Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“The Art of Dance” is a dramatic photo of that most dramatic of dances, the tango. It made me smile that the man has the flower in his teeth rather than the far more stereotypical woman. They are caught in the spotlight, forming the beautiful lines that would make dance judges reach for the 10 cards. It is just one of many widely varied photos from Maria Rodriguez’ photostream.
What’s an SL photostream without a bit of cheesecake? Click here:
Speaking of which, do me a favor and go to the homepage and let us know if you can see the video. Since I blogged about it last week, I've received reports that many can't see it, and I'm not sure why. Possibly Linden Lab is geo-targeting it to select visitors based on location, or it only plays on some browsers/devices? (Plays fine for me from Los Angeles on Chrome on my Windows laptop.)
I've caught countless live music performances streamed into Second Life over the years, but performer Katica Pajic (Katiaportugal.genesis in SL) has a fresh new twist that I haven't seen before: While performing in SL, she also streams her computer display/webcam feed on Facebook and YouTube. That way, you not only get to watch the virtual show, but can also watch Katia singing (and chatting with her audience) in real life.
She started doing shows like this in April 2020, during the height of the pandemic, and after a brief pause, began doing so again, often performing twice in one night.
The inspiration, she tells me, is "to show people how it looks from the performer's side and who are they behind their mic." And also, that "I am not just an SL name... I am a person."
I love this extra level of engagement, and it's also a smart way for performers to build their brand. Anyway, Katia's next show is set for tomorrow at Noon and 2pm SLT -- follow her Facebook and/or her YouTube channel to watch!
The Really Needy HUD system (a proud sponsoring media partner to New World Notes) just launched Season Two of its fitness contest, with the top three winners collecting L$2000 total in cash prizes, along with a free Really Luxurious Shower Cabin -- go here to get started.
A fun new way to explore Second Life and socialize, the Really Needy HUD is a Sims-like roleplay system to SL, and the fitness game on it tracks the most active players on an in-world leaderboard. (Click here to see it.)
Here's tips to getting started from Really Needy's Grace Ling:
That's right: Pet the dog in VR. And feel yourself petting them too.
"Basically the controller vibrates if you pet the dog, and they'll follow you around if you're holding like a stick or a tennis ball," VRCer Ben Rainwolf tells me.
The immersive effect of the dogs' AI, matched to the VR experience seems pretty compelling: "The cute dogs never stop wanting attention and I feel terrible if I don't give it to them," as another player put it. "It's like an adorable trap that you can't leave."
"The dogs gain trust with you over interactions and change their animations and wagging the more you interact," project designer Jen Davis-Wilson of Studio CyFyi tells me. (Her co-founder Cyan Laser created the dog AI.) "The conditionals of going home, interacting, petting, etc. does get a bit complex with multiplayer networking. But this was a fairly small job."
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
This picture by Tresore Prada Hawkins sent me off an futile Google quest to identify a female poet who wrote “inspirational poems” for greeting cards because this picture looks so much like the greeting cards my mother would seek out, all with poems from this particular three-word name poet, all with soft-focus, idealized scenes, some with people, many with flower-infused landscapes. When I saw it, I just thought of my mother and how much she would love this picture. And if you have any idea who the poet who graced so many inspirational greeting cards in the 70s and 80s, let me know. It’s driving me nuts!
Now, Mom would definitely not get a greeting card with the next one, click here:
In response to my post on VRChat's impressive creative community, a Rec Room creator recently sent me this strong case for their own platform of choice, and included the videos featuring great user-created contest in Rec Room seen here.
"There is amazing work and talent there, and it was all built in game. ALL of it. All of the modeling, texturing, animations, programming, costumes, etc. To me that's the magic of Rec Room," they told me.
This and Rec Room's multi-user collaboration aspect, they argue, is in sharp contrast to worlds with tool sets that are tightly integrated with a 3D engine and require a lot of offline, solo creativity:
"For most other things like VRChat," as they put it, "you'll be in Unity for days doing all of that stuff. In Rec Room, you're doing it with up to 40 people across almost any platform, voice chatting and co-building and hanging out the entire time. You don't have the friction of needing to go download Unity or ROBLOX Studio and learn all of this dev tool stuff on your own. Plus other Rec Room users will teach you how to build in real time."
“Hopper Like” by Karma Weymann looks as though it shows us the building across the street from the famed Nighthawks diner by Edward Hopper. She is in the next building over, the only person in the picture. That’s very Hopper-like, too. It’s not just the building that is reminiscent, it is the sense of how alone the people are.
