New World Notes

Best Laptops For Second Life: Recent MacBook Air Model Runs SL Surprisingly Well (With Some Graphics Settings Tweaked)

Thanks to reader "dkronfeld" for sending this photo which effectively demonstrates a pretty surprising point he made in a recent open forum: With the right settings, Second Life runs pretty damn well on a recent model MacBook Air! Pictured above is his 2020 MacBook Air with an M1 processor, 16GB RAM, and the 8 core GPU. (This one here, with a starting price of $999.)

Emphasis on "right settings", though, as dkronfeld explains:

Best Laptops For Running Second Life: ASUS - ROG Zephyrus Recommended for Great Graphics & Power, MacBook Air for Lightweight Access

Above: Whiskey's laptop running SL  -- photo courtesy Whiskey Monday

If you're looking for a new PC gamer laptop that runs Second Life well, acclaimed metaverse artist Whiskey Monday recommends the ASUS - ROG Zephyrus 16":

"This is my new laptop and it's light and ridiculously powerful in Second Life," she writes in Comments. "I can run Second Life and Photoshop at the same time and while the fans are loud, it runs like a champ."

It's currently selling for under $2000 on both Amazon and Best Buy so definitely worth a look. As for the loud fans, that's a frequently reported side effect of the Firestorm viewer grunting and groaning to process all those high end graphics. (For what it's worth, my Dell G5 15 gamer laptop runs the official SL browser pretty well without heavy fan action, but then again, I generally don't run it on maximum graphic settings.)

Above: High-res image created on Whiskey's Zephyrus laptop (via her Flickr)

"Light" by the way, might be a relative term, because (as reader Mondy notes), the Zephyrus is just over 4 pounds. That plus the AC adapter may get you in 5-7 pound range. Which might not seem heavy, but if you're planning on taking it many places, I'd definitely recommend a good backpack that distributes that weight well.

Speaking of weight, longtime reader "dkronfeld" recommends (somewhat surprisingly) the MacBook Air, which weighs in at under 3 pounds. However, that comes with a graphics hit and settings to adjust:

Run Second Life on Steam Deck? This Redditor Says It's Possible Through Firestorm & Gets Good Performance

SL Redditor /RealEvilind recently posted this tantalizing image, showing Second Life running on Steam Deck, the handheld videogame console from Valve, and they report it gets pretty great performance:

This is Firestorm running on the Steam Deck pretty well. It pulls off 30 - 40 FPS in a normal crowded area, on high, with ambient occlusion on. It runs on Linux, and it's very easy to install. All I had to do is customize the controller, so that I could move and manipulate the camera. The device's trackpads can be set as mouse with click and right click.

We finally have a pretty cheap, truly portable solution for Second Life.

Maybe so! If you have a Steam Deck and the patience to set it up to run SL. As I'm not a Steam Deck owner myself, I'm talking with RealEvilind now, and will hopefully get a video to show their demo in action. 

As for the setup, here's their notes on that:

Study: Online Video Meetings Impair Creativity -- Opportunity for Virtual World-Based Conferencing?

The title of the study published in Nature is "Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation", but it's specifically referring to Zoom-style online video calls:

 In a laboratory study and a field experiment across five countries (in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia), we show that videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas... Specifically, using eye-gaze and recall measures, as well as latent semantic analysis, we demonstrate that videoconferencing hampers idea generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus. 

This tracks with my personal experience. I do countless editorial/brainstorming calls on Zoom and Skype video, and to make real substantial creative progress, find myself putting a browser window in front of the video feed, so I don't get distracted by people looking at me (looking at them). Or only having my camera on for the Hello and Goodbye portions of the call.

This strikes me as an opportunity for virtual world/metaverse platform-based meetings where typically, there is no direct eye contact, and the visual cues are immersive 3D graphics:

Reader Says He Can Run Second Life for Linux on a $250 Tablet!

Update, October 18: Many more details from Thor in Comments below. 

Replying to our open forum call for tablets that can run Second Life, Andabata Thor sent along this screenshot with details:

"I am often on SL by tablet CHUWI Hi10X 10.1 inch. 1200x1920 and Clear Linux OS. I think that for a senior like me it is not a bad experience..."

I believe he's referring to this tablet which is currently selling for under $250, but buyer beware. Hopefully Thor comes along with more details and tips because his setup sounds fairly unique.

Facebook Internal Survey: 1 in 4 Not Convinced By Zuckerberg's Defense Against Whistleblower Allegations -- Nearly Half Want Government Regulation

As promised last week, here's the results of a survey conducted last weekend by staff at Blind, an anonymous messaging/virtual community app for employees, asking users their opinions on the recent whistleblower allegations made against Facebook. About 5,000 responded across many social media companies, with nearly 10% of them (482) staff members at Facebook itself.

Courtesy Team Blind, here's the survey results from Facebook employees only, starting with the question, "Are you convinced by Facebook’s defense to the whistleblower’s allegations?"

Here's how Facebook staffers answered:

Notably, a significant minority of Facebook employees (1 in 4) did not find their own company's defense against the allegations to be credible. 

There was a similar result to another question: "Do you believe Facebook puts profits over user safety?"

Here's how Facebook employees who took the survey replied:

Could You Run Second Life on Steam Deck? Would You Want To?

Interesting new comment from Tad Noodle and Jerom Franzic on an older post on Second Life's upcoming iOS app. How about Second Life on consoles? Specifically, Valve's Steam Deck, set for release this December. (Trailer above.)

As Mr. Noodle wonders aloud:

I wonder if Second Life would run decently on a Steam Deck? I watched a video with my husband and they said you could use 3rd party gaming apps on it, since it's basically a small PC.

 That sounds right. And Mr. Franzic expands:

Watch: The Teaser for Alter Ego is Here, and I Have Questions About FOX's Upcoming Avatars-Meet-Masked Singer Show

Back in May, a FOX producer was reaching out to members of the Second Life community (and presumably other virtual world communities) about Alter Ego, an upcoming avatars-meet-Masked Singer reality competition show. Now set to premiere on September 22nd, here's the teaser.

... and here's my questions about it:

Watch: What Reality Would Look Like With Virtual World Lag

I seriously doubt Verizon's 5G network can substantially address this as much as Verizon thinks it can*, but their ad pretty much nails the laggy virtual world experience transplanted to the real world. (Too bad there's no jelly dolls.)

* As my brilliant futurist friend Amber Case points out, rather than 5G being the Internet speed solution many people in tech have hyped it to be, the likelier scenario is phone users simply sponge up most of 5G's excess bandwidth by watching more movies and such, and so overall performance improvements will be relatively mild.

Watch: Skittish Adds Philip Rosedale's High Fidelity Spatial Audio & Other Virtual World-ish Features to Upcoming Playful Space for Online Events

Skittish, Andy Baio's upcoming "playful virtual space for online events" (go here to register for early access) recently added High Fidelity's 3D spatial audio to the platform, so naturally, I had to get a hands-on (ears-on?) demo from Andy -- watch above, but maybe turn the sound down a bit due to my overly booming voice.

So far Skittish is an incredibly charming virtual world-type space for live meetings of all kinds, especially if they lean toward the whimsical -- think Animal Crossing meets Zoom, except your cartoon animal avatar is the one on camera, not you.

Integrating High Fidelity, Andy tells me, "dramatically increases the cross-browser compatibility, audio quality/latency, and scale for concurrent users." This also makes Skittish the first virtual world-type experience using the API to the Philip Rosedale-led spatial audio technology. (At least the first one that I'm aware of.)

Other new features you'll see in my demo with Andy: