New World Notes

Free Sinespace Gold: Get New World Notes' Special Code for 500 Gold!

Some readers reported trouble redeeming last week's free 500 Gold offer from NWN media partner Sinespace, so here's a couple new redemption codes to use, and how to use them:

To redeem New World Notes' Sinespace Gold offer:

• Log into your free Sinespace account (or create one first) on the Sinespace website.
• Then, under the My Accounts section, enter “YTGPKP62” in the Redeem Code tab. (See pic at left.)
• You should get a confirmation message shortly after.

What to do with all that Gold? Here's some recent ideas:

• There's the high-res avatars and accessories from famed creator Daz 3D.
• There's the vast selection of custom-made dances from Abranimations, longtime creator of virtual world-based moves.

Here's another redemption code for readers:

Nylon Reads Completely Nice Customer Notecards

Dolly Parton Challenge Inevitably Invaded by Second Life Avatars

That the #DollyPartonChallenge is called the #DollyPartonChallenge is probably the most random meme on the Internet today because among anyone in the world, Dolly Parton is not only pre-social media, she is too gigantic a force to be contained by it.

That said, as you might expect, Second Life's social media mavens have recently invaded the meme with their avatars -- as with this one above by Caitlin Tobias. Indeed, check the #DollyPartonChallenge tag on Flickr, and you'll see avatars have swarmed it.

Whoever would have started such a meme within the SL community? Here's the culprit:

Cajsa's Choices: You Must Love Anto Haiku's SL Fashion Blog

Must Have Love is a fashion blog by Anto Haiku that has a real variety of  styles. In this post, she presents at the somewhat noir photo, a woman sitting on the edge of the roof looking down at the city. Her outfit is put together from items sold at this month’s Uber event that runs through February 20th. Here is a catalog for the event from Seraphim:

• Amitie poses On the Roof Shiny Shabby
• tram J0109 hair UBER
• N-Uno - Verda Top UBER
• N-Uno - Verda Bodysuit UBER
• N-Uno - Valery Stockings UBER

Another to love beyond the break:

Mark Zuckerberg Drops Huge Hint on Oculus Quest Install Base on Facebook Earnings Call

Many VR enthusiasts are skeptical about SuperData's VR sales reports, the most recent of which pinned the install base of Oculus Quest to now be 705,000+. But there's another, possibly more reliable source for estimating the Quest's install base: What Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says about Quest earnings during a stock earnings call.

And here's what he just said:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during a call with investors that “on Christmas Day, people bought almost $5 million worth of content in the Oculus Store.”

Now Facebook isn't exactly reputed for its honesty, but misstatements on a public company's financial reports are quite literally a criminal offense.  As a veteran game analyst once put it to me: "Earnings reports are reliable, because if they're wrong, someone can go to jail."

But what does $5 million worth of content in the Oculus Store purchased on Christmas Day tell us? A fair amount, thanks to the magic metric called ARPU:

UK Second Life Users Likely To Be Hurt By Brexit Fluctuations on US$-to-Pound Exchange Rates

Last year, many Second Life users based in the UK celebrated their impending Brexit from the European Union with a party in the virtual world (above). But ironically, British SLer Michaelatv Destiny makes an interesting point about Brexit in the official forums:

I'm just getting some feedback from my fellow Brits. In 2016 I had an affordable [SL] homestead I could keep under my present retired income. We were getting $1.49 to one GBP. Our currency crashed big time after stupid decision to leave.

In no time at all it was down to $1.35, which added £6 a week extra on my tier, which I could not afford. So been waiting 3 years for GBP to recover back to $1.49. Again. This hasn't happened, and I really losing hope I will ever be able to buy or rent in the near future.

Brexit happens any day now, and there's no doubt in my mind that our GBP will go into free fall. I conservatively predict the pound will be almost worthless, crashing to about $1.10 to one GBP. That would push up the price of a homestead to £9 -£10 a week, from-pre 2016 levels.

More conversation here. For the many older British living on a pension, especially, even a small change to the British pound-to-US dollar exchange can adversely impact their discretionary spending (i.e. entertainment, i.e. Second Life), so she's probably right. I'm not any kind of expert on exchange rates, but this analysis from Capitol.com does suggest sharp fluctuations and a downward trend for the British pound against the dollar, greatly accelerated by Brexit:

Cajsa's Techniques: How The Friendly Otter Creates Her Amazing, Painting-Like, SL-Based Images

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

Hamlet was particularly curious about the process for The Friendly Otter’s “The Crows Watch” that I featured recently. I thought it was likely mostly achieved in Second Life and he thought it was likely more post-processing. Experimenting in WindLight myself, it was fairly easy to get a black and white silhouette, but to get the kind of etched detail was another story. But there was more to it after all. 

The Friendly Otter shared her process with me. Her pictures were shot in Firestorm. First, she used Xanthe’s Hazy Daze WindLight, commenting that it does a good job of clearing the background with bright white light. Then she began editing in PhotoShop. She guessed that took about an hour or two. These are the steps:

1. Film Grain filter - max Highlight Area and max Intensity. This softens the background a little more and shows some more detail of the foreground
2. Black & White adjustment
3. Tilt-Shift Blur - just a low blur of 5px; angled it so it kept the bird bodies clear but blurred the house and some of the legs
4. Texture Overlay - set to Color Burn
5. Photocopy Texture Overlay - set to Lighter Color

Here’s a couple more by Otter, with her technique notes:

Pregnant Avatars With Growing, Visible, Birth-Able Fetuses Coming Soon to Second Life (Whether You're Ready or Not)

Bento-based avatars! These new-ish, highly customizable avatar skeletons have made all manner of SL innovations possible, and as you might have guessed, this one would come soon enough:

A pregnant avatar with a gradually growing fetus inside, which at the end of gestation, actually gives birth in Second Life. Another feature in development (if the technical challenges can be overcome): Making the fetuses visible through the baby bump.

It's an upcoming product from Zooby VR, creator of SL babies, virtual cats which even poop, and other strange and wonderful artificial life creations. Lead designer Carrie Tatsu tells me they've already garnered great excitement from her customers, avid for further roleplay possibilities:

Google Stadia Likely Has Way Less Than 1 Million Users

Gamers are getting disgruntled about Stadia, Google's game streaming service, but a more relevant question for me is: Just how many gamers are even trying Stadia out? We can make an educated guess:

• Google Stadia has less than 500,000 installs on Google Play. It's currently showing between 100,000 and 500,000 installs.
• Google Stadia (probably) has less than 40,000 installs on iOS. It's currently showing 385 reviews on iOS' App Store. A pretty decent rule of thumb is to assume that there are 100 users per 1 posted review, i.e. 38,500 total; round that up to say under 40,000.

Assume similar install numbers for compatible PC and Mac devices, and less than 1 million total installs (let alone active users, which will be less) is an educated guess. Unless I am missing something?

Cajsa's SL Flick Pick: Lotus' Lovely, Avedon-esque Avatar Images

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

I was struck by how beautifully the avatars in Lotus’ photostream are posed. There is a natural grace to the poses. Of course the photos artfully display the poses to their best effect possible. It all becomes clear when I noticed vendor ads for Boo’d Up.oses where she is the model for most of the poses. Boo’d Up.oses is Fred Hamilton's, pose store. He was recently featured under his Flickr name Mr. Nobody. Getting back to the picture, I like how she uses her body as the frame of the shot. Bokeh is often used when the background is blurred and the illumination comes from the direction the camera is pointing. She put a bokeh layer over her image to create the effect.