New World Notes

Open Now: LynchLand, A Whole Second Life Sim Devoted to the Art & Characters of David Lynch. Premiere Party This Weekend!

In heaven, everything is fine. You got yours and I got mine... Click here to visit.

That's right: The David Lynch fan group in Second Life that I wrote about last month has gone ahead and opened up a whole dedicated sim devoted to Lynch's imagination and tributes to scenes and characters from his most memorable works (with a decided Twin Peaks skew). It's open now, and this weekend starting tomorrow at 4pm PT, there's an official opening party. Dress code is "sensual black attire", and an owl mask will be given out upon arrival.

Here's some more glimpses of LynchLand courtesy of group leader Myrdin Sommer, who is financing the sim with a couple other founders: "Cate infinity, SurfSide66 and me, we pay the rent and we hope we get some Lindens in the Land-tip jars at events... the sim is there to have creative events and if people like to hang around in LynchLand that is perfectly fine, all terrain is accessible, so they can stay at the cabins etc. all they want, or just come and take pictures."

So if you're a Lynch fan too -- or David Lynch himself, as he's known to make the occasional metaverse visit -- consider tipping! More images and event details below:

Fantastic Friday Fashion Ideas for Male Avatars from an Annoying Ram

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

Arietemolesto is a blog from Caesar Langer. I am guessing it is really Ariete Molesto which Google Translate tells me means “annoying ram”. Well, I am not annoyed by this blog post The Riding Begins.It’s very weekend casual and perfect for a bike ride if it were not going to be 100𝆩 today. I love the pose which looks completely natural. 

• Top: Unfolded – Rayan Jacket (@ TMD)
• Pants: Unfolded – Ares Jeans
• Shoes: Gutchi – BSKT Sneakers M1 (@ ACCESS)
• Pose and Bicycle: Secret Poses – Bicycle Ride

For a slightly less casual look, click here:

Mystery: Quest 2 Install Base Must Have Passed Zuckerberg's 10 Million Target By Now - So Why No Meta Announcement?

With Meta's Q2 2022 earnings report out now, it's once again time to engage in some Quest 2 install base tea leaf reading. I've written about this multiple times (most recently here), but the basic gist is: Most or nearly all the revenue from Meta's Reality Labs division comes from sales of its Quest 2 hardware device, with an MSRP of $299. So doing the back-of-envelope math:

• Back in April, I calculated the Quest 2 install base as about 11-13 million.
• According to the latest revenue report, Q2 revenue for Reality Labs was $452,000,000 million.
• Which suggests up to 1.5 million more Quest 2 units were sold between April and June 2022.
• Giving us a grand total Quest 2 estimated install base of 12-14.5 million units maximum.

Even at a very conservative estimate, Quest 2's install base crossed over 10 million months ago.

Which brings up a new mystery: Why hasn't Meta announced Quest 2 hitting a 10 million milestone?

10 million is, after all, Mark Zuckerberg's (somewhat arbitrary) target goal for the Quest 2. As he put it in 2020:

Incredible Second Life Fan Tributes to Music Videos by j-hope of BTS

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

Bulletproof Next is a K-Pop tribute band in Second Life inspired by BTS who have a Flickr account for their band and poster art. Band members include Chiaki xue, kakarot nosantou, and Sopha Portal and many others.  Yesterday they  featured this fabulous recreation of a scene from the percussive Arson video by BTS member j-hope. [Click here] I like how he bends at the waist, curving into the already slightly askew picture. It’s a clever bit of composition that makes this pic even more interesting. This pic was taken by kakarot. I just hope they aren’t too literal a tribute band and don’t go on hiatus. 

For more band pic, click here:

Steam Protest Against VRChat's Mod Ban So Far Leads to Little Change of Actual VRChat Usage on Steam

VRChat July '22 concurrency via SteamDB

Ever since a user protest against VRChat's recent announcement banning mods led to a bombarding of bad user ratings on VRChat's Steam page, I've seen dire warnings of disaster for the platform. But having covered user protests on metaverse platforms for quite some time, my general rule of thumb is:

Isabella Rumsford Creates in SL a Literal Rendition of a Classic Movie Line

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

Isabella Rumsford’s picture was inspired by the lines from It’s a Wonderful Life [click here]: “What is it you want Mary. What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.” 

Isabella made this as literal as could be and it’s beautiful. I love how she balances the moon with her avatar and the earth with the light from the sun or the spaceship. You can see the shadow of the moon falling on the earth which I think is a nice detail. It’s just wonderful all the way around. 

For more intriguing scenes of second living, click here:

FTC Action Against Meta's Acquisition of Within Seems Poorly Placed When Meta is Losing Badly to Rec Room & VRChat

Above: Within's Supernatural on the Oculus store with nearly 10,000 user ratings

Fairly big bombshell just dropped:

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday filed for an injunction to block Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, from buying a virtual reality company called Within [producer of the highly popular fitness app called Supernatural], potentially limiting the company’s push into the so-called metaverse and signaling a shift in how the agency is approaching tech deals... John Newman, the deputy director of the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Competition, said the agency acted on the Within deal because Meta was “trying to buy its way to the top.” The company already owned a best-selling virtual reality fitness app, he said, but then chose to acquire Within’s Supernatural app “to buy market position.” He called the deal “an illegal acquisition, and we will pursue all appropriate relief.”

Maybe I'm missing something, but Within's Supernatural is nowhere near "the top", even in the Quest 2's ecosystem of some 10-12 million headsets. With nearly 10,000 user ratings in the Oculus store, Supernatural likely has usage in the six figures.

That's not nothing, but claiming that's "the top" misses the big picture: Meta is currently losing the platform war on its own platform. Compare Supernatural's usage with numbers announced by the metaverse platform Rec Room last April:

VRChat Community Wracked by Protest Over Ban on Modified Clients

Above: Steam's VRChat ratings bombarded by protesters

A Metaverse platform is nothing without a thriving community, but the flipside is portions of that community can seem to endanger the platform. VRChat is experiencing that now, due to an announcement that seems benign on its face:

“Modified clients” are a large problem for VRChat in a variety of ways. Malicious modified clients allow users to attack and harass others, causing a huge amount of moderation issues. Even seemingly non-malicious modifications complicate the support and development of VRChat, and make it impossible for VRChat creators to work within the expected, documented bounds of VRChat.

In order to prevent that, we’ve implemented Easy Anti Cheat (EAC) into VRChat. If you’ve played Apex Legends, Fortnite, Gears of War, Elden Ring, or many more, you’ve seen Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC)...  The integration of EAC means that all modified clients are blocked...

Every month, thousands of users have their accounts stolen, often due to running a modified client that is silently logging their keystrokes as well as other information. These users – often without even realizing it! – run the risk of losing their account, or having their computers become part of a larger botnet. 

Excuse me while I recover over flashbacks around various modified third party-made Second Life viewers which were banned for having dubious features. As with Second Life, a highly vocal number of VRC players have been protesting VRChat's move since it was made, include bombarding its Steam listing with bad reviews. Which as you can see above, is also an indicator of how small the protest is: Less than 10,000 users have recently posted a negative review. (Based on various figures, I'd estimate VRChat has about 5 million monthly active users, give or take.)

Do the protestors have any legitimate points? Somewhat, in the sense that some mods include some features that provide text captions for deaf users, contrast for colorblind users, and so on. But then again, from VRChat the company's point of view, thousands of users are reportedly having their accounts actively stolen by modded viewers every month.

Which side is right? Rather than weigh in, I'll quote a famed and highly respected member of the VRChat creator community, who requested I quote them anonymously, "due to the toxicity online" (their words), and provided great context on the situation:

Flashback: Roblox Abandoned China a Month After a Pro-Taiwan US User Accessed the Chinese Version Through the Great Firewall

Shelf under Could Be Coincidence, Could Be Something Else: Vice News has a fascinating in-depth look at Roblox's attempt to launch in China, including plans to accommodate the Chinese government's expectations around censoring content that suggests, for instance, that Taiwan is independent from China. Last December, however, Roblox abandoned China for mysterious reasons:

[I]n July 2021, Roblox launched LuoBuLeSi, the Chinese version of its platform. Other documents show some of the mechanisms it had in place for complying with Chinese regulations, including a game “whitelist” and moderation features for display names in the country. 

Roblox’s time in China was exceptionally short lived. In December 2021, the company closed down LuoBuLeSi without going into detail about why. Soon after it shut down, the company said that it was working to relaunch after making “necessary investments” to its “data architecture” but did not provide any additional information about closing.

The Chinese market for online games is extremely large (as I saw first-hand a decade ago), so it's strange that Roblox would give up on it so quickly.

As it happens, exactly a month before that (November 2021), a notorious Roblox user and popular YouTuber did pull this pretty cyberpunk stunt off:

Today's Flickr Pick: Ambre Singh Creates Comic & Conceptual Images in Second Life

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

Can I love a Second Life photographer simply because her pictures make me giggle and sometimes even laugh out loud? Yes, yes I can.

Ambre Singh’s picture is cute but when you add the title “Sitting on the Duck of the Bay” it goes from cute to hilarious and memorable. It made me want to do a deeper dive into her photostream. She’s not that fond of clothing, particular bras and shirts, and beach living gives her the freedom to live comfortably au naturel. However, being humorous does not take away from her artistry. 

For a fabulous SL homage to a classic painting and more, click here: