New World Notes

Play in VRChat: Udon Tycoon, Amazing Community-Created Multi-Player Rollercoaster Construction & Sharing Sim

UdonTycoon is a new VRChat experience [search “Udon Tycoon” to play] that’s easily the most amazing game I’ve seen created on the platform. (And I’ve seen some amazing ones.) Basically a mash-up of Roller Coaster Tycoon but in VR and in a multi-user virtual world, it includes a user-controlled toolkit that enables players to create and save their own rollercoaster tracks and -- this part makes my head spin -- share them in the same space with other players at the same time. 

“Yes, it's all fully networked,” lead creator Reimajo tells me. “[Players] can even preview the parts that other users intent to place with them.”

Reimajo and her collaborators have been building this in their free time for over a year, coding gameplay (as the name suggests) in UdonSharp, the user-made C#-to-Udon compiler popular with VRChat developers. But at first, she didn’t even intend to turn it into a full-fledged game: “[W]e just worked way too long on some things that we personally found cool because nobody else had done it before.” 

That community tinkering aspect distinguishes UdonTycoon -- or for that, most every other great VRChat experience -- from professionally made VR games. 

“A regular game studio couldn't justify the development time that we put into some ‘gimmicks,” as Reimajo puts it. “That's why most VR games today are still not very immersive and use laser pointer UI for example, or simple buttons that you can only click with your trigger button, but not physically press with your hands.”

Launched last week, it’s already attracted nearly 40,000 visits, which is a higher play rate than most studio produced VR titles. (As I write this, only some 1500 people are playing Beat Saber on Steam.)

“All of that is mostly just the product of hanging out in VR with my friends and I'm the person who codes all the time,” Reimajo adds.”I taught that to myself 2 years ago when Udon was pretty new, together with all the needed Unity skills. There was a lot of stuff that I was missing in VR (why are there no good non-plane flying games?) so I wanted to learn how to make it myself.”

More from Reimajo on creating UdonTycoon below:

This Rare SL Fashion Blog Expresses Art & Personality, Not Just Style

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

Tapas and Clothes is a blog I featured earlier this year but I really could not pass by Trouble Dethly’s Even If Just for Tonight, a post with this fabulous pic or the event it promotes. Don’t we all feel overwhelmed from time to time and the constant stimulation from old-fashioned media and social media can overwhelm us? But then again, they say if you want something done, ask a busy person. 

SLurl: [Third Annual Interactive Trick or Treat Neighborhood and Carnival].

• Top – Deadwool – Malone Working Vest
• Top – Deadwool – Sean Trousers

For a nice bit of star-quality cosplay , click here:

Meta Commentary on Facebook's Metaverse Move to Becoming Meta

Update, 11/29: Added the summary video above!

7 years ago, Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson told me this:

"Metaverse" has turned into a sort of golem, capable of wandering the earth on its own, out of the purview of its creator. So I am always surprised to see where it turns up and what it's doing. Ten years ago that wasn't the case. Anyone who wanted to use it in front of a normal audience would have had to say "Metaverse, an idea from the novel Snow Crash." Twenty years ago, they'd have had to add, "a novel by Neal Stephenson." Now apparently "Metaverse" can stand up on its own three feet and lumber about, at least in the setting of tech blogs.

Now, however, it's front page news on every major media outlet, because this was just posted by Zuckerberg on Facebook's company site:

From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other services. As our new brand starts showing up in our products, I hope people around the world come to know the Meta brand and the future we stand for.

Emphasis mine and put a pin in that, because if he's serious, that suggests a time when Oculus may not require Facebook Connect. In fact he just suggested that much in an interview with the Verge:

Addams Family Cosplay & Other SL Halloween Fun from Reign Renzci

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

Reign Renzci’s title for this pic cracked me up. “How pumpkin spice lattes are made” is a great quip for a fun Halloween picture. I love the lighting in the pic, the sheen bouncing off their heads. It’s vibrant and colorful, and as good a theory as any other. 

For more Halloween humor, click here:

Watch: Matthew Ball's Metaverse Fireside Chat With WaPo's Gene Park & Myself in Breakroom -- Topic Timecodes in the Post!

As promised, here's the full video of my recent metaverse fireside chat with metaverse analyst/VC Matthew Ball and The Washington Post's Gene Park in Sine Wave Entertainment's Breakroom. While we chat, Sine Wave founders Rohan Freeman and Adam Frisby (the large bunny) dynamically edited the world's Unity-based environment, which is why an actual bonfire and assorted random objects and effects suddenly appear around us.

Here's the time codes for all the key topics we discuss:  

2:35 -- Was there a personal experience for you which led to an “ah ha” moment that inspired your thinking on the Metaverse? (Answered by both Matthew and Gene.)

7:55 -- We discuss the elephant in the virtual room, on why Zuckerberg is reportedly changing Facebook's name to be more metaverse-like -- is it just a cynical PR move, or is it genuine? Matthew then goes into his sense of where Facebook is currently positioned in the wider ecosystem, while I discusses how Facebook brought on the founding CTO of Second Life nearly a decade ago, and he subsequently helped put together the Oculus acquisition.

14:00 -- Social graphs and the metaverse; is social media as we know it coming to an end? And how can its next generation be built to serve the metaverse? Matt discusses that in relation to Epic Games and Tim Sweeney's tweets about its own ambitions around the Metaverse, and the evolution of identity on the Internet.

19:00 -- Is there a metaverse age cliff (as I put it)?  The platforms we generally describe as metaverse-like are extremely popular with pre-teens and teens, then usage seems to rapidly drop off once people age out of their 20s.  

24:55 -- Interoperability and regulation. How does Matthew see regulation happening? Is he optimistic that we'll create shared open standards?

Coming up: ROBLOX and "scrip" (as documented in this video by Quentin Smith), the Metaverse and NFTs, and a guest appearance by Philip Rosedale:

Why: Why Second Life Needs a Better Presentation & Starting Setpiece

Here's a good video from longtime gaming/SL YouTuber Luca, who is demonstrably more passionate about improving Second Life than most people at Linden Lab. In it, Luca basically argues that Second Life can and should modernize its presentation and first-time user experience so it appeals to current gamers, and add a great opening setpiece -- i.e. a dramatic, exciting experience that gets these starting users interested in finding out more about the world and how to use it. 

"Setpieces matter," as Luca puts it to me now. "They set the tone and perception of how modern or ahead something is more than words can do." (I said something similar about the opening setpiece to Scavengers, which a Linden vet helped create.)

"Other platforms are increasingly filling the shoes of dedicated social virtual worlds," Luca goes on, "and many that are not inherently social are adding more social features. Second Life's uniqueness in term of individual features is diminishing rapidly but it is still very unique as a whole, we just need to up our game in how we communicate that uniqueness and unique selling proposition." 

This is all true. As an example of what current games are doing, Luca includes some screengrabs from Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Citizen, the MMO with a passionate following. But that's not to suggest Luca's suggesting Second Life look like Star Citizen per se:

Three Visually Fantastic Places to Visit in Second Life Photographed by SuTol

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

SuTol’s picture of the sim “Wo Qui Non Coin” [teleport here] just grabbed me. As beautiful as the bucolic sims are, I am always entranced by sims that capture the frenetic energy of a city. She includes a link to a song of the same name. I love the energy of the city. 

Never fear, SuTol can do bucolic as well, click here:

New World Notes Newsfeed: Metaverse Content I’m Currently Consuming

New links added (nearly) every weekday!

Unfortunately today's newsfeed is all about Facebook and the metaverse:

Facebook spending over $10 billion developing the metaverse this year:

"I recognize the magnitude of this bet," Zuckerberg said [in an earnings call]. "This is not an investment that will be profitable for us any time in the near future."

Zuckerberg argued that Facebook had to build out a lot of fundamental technology first before it can rake in any meaningful returns with AR and VR. "Our goal is to help the metaverse reach a billion people," he said, adding that he hoped to reach that goal by the end of the decade. That's when it could also become "a real business story," Zuckerberg said.

This is a tad bit more than the $5 billion over 5 years that Facebook recently announced (scroll down), but I guess that was only referencing EU-based employees. Again it's a mystery how Facebook plans to "help" make a billion people strong metaverse when its VR headset install base is so small, as is its erstwhile metaverse platform. More on that here. 

Facebook whistleblower "shocked" by Facebook's metaverse investment:

Frances Haugen was “shocked” when she heard the company planned to hire 10,000 engineers in Europe to work on the “metaverse,” a version of the internet based on virtual and augmented reality, when its money would be better spent on safety, she told British lawmakers Monday.

“I was shocked to hear that Facebook wants to double down on the metaverse and that they’re going to hire 10,000 engineers in Europe to work on the metaverse,” she said. “Because I was like, ‘Wow, do you know what we could have done with safety if we had 10,000 more engineers?’ It would have been amazing.”

The irony is, by spending so much on the metaverse which could have instead been spent on engineers who could help make Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp much safer, the entire company is in an extreme PR crisis and faces imminent government regulation. What happens if US regulators demand that Facebook sell off Oculus and its other arms, or at minimum, orders the company to remove mandatory Facebook ID log-in from its Quest devices?

Video purporting to be Quest 3 and upcoming avatar/metaverse/mixed reality applications from Facebook leaked. Originally via "Bastian", while Tom's Hardware has a good in-depth write-up. All of this or none of this could be announced at Facebook Connect this Thursday, but it definitely seems premature to announce a new HMD when the Quest 1 and 2 are only a couple years old. Check back on the 28th! 

Previous days' entries after the break:

 

Frank Herbert's Estate Once Targeted Virtual World Cosplayers of Dune -- And Now Virtual Worlds Are Being Used to Promote Dune

With the new Dune movie now a huge international hit and part 2 just announced, I was thinking back to 2009, when lawyers with Frank Herbert's estate went after a small group of Dune fans cosplaying their favorite book in Second Life:

[L]ast weekend Werribee and other members received legal notices from Linden Lab via Trident Media Group, a New York literary agency which maintains the Herbert Estate. "In particular," the notice reads, "Trident Media Group has complained about your use of characters, concepts and other material associated with 'Dune' in the Second Life environment." Those include roleplay locations entitled "Sardaukar Mask", "Fremen Domain", and "Bene Gesserit Retreat". The Lindens' notice ordered Werribee and his group to remove such titles and objects from Second Life within two days, or the company would do so itself.

But that was 12 years ago; now, virtual worlds are an integral part of the promotion for the Herbert adaptation, with official Dune content available in Fortnite (video below) and from Ready Player Me, an avatar-creation system (make your Dune avatar here). These are of course officially licensed via the movie's studio and estate, but I just noticed there's also many fan-made Dune creations in ROBLOX and on VRChat. I suspect those won't receive the same cease-and-desist treatment, seeing as how virtual world gamers are now understood to be a crucial part of any media ecosystem, but we'll see! 

Marvelous Macabre Metaverse Images by SL Artist Nimil Blackwood

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

Nimil Blackwood combines a fascination with the macabre and fantastical in her photostream. In “Siren,” she presents a siren whose beauty is balanced with horror. The color and reduced contrast reinforces the feeling of being underwater where the light is filtered by sea. It’s both beautiful and frightening, exactly the line Nimil walks. 

For more scarily beautiful pics, click here: