Scribe's Ambience

"Path of Love" by Amelie Fravoisse

Apollo's Ambience is a Flickr stream of whimsical and breathtakingly beautiful Second Life images curated by Apollo Scribe, and while I chose Ms. Fravoisse's above from there, Mr. Scribe has collected dozens that are just as smashing. Go here and see.

MMO Takes Choice of Avatar Race Away from Players, Provoking Racism... and Frontier Justice Against Racists

Here's a very interesting Kotaku post on the latest update to Rust, a multiplayer survival MMO, in which the developers took away an avatar customization option that gamers have taken for granted for, well, basically since MMOs have existed: Race. So instead of getting to choose the avatar's skin tone and physical features, in Rust those are now selected for the players -- you know, like in real life. Which in turn exposed some real life attitudes about race among a lot of players:

Largely, said [lead developer Garry] Newman, the change has been received favorably, but it hasn't been without its growing pains. Some people have protested the fact that they suddenly sport skin colors that aren't theirs. There's also been a definite uptick in overtly racist language: "It makes me wish I'd set up some analytics to record how many times the N-word was used before and after the update," Newman said. "It was used quite a bit from what I've seen."

On the plus side, that racism led to a kind of virtual frontier justice in the wild west of the Rust game world:

What Are Your Favorite Second Life-Themed Flickr Feeds?

As I mentioned earlier today, we want to devote more New World Notes coverage to great SL-related Flickr feeds. Flickr probably has the most SL-related activity (if not users) among all the major social media platforms, and as we saw today, some of the best SL-themed content. So please share your favorites in Comments (yes, including yours), and tell a bit about why you love them so. Bonus points for Flickr feeds with embeddable display widgets, so we can give readers a nice good look!

Toca Nature: Lovely Open World Creation Game for iOS

Toca Nature is a lovely looking iOS game which launched a few months ago, and it's about creating and fostering a little world with your fingertips -- watch:

Here's the basics of play:

Shape nature and watch it develop. Plant trees and grow a forest. Raise a mountain and enjoy the view. Collect berries, mushrooms or nuts, and feed the different animals. Learn who eats what and discover how much it takes to winkle a bear out. Walk through different landscapes and become friends with a fox. Capture the moment of woodpeckers zigzagging between trees, and watch the day turn into night.

Haven't played it yet but Toca Boca, the studio that developed the game, is quite acclaimed for its sandbox games for kids. I interviewed Toca's CEO Björn Jeffery a few years ago, who told me about their design philosophy:

Meet 'Barely Round', the Bestselling Second Life Avatar Shape from Ample Avi (NWN Partner News)

Every month here on NWN we feature a shape from sponsoring partner Ample Avi, a Second Life store specializing in realistically curvy and plus-sized avatar bodies. Sometimes the shape we feature is brand-spanking-new, and other times that shape is an Ample Avi classic. This month we're looking at something from the latter category, a shape descriptively called Barely Round.

Ample Avi designer Xme Xue tells me that Barely Round has become one of her most popular shapes since it was released just last year, and it's easy enough to see why. Barely round features all the curves you'd expect from an Ample Avi shape, but bundled in a slightly slimmer package than usual. It's kind of the best of both worlds, giving you a sleeker figure without trading your statement-making curves for a rail-thin silhouette. Barely Round is also a personal favorite of Xme's that has made its way into her regular wardrobe rotation -- and may very well make it into mine too.

You can pick up Barely Round for yourself on the SL Marketplace, or swing by Ample Avi's in-world store [Teleport link] for much more.

Flickr Pics That Make Virtual SL Homes Seem Utterly Real

I'm utterly besotted by the Flickr stream of Ms. Lemon Panda (yes), and I'll tell you why: Like a virtual version of Architectural Digest, most of her photos focus on Second Life interiors, and she shoots them with elegantly poised compositions and such perfect use of color and shadow that her 3D images seem entirely appealing and real. See many more here.

Also, a request for readers who also love Flickr:

How Do You Stop a Spambot Like EL Consulting?

Internet experts reading NWN, would love your advice: The blog is again being inundated by Spam posts from "EL Consulting", a bot based in Germany. We get literally dozens of EL Consulting Spam link comments like the above put in various posts, even though it's not clear what the bot is supposed to be promoting or even saying. (Seems to generate random text and links and spit them back as a comment, for unknown motivations.) These comments get automatically deleted, but can still be distracting to actual NWN readers interested in having a civil, back and forth conversation with other readers. (Which this Spambot clearly isn't capable of doing.) Using Typepad's IP address blocker doesn't work, so we're kind of at a loss. Any ideas?