New World Notes

High Fidelity Reportedly Scales to 200 Fully-Rendered Concurrent Avatars in a Proximate Space on Same Server

This screenshot from the latest product update of High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's new VR world, is pretty damn impressive, and I'll tell you why. Well, let HF's Chris Collins first set the scene:

High Fidelity will achieve high scalability both by maximizing the number of people who can be together on a single server, and also by connecting servers together to create larger single spaces. In pursuit of this first goal, we’ve begun optimizations to maximize avatar concurrency for the single-server case. So far, as is show in this image, we’ve been able to support a couple hundred avatars connected to a single server, with the nearest 40 or so rendering at 75Hz in the Oculus using fairly detailed avatars and including joint and facial animation.

Thing is, all these 200 avatars look pretty fully rendered, so it's even more impressive if they can consistently get 40 of the nearest to render in, well, high fidelity. With Philip's first VR world, Second Life, it is difficult to get even forty avatars total on the same server, and that's with hellacious sputtering and partially rendered avatars. (You can get about 200 semi-visible avatars in proximity to each other, but only when they were on four different sims right next to each other, which almost always looks like a lagtastic wreck.) So if this level of quality concurrency works as well as promised, that's quite a leap, and an important one.

More updates from the video, many others that are also intriguing:

SL Mesh Head Neck & Neck With Black Desert Faces

Black Desert's avatar customization system definitely seems impressive, but I gotta say, the latest user-made mesh-based heads in Second Life are giving it a run for its virtual money:

Video demo via Strawberry, who has the details on her blog. Too bad this level of customization is only going to be available to established SLers who know where to get their heads.

NWN Open Forum: Share Weekend Events & Whatever Else

Events, blogs, Flickr streams, YouTube videos -- if it has a link, I'd love to see it in Comments. (And possibly feature them right here on the front page!)

Goldman Sach's Virtual Reality Growth Forecasts Depend on Seriously Questionable Assumptions About Usability

As I wrote on Tuesday, the venerable banking firm Goldman Sachs forecasts about 40-300 million virtual/augmented reality units will ship by 2025. But here's the thing: When you read the firm's actual report, you find some seriously questionable assumptions which should cause heavy skepticism that even the low 40 million estimate is actually going to happen.

When I read this passage in the report, my mouth dropped:

Virtual reality will grow, in other words, because it's intuitive and easy to use. Which means I need to say this with deep emphasis:

A device which literally blinds and deafens you to your surroundings is by definition not intuitive or easy to use.

Goldman Sachs' analysts are describing the usability of VR only from the perspective of the VR display. Because sure, it's easy and intuitive to wear an HMD rig which moves more or less naturally along with your head movements. But for potential consumers, that's only part of the usability question. The more obvious question being: Do I want to wear something that prevents me from easily seeing or hearing my surroundings for extended periods of time? That's a massive expectation to place on people, and outside dedicated VR enthusiasts, we have no idea whatsoever whether they will. And not withstanding one-off products like those blinder/ear muff things people wear to sleep on airplanes, there is not a single mass market device that does this -- certainly not one that costs $599.

As legendary game designer Warren Spector put it to me last year:

3D Tribute to Undertale Reportedly Closing Soon Due to Hacking & Drama

This is why we can't have nice things, I guess: According to a group announcement just posted to a blog, the seriously impressive Undertale tribute to Second Life I blogged about yesterday is being closed after donations to host it are gone. I've reached out to confirm this with the lead creator, Sykes Furse, but haven't heard back from him yet. What I can confirm is the sim it's based on, Souls Haven, is no longer generally accessible (at least to me).

According to the announcement (from the blog of Skills Hak, lead creator of the popular and acclaimed Insilico region), hacking and drama is the problem:

Oscar-Themed Avatar Fashion Contest With L$50K in Prizes

Harper Ganesvoort's 7th annual Oscar-themed Second Life avatar fashion photo contest is open for submissions, with a total of L$50,000 in prizes for the best pics. You can see the entries so far on this Flickr page.

I would like to feature some entries here on New World Notes, so post your entry links in Comments. Bonus points if your avatar is dressed in Mad Max: Fury Road-themed formal wear and/or calls out the #Oscarsowhite controversy. Because far as I'm concerned, that was the only truly great movie that's been nominated, and the racism flare-up is the only thing worth watching the Oscars for. (But that's just me, or maybe not.)

A 3D Recreation of Undertale is Being Built in Second Life

UPDATE, 1/29: Read this post for news on this project, which is reportedly closing. 

I told you about the 3D version of Undertale, the beloved, hit indie RPG, being created in Second Life. Since then I had a chance to chat with Sykes Furse, who leads development on it with a large team of volunteers, and shared way more details:

“It's not a game, it's a simulator for people to enjoy the same game we all came to love, Undertale, in a 3D environment. We host nothing but an appreciation sim so others can enjoy it and hang out if they like. So far all we have are the Ruins and Snowdin. Toriel's home will be done sometime soon, but I and a few others are going to start working on Waterfall as soon as we possibly can!”

Surprisingly, Sykes' team of volunteers have created a pretty playable simulation with Second Life's basic building and scripting tools:

Try Black Desert's Cutting Edge Avatar Creator for Free

Black Desert's much-talked about avatar creator is free to download now. As longtime NWNers know, Janine "Iris" Hawkins was writing about how amazing it is a couple years ago:

Both the characters and the world look so polished and realistic that its screenshots could easily be mistaken for renders from 3D software like DAZ or Poser (seriously). But yesterday, in advance of their second closed beta test phase, the developers of Black Desert released a new video to flaunt the game's unique character customization system.

You can try it for free without necessarily playing the actual MMO it's been created for, so give it a while. If you do, all you masters of avatar customization, please share your character selfies in Comments!

Brain-Melting Demo by Longtime Virtual Reality Pioneer Seems to Bend Space & Time in 360 Degrees

Watch this video which may just melt your brain, and note the 3D controls on the top left, which you can use to rotate the camera around in a very cool way (especially if you're wearing a VR rig):

Created by mathematician and longtime VR pioneer Henry "Seifert" Segerman, I keep watching and trying to describe what's going on in plain English, and came up with this: Henry has installed code which simulates a Mobius transformation in a special 360 degree spherical camera to create a single infinite time loop. I think that's about right, but let me let Henry himself explain. [Update, 3:55pm: Not exactly, see Henry's clarification below.]

"Just like in the ancient video game Asteroids, when you fly off the side of the screen, you reappear on the other side, and you loop around. In the same way, the camera in the video appears to fly out the window of my apartment, reappearing in through some sort of portal floating in the middle of the apartment.

"Except the camera only appears to move. In fact, it's always sitting in the same place -- you can see the top of the tripod in the middle of the floor. The Möbius transformations let me 'zoom' the spherical images, which makes it look like the camera is moving."

To help understand how this is done, here's the original raw footage:

Henry's application emerged out of a VR project to use technology like this in live video-captured virtual reality:

Project Sansar Open Beta: Probably Not Until December

Daniel Voyager transcribed the notes of a recent podcast featuring Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Atberg, who offered this timeline for Second Life follow-up, Oculus Rift-integrated virtual world code-named Project Sansar:

• Around June 2016 or soon after the Lab will probably allow people to start to apply for Project Sansar in some way. [Beyond those already in closed Alpha.
• By June 2016 the Lab will be inviting hundreds of creators possibly to get things moving. 
• Between July 2016 and September 2016+ the Lab will increase the number of people who can come in month after month to continue test/develop Project Sansar.
• If things go according to plan the Lab plans to open the door for anyone to come in and play with Project Sansar around December 2016 – January 2017 (Open Beta). 

So as many NWN readers predicted, Sansar won't see the light of day before a new American President is elected. I would have guessed open beta this Summer, but looks like I was wrong. Could be frustrating for Oculus Rift fans eager to try it out sooner. But for remaining Second Life fans, that's some good guys: