New World Notes

Stunning Fantasy Roleplay Photos Created from SL Screenshots

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

KaraLee Aeon’s photostream is filled with fantasy photos that will take your breath away. Recently, she has been creating frames that her subjects emerge from in such a stunning style. It reminds me of Erté. 

For more, click here:

Watch: SeraCast's Live Stream Showing Off New Items at The Outlet

In case you missed yesterday's live stream from the Seraphim sim during the holiday, here's Del and Kess with much fun, snark, and surprises, not to mention a truly excellent flower umbrella. They're showing off all the new available items, and roll out two ne brands: Stealthic and Dove & Pear.

Top 5 Posts Last Week Including: The Flaws in Meta's Metaverse Vision vs. Epic's Epochal Perspective

• I Love Tim Sweeney's Vision For The Metaverse -- But Don't Get How Apple & Google Are Such A Threat To It
• "What's She Wearing" Tool Displays Fashion Credits Of Nearby SL Avatars. But Beware Avatar Fashionista Drama!
• Three Fundamental Flaws In Meta’s Vision For The Metaverse
• Watch: What Social VR / Metaverse Platforms Can Learn About User Safety From 2D Virtual Worlds
• Star Atlas Sure Seems Less Like A Metaverse Platform & More Like An MMO

SL Special: Buy Summer Home Furnishing Bundles from Dutchie -- And Support Dutchie During a Difficult Real Life Health Crisis!

The Dutchie Spa Bundle is a special discount Summer offer from the beloved creator of SL furnishings, one of many bundles that Dutchie owner Froukje Hoorenbeek is offering now. (Many more below.) She's offering these as she's going through a real life health crisis that will take her away from SL content creation for awhile:

"What I have is two fractured vertebrae," she tells me, "and the operation is being done by a neurosurgeon and an orthopedic surgeon together. They are gonna put cages and screws in to fixate my spine and it's gonna take at least 4 hours for them. Afterward, I will not be able to work for at least 3 months, they tell me. Sitting will be hard to do during that time.

"We have pretty good health care in the Netherlands and I have insurance, so the operating costs are covered. The three months of recovery afterward are not."

So she is expanding her Marketplace offerings now ("as much as the pain allows me") as she prepares for her operation, and the long stretch afterward. Dutchie, a sometime sponsoring supporter of New World Notes (though not at the moment) is a longtime and much-admired SL brand, so if you are in the market for great virtual home furnishings, I hope you consider shopping on her store.

More Dutchie bundles below, and all my best for a speedy Dutchy recovery!

I Love Tim Sweeney's Vision for the Metaverse -- But Don't Get How Apple & Google Are Such a Threat to It

As a good compare and contrast with Meta's questionable vision for the Metaverse, here's a long weekend read -- a Financial Times Q&A with Epic Games' Tim Sweeney. Who might disagree, but I totally think this is his nice way of saying "WTF is Meta even thinking?":

[Meta's vision is] in many ways broader than Epic’s. We see this as a central entertainment medium, and they see this as a medium that will connect everybody across distances for any purpose including work, and just hanging out chatting. And they talk a lot about open platform principles: they’re not building a Meta walled garden, they’re trying to contribute to standards and practices that lead towards an open metaverse. And I really like that vision that they’ve articulated. On the other hand, there’s all their actual existing business practices and all their actual existing businesses, where they run ads associated with your content feed and don’t revenue share that with the creators of the content that drove the engagement. And there is an ad economy that is completely controlled by them, which is not an open ad economy and has all the manifestations of an entirely closed ecosystem.

Wait, Mark said we're going to go into the Metaverse to do office work... right?

I’m not sure if that vision actually works, because it’s not very fun to sit around in 3D and just talk to people. It gets really awkward really fast. A bunch of guys can’t get together and just sit in a room for hours and have a conversation, right? You have to be shooting darts or playing billiards or shooting hoops or doing something together to break up the dull moments and keep you entertained for a long period of time. And that’s what this medium does. I think if you strip the entertainment aspect from it, you end up with a super creepy version of America Online chat rooms!

I might go a step further and suggest playing with building blocks while in the meeting, as a kind of focus-creating 3D doodler, like Sine Wave does in Breakroom. But yes, if it's not inherently fun, I doubt it will scale.

My one question (and hopefully I'll get to ask Sweeney myself sometime), is why so much concern over Apple and Google controlling the Metaverse? Here's Tim's case:

Cajsa's Choices: SL Fashion for Friday from Carley Benazzi

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

Carley Benazzi is a blogger whose self-named blog is rich with pictures, but not cluttered with unnecessary bells and whistles. It’s very clean with huge photos and different shots of the outfit. I love how her hair and the outfit go together. 

• HAIR |  Yomi  – Tenshi  Hair – NEW!@The Warehouse Sale
• DRESS | ISON – aryana cutout dress

For more great style, click here:

"What's She Wearing" Tool Displays Fashion Credits of Nearby SL Avatars. But Beware Avatar Fashionista Drama!

My post on Strawberry Singh's tips for listing SL avatar fashion credits was the most shared on Facebook last week, so in service to the people, here's a similar tool but in a heads-up display, available for free in the Marketplace: The What is She Wearing HUD.

Strawberry herself shot a tutorial for it in back 2016 (watch above). Since then, however, she's observed some social dynamics around the HUD. Which is a fancy way of saying Drama:

Fun Web Tool Turns Virtual World Screenshots Into Classic Paintings, Including Frame & Visible Brushstrokes

わー。これは、楽しい(*´▽｀*)#SecondLife #sljp #Dinkieチャレンジ https://t.co/PwysGxa5nG pic.twitter.com/D3uDiAlA33

— Sanny Yoshikawa🌻🌻🌻 (@sannysquirrel) May 10, 2022

Classic Frame is a fun image converter that our Japanese correspondent Sanny Yoshikawa was playing with recently (above), and while it was designed to turn real life photos into classic paintings (frame and all), yep, it also works just as well with virtual world images, even turning pixels into paint swathes and blotches and brush strokes.

Here's one from another Japanese SLer on Twitter:

Photos From Cica Ghost’s Charming New SL Art Installation, "Garden"

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

Isabel Hocken is adventuring around Second Life. Recently, she stopped by Cica Ghost’s new installation Garden [teleport link here] and brought back some gorgeous pictures. I love the way the big flower fills the left hand third of the picture. It forms a sort of frame. It’s an excellent picture. 

For more, click here:

Three Fundamental Flaws in Meta’s Vision for the Metaverse

There’s a new long essay on Meta’s vision for the Metaverse from Nick Clegg, formerly a UK politician and now President of Global Affairs at Meta. (He was the company’s point person when Facebook and Instagram’s many failings were brought under harsh public scrutiny.) Given his position at the social media giant, Clegg’s essay has deep insights into Meta’s vision and strategy for the Metaverse. Give it a read, we’ll be here when you come back.

There’s actually much about it that I agree with, but with Meta putting the most money into Metaverse development of any company by far, it’s more important to point out key flaws which suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of how metaverse platforms work (and don’t work).

For starters:

Assuming that immersive 3D interaction is a “logical” evolution of text, voice, and video:

Clegg writes:

We don’t communicate through written words alone, so text-based internet services would never suffice. Static images are an important part of how we communicate, as are sounds and moving images. But we interact in three dimensions. We use multiple senses, body language, spatial awareness. We signify our intention to trust one another by looking each other in the eye, smiling, or warmly shaking hands. We express our feelings towards loved ones not only by saying what we feel but by expressing it physically. We show joy, sadness or anger through nonverbal cues that are embodied and experienced rather than written down.

Advances in speed and availability of connectivity have now reached a point that begins to make many of these three-dimensional interactions possible virtually. It is therefore logical that the next step in the evolution of the internet is one that reflects this.

Note the jazz hands employed to cover that last non sequitur. While it’s true that immersive 3D interaction is now much more feasible and affordable, it does not follow that it’s by and large more desirable than video or even text. Facetime was launched for the iPhone in 2013, but 75% of Gen Z and Millennials still prefer to text. And despite its affordable price point, the slow sales of Meta’s own Quest 2 headset should undermine any confidence that immersive communication is the next inevitable step. (As opposed to a successful niche.)

More questionable assumptions: