New World Notes

Virtual Recreation of Huntington Beach Evokes Real Nostalgia in Visitor

Pic by Terry Worthington from the official Rigs of Huntington Flickr page

The beautifully detailed Second Life recreation of old Huntington Beach inspired this apparently real, very 60s-flavored revery* by reader Luther Weymann:

Wow. 424 12st Street, Huntington Beach. 1967. Climbing on the rocking horse oil pumps and riding them like the bulls in the bar while on acid. Good times. Traded a quart of reds for a bag of weed window to window while driving on the 405 with no one we knew. Doing a joint in the back of Mystic Arts World in Laguna then going next door to Taco Bell. Yumm. And the surf at the pier? All my buds had buds in bags on our boards. Angelo answered the knock at the open front screen door while I was breaking down a key into baggies on the living room floor and he turns his head and says this officer won't arrest us if we'll give him some buds. Cost me 4 bags and some rolling papers to get out of that mess... And yeah there was a three day round trip drive to Monterey Pop in the VW van.

I'm telling you youth is wasted. Oh there is the "on the young part" but I'll just leave it at "youth is wasted".

Memories of Huntington. Thanks.

Notably, the Rigs of Huntington was created by a Frenchwoman (Jade Koltai) who has never visited the beach in real life, working only from archival photos. But the virtual world recreation of a real historical location was still vivid enough to inspire genuine nostalgia for a place long since changed.

Top 5 Posts Last Week Including: Facebook Staff Privately Worry Fake Ads May Alter Election, Huntington Beach Gets a Second Life, Favorite Games Strangely Vary State-to-State

• Huntington Beach Was Once A Surreal Paradise Hellhole So Of Course Someone Recreated It In Second Life
• Favorite Game Varies Widely From State To State, According To Google Trends -- And Fortnite Is Only Most Popular In 20 States!
• VR Install Base As Of Q3 2019: Oculus Quest Just Below Half A Million, PSVR On Track To Pass 5 Million By The New Year
• Majority Of Facebook Employees Believe Policy Allowing Political Ads With False Claims May Change 2020 Election - Blind Survey
• Linden Lab Couldn't Take Over Firestorm Without Killing Firestorm

Nylon Pinkney Is Online: Scariest Halloween Costumes in the World

Sinespace Halloween Celebrations Launch This Weekend! And Last Chance to Submit Entries to the $3000 Wicked Witchcraft Challenge

Starting tomorrow, NWN partner Sinespace is launching its Halloween event spectacular with events running from tomorrow (Saturday) until the end of the month. Click here for all the event listings.

Speaking of spooky, there's still time to submit a creative work in Sinespace's Wicked Witchcraft challenge: Create witchcraft- themed interactive content in Sinespace (clothing, accessories, furniture item, spawnable memento, etc.) for a chance to win $2000 or $1000 in cash plus an exclusive Creator membership. Deadline is October 28 -- click here for all the details.

Here's some highlights from the Halloween festivities:

Huntington Beach Was Once a Surreal Paradise Hellhole So Of Course Someone Recreated It In Second Life

Pic by Elizabeth Dovgal

Click here to teleport to a new experience in Second Life that's notably strange and wonderful: A recreation of Huntington Beach in Southern California, at a time in the early-mid 20th century when oil rigs dotted the sky, even down to the beach, making the place a surreal combination of placid beach town and industrial wasteland.

To see what I mean, here's the official Rigs of Huntington Flickr page.

Amazingly, the town was created by Jade Koltai, in real life a French woman who's never actually visited Huntington Beach (she tells me), and instead based it on photos from this article, along with other sources... in about a week. Which is all the more impressive to me, because living in Los Angeles, I've been to Huntington once or twice, and Jade gets a lot of the beach town elements impressively right.

Here's a RL pic to compare with the SL pic above:

Favorite Game Varies Widely from State to State, According to Google Trends -- And Fortnite is Only Most Popular in 20 States!

Just got this fairly fascinating map from consumer/online research firm Satellite Internet, which compiles Google Trends for the top 20 videogames on the market now, but on a US state level. When you get that granular with the results, it turns out there's lots of surprises: While Fortnite is far and away the world's most popular game now, for example, it's not the most popular in most US states. (Click above to embiggenate.)

"[W]e were expecting Fortnite to be the most popular game across most states," as Staff Researcher Victoria Smith tells me. "We were surprised to see there was a lot of diversity across the US for the most popular video game. Minecraft rose to popularity this year and came up across a lot of states too. We included 20 different video games in our report, to see if Fortnite would beat them all out."

But that's only the case in 20 states. And in many other states, it's another game entirely:

VR Install Base as of Q3 2019: Oculus Quest Just Below Half a Million, PSVR On Track to Pass 5 Million By the New Year

SuperData just published a new report on the state of the VR industry, and gave me a sneak preview. The most important data point (as always) is the total install base of premium VR headsets -- see above. While PSVR is way ahead, Oculus Quest has so far seen relatively strong sales... relative being the operative word:

Oculus Quest sold 180K units during the quarter [Q3 2019], nearly double the combined sales figures for the Oculus Rift S and Oculus Go. It's clear Facebook's VR efforts in the near-term will be focused on its high-end standalone device. Lifetime sales for the device reached nearly 400,000 units through the end of Q3.

This is a bit slower than I forecast last August, when the numbers suggested Oculus Quest would reach an install base of 1 million by the end of 2019. That might happen, given the holiday season -- as SuperData's report notes, the Quest is the ideal gift, since it's ready to be played right out of the box -- but that's still far from clear. Take a look at the momentum of the Quest, versus PSVR:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Pedro Elevates Avatar Screenshots Into Art

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

“World” brought my browsing to a dead stop. It is the world folded in on itself and it’s wonderful. Pedro’s photostream is overflowing with striking and powerful photos. I love how there is symmetry and asymmetry. He’s centered, the folded “world” is balanced, but then there are the birds...

Sale: Hand-Drawn Avatar Portraits by Nylon Pinkney -- Two-for-One!

Click here for a Halloween special from Danielle "Nylon Pinkney" Faigenbaum, acclaimed SL/RL artist and creator of the Nylon Pinkney is Online comic: Headshot portraits of your avatar, two for the price of one. (And yes, she accepts Linden Dollars.) I'm of course biased but I think she brings a buttload of charm and visual style to these illustrations, making them more lifelike than the 3D digital versions. Here's a few she's done before:

Cajsa's Flickr Pick: Olympia Rhode Turns SL Into Rembrant-Like Imagery

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

Olympe Rhode’s photostream is exciting. Every picture is a work of art. There are no  casual snaps, no silly shots. It is all considered and composed to create beautiful, intriguing works that explore form and substance. Olympe usually works in sepia or in desaturated colors that focus our attention on the elements of the photo with no distracting colors. Thus, the thin lines that suggest the cage superimposed on the near transparent body are clearly our subject even though they are faint suggestions. You can see why this picture is called “My Body Is a Cage.”