New World Notes

Shock Stat: In 2017, VR Headset Shipments for Most Top Brands Went DOWN Compared to 2016

SuperData has an excellent free new report of game industry sales for 2017, which includes the most important figure forecasting the future of the virtual reality industry: In three words, worse than slow.

In many more words: 2017 sales of "full VR" rigs were flat or even negative, with Rift shipping slightly more HMDs in 2016 than 2017, and HTC Vive shipping less last year than the year before.  

Far as mobile-based VR, Google Daydream also saw slower shipments, as did Samsung Gear. (Though Gear VR remains far and away the market leader, with well over 8 million total shipments).

Looking at SuperData's data, the only unambiguous success in VR hardware sales goes to Playstation VR, which nearly doubled in shipments from 2016 to 2017, earning just under 2.5 million total shipments last year. (Which still means only 3% of Playstation 4 owners bought the VR headset it was created for.)

Hopefully these numbers start causing alarm bells to go off in the VR industry, because they promise a fallow season for many years to come. Personally I expected VR headset sales to grow slightly in 2017, so I'm pretty surprised to see them go down for 3 of 5 leading rigs.

I'll give the final word to SuperData, which reports these bad numbers as tactfully as possible:

Cajsa's Choices: Magnificent Photos from SL's Mermaid Roleplay Community

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

Are mermaids cetaceans? They are aquatic mammals. In our first lives, live sightings of mermaids are limited, mainly to myth and art. In Second Life, there are many sightings and even contemporary photographs that prove mermaids exist. I thought it might be informative to take a look at some of the photographic evidence.

From the sirens who sang ancient sailors to their death and the fabled city of Atlantis to the Little Mermaid and Daryl Hannah, mermaids have fascinated. It’s no surprise then that there are vibrant mermaid role-playing communities in Second Life. Destinations highlights many of the underwater sims that host merlife. There’s even an organization to promote the harmony and safety of merfolk called the Safe Waters Foundation. On Flickr, there are several groups including Second Life Merfolk, Mermaids of Second Life, Second Life Mermaids, and Undersea Second Life.

Sugarfairy88 Resident’s No Grave But The Sea (above) caught my eye with the bold red coloring of the mermaid. Most of the time the mermaids we see are in the blue to green spectrum which is odd when the ocean is full of bright and colorful fish. This picture seems to confirm the notorious reputation of mermaids as sirens who lure sailors to their death.

۰˚Yukino ۰ 火の鳥 雪乃˚۰ shared this photo called Fish Dinner 4 that reveals that the peril is bi-directional. This photo is an excellent example of how framing can direct your eye, we see the diner looking at the mermaid, the hands framing the mermaid and all are directed toward the upper right. I love its unique perspective on the mermaid question, eschewing the usual romanticism. It also reverses the usual predator-prey relationship between the air and water breathers.

Many more mermaid roleplay pics after the break!

Bitcoin Infographic: Look at All the Big Companies & Organizations Which Wasted Time Trying to Accept a Virtual Money Hardly Anyone Uses as Money

Market research firm 16 Best just sent me this beautiful and handy infographic showing all the major companies and organizations which accept Bitcoin as payment -- over 160 in fact! -- click here for the embiggenated version. With Bitcoin price wildly fluctuating while daily transaction volume stubbornly remains flat, it's really a case study in humility, and the hubris of libertarian thought experiments which run aground against reality: So many reputed firms with so many smart people, convinced despite all evidence to the contrary that Bitcoin was ever going to be used as actual money to buy actual (legal) goods and services. With Bitcoin's daily transaction rate at around 200,000 per day, it remains the case that Linden Dollars are still used more often than Bitcoin has been, or likely every will be.

VRChat User Activity Definitely Trending Downward

I saw worrying signs last week but now that we have user activity from last weekend (typically the busiest two days for MMOs/virtual worlds), there's a definite downward trend -- from a daily peak concurrency of 20,000+ on January 13th to just under 15,000 on the 20th, to under 12,000 on the 28th. The company reported temporary connectivity issues on the 28th, but even factoring those in, there's still a solid drop-off of user activity overall. As reader Pulsar notes, you can see the same pattern on Google Trends:

Greetings from the Second Life Desert Called the Sea of Beckoning

I forget how I first came across it, but the other night I wound up in The Sea of Beckoning (direct teleport here), a pretty impressive desert sim which seems to stretch on forever thanks to some clever desert backdrop stitching. A go-to destination for dramatic fashion shoots in the dunes, quiet contemplation, Dune roleplayers (just don't tell Frank Herbert's lawyers), or folks searching for a real virtual desert of the unreal.

Decentraland Launches Command Line-Based Scene Editor Because That's How Hardcore They Are at Decentraland

Decentraland, the ambitious, open standards-based social VR world which raised $25 million in Ethereum-based virtual land purchases last year, just launched a scene editor, but unlike other virtual world editors, this one is hardcore and for developer's only -- i.e., it's command line-based for god's sake:

The CLI is an open-source tool that core developers can use to create, edit, and upload scenes to Decentraland’s parcels. Critically, the CLI is not tied to any particular version control or editor toolset, allowing you to use the tools you think are best for the job...  We recognize that the CLI is difficult to use if you’re not already familiar with developer workflows. There is a lot of construction work that needs to be done in Genesis City and a CLI is the most powerful tool for developers on the job. However, everyone has important ideas that are crucial for Decentraland, so tools to enable construction by more people in Genesis City are in active development.

There's a certain sense to starting with a CLI before creating a user-friendly (but much more cost-intensive) 3D editing tool for mainstream users. As it happens, the best argument for the power and efficiency of the command line interface was made by the creator of the Metaverse itself, Neal Stephenson.

Tutorial: How to Custom Edit Your Own Second Life Skies (Mac Edition)

There's been lots of interest in Stevie Davros' Custom Skies now in the SL Marketplace, so here's Stevie's step-by-step tutorial video for updating the default SL skies in your viewer to those custom-made by him or anyone else, for that matter. This tutorial is specifically for the Mac version of the viewer, but Stevie tells me the process for Windows should more or less be the same, except more Windows-ish. (Hopefully Windows users can post some tips in Comments.)

New World Notes is on Discord for All Virtual World & Social VR Chat Needs

Click here to join, and connect with my Discord account directly at WJA#3523. If you don't know, Discord is a text and voice chat platform for gamers which grew very rapidly last year and now counts nearly 100 million registered users -- it's basically Slack for gamers. (For that matter, Slack is basically IRC for the 21st century, while IRC is basically the telegraph for the 20th.) 

So join the live convo! Great way to chat about SL/VR news and share cool stuff with NWN readers and I. In fact, hours after creating the channel, longtime NWN reader Chav Paderborn immediately started talking about her SL Poop museum, i.e., the history of building in Second Life, from prims to sculpts to mesh, as illustrated in 3D poops. So you know, a super auspicious start.

If you're already a Discord user, here's the NWN chat widget: 

Top Six New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• Fallout Evolved In Second Life: Roleplayers Create Mini-MMO Inspired By Bethesda's Post-Apocalyptic Franchise
• VRChat Runaway Growth Hit A Daily Peak Concurrency Plateau?
• Now In The Marketplace: Insanely Gorgeous Customized Skies For Second Life Viewers, Hand-Painted Or Photographed From Real Life
• Cajsa's Choices: The Impressionistic Virtual Photography Of Tutsy Navarantha
• WATCH: PwC's Jeremy Dalton Discusses The Future Of VR & AR
• VRChat Avatars Standing Around As Someone With A Full-Body Tracking Suit Has A Real-Life Seizure Is A Glimpse Of Social VR's Future

WATCH: How to Customize & Design Your Free Region in Sinespace

If you're interested in checking out Sinespace, the upcoming Unity-based virtual world (a proud NWN media partner!), here's a video tutorial worth watching from lead developer Adam Frisby (aka Adam Zaius in SL). Every Sinespace user gets a free region to start, so Adam walks you through the process of creating a region and customizing it within the viewer.

And then in the second half of the video, for folks familiar with Unity, he gives the basics on using the Unity editor to upload your own scenes directly into Sinespace. If you want to do that, be sure to install the latest version of the editor pack before starting -- click here to get it.