New World Notes

Sinespace Unveils Free Player Region & Free New Home for All Users

Big Labor Day weekend announcement from Sinespace, the Unity 3D-based virtual world (and proud sponsoring partner to NWN): A free new home and region for all Sinespace users, both new and returning. Unlike a region in, say, Second Life, a Sinespace region can be customized to near unlimited size and hold up to 200 users at the same time.  Here’s how to get it:

1. If new to Sinespace, create a free account here. 
2. Download the new version of Sinespace for Windows, Mac & Linux here. 
3. Existing users: Click Home to load your new home and free region.
4. New users: Simply click Home to teleport to your new  region.

The new home (see pics) is much larger than the previous default home, and is ready for furnishings available in the Store. Or you can buy a new home template in the Store of endless size and variety — a small island, a castle, and beyond.  And here's a new tutorial for taking enhanced snapshots of your home, region, avatar, and more:

More new home region pics and help tips below:

The Wedding Planner: The Smartphone-Era Remake

Support Black Dragon, the Viewer That Makes Second Life Look Amazing

Totally untouched Black Dragon screencapture by Nadjanator

Click here to consider supporting future updates to Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following for how it optimizes and enhances the virtual world's graphics, the brainchild of NiranV, a passionate (if cranky) advocate for making SL and user-made content beautiful as it deserves to be. (And don't worry about the Adult content warning that pops up when you click, it's an odd Patreon quirk as there's nothing really NSFW on his page.) 

Speaking for myself, NiranV is one of the most talented SLers to support the community, volunteering skills to Black Dragon that could easily get him a high-paying graphics programming job. People like him need and deserve the SL community's support, so they in turn can keep on supporting the SL community. So click here to become a patron to his Patreon. Don't take my word for it, take a look at the pics in this post, and on this Flickr group devoted to untouched Black Dragon images.

Speaking for himself and his viewer, here's what SLers can expect to get from using Black Dragon:

Rec Room Always Intended as Cross-Platform & Not VR-Only, Says Company's Community Head

As Rec Room for iOS went to open beta, I mentioned how some community members have grumbled that the social VR world seems to be moving away from being VR-focused. But Shawn Whiting, head of community at Rec Room, tells me that that's never actually been the case:

"We think of ourselves as a virtual social club," as he puts it. "We're always expanding to new platforms since playing with your friends is what makes Rec Room so fun. We're always looking to increase the opportunities players have to hop in no mater where they are or what device they have."

I think it's fair to say Rec Room (as with Sansar), marketed itself some years ago with more emphasis on VR, until it became clear that few people wanted to buy a virtual reality rig. But since Rec Room was among the few social VR games on Steam back then, my sense is the small community of early adopter HMD owners fervently embraced Rec Room as "our platform". But Sean insists it's always been architected for cross-platform:

Space Engineers, a Voxel-Based Sandbox Game for Creators Who Want More Destruction

YouTuber Luca, who's made some of the best viral Second Life machinimas in recent years, has a third life as a YouTube streamer of Space Engineers, a voxel-based sandbox game. (Watch above, as Luca builds a whole ass space ship during a downtime.) While the game worlds are decidedly different, Luca says many fans of the former might want to try out the latter:

An Optimized Second Life Looks & Perform (Almost) As Well as a AAA Game

This is a jaw-dropping sneak preview to an upcoming roleplaying sci-fi game, and while you might assume otherwise on first glance, it's not a AAA game for consoles: It's based in Second Life. Called New Frontiers (Discord channel here). Lead developed by JDB Bing, it's expected to officially launch in a few months, but you can sneak preview it in person: Click here to teleport.  

Shot in the Black Dragon viewer at about 30 FPS (perfectly decent for an RPG), Mr. Bing tells me the sim is being optimized for high performance: "There isn't a bunch of a 1024 textures everywhere," as he puts it. "Mostly we are trying to stay away from resource-wasting items and sticking with creations from Isil/Tokeli/Skye. They use materials aka speculars/normals along with limiting their polycount and texture usage."

As such, it's a clearcut case study on the importance of optimization, and what Second Life users, creators, and Linden Lab itself are missing out on, when they refuse to put a premium on optimizing:

Rec Room for iPad & iPhone Now in Open Beta, Here's How To Get It

Rec Room, now running in second place in everyday usage behind VRChat (in terms of next generation, VR-facing social worlds), just announced the open beta for Rec Room on most iPad and iPhone devices. Here's how to get it:

1. Ensure you have a supported device by checking here
2. If you do, download the Apple TestFlight app from the App store 
3. Click this link (on your iOS device) to join the Rec Room iOS beta
4. Report bugs and give us your feedback here!  

Watch some early user video below. Interesting that it seems to be a first-person only experience, so that the mobile version isn't too different from the full VR version. Some Rec Room community members have grumbled that the game seems to be moving away from being VR centric, but if the iOS version drives much more usage, I think it's likely those complaints will die down.

Cajsa’s Second Life Flickr Pick: The Moody, Cinematic Screenshots of RAI

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

I love this picture from RAI called “Lost in Translation.” There is something so comforting in the lighting, the guy sitting at the counter eating his meal, the cook/waiter/dishwasher watching over him and the eager rooster keeping an eye out for spillage. It feels like a scene from a novel, something is about to happen, but not yet.

Bakes on Mesh Will Greatly Improve Second Life Performance -- If SLers, Viewers & Mesh Brands Adopt It

Left and right: Bakes on mesh when using the updated SL viewer... and a current 3rd party viewer (photos by Rhonda Huntress via this thread) 

Linden Lab just announced the official release of Bakes on Mesh [aka BOM], which aims to optimize mesh-based attachments. (Lack of mesh optimization has utterly crippled Second Life performance in recent years.) And while actual SL users are struggling to get it to work with their existing mesh and current viewers (see above), it does have great promise. NiranV, creator of the Black Dragon SL viewer and Second Life's sharpest critic of poor performance, is cautiously optimistic. 

"Bakes on Mesh idea is nice and it's a much needed thing, especially with onion layers," as he puts it to me. "This could potentially reduce texture memory usage by up to 75%, and polygon counts too." He's planning to merge BOM to his own viewer soon, and Firestorm, Second LIfe's most popular viewer, is already doing so.

One key challenge, however, is BOM's compatibility with existing mesh-based avatar content. It remains to be seen if the leading brands will update existing content for their customers -- or require them to buy new BOM-based mesh.

Empathy, Inc.: Acclaimed Indie Movie is Dark Twist on VR Utopianism

Empathy, Inc. is a new, acclaimed indie movie coming to an arthouse theater near-ish you (and hopefully one or more streaming services), and to judge by the trailer, it's a darkly clever twist on the most utopian claims from the virtual reality industry. Here's the synopsis:

Hotshot venture capitalist Joel has a multi-million-dollar deal go up in smoke, and he and his actress wife Jessica are forced to move in with her parents and start from scratch. At the lowest and most desperate moment in his life, Joel meets old friend Nicolaus and his business partner Lester, who are seeking investors in a new technology known as XVR--Xtreme Virtual Reality--from their company Empathy, Inc., which is said to offer the most realistic and moving experiences for users by placing them in the lives of the less fortunate. Joel gets the startup its funds but soon discovers that the tech's creators have far more sinister uses in store for their creation and that the reality it provides its customers isn't virtual.

If the technology use case sounds familiar, it's likely because many tech evangelists were just recently claiming virtual reality could do that very thing. For example, like I wrote a couple years ago: