New World Notes

Free in Sinespace: Beach & Nightclub Template to Install in Your Free Region

Sinespace (an NWN partner!) has free new content to play around with this weekend -- two "room templates" to install in the region every user gets for free. "Room" is something of an understatement, because as you can see above, one of them is a whole expansive beach scene. The other is indeed a room, but full of pulsing light -- a nightclub template (pics below). To install these, just go into your viewer and get them from the store. And if you have trouble installing, post questions in Comments, and I'll nudge the Sinespace team.

New App for Chatting Between High Fidelity & Second Life (And Back Again)

Metaverse problems: You use Second Life, founded by Philip Rosedale and team, and you're interested in trying out High Fidelity, also from Philip and his crew, but you don't know anyone in HiFi. Or say you're in High Fidelity, wishing your SL friends would hang out with you there, but you're feeling a little... a little lonely.

 Zeja Pyle may have a solution for you, a web-based app for texting from SL to HiFi and vice versa. (Here's background on it from her blog.)

Here's the Second Life HUD you'll need to use in the SL Marketplace. Second Life/High Fidelity user "Judas", who tipped me on this, says it works pretty well. (And no, his advice won't betray you, his name of course is a Bob Dylan reference.) To use it in Second Life, you do need to enable Media in your settings -- click below to see the helpful .gif animation Judas created for us for 30 silver Lindens:

A Facebook Page Full of SL-flavored Memes Only SLers Would Understand

Second Life: The Memes takes the memes you know and love, gives them an inside baseball SL twist, and then, of course puts them on a Facebook page:

Where 10 year old avatars look a day old, where people still don’t know that face lights are a f*cking nightmare, where everyone knows a furry, where grown adults act like small children, where people carry around talking, sh*tting dolls, where you are asked to give $100L so someone can pay their $1,250L rent, where people refuse to understand mesh, and where dudes use chick avatars, and adults use child avatars. 

Launched last month, it only has 900 subscribers, but definitely deserves 9,000 or 90,000 more. Or all 900,000 users that Second Life supposedly has (LOL people fudging SL user numbers for the media could be a meme in itself, it's more like 500-600,000). 

Speaking of memes, here's the one I made riffing off "First World Problems" a few years ago:

OpenSim Community Devotes Week to Deceased Developer Named Cornflakes

This week is Cornflakes Week for the community built around OpenSim, the open source spinoff of Second Life. What's that even mean, you ask. Here's veteran virtual world expert John "Pathfinder" Lester to explain:

"It's all around a celebration of the work of Cornflakes Woodcock," Pathfinder explains, "who died about 5 years ago but left a HUGE legacy of free content and resources in OpenSim. Very unique guy, very creative, and was very loved by everyone in virtual worlds. Amazing to me that these celebrations are still going on after so many years. So many people talk about how impermanent virtual worlds are, but this is a beautiful example of how both content and social bonds are much stronger in the virtual than most folks can imagine."

Cornflakes events posted here, including one happening at Noon Pacific today. And here's a tribute to the man, the myth, the metaverse legend.

Cat Life Launches: Feed, Brush, Pet, Play With a Virtual Cat in Second Life -- Or Be the Cat Yourself!

Cat Life, the ambitious pet game for Second Life you read about last December, is now finally available in the SL Marketplace right here. Created by the popular virtual animal/NPC brand Zooby (Facebook page here ), lead designer Carrie Tatsu narrates the walk-through tutorial above.

As the name suggests, it's both a pet care game and a game where players can actually be the cat themselves: "I can be a cat and you can be a cat and we can share our accessories and gain tokens which can be redeemed for toys," she says. 

And yes, that means doing pretty much anything an actual cat does, as part of the game:

Virtual World Developer's Visit to Linden Lab Hints at Big Updates to Sansar and Second Life Coming Soon

Will Burns, Vice-Chair for IEEE's Virtual Worlds Standard Group, recently stopped by Linden Lab's headquarters in San Francisco for a visit, had a good long chat with CEO Ebbe Altberg (pictured here with mandatory hoodie, next to Will with bonus Deadpool T-shirt) and got a tour of upcoming Sansar content. What exactly Will saw in Sansar he cannot say, since he signed an NDA at the door, but reading between the lines of what he reported afterward, it looks like Sansar and Second Life will see some pretty big updates soon (or soon-ish).

"I’m not telling anyone what they’re doing exactly," as he puts it to me, "but rest assured they didn’t drop the ball with Ready Player One. It’s really mind-blowing. I think people will be in awe and pleasantly surprised."

Will is a longtime Second Life user and content creator, where he's known as "Aeonix Aeon". And having gotten this first-hand, full-blow demo of upcoming Sansar content at Linden Lab, sees the two this way:

"When I want high-end mind blowing, I’d dip into Sansar with a headset for a half hour. Then come back to Second Life for the rest of the evening. Best way I can find an analogy for SL users is this: Imagine Sansar is Disneyland. Second Life is the everyday after that. You pop off with the family and friends to Disney for a fun afternoon or vacation, then come home. In the same manner, Sansar is Second Life’s Disneyland. It’s fun, impressive with the right hardware, and mind blowing. Then you come home and while home isn’t as exciting or high end packed with thrills and wow factor, it’s home and you spend most of your time there. Each has a legit purpose.

 

"Now, could I see everyone running out to get a headset for this? Of course not. It’s still niche audience at best. But I definitely recommend a proper engagement with it if you get a chance.

Long as you keep in mind it’s Disneyland to SL, it’ll make sense."

Other dedicated SLers have made the theme park/home analogy for Sansar. Speaking of which, here's the notes Will posted to a private Facebook group after his visit to Linden Lab which hint at updates for both:

Help Wanted: Sinespace Hiring Virtual World Photographers & Videographers

Our friends and partners at Sinespace, the upcoming Unity 3D-based virtual world from SL/OpenSim vets (a proud NWN sponsor!), are looking to hire talented virtual world photographers and videographers who can beautifully showcase the world's fashion, avatars, scenes, events, games, etc.-- and yes, they do pay in Sinespace Gold and cold, hard, real world cash. 

Interested? Message me on Discord (WJA#3523), DM me on Twitter, on Facebook, or send an oldschool e-mail to wjamesau at gmail. Please include these details:

Cajsa's Choices: The Amazing Avatar Cosplay Portraits of SL Photographer Flight of Osiris

“Justice League Second Life” by Flight of Osiris - click to enlarge

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

Pop culture fans are sure to love the Flickr stream of Flight of Osiris. He has a fascination with characters from film, comic books, and politics, and memorializes that interest in Second Life. He also shoots portraits of other people that are excellent at revealing personality. Often there can be a flat affect in SL portraits, but his are full of life. From movie superheroes like Batman to popstars like Beyoncé to a portrait of Putin as a popstar supervillain, his works are vivid and realistic. Since my interview, Osiris changed his Flickr display name to “Project 17-73” in honor of a photo project he is working on to photograph men at all ages as depicted in Second Life. For all that that more, read my interview with him below:

“Lemonade” by Flight of Osiris 

Pop culture seems to inspire a lot of your work, superheroes, characters from television, music icons, and politics. How do you approach creating such effective SL images? 

I have a big interest in politics and pop culture and its relevance to everyday social commentary, whereas once it was simply the purview of geeks and old men, so I always try to imagine that if I was creating a GIF for Twitter how would it translate through a SL picture.

If you apportioned the time for each shot to preparing the avatar and scene, shooting the raw shot, and post-processing in some editing software, how much of your time is spent on each part? Can you describe your process from your initial idea to the final product?

The inspiration takes ages to come up with, I can go through a dry spell where I'm not satisfied with anything but once I get an idea, then usually takes me about an hour to make each picture.

As mentioned above, the idea for each pic comes from imagining what a GIF looks like through an SL pic as most people use GIFs on Twitter to convey a message that through words would take ages -- I try the same technique in SL. I'm not interested in conveying a story like some people, more I just want to provoke an emotional response as quick as possible.

Much more below:

 

Chouchou, Pioneering Virtual World Music Duo, Launching 10 Year Anniversary Album Featuring Many Songs First Launched in Second Life

Chouchou is an indie duo with a pretty solid fanbase and a great, jazzy-ambient sound (think Massive Attack or Morcheeba with some J-Pop hooks) that's about to launch its 10 year anniversary album. (On February 23, to be exact -- follow them on Twitter for updates.) As longtime readers may remember, Chouchou originally launched in Second Life, with the two members performing live in SL from two parts of the world:

Though Japanese by birth, she tells me, juliet Heberle has lived in New York City for the last decade; Arabesque is based in Tokyo, and the two have never met in real life.  He transmits his music digitally, she records her vocals over them, and in Second Life, they perform live together while several thousand miles away.  "He hears what I hear," says juliet, "so I easily know what he wants for each song without asking him. I think that's why we can grow our music together."

In fact, some years ago they were once rated the top music group in Second Life. So unsurprisingly, this new album features many songs first launched during their SL performances:

VRChat Settles Into Sustainable Community of 7000+ Daily Users

Last month it looked like VRChat usage was definitely trending downward, but a few weeks later and pulling the camera back to three months, and checking its Steam stats, we see a different story:

After a massive growth spike in December and January, with daily active users peaking over 20,000, usage is definitely slipped -- but then stabilized, not slipping beneath 7,000 daily users, even during the weekday. This has all the marks of a sustainable, active community, as opposed to waves of hit and run trolls. And while 7,000 daily actives isn't spectacular in the big picture which includes MMOs and multiplayer games, compare (above) with competing social VR platforms -- Rec Room is a distant second with daily actives in the low three figures, and the rest (including High Fidelity), even more distant with usage in the two figures.

The next question is if VRChat can start building on this base, but right now they're best positioned to do so. Take a look at recent tweets about VRChat, reflecting a vibrant and diverse userbase: