New World Notes

How to Create Avatars for Virtual Worlds -- An Oculus/Linden Lab Vet's Advice

Avatar pic by Ella Pinellapin

Continuing his blog series on what he's learned as a lead developer/consultant at Oculus, Eve Online, and of course Linden Lab, Jim "Babbage" Purbrick has a new post on the importance of avatar customization tools in open-ended virtual worlds:

If you are building a Metaverse which connects every possible virtual world how do you start? How do you please the person who wants to have the perfect tall dark stranger avatar rendered in 3D as well as everyone else? This was the challenge facing Linden Lab when building the avatars for Second Life at the turn of the millennium. While the default avatars could be manipulated into a huge variety of shapes and sizes using the available parameters, the results were often crude and the available wardrobe never strayed far from geeky teen hangout chic. Luckily for Linden Lab the inability of the avatar system to satisfy every whim was a huge opportunity for the entrepreneurs of Second Life.

Builders quickly realized that they could fashion shoes, hair, clothes and accessories from primitive 3D objects which could be attached to avatars to dramatically increase the gamut of styles that could be realised. Linden Lab enabled another wave of innovation by allowing animations to be uploaded which as well as allowing every conceivable dance move to fill the nightclubs of Second Life also enabled tiny avatars which either folded up the default avatar geometry inside cutely sculpted animal models or moved the default avatar under the floor so it was completely hidden and just served as a platform for a tiny replacement avatar standing on its head. Many years later Linden Lab finally allowed people to entirely replace the default geometry and textures so now it is common for not a single triangle or texel in a Second Life avatar to have been defined by Linden Lab.

But If a new virtual world is just launching, what avatar options should be available for early adopters? Jim's advice:

"In my opinion developers should make sure they provide realistic body shapes (not 2 meter tall avatars with impossibly large breasts) and diverse skin tones and facial features so that every potential user can easily build an avatar that looks like them if they choose. Some basic clothes should be provided, but these can be largely left to the community to develop."

Adding non-human avatar options open up some additional, interesting concerns. As Jim puts it:

Weekend Read: Real Life Black People Reflect on Being in Second Life & Experiencing Virtual Racism

This is an epic, thought provoking new article in the latest SL-focused ECLIPSE magazine on real life Black people in the virtual world, reflecting on Black Lives Matter and their experiences in SL. It's written by New World Notes contributor Cajsa Lilliehook. She interviews many Black SLers, who discuss racism in SL -- everything from avatar skin color discrimination, to coming across people roleplaying in a plantation.

Read an excerpt below:

Black Woman Under Pressure to Keep Her Opinions To Herself in Real Life Expresses Them Through Her Second Life

Emuna Zamani, a warm and chatty virtual world YouTuber, recently posted this moving video where she starts by talking about her anxiety and anger over recent real life events -- first the pandemic, and then the international uprising over the killing of George Floyd and other Black people, along with the systematic racism which contributed to their deaths.

African-American in real life, she expresses her unvarnished opinions on all this through her Second Life avatar, who is also Black. In real life, as she explains, she is under pressure to keep those opinions to herself:

"I'm very angry," as she puts it. "I'm glad I'm working from home because if someone [in the office] said the wrong thing... man, lemme just tell you, I don't know. That's how fed up I am."

One day, she tells me, her YouTube channel may emerge from behind her avatar.

"After I leave corporate America," as Emuna puts it, "I want to record my Being Black in Second Life videos as myself. My current career doesn’t give me that freedom."

The video is devoted to the Virtual Black History Museum in SL, a place she just discovered and explored by happenstance. Her tour was so powerful, she records this video in near tears:

No-Photoshop Avatar Screenshots in #SLBareFaceChallenge Look More Human Than the Usual Heavily Processed Avatar Images

Pictured: Arnno Planer's #SLBareFaceChallenge

In the #SLBareFaceChallenge, as the hashtag suggests, SLers challenge each other to show the community what their avatars look like in a raw screenshot with no post-processing or other add-ons. Overall results, for the most part are surprising to me: They generally look more vivid and "human" than the usual heavily processed, over-posed pics that tend to clutter the virtual world fashion ecosystem. Instead of adding an extra layer of virtuality through Photoshop, these screen captures rely on SL's "natural" lighting and avatar bone structure/skin texture, and you end up with something closer to real life.

Here's another challenge entry by Effy Leigh:

Friday Fashion Blog to Follow: Tiffany Parkin's Blended Blog Combines Second Life Style With Real Life Musings

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

Tiffany Parkin’s Blended Blog is my favorite kind of blog, one that blends pictures and credits with commentary on the blogger’s life, first or second. “Where the Streets Have No Name” caught my eye because I just finished a book that explains that in Tokyo, there are few street names, only for major streets. Tiffany’s picture is in Tokyo which gives the title more meaning. Look at how she provides details such as her pose adjustment and viewer)  

• [KoKoLoReS] – Starlight Umbrella
• Stealthic – Ivy
• Vinyl – Yesterday Raincoat [@ The Liaison Collaborative]
• Pose: Sweet Art – Ella 5m (Adjusted the R hand using the Black Dragon Poser)
• Location: Little World

In late 2018, Tiffany posted one of her most influential and boldest posts. See it below.

As She Was Dying from COVID-19, Longtime Second Life User Uccello Poultry Wrote a Farewell Letter to Her Virtual Friends & Family

It's the first Coronavirus-related death I'm aware of to hit the Second Life user community, but it certainly won't be the last: Longtime SLer Uccello Poultry reportedly succumbed in real life to COVID-19 recently.

I say "reportedly", but this news comes from Uccello herself. Before she died, she wrote a number of letters to friends and loved ones in her hospital bed, on her iPad. After she passed, her real life brother, who also plays Second Life as CC Columbo, discovered these messages in her iCloud account.

And so he posted her message to her Second Life community on her long-running blog, The Poultry Report. It's also a memoir of her troubled childhood in real life, and a tribute to the SLers she met in the virtual world and who became her adoptive family, and then nurtured her in both realities:

At Lesbos I met my soon-to-be sister, Threshin. She helped me become a strong (if willful) and confident woman over the subsequent years. Always encouraging and loving, I learned that I didn’t need to cling to my brother. I also met my wife, Angela, there. Marriages in SL are real, if you let them be so.

I’m also proud to say I was a citizen of Bay City, the BEST community in Second Life. So many close friends, especially Marianne, Pygar, Rachel, Roc, and the eternal Ever Dreamscape. This was truly the life I did not have growing up. And grow up I did. The strength I gained from being accepted into the city and becoming a contributor (the year I was Miss Bay City was the best year in any of my lives) led to me becoming a productive citizen in Real Life. Getting a job, paying taxes, and becoming responsible for others. Just like a real person!

... Take my Love. I have plenty for all of you. Perhaps I’ll see you all on the Big Grid and we can swap stories. I hear there’s no Grid goo and the Feed there works. Until then, there’s so much I haven’t done. Go out and do it for me.

Much much more here. Much thanks to Dusty Jamberoo (Michael Shaw IRL), who also counts himself as among Uccello's friends, and has his own remembrances of her:

Less Than Two Days After the Return of Optional Name Changes for Second Life Avatars, Someone Already Paid $40 To Switch Theirs to "Freddie Mercury"

I had a feeling this would happen soon after Linden Lab brought back last name options for Second Life avatars, but I didn't expect it happen so quickly: Less than 2 days after that feature was announced, some SLer looked at the first pool of available surnames, and did the inevitable: Became Freddy Mercury. I was hoping for an avatar profile pic with a handlebar mustache or at least a few lines from "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the bio, but the Second Life version of Freddie Mercury is pretty shy, at least so far.

Sad to say, however, still no sight of anyone named "NegativePress Covfefe", another now-available option, but I will keep checking for that awesome occasion.

Becoming Freddie Mercury in Second Life, by the way, is no small investment: It costs $39.99 to make the switch, plus an upgrade to Premium Second Life subscription (if not already upgraded). That's like $160 to be Freddie Mercury in Second Life for just a year! Update: According to the name change FAQ, Freddie Mercury can discontinue their Premium account and still keep on being Freddie Mercury (thanks, Mondy).

And it might even be more than that: As Canadian virtual world blogger Ryan Schultz points out, many global currencies have taken a beaten against the US dollar during the pandemic, so non-American Second Life players will likely pay way more: For instance, due to its recent devaluation, it would currently cost Ryan nearly 80 goddamn Canadian dollars to change his SL name.

As for Freddie Mercury of SL, I reached out to him to find out more, but so far no reply:

Will We Prefer to Touch Each Other Through Real Avatars, Post-Pandemic?

VR pioneer Jacki Morie, who advised XPRIZE's recent challenge to create a real life, robotics and VR-powered avatar, has a fascinating post on XPrize's blog where she considers the state of online technology now connecting us across borders -- especially while so many of us in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Will the human-to-human relationships initiated and maintained [online] provide what we fundamentally need? Certainly, these mechanisms of togetherness will allow us to communicate, to conduct business, play together, and to virtually travel and experience digital recreations and immersive video of distant destinations.

But something is missing in this imagined post-pandemic future. What happens to human touch—that physical connection—when our primary means of coming together is digital?  In present day, we know that babies who are never touched fail to thrive. We, humans, require touch; our skin is our largest sensory organ and informs our very being and sense of self. Absent this, how do we thrive as humans in an immaterial world? 

She imagines a not-too-distant future where we will use robotics-driven avatars to visit and interact with remote friends and relatives, and "touch" each other through Internet-enabled haptics devices. That technology itself already exists, and she has tried it out first-hand: 

"A year ago I was able to try a product that three companies combined to make," Jacki tells me. "Their consortium is called Converge and with their tech one can put on haptic gloves and control a robotic arm (or two!) and actually feel the objects that the robotic hand is feeling. Quite amazing and convincing, especially for this early on."

But can artificial touch become a meaningful replacement for human-to-human touch?

Pregnant Avatars With Growing, Visible, Birth-Able Fetuses Coming Soon to Second Life (Whether You're Ready or Not)

Bento-based avatars! These new-ish, highly customizable avatar skeletons have made all manner of SL innovations possible, and as you might have guessed, this one would come soon enough:

A pregnant avatar with a gradually growing fetus inside, which at the end of gestation, actually gives birth in Second Life. Another feature in development (if the technical challenges can be overcome): Making the fetuses visible through the baby bump.

It's an upcoming product from Zooby VR, creator of SL babies, virtual cats which even poop, and other strange and wonderful artificial life creations. Lead designer Carrie Tatsu tells me they've already garnered great excitement from her customers, avid for further roleplay possibilities:

A Black Woman in Real Life Reflects on Being Black in Second Life

Martin Luther King Jr. day should not be the only day we think about addressing racism as it occurs in virtual worlds, so these thoughtful videos from SL blogger Emuna Zamani, a black woman in real life, are worth a watch today or any day. Emuna has a warm and chatty presence, even through her avatar, which helps her broach potentially touchy subjects in a gentle way, including:

• She argues that it's not necessarily offensive when SL skin makers don't offer black-skinned avatars, as they can take time and special effort to make well -- while getting them wrong can cause offense.
• It's not offensive "blackface" for non-black SL bloggers to depict black-skinned avatars in their images -- but it can be disrespectful/borderline blackface when those images incorporate stereotypical aspects. (Which, unfortunately, she's encountered within the SL blogging community.)

In Part 2, she addresses reader comments, including one who insists that there's no racism in virtual worlds (very much not the case), then goes on to discuss other provocative topics: