New World Notes

Kaoruco City, Jaw-Dropping Second Life Sim Inspired by Blade Runner and Other Cyberpunk Classic, Opens -- Watch the Trailer!

Watch this machinima trailer directed by master SL creator Eripom Moonwall, premiering Kaoruco City, a new Second Life sim inspired by Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, and William Gibson's Neuromancer, along with SL-based cities of the past, most especially Insilico and District 18.

Lead developed by Kaoruco Resident and a team of fellow Japanese SLers, it evokes a neo-Tokyo type vibe. Kaoruco and team re-purposed many pre-existing cypberpunk-themed assets for much of it ("Second Life has enough contents to build sci-fi scene," he notes), and were able to assemble them over a week of work. They paid special attention to the small details that make up a living city:

"We focused on making roads, avenues, and small paths," he explains, "Because in many movies, there's attractive scenes like Deckard eating at a noodle bar downtown."

 

You may be surprised it only took five days to build what you're seeing, but Kaoruco says it worked because the team had the same basic vision in their heads:

Social VR Halloween: Explore a Creepy AF Hotel in Sansar

If you're looking for a scary social VR experience today, the aptly named Scary Game Squad Hub by Sergio Delacruz is open for visits in Sansar, evoking the creepy hotels of The Shining and other classics. Intrepid virtual world explorer Eve Kazan made a recent visit, somehow survived, and came back with some suitably creepy images featured here. (Also, unlike other Sansar experiences, it's a relatively small download -- Eve estimates 5 minutes or so.)

As to the experience itself -- possible spoilers and definite video from Eve below:

Black Dragon Update: Control Multiple Animated Avatars at the Same Time

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following among hardcore graphics fans (developer NiranV estimates about 3000+ downloads), has a new version available for download: "Animating Dragon".

As that suggests, the latest updates enables this: "The ability to use poses to animate not just yourself but also Animesh now. Previously I added posing for Animesh but you could still only animate either you or them [Animesh-based NPCs) and only one at a time," as he explains to me. "Now you can animate everyone independently and/or at the same time."

So basically, this is a major boon for machinima makers and fashionistas who want to take supermodel shots where they want to control the supermodel too. (Just for starters.)

Video of Animating Dragon in action below. More about it on NiranV's blog (where you can also get the download link). 

Niran, by the way, has a Patreon for developing Black Dragon, and donations sure seem well-deserved. I mean, just look at what he's doing all by himself on his viewer:

Sansar to Close Sandex, Move Platform to Steam in Search of VR Users

Well this is quite a virtual shoe to drop -- the end of Sansar's virtual currency to US$ exchange (called the Sandex), and a transition to  publishing the social VR platform on Steam:

The cornerstone of our growth effort will be to put Sansar on Steam. Steam is where more than half of the VR market goes to find software. It also is a huge pool of users who are interested in our space and are likely to have the hardware required to run Sansar. We anticipate being able to get onto Steam by the end of this year... n order to do this, we are obligated to make significant changes to how Sansar works, especially in how the Sansar Dollar and process credit system work. These changes, will also make the credit process for Creators far more consistent and predictable. The first change is that we will be discontinuing the Sandex as of December 4, 2018.

Sometimes I feel like Linden Lab's strategy is to do the direct opposite of what New World Notes just reported, because as I posted yesterday, Oculus and Vive usage appears to be flat or declining on Steam. And also, early this year: That only twelve of all the thousands of compatible games have attracted meaningful sales on Steam. And that when it comes to social VR on Steam, only VRChat has a (relatively) large user base, with the rest struggling with concurrencies in the two to three figures. But all that to one side, you can't blame Linden Lab for making what seems to be a hail Mary pass in the face of low user numbers.

Then again -- and this was years before Ebbe Altberg became CEO, and I'm not sure any executive from 2012 is still there, to tell him -- Linden Lab unsuccessfully attempted a similar strategy with Second Life: 

Oculus & Vive Usage Appears to Be Flat or Declining, According to Steam Stats, Sales Estimates

Active VR owners on Steam in September 2018, via Road to VR's estimate

Road to VR has an interesting report which combines usage rates of Steam, the largest platform for computer and VR games, with Steam's monthly Hardware & Software Survey, then came up with this estimate (above) for active VR owners on Steam.

"[I]t would be more accurate to call the figures above ‘Monthly Attached VR Headsets on Steam’ rather than ‘Monthly Active VR Users on Steam’," reporter Ben Lang allows, "though this is the closest indicator we’ve got to the latter." Fair enough. Based on that calculation, Oculus usage is somewhat ahead of Vive, and -- subtracting the smattering of Windows Mixed Reality headset owners -- there's a total of 600,000 active Oculus and Vive users total for September 2018 on Steam.

This number is pretty perplexing, because it's significantly lower than the estimated number of total Oculus and Vive sales at the beginning of 2017:

Creative User Hacks to Second Life Appearance Make Avatar Customization Incredibly Difficult for New Users (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: User-Made Mesh Head Heads-Up Display (reviewed by Cassie here)

Commenting on the appearance of professional makeover agencies in Second Life, reader "Pulsar" points out this is partly the outcome of innovation among the user community, as users came up with creative ways to improve avatar appearance options beyond what the default viewer offered:

And to think that once you could create your own hair style straight from the viewer sliders, as well as everything else (you still can, but it's outdated).

Creative users took advantage of each update and new feature to improve their avatar looks, sometimes even with hacks like the "invisiprim". Avatars became prettier and prettier, even incomparably better, but on the other hand fashion became more and more complex.

Instead of sliders, you had to edit your prim or sculpt attachments, then you had to use alpha layers, then merchants would sell their rigged mesh without setting the attachment point, so you have to carefully "add" it (or add to another attachment point) instead of "wearing" it, in order to not end up naked, just because you grabbed an ice cream. Then appliers, various HUDs, then you have a bunch of products from different brands and that aren't compatible with each other, as well as legacy content, so you have to know what's compatible with.

In other words, with every creative workaround the Second Life community added, avatars became more and more difficult to customize -- and became near impossible for new users:

Top 7 New World Posts from Last Week: From VR & AR Innovation to Social VR's Struggle for Traction

• Watch: Dazzling Demo Of Fluid Physics In Augmented Reality
• What Developers Should Know About Unity 3D's Entity Component System For Building Massive Game Worlds
• Social VR Infographics For Consumers & Developers: How Do VRChat, Rec Room, High Fidelity & Many Others Stack Up Against Each Other?
• Sons Of Second Life Status: Sansar Attracting More Website Visits, High Fidelity Attracting More Monthly Social VR Users
• Sansar User Growth Slowed By Massive Experience Downloads Up To TWENTY-FOUR Gigabytes
• Isotopium: A Real World Virtual World That's A Scale Model Of A City & The Avatars Are Internet-Controlled Drones
• Oculus Co-Founder Who Wanted To Build A "Billion Person Virtual World" Departs Facebook, Decrying Company's "Race To The Bottom" With Standalone Headsets

Philip Rosedale, Tom Boellstorff & Ela Darling Speak on Virtual Love & Sex at LA's In.flux Conference This December 1st-- Get the NWN Discount!

The In.flux Reality Mixer is an all-day AR and VR-focused event in Los Angeles that's designed especially for executives in media, games, advertising, and related industries, and it just added a cool (and likely wild) panel on virtual love, sex, and relationships: It's being hosted by Second Life/High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale, and he'll be talking with anthropologist Tom Boellstorff, who researches how virtual worlds help disabled users, and Ela Darling, co-founder of GonzoVR, and sometimes described as "the world’s first VR camgirl, and a leading voice in the intersection of VR and the adult entertainment industry." So quite an amazing trio with many stories to tell and insights to make. This happens along with many more talks, an art gallery, and audio lab this coming December 1st in downtown LA. And since I'm an advisor and speaker, here's a special discount code:

Go here to register and use NEWWORLD as your discount code for a $20 discount to a ticket, which runs from $30 to $120 (for VIP access). Ask your company to cover the cost as a research and networking expense, and see you there!

Upcoming Halloween Events in the Unity-Based Social MMO Sinespace

Catacombs in Sinespace's Illuminati Region via Lyric's Flickr

NWN Partner Sinespace has Halloween-themed events this weekend and next week, starting this Sunday at 3pm PST with live music at the Harvest Ho-Down at 381 Club, and a Best in Orange and Black Outfit contest for gold prizes. And on October 30 at 5:30 PST, there's Boo-tastic club music and a gravely huge gold giveaway. And for generally scary exploring, visit the Illuminati region (pics above and below). More on the blog and Twitter.

Watch: Dazzling Demo of Fluid Physics in Augmented Reality

Remember those great scenes in James Cameron's The Abyss where water seems to float in the air and change to the character's touch? Developer Lee Vermeulen has basically done that in augmented reality with fluid physics -- watch above. He's using a ZedMini with an HTC-Vive set-up. This feature is for a platform he's building for Modbox, his ambitious AR development platform: