New World Notes

My Twelve Favorite New World Notes Posts from 2017: Finding Reality & Humanity Amid Constant VR & Virtual World Hype

VR Developers: You Really Need To Talk About Your 'Bedding Taylor Swift In The Oculus Rift' Problem Before It's Too Late: "I can personally guarantee Father Misty that virtual sex with avatars of non-consenting real celebrities is hardly the most disturbing thing that exists in the virtual world -- not even close. And while his point is a socio-cultural one (and a very valid one at that), it's also one, in less poetic treatments, can hurt whole industries. Because I can also guarantee he's raising issues that the media will focus on, when and if VR ever really starts to gain mass adoption numbers. Because that's when the hype honeymoon ends, and the hard questions begin."

The Trouble With Calling Virtual Reality An "Empathy Machine": "Unless and until VR becomes truly mass market, content created for empathy purposes will tend to be highly self-selective and self-affirming. For instance, it's one thing to create a VR experience about what it's like to be homeless in real life, but the only people likely to experience it are those who already empathize with homelessness as a real life problem. Does anyone really think even a VR enthusiast who has no evident empathy for the poor in real life will invest the time and effort into having an experience which is intended to challenge their world view?"

Avatar Skin Tone Experiment Reveals Strong User Preference For Whiteness: "In virtual worlds and MMOs where most aspects of avatar appearance can be instantly changed by a few button clicks -- including gender and skin tone -- do we leave our real world attributes and preferences behind? After noting that avatars with lighter skin seem to get more likes than darker ones on Flickr, I enlisted the help of Mandy Smith, a popular SL fashion photographer on Flickr, to take two photos of the same avatar in the same pose in the same location, with the only difference being her skin tone..."

Second Life Content Creators Now Likely Making More Money From Second Life Than Second Life's Own Corporate Owner: "Only last month, I estimated the company and its users were earning about equal revenue from SL, but it looks like the latter is doing better. (And grassroots content creators generally don't have to rent an office or help cover expenses like transportation costs, as Linden does!) It's an unexpected outcome for both the company and the users, and is the flip side to all the customers complaints about Linden Lab's high land tier costs. Overall and in aggregate, the users are getting the better end of the deal."

Strawberry, Unbound: How A Virtual World Helped A Young Muslim-American Woman Become More Politically Active In The Real One: "I have always been pretty shy in the real world but Second Life has helped me overcome that a bit," Strawberry says. "I have more confidence to approach people or be more outspoken in the real world because of my experiences in Second Life. I wouldn't have thought about sharing my thoughts on such a global or large platform. It also encouraged me to carry the fight and resistance in the real world as well by going on marches, protests, calling my local officials, etc..."

WATCH: “RLForever”, A Powerful Virtual World Tribute to Real World Loss: "Creating machinima and images in Second Life became, as he puts it, 'a type of therapy to be honest. I needed to find a way to balance the emotions and fires in my heart with the realities and tragic nature of real life... We are all full of madness inside, we hide it from others and ourselves, yet it remains. I use my creative work to explore this madness, to embrace it, cherish it and value it and in the process, hopefully, understand those around me better and love them more.'”

After the break: VR and porn, Bitcoin euphoria, virtual worlds and HBO's Silicon Valley, Overwatch's female fans, the aftermath of an Atlantic Monthly profile of Second Life, and -- oh yes -- the Internet and the end of the world:

December 30 in Sinespace: Free Winter Festival With Live DJs & Dancing, Snowball Fight, Ice Skating, Gold Prizes, and Much More

Tomorrow (December 30th) in Sinespace, the upcoming Unity-based virtual world from Second Life veterans (longtime pals and proud NWN partners!), the developers are hosting a huge Winter Festival running from 10AM to 3PM PST, a great way to take a look at the latest update of the world while partying with the Sinespace team and users. Here's all the details on the Sinespace blog, including highlights like these:

Kicking off the fun we have DJ Yer hosting her Holiday Cheer and Snowball fight in the White Forest. Enjoy some festive music and relax with your friends. Anyone who joins in on the snowball fight will have a chance at winning a 1st place prize of 1000 Gold, and the runner up will win 500 Gold.

Much more here.

Cajsa Choices: My Favorite Twelve Second Life Photos from 2017

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

I have a hard time with the word "favorite". What appeals in the moment might soon be superseded by another. Sometimes my mood inclines me toward the macabre, sometimes toward the twee, and everywhere in between. That said, these are the Second Life-based pictures that stuck in my memory from 2017, drawn from the “What I Like” column on my blog, “Cajsa’s Choices” here on New World Notes, and from the hundred-plus photos I review on Flickr every day:

“Somewhere in Between” by B. Tomstone (above) is one of those caught in the moment photos I love so much. I like the sepia tone that gives it a place in time, the tonal range from the bright light on the shirt and her thighs to the dark shadows, and the geometry of her bent legs mirroring the shape of the chair’s back and seat. It’s extraordinary...and so are most of the photos on his timeline. I would love to profile this artist, but Tomstone humbly asserts “I don’t feel like a very good SL photographer.” so you will have to go over to Flickr and see for yourself. Don’t miss this extraordinary untitled photo on your visit.

“To Corruption” by Ｋｅｙ Ｍｏｎｋ exemplifies how an artistic vision can make the smallest detail important. Most people, if taking a picture of a piano, will take a picture of the piano. Perhaps they will stand someone in front of it. If they’re feeling fancy, they might put some flower on it. An artist will find a single detail and zoom in on that and reveal it even more profoundly than ten pictures of the entire piano. Folks who want to spend some time seeing one beautiful photo after another would be smart to spend a few hours perusing Ｋｅｙ Ｍｏｎｋ’s photostream. It is extraordinary.

“Water Fairies” by Meriluu (Mery M) is one of those jaw-dropping photos that folks in Second Life just manage to create somehow. I love the rich colors, the intermittent light through the trees, the way they are reflected in the water which is so much more realistic than a more perfect reflection. Everywhere you look, there is something interesting and considered in this picture, yet it does not feel overcrowded.

Many more favorites after the break, beginning with one that's not for the faint of heart:

WATCH: My Top Five Favorite Second Life Machinimas from 2017

From surreal comedy to moody sci-fi to eerie art installations, here's my favorite Second Life-based machinimas from 2017 -- starting with this one from January, reflecting this year's trend of YouTubers recording SL broadcasts "live", a departure from traditional narratives of past machinima. But as real life opera singer Cassie Middles demonstrates, there's something fresh and exciting about recording SL experiences as they happen, without editing:

More about Cassie's video here.

"Library": Beautiful SL Machinima Tribute To Classic Literature (from April) -- created by Pepa Cometa, a master at creating evocative montages showing off the metaverse at its best.

Three more after breaking, starting with longtime SL artist Bryn Oh (also in April), shooting in an in-world art installation she created this year:

The Top Ten Most Read and Shared New World Notes Posts of 2017

As is usually the case, the New World Notes posts most shared on social media and/or picked up by larger media outlets this year offer a pretty good review of 2017's top highlights -- starting with:

Linden Lab Becomes First (And Only) VR Company To Join Tech Industry's Amicus Brief Against Trump's Muslim Ban (February): "... This also makes Linden Lab the first and so far only VR-focused tech company to join the brief. (That's not counting fellow signees Facebook, which own Oculus, or Google, which develops Daydream, or Microsoft, which develops HoloLens -- but those giants are not categorized by their VR products.) For all the billions of dollars invested in VR startups in the last few years, and general outrage in the VR industry over Palmer Luckey's covert Trump support, the Lab stands alone..."

Confirming Danah Boyd's Early Concerns, Studies Suggest Women Much More Likely To Get Motion Sickness From Using VR (March): "Back in 2014 just before the VR hype wave hit a new peak, renowned sociologist danah boyd expressed deep concerns based on her own early research that virtual reality literally made most women sick. 'I want folks to take what I did and push it further,' danah told me at the time. 'If researchers start to investigate this issue, I'll be ecstatic.' They have, and according to Science News, some new studies are backing up danah's earlier insights..."

Ozimals Ending: 1000s Of Beloved Virtual Bunnies Condemned To Permanent "Hibernation" Due To Cease & Desist Legal Order (May): "The owner of Ozimals, an extremely popular brand of breedable virtual bunnies and other pets for Second Life which once partnered with Linden Lab itself, is about to go defunct due to a real life cease and desist order... This is the dark side of the thriving virtual economy. Second Life content creators may now make more money than Second Life's corporate owner, but that revenue is often in jeopardy due to accusations of IP infringement between competing creators -- who sometimes come with a court order."

Website Tracks Just How Few VR Users There Are On Steam (June): "As of this writing (according to VRLFG) there's less than 2500 players total across all VR games on Steam (out of some 8-12 million concurrent Steam users). AltSpaceVR, which is perhaps closest to Sansar and High Fidelity in the social VR space, currently shows just 14 total players (23 total over the last 24 hours). There's an estimated 750,000-1.5 million owners of Oculus or Vive headsets now on the market, so you'd except at least 1% of them would be using their devices on Steam. But actual usage is well below 1%."

Six more below -- starting with my most read 2017 post by far:

What Challenges Must Sansar Overcome to Succeed as a Virtual World Fashion Platform?

Longtime NWN reader Chic Aeon raised some smart points last week on the challenges that Linden Lab will need to overcome, in order to grow Sansar into a successful virtual world fashion platform. And while you may not agree with them, they're worth discussing -- and hopefully, will encourage other content creators to describe additional challenges too:

High Complexity of User-Created Fashion

IF they figured out a way to import from Marvelous Designer and keep the "avatar complexity settings" low, then great, as lots of folks that make clothes like MD. HOWEVER, Marvelous Designer is the number one "issue" on the SL Forums for uploading problems for mesh clothes. The problem is almost always the very HIGH COMPLEXITY of the garment. It certainly may ("may") be possible to keep that complexity low, but since Sansar is going to be user- generated content, we are going to have to assume that the same issues from hobbiest designers will flow over into that platform. I don't see how this is going to help what seems to be the number one complaint with Sansar -- the half hour load times. Again, not my area of expertise, just what I see on the forums, so perhaps someone with more knowledge can reply here.

Responding to reports that Sansar clothing still needs to be adjusted after being put on an avatar, Chic brought up another challenge:

Six Huge Second Life-Themed Flickr Groups to Follow

Caroline Apollo very kindly shared her list of Second Life-related groups on Flickr, and they're considerably larger than the ones I previously listed:

• Flickrites of Secondlife, 19631 subscribers
• Second Life - Avatars, 13138 subscribers
• SecondLife, 12643 subscribers
• i ❥ Second Life, 12578 subscribers
• Second Life Fashion, 11207 subscribers
• Avatars with Attitude!, 10278 subscribers
• Photographers of Secondlife, 10046 subscribers

Any others in the five or six-figure subscriber range readers should know about?

Top Six New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• Cajsa Choices: 12 Of My Favorite Holiday-Themed Photos From Second Life
• Sansar Fashion Items Reportedly Require User Adjustment To Prevent Poking Body Parts Problem That Still Plagues Second Life
• Coming Soon To Second Life: Bento Mesh Cat With Emotive Expressions, Pet-Raising Game, And Both Avatar & NPC Functionality
• I Hope Linden Lab Is Personally Apologizing To Other SL YouTubers Besides Strawberry Singh Who Were Spooked By Their Takedown Notices
• Magic Leap Finally Unveils "Creator Edition" With CD-Like Power Pack, Snapchat-Like Goggles, Uncertain Future
• Do You Want A Second Life In Identity, The Upcoming MMO Which Painstakingly Recreates Modern American Life?

Cajsa Choices: 12 of My Favorite Holiday-Themed Photos from Second Life

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

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and seasonal photos are where it’s at. I absolutely love “Couldn’t Resist” from Samanda Eddingham Jewell. I am drawn in by the angle, the perspective that places the rope in the forefront, showing the subject from the back. The slumped shoulders suggest sorrow and loneliness–something many experience during the holidays when they are far from home. I love how depth of field focuses our eyes.

Yes, this magnificent Christmas photo “Merry Christmas to You All” is from Second Life. The artist Doni even explains how she created it and the items she used on her Flickr page. Doesn’t it look just like an old-fashioned illustrated Christmas card? Some of it is how it is framed by the evergreen boughs. It’s beautifully balanced without perfect symmetry which makes it far more interesting than absolute symmetry can ever be. I love the imagination and the creative way it pays homage to the past. And yes, I know it’s from 2011, but I didn’t have this column back then to highlight it.

“Driving Home for Christmas” by Eria Ziemia is an exquisite photo. The lighting is beautiful, the fence forms leading lines and there is even an ess-curve road. This incorporates so many excellent elements of excellent photo composition, but even better, it’s evocative, calling up emotions and memories of years past.

For those of us who love stunning photo compositions, the return of Moos Hultcrantz with this photo called “Baja Norte” was an early Christmas gift. Hultcrantz creates amazing scenes that are set in time and place with an eye for detail and authenticity. His photosets are always complete, but not overstuffed. They are not made to stuff as many bloggable items in the frame as possible, but to be as authentic as possible while telling a story. I don’t know him, but I have missed him during his hiatus.

Many more below the break!

Meet Asthenia Pinazzo, Second Life Fashion & Home Decor Blogger

Asthenia Pinazzo is a Second Life blogger from Belgium whose real world career is quite a contrast from what she does in Second Life. "I do a really serious government job in real life and only do frivolous things in SL," she tells me. Along with her highly active Flickr account, she runs not but two blogs -- her fashion blog, Absolutely Asthenia, is mainly a compilation of stylish Look Of The Day pics, though her favorite is this one right here: "It was such a fun post to make and pretty much sums up my take on SL fashion," she tells me.

She also runs a home design blog, cleverly called Background Shot. But her favorite post right here is actually very somber, for a good reason: