New World Notes

Binge Watch: A Second Life Machinima Team Not Only Produced a Full-Length, Tarantino-esque Detective Series, It's Now On Its Third Season!

With its arresting visuals, sardonic dialog, and music like the ironic Sinatra throwback heard above, the LANG series is something Quentin Tarantino* might make, if he was in the mood to make a comedic neo-noir machinima in Second Life. Created by Zatch Ixchel and company, I wrote about LANG last January, and it's not only kept up its solid pace, but is now teasing Season 3 as coming soon. 

"At this point, I’m inspired by the characters themselves, the world we’ve built here," Zach tells me, when I ask how he keeps inspired to keep creating episodes. "I want to know what happens to these people. I want to know why Lang is the way he is. I want to know if Sadie will ever be satisfied."

Watch Season 1 and Season 2 below so you're all caught up before S3 drops:

SL Fashion Friday: Two Stylish Looks from Two Shopping Events

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

Chic at Phil’s Place has been keeping us informed of the best in fashion since 2008. As one of the old guard, she has kept going while many others have taken long sabbaticals (ahem, me!) or quit altogether. I love how she focuses on one item in Unseelie, the fabulous foot jewelry from Lassitude & Ennui. 

Lassitude & Ennui’s Unseelie foot jewels are at the Chronicles and Legends event -- click here to teleport. 

For a mod look, click here:

Oculus Quest 2 Install Base Now Likely 3-4 Million, According to Facebook's Coy Earnings Reports

Original chart via UploadVR, annotated with Quest 2 sales estimates by me

Facebook's latest earnings report is once again playing the coy game of referring to Oculus device and software sales "as non-advertising revenue" without giving any specifics, so we must continue the coyly make install base estimates. And based on some rough but reasonable assumptions*, Facebook probably sold 1.4 million to 1.9 million Quest 2 units in the first quarter of 2021, a slight decrease in the estimated 1.5 million to 2 million Quest 2 units sold in the first quarter of its launch, in Q4 2020.

Or to put it another way: The Quest 2 probably has a total install base somewhere between 3 million and 4 million. Which isn't bad! That still trails PSVR's install base in absolute numbers, but then again the Quest 2 has been on the market for far less time. The next test is whether this revenue remains steady; if it does, by end of 2021 it'll hit the 10 million install base that Mark Zuckerberg arbitrarily set as the target for mainstream adoption. (10 million is still far smaller than leading game consoles, but that's another topic for another time.)

Can You Sell a Second Life Screenshot as NFT Art? Probably, But Beware Second Life's "Gray Interesting Mysteries" Around User IP Rights

UPDATE, May 7: Linden Lab relatively recently updated its TOS to address the issues discussed below -- read this follow-up post.

With hype over NFT digital art still hyping, Second Life users are asking the next inevitable question:

Is it possible for an SL photographer to sell their digital photos as NFTs? Lately, selling NFTs is a hot topic. We see digital art selling at marketplaces like Nifty Gateway for obscene amounts. Obviously, that's rare. Still a number of photographers have come to me lately asking if photos taken in Second Life are saleable as an NFT for a profit -- even a small profit -- on marketplaces like Nifty Gateway or Rarible. The TOS is so confusing. 

The short answer is Yes, but the actual answer is much, much more complicated. That's because Linden Lab the company allows users to retain ownership to anything they make on the Second Life platform, which has led to game companies, book publishers, TV networks, movie studios, even fashion brands, creating and profiting from content that was originally made in SL -- all totally permissible, from Linden Lab's point of view.

However, the very fact that SL users retain the IP rights to anything that they make in the virtual world leads to many "gray interesting mysteries" -- in the words of Fred von Lohmann, who said them when he was staff attorney for the Electric Frontier Foundation:

A Beautifully Illustrated Travel Guide on Flickr to Wonderful Second Life Locations -- Teleport Links in Every Description

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

Second Life has hundreds of sims so a travel guide is a useful person to know or at least to follow. Anthony Gartner is just such a person. Posting single snaps as he travels from sim to sim, he gives you an idea of what you will see and he kindly provides a SLURL to each location. I love this picture from A Little Bit of Soul. (Click here to teleport.) I think he does a great job of capturing the essence of the place. 

For an out of this world experience, click here:

Anonymous Artist Made Amazing Virtual World Images Like These Then Mysteriously Disappeared from Flickr

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

Update, 6:00pm SLT: While Ms. Shilova is no active on the featured Flickr account, SLer Vince JB Striker points out that she won an SL-based competition earlier this year. I've changed the title to reflect this. (WJA)

Catchafire Shilova is no longer active on Flickr, but I only discovered her today, so she is still new to me. Her pictures are so original and surreal, it would be a shame not to highlight them just because they are old. In “Scarcity Generation” we have Mickey and Minnie figures in punk tartans and safety pins. There’s blood on her hands and feet, she’s holding a knife, has Shilova killed Minnie? Is the answer in the linked song “There Will Be No Next Time?”

Can cats do the mambo? To find out, click here:

Milestone: VRChat Peak Concurrent User Numbers Start Surpassing Second Life's

Source: This user-made VRChat concurrency tracker by @OhNoItsFusl

It's been building for many months, and last weekend, it finally happened: Social VR/virtual world VRChat surpassed Second Life's concurrent user rates, probably for the first time: When 40,540 people were logged into SL, VRChat counted 42,513 online users.

This news via longtime virtual world explorer Adeon Writer, who's been tracking VRChat-versus-Second Life CCU numbers for quite some time. (Second Life's current usage rates are published via this API.)

What's striking, as Adeon tells me, is that there wasn't any particularly special event in VRChat happening last weekend that drove up user log-ins :

"Just your average Saturday peak in VRChat," as he puts it. "It's just growing, I think. I just thought it was interesting as I've never seen VRC's online count be higher than SL's at any given time."

Me too. For the longest time -- i.e. well over 15 years -- Second Life has attracted daily peak CCU rates in the 40K+ range, often approaching 80K at its apex of concurrent activity, around 2007-2008.

Now, a much younger virtual world (VRChat was launched in 2017) is finally starting to attract those usage numbers too.

This isn't to say VRChat's CCU is always higher than SL, because Second Life's 40K+ CCU happens at a very steady rate:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: The Incredibly Detail-Rich Pics of Teej Timaaj

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

I love the abundance in this picture by Teej. While generally people recommend not placing your subject in the middle of a picture, rules do not apply to goddesses. Moreover, Teej does not make the mistake of centering everything. Notice the flowers are much closer and bigger on the right, giving perspective and dimension to the picture. I love that she uses flowers the same color as her skin, making the subject blend into the picture. While many seem to stand out with contrasting colors, one way to get people to look closely is with an avatar that stands out by blending in - like a chameleon. 

No goddesses in the next picture:

This Week's Featured Banner: The Mass Effect-Inspired World Created in SL

This week's banner above was featured in my recent post on BluShock, a group of dedicated Mass Effect roleplay fans who have created an entire experience in Second Life inspired by their favorite game. Sample:

“It's our largest and most ambitious/compact base of operations yet,” BluShock leader Fazzy Constantine (above) tells me. “We have over 25 rooms and multiple elevators with 8 levels each, a huge arboretum dome, which is inspired to look like the Presidium Commons, on the Citadel, from the Mass Effect games, which our roleplay group has been inspired by, since 2010.”

But the base is only the beginning:

“The asteroid will be our base of operations in our fictional star system. Vanaheim, which is set in the Milky Way galaxy, in what would be known as the Beta Quadrant, if you were into Star Trek. We have three more main worlds we'll be creating, over the course of 6 to 9 months.”

Teleport link to start exploring yourself, but be sure not to interrupt any Mass Effect roleplay already in progress.

Submit your own favorite virtual world locations here or in Comments below:

Top Posts Last Week Including: An Oddly Real Homepage for a Virtual World

• Second Life Unveils Strange New Homepage Featuring Real Life Model, Other Odd Non-Second Life Marketing
• SL At The End Of Major Innovations After Uplift? (Comment Of The Week)
• "The" Metaverse Isn't Happening (Comment Of The Week #2)
• Twitter Usage Back Up To 2020 Levels Despite (Because Of?) Trump Ban