New World Notes

Best SuperData AR/VR Datapoints for 2019: Pokémon GO is the AR Market, Standalone VR Games Earned $171 Million Last Year

Game/XR analyst firm SuperData* recently released its 2019 year in review report, and was nice enough to give me a preview. I love when a single datapoint can tell you quite a lot about the larger ecosystem, and in this case, the report has (for me) two. First up, a telling one for AR:

Pokémon GO is 81% of the augmented reality game market -- which effectively means Pokémon GO is basically the entire AR game market.  

And one for VR:

Watch: NEOS Social VR Adds Highly Detailed Mouth Tracking With Reported Latency Under 100 Milliseconds

Here's the latest update from NeosVR, an impressive indie social VR metaverse project backed by Patreon funders that we featured last year: Eye and lip tracking using the HTC Vive (along with HTC's Lip Tracking module). As demonstrated by lead developer "Frooxius", this is among the most detailed variation of mouth tracking I've seen in any VR app, not just tracking lip movement but tracking tongue, teeth, and inside the mouth.

In the video you definitely see an occasional delay between real life mouth movement and the avatar's mouth, but Frooxius tells me that's a feature of audio processing that wouldn't show up in the social VR world of NEOS:

Cajsa's Flickr Pick: Belba Creates Amazing Images from Second Life

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

Belba’s “Last Dance” is an extraordinary picture. I love the perfect symmetry. Usually, it is recommended that people avoid symmetry to make their images more dynamic, but in this case the near-perfect symmetry emphasizes the forms, the shape of the light and the tutu. I also love the richly saturated colors.

Watch: "Let's Play Sims 4" as Streamed by... Someone's Second Life Avatar

There are copious YouTubers who stream "Let's Play Sims 4" videos and there's a small but passionate group of YouTubers who stream "Let's Play Second Life" videos, but this is a first for me: A YouTuber who streams "Let's Play Sims 4" videos through her Second Life avatar. (Watch above to see what I mean.)

"I’ve been working the last couple of months to create a platform (blog/YouTube) to experience both SL and learn about gaming through the lens of this online personality," explains YouTuber Meela Vanderbuilt. "My interest in gaming and even virtual platforms is so starkly opposite my RL career/life, so it’s just been fun to mix my interests and experience in content creation with SL... as Meela anyway!"

She does see quite a lot of overlap between how she plays Second Life over the last 7 years, and how she plays Sims 4 now:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Alma Berta Creates Pics of Epic Kawaii Cuteness

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

Alma Berta’s “Clear Blue” is a great example of Second Life anime avatars and the Kawaii aesthetic. The pose is cute and the clothing, hair, and accessories exude the femininity and amplified romanticism of Kawaii culture. I also love the blue color story, a useful reminder to the kawaii world that blue is not just for boys.

Xiola Linden's Farewell Address to the Second Life Community: Be Open To Change, Be Informed, Be Welcoming

I told you last week that the tech worker formerly known as "Xiola Linden" recently left her role as Community Manager at Linden Lab to take a similar role with mixed reality startup Ubiquity 6. As she did, I asked her if she had any last message for the Second Life community she loves so much. I put it to Xiola this way:

If the SL community asked you the best way to improve itself and make it stronger, what would you suggest?

And this is what she told me -- her farewell address as a Linden, so to speak. 

"Be open to change, but never stop questioning it. Constructive criticism is always going to be received more enthusiastically than attacks. It is very easy to get emotional about something that means so much to us. I know, from my own experiences with Second Life, that it's sometimes difficult to keep calm and Second Life on -- but I also witnessed that sort of emotional response grow into a lot of misinformation and unnecessary panic. So, it's a balance. But it is important and key, I think."

The community should also strive to be more of a community in the best sense of the word, because there's still so much potential in Second Life:

Watch: Oculus Quest Demo Virtually Recreates Developer's Apartment at 1:1 Scale, Adds Interactive Surfaces

Unity Labs developer Greg Madison created this seriously impressive Oculus Quest demo in which he mapped out* his real life apartment with a virtual, 1:1 scale recreation of that apartment -- including the flat surfaces. That way, if you're wearing the Quest, any surface can instantly become an interface for games or other interactive apps:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Sunset Theas Takes Beautifully Impressionistic Pics

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and style

Sunset Theas’ photostream is an exploratory journey of what you can do with WindLight and depth of field. The title of this shot, “they were on top, standing one in front the other, the moment before they realized there were no more floors to climb” is indicative of the way he works, integrating words with his pictures to create a deeper connection.

A Black Woman in Real Life Reflects on Being Black in Second Life

Martin Luther King Jr. day should not be the only day we think about addressing racism as it occurs in virtual worlds, so these thoughtful videos from SL blogger Emuna Zamani, a black woman in real life, are worth a watch today or any day. Emuna has a warm and chatty presence, even through her avatar, which helps her broach potentially touchy subjects in a gentle way, including:

• She argues that it's not necessarily offensive when SL skin makers don't offer black-skinned avatars, as they can take time and special effort to make well -- while getting them wrong can cause offense.
• It's not offensive "blackface" for non-black SL bloggers to depict black-skinned avatars in their images -- but it can be disrespectful/borderline blackface when those images incorporate stereotypical aspects. (Which, unfortunately, she's encountered within the SL blogging community.)

In Part 2, she addresses reader comments, including one who insists that there's no racism in virtual worlds (very much not the case), then goes on to discuss other provocative topics:

Treasure Trove for Creators: 100,000+ Classic Art Images for Free Use

Here's a treasure trove for art lovers and creators of new art including digital remixes and reboots of old art, including virtual world platforms: Over 100,000 digital photographs of great art from Paris Museums, including works by Monet, Picasso, and Cézanne,  licensed for free use and re-use. As the press release announces:

Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, and the Catacombs. Users can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work, and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image.

“Making this data available guarantees that our digital files can be freely accessed and reused by anyone or everyone, without any technical, legal or financial restraints, whether for commercial use or not,” reads a press release shared by Paris Musées.

Link via Jason Kottke, who has some wonderful examples of the art available for download and use.