New World Notes

New Year's Special at Ample Avi: 50% Off Everything In-Store for Customer Appreciation Day (NWN Partner News)

If you've been waiting for the perfect opportunity to snap up one of Ample Avi's curvaceous, naturally-proportioned Second Life avatar shapes, then there's an opportunity coming up on New Year's day (that would be tomorrow) that you won't want to miss. For one day only, every single shape at Ample Avi's main store location in Pryeri [teleport link] will be on sale for a full 50% off.

If you're not familiar with Ample Avi designer Xme Xue's work, thankfully you need look no farther than NWN for some solid examples. She's been a sponsor of New World Notes for over a year now, and in that time we've featured quite a few of her shapes in our sponsored posts. Although Ample Avi specializes in full-figures and realistic proportions, there are shapes there to suit just about every taste. Naturally I've got a few favorites out of the Ample Avi shapes we've featured here, so if you want to see what the brand's about I definitely recommend clicking through to take a look at Mini Me, Barely Round, and Rita v2.

Just remember that this steep discount isn't going to last -- it'll only be available on January 1st 2016. After all, what better way to celebrate the new year than with a new look for your avatar? Click here to search for specials at Ample Avi.

NWN Survey: How Many Active Second Life Users Will There Be at the End of 2016?

As a complement to our survey on Project Sansar, here's a survey on Second Life's userbase at the end of 2016. Will it add more users next year, stay roughly the same, or dwindle in size?

Survey results shared in the New Year! Meantime, feel free to discuss reasons behind your answers in Comments below:

Top 10 New World Notes Posts by Popularity in 2015

With assists from sites like Kotaku and online communities like Reddit, Hacker News, and of course SL's own ecosystem, here's the most popular New World Notes posts of 2015 by total readership and/or social sharing. Six of these ten posts are mostly or entirely about Second Life and related topics, one more generally about VR and the metaverse, and three related to broader topics around tech/gaming/social media culture:

• Virtual Reality Advertisers Seem Hellbent on Repeating Second Life Marketing Mistakes
• Gamergate Hasn't Hurt Academic Interest in Gaming, Say Leading Scholars -- If Anything, It's Increased Interest
• Remnants of Earth, a User-Made MMO in Second Life UPDATE: Now Featured on Kotaku, Lead Dev Comments
• Seeking to Uncover Grand Theft Auto V's Mysteries, Players Discover Virtual Memorial to a Second Life Pioneer
• Reporter Who Only Gets Expert Tour of Second Life Only Gets Part of Second Life's Story Right

Five more beyond the break!

Top Six New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• Over-Immersion & Virtual Reality's Uncanny Valley Problem
• Does Valve Want to Turn Steam Into a Gaming Metaverse?
• High Fidelity Massively Updates Website, Adds Renowned Futurist Think Tank & NATO to Domain Registry
• Are First-Person Shooters Too Fatiguing for VR? Valve's Experiments With Half-Life Suggest So
• Project Bento: Tasty Extended Skeleton for SL Avatars, Massive Leap for Avatar Expression and Enhancement
• NWN Survey: How Many Monthly Active Users Will Project Sansar Have By the End of 2016?

My 5 Favorite Second Life Machinimas of 2015

Perfect watching while wrapping Christmas presents or preparing to eat Chinese food or airing grievances, here's my favorite five SL-made machinimas this year, with some background on each at each link:

Watch Bryn Oh's "Scissors", the Best Second Life Machinima You May See This Year

Monday SL Machinima Features a Small Town With Secrets

Three more beyond the break!

Post Second Life Holiday Shopping & Event Tips Here

New World Notes is winding down the year with holiday shopping and events (along with some Best Of lists), so please feel free to promote your favorite festivities and shopping ideas here -- include links, especially to the Marketplace or at least map locations!

A-Frame: Open Source, Cross-Platform VR Framework

A-Frame is a VR project you should keep an eye on, and here's why:

A-Frame is an open source framework for easily creating WebVR experiences with HTML. It is designed and maintained by MozVR (Mozilla’s virtual reality team research team). A-Frame wraps WebGL in HTML custom elements, enabling web developers to create 3D VR scenes that leverage WebGL’s power, without having to learn its complex low-level API. Because WebGL is ubiquitous in modern browsers on desktop and mobile, A-Frame experiences work across desktop, iPhone (Android support coming soon), and Oculus Rift headsets.

Cross-platform is particularly important to gain a mass market.

NWN Survey: How Many Monthly Active Users Will Project Sansar Have By the End of 2016?

Time to wind down 2015 with some predictions for the New Year - starting with Project Sansar. To tap the wisdom of the avatar crowd, we want to get as many participants as possible - so please share!

Social sharing buttons below, yo:

Project Bento: Tasty Extended Skeleton for SL Avatars, Massive Leap for Avatar Expression and Enhancement

Bento! It's a delicious Japanese lunch box, and now, the code name for a delicious set of new Second Life avatar skeleton extensions (as seen above, as described below):

This extended skeleton, which is fully backward compatible with existing avatars, rigging and animation, gives creators the power to create more sophisticated avatars than ever before. The skeleton extensions include:

• 11 extra limb bones for wings, which could also be used for additional arms, or extra legs.

• 6 tail bones

• 30 bones in the hands

• 30 bones for facial expressions

• 2 other new bones in the head for animating ears or antennae

• 13 new attachment points associated with the new bones

Adeon Writer, who made sure I made sure to blog this, is duly freaking out:

I'm really floored. It's like... this is my wishlist from 2008... this update just gave Second Life at least 10 more years in the content making department. (Assuming nothing else makes the grid go down.)

Are First-Person Shooters Too Fatiguing for VR? Valve's Experiments With Half-Life Suggest So

Since Valve is partnering with HTC to create its own VR headset, the Vive, you'd think Valve is gong to create a virtual reality version of its most famous franchise, Half-Life. Turns they've tried, and it didn't work, reports Half-Life developer Ken Birdwell:

“We’re still in that mode of trying to figure out what we do with this,” the developer stated on subject of the HTC Vive. “We have endless experiments, and they’re neat things, but we still have to figure out how we put this into a narrative. How do we pull the player through this immersion? If players actually did all of the actions from Half-Life in VR, they’d be fatigued in five minutes."

Super-disappointing news for VR fans looking forward to a virtual reality integration of Half-Life -- and super instructive about the future market for VR in general: