New World Notes

Avatar Cosplayer Creates Tracer of Overwatch By Recycling Second Life Parts

Tracer SL cosplay by Alexandria Brangwin - see high res version here 

Avatar-based cosplay has been popular in Second Life since the world started, but the introduction of mesh into SL has somewhat spoiled the fun, since it's not uncommon to find unauthorized 3D models that have been ripped and plopped right into the world. Where's the challenge in that? Longtime gamer and SLer Alexandria Brangwin, however, created this truly impressive Second Life cosplay of Tracer from Overwatch the old-fashioned way:

"There are a lot of pre-made full avatars on the Marketplace but they often suck really bad," as she tells me. "They're scanned or lifted from other game files so they miss a lot of fine detail and end up looking very low quality -- even have no animations, no bento hands, not even eye movement... death to the project if you're trying to achieve specific poses." 

So instead, she went virtual world dumpster diving through Second Life's massive library of content looking for parts to recycle:

Modbox, Sandbox Game Development Platform With Amazing Mixed Reality Features, Coming to Magic Leap

Anytime I blog a VR/AR demo created in Modbox, the multiplayer sandbox game platform from Toronto dev Lee Vermeulen, the brains of mixed reality fans proceed to melt. (Like say this one, and also this one.) So their brains should also liquify at this video showing Vermeulen hard at work converting Modbox to Magic Leap:

Sinespace Announces Milestone Awards in FPS Map Design Contest!

Since NWN partner Sinespace recently extended the deadline for its first-person shooter map contest judged by Erik Wolpaw to May 31st, the development team is awarding a $500 milestone prize to the contestant with the most developed game experience so far.

First prize goes to Sinespace user “AnshumanPadhi”, who created the map depicted in the video above -- an outdoors space with appealing cartoon graphics and lots of variety to the environmental layout (exposed stairs, hills, trees, rock formations, etc.) to encourage stealth and strategy during combat; it also comes with several solo player quests, and a multiplayer King of the Hill challenge at the center of the map. Anshuman is documenting the step-by-step development of his entry on his website -- go here to check it out.

The runner-up (winning $250) is Sinespace user Zvalle20, who is creating a “homage to feudalism with the castle behind the wall:

Cajsa’s Daily Flickr Pick: Artful Screen Captures from Red Dead Redemption 2

Stuart Dodd’s photostream focuses on Red Dead Redemption 2, the Wild West game that was recently used to make Lil Nas X’s “Old Towne Road” music video that that landed on the Billboard Country chart until Billboard knocked him off sparking a controversy and inspiring country singer Billy Ray Cyrus to do a remix with him to show solidarity.  

I like how Dodd is using light and shadow in this picture to dramatic effect. The left edge of the door is right on the center line, but in terms of composition, I think the most striking elements is the contrast between the outside and the inside. 

“Waiting in the Evening Light” employs the same light and dark contrast. The cowboy is placed according to the Rule of Thirds. The light has a kind of solid quality to it, something anyone who has explored an old abandoned logger’s shack or even walked in a forest with a thick canopy where the light breaks through.

Philip Rosedale & Other Readers Ponder the Appeal of "Living, Breathing" Simulated Worlds

Great conversation that spun out of last week's great podcast interview with Philip Rosedale by ex-Linden Melinda Byerley, spinning off from my comment that "I'm a bit sad that he talks so much about how in the beginning, the focus was on making Second Life a living, breathing world with a simulated ecosystem and realistic ocean, sun and moon cycles, and so on... [when] both Second Life and High Fidelity, which now look, feel, and operate far more like interconnected 3D chat rooms."

To that point, Philip comments:

I so much agree about the magical appeal of the 'living, breathing world' - but why is it so appealing? I think about this a lot, and although I feel it in the most passionate way, I still wonder where the feeling comes from.

To that question, Mac speculates:

It may be because we, in our 'real', breathing lives, live in a vast ecology. We live on the ground (even if our feet are in an apartment 20 stories high). We exist in a network, invisible to us though it may be. We are solidly of our earth (and will return to it!). We are alive within an unimaginable connection which we evolved through and grew up in, through countless generations and millennia.

That may be why a series of discrete 'interconnected 3D chat rooms', as Wagner puts it, feels unnatural. The 'imagined reality' of these rooms technically and practically ends at their borders, unlike physical reality (in the physical reality of our world, you cannot get to the end of reality; you can't reach out and find that it has ceased. There is always something beyond your reach, be it air, space, vacuum, the rest of the universe. You cannot get to a point of 'nothing'). A teleport between rooms isn't quite the same as a physical tunnel. Discrete 3D chat rooms push against an internal fundamental knowledge that the world is still 'of a piece' even though it has become many pieces, many places, many communities. I would imagine that this feeling (analogous to the uncanny valley) will fade over time as we get used to non-geographically-designed digital landscapes: people can, have, and will adapt to situations which seem uncomfortable or unsuitable at the start. We are, after all, discursive and negotiable creatures. These are still teething times for the digital human.

In other words, he's arguing that it's a feeling we can evolve away from. Melinda herself makes a comment which suggests it's a feeling mainly confined to childhood:

Dual Universe Podcast Talks 30K Concurrency & Other Metaverse-y Topics

Cool new feature from the team at Dual Universe, the upcoming, crowd-funded, single shard MMO: A regular podcast, also available on YouTube (watch/listen above). Among the topics covered in the first episode is the recent stress test featuring 30,000+ (mostly simulated) concurrent players on the same contiguous planet, and a talk with founder JC Baillie, who I interviewed last month -- when he explained why Dual Universe is his team's attempt to create the metaverse. Watch below:

Top 5 Posts Last Week: Amazing Mixed Reality Demo, Linden Lab Addresses Reader Questions, Philip Rosedale Speaks, New Nylon Comic on Social Media

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online - What Becomes Of Your Social Media Nudes
• Watch: Amazing Mixed Reality Project -- Move 3D Objects Within Real Locations In VR... Which Then Seem To Appear In The Real World
• Linden Lab Responds To Second Life User Reader Questions About EEP Failures, Viewer Revamping, The Return Of Last Names, And Much More
• Linden Lab's Social Media Team Should Promote User-Made Marketplace Content
• Listen: Philip Rosedale Interviewed By Linden Vet About Building Virtual Worlds

Nylon Pinkney Is Online - What Becomes of Your Social Media Nudes

Send Cajsa Lilliehook More Great Virtual World/Gaming Flickr PhotoStreams!

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

I love Bailey Haiku’s fabulous ‘Stop Blaming Me!” a terrific sendup of the Bad Panda page Flickr explorers are all too familiar with. (See below.)

I am always looking for people with fun, creative, or beautiful photostreams from Second Life or other games. If you want to suggest someone or even suggest yourself, you can contact me through FlickrMail.

See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter or on her blog.

Second Life Adds "Linden Homes Security System" to Eject Virtual Intruders

You could even call it a "Ralph Pootawn Begone" device:

Your new Linden Homes Security System can be wall-mounted upon placement. When activated, it will scan your parcel as much as 400m above and below the control unit for unauthorized visitors...  We’ve chosen a minimum of 15 seconds and a maximum height of 400m to allow for those just passing through (either on the ground or in the air close to your home) to not be immediately booted off-course (while those who linger will get removed). Ejecting rather than send-to-home also allows first-time offenders to get the hint and continue on their travels.

More about it on the official SL community site. Pootwan, of course, is the griefer who helped saddle Second Life with the unfair "where people go if they can't get sex in real life" reputation years ago: