New World Notes

How Sims 4 Content Creators Make a Good Living from YouTube

When we talk about virtual world content creation on New World Notes, we're usually referring to merchants who sell virtual items in Second Life and so on. But FastCompany has an intriguing report of another niche that's spun out of Sims 4 -- creating tiny Sims 4-based houses on YouTube, and making money from the YouTube ads, sponsorships, and merchandise:

To her surprise, she discovered an entire community on YouTube devoted to building elaborate houses in The Sims... she began uploading her own builds, as they’re called, to YouTube under the name Deligracy (she goes by her username, for privacy). Today, she has 810,000 subscribers and even sells merchandise, like sweatshirts, mugs, and phone cases. Deligracy’s channel has become so popular that she quit her job as a junior graphic designer because she was making more money from YouTube. Some of her most popular videos, which get tens of thousands of views, aren’t of the most elaborate houses Deligracy can dream up: Instead, her audience is obsessed with tiny homes.

As a rule of thumb, if your YouTube channel has subscribers in the six figure range, you can make a comfortable full-time living from sponsorships -- and when it gets into the seven figure subscriber range, you can make a very comfortable (as in lawyer's salary and above) living. Notably, Deligracy (and other Sims 4 creators) are focusing on a specific niche -- i.e. tiny houses -- that seems to be drawing lots of viewers from outside the Sims 4 fanbase. 

I.E., here's a tip for talented home builders in Second Life, Sansar, and beyond: Your best market may not be in-world, but on YouTube.

Watch: Why Detailed 3D Game Graphics Require So Much Computing Power

Here's a fun Vox explainer from Cleo Abram explaining how 3D graphics are rendered in games -- and exactly why more and more details require more and more computing power. "You'd think that a more powerful computer would make it easier to render games, and it does. Except game makers compete to add more and more detail, pushing the limits to what even the latest technology can do," as she puts it.

Her main case study is the new open world game Red Dead Redemption 2, and as it happens, that's also the title we discussed when talking about the massive hit to user performance caused by 3D content creators who don't optimize the amount of triangles/polygons in their objects:

The EU's Upcoming Copyright Directive Threatens User-Generated Content Platforms Including Virtual Worlds -- But Citizens of Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, Poland & Belgium Can Help Block It!

Article 13 of the EU's Copyright Directive is an existential threat to every single online game/MMO with user-generated content including Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Second Life, VRChat, and beyond -- for reasons explained on NWN last year -- and it's about to be approved by the European Union's parliament. (Short version: It'll require every company with user-generated content to create a costly, easily exploitable IP rights filter.) But there is still time to fight this: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling out to citizens of several key EU nations to lobby their elected officials:

Specifically, citizens of Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, and Belgium, click this link to take action.

There's some very good if complicated reasons why those countries are so crucial to stopping Article 13, the EFF's Cory Doctorow tells me -- if you're interested in European Union parliamentary procedures, read on:

Eye-Controlled Robot Enables Homebound Paralyzed People to Become Real Life Avatars Outside -- Even Work in Coffee Shops

This is pretty fascinating with profound implications down the road:

Developed by Ory, a startup that specializes in robotics for disabled people, the OriHime-D is a 4-foot tall robot that can be operated remotely from a paralyzed person’s home. Even if the operator only has control of their eyes, they can command OriHime-D to move, look around, speak with people, and handle objects... a staff of ten people, with conditions such as ALS or spinal cord injuries and working from home, are paid 1,000 yen (US$8.80) an hour (a standard wage for part-time work in Japan) to serve up coffee and interact with the clientele. But more importantly than money, these people are also given a newfound independence.

More here. It's partly inspired by Time of Eve, an anime which portrays robots and humans working alongside each other -- and the filmmakers collaborated on the project so that the robot server resembles the one in their movie. Video below:

2018 VR & Virtual World Prediction Review: How Well Did I Do?

While readers post their predictions for 2019, here's a quick fact check on my 2018 prognostications from last January:

Second Life will enjoy a small burst of user growth. Say 100,000 more monthly active users from the 800,000 or so (counting new users who usually churn out).

Sadly No. (Though private sim ownership increased slightly.)

Sansar and High Fidelity won't see mass growth in 2018. I'd be surprised if either gains more than 50,000 monthly users, mainly because they're still optimized for high-end VR rigs.

Disappointingly Yes. Given daily peak concurrency rates in the two-three figures for each, monthly usage for each is probably in the low four figures.

High-end Rift & Vive VR install base will remain low.

Frustratingly but unsurprisingly Yes.

Bitcoin's daily transaction rate to remain well below 500,000 a day. (The major media may finally notice this instead of writing about the irrelevant sales value.)

Also hilariously Yes. And it's been a relief in recent quarters to see tech and business reporters finally inject some skepticism into Bitcoin hype.

So, 3 out of 4 right.

New iPhone App Remakes Massive Attack's Mezzanine Into Adaptive, Mixed Reality Experience

Fantom Mezzanine is a free new iOS app from legendary UK group Massive Act which recreates their classic, masterpiece album Mezzanine into an immersive, interactive format. It's co-created by adaptive music/sound artist Robert Thomas, who's been designing ambitious audio experiences across many mediums and technologies over the years, including in Second Life.  (Disclosure: Also a pal.)

"It's a continuation of many previous discussions really about music and tech, what we could explore," Robert tells me. "In this app, you shoot a video and the app generates a realtime remix which is like a soundtrack to the action in the video. If you move around in the image, the drums come in and glitch out, if the device moves some of the sounds modulate and change. If you smile the vocals come in. Lots of interactions, some secrets to discover too."

I'm just starting to play with the app, and it's a dreamy way to walk around in the world, where your camera and microphone inputs integrate with indelible audio clips from (in my opinion), one of the best albums of the last two decades. And it's an amazing creative pinnacle for Robert, who many readers might have met in SL back in the day. He worked closely with Massive Attack's Rob Del Naja to create personalized remixes of Mezzanine.

"I was very into Mezzanine when it came out. Working with the multitracks from that album was a real honor."

Download it here, and if you do create videos, be sure to put links to them in Comments!

Watch: NVIDIA System Converts Real Life Into a Virtual World -- But Probably Won't Replace Actual Virtual Worlds

Using a complex system of algorithms which marketers insist on calling "AI" (making my teeth grind in the process), engineers at NVIDIA have made it possible to convert real world video into a 3D virtual world:

The network operates on high-level descriptions of a scene, for example: segmentation maps or edge maps, that describe where objects are and their general characteristics, such as whether a particular part of the image contains a car or a building, or where the edges of an object are. The network then fills in the details based on what it learned from real life videos. The demo allows attendees to navigate a virtual urban environment that is being rendered by this neural network. The network was trained on videos of real-life urban environments. The conditional generative neural network learned to approximate the visual dynamics of the world such as lighting, and materials. Since the output is synthetically generated, a scene can be easily edited to remove, modify, or add objects.

My first thought was, "Hundreds of level and map designers are soon gonna be out of a job." My second thought was: Don't be dense. 

Magic Leap Launches Avatar Chat With AR Chatroom & Media Sharing, Cartoonish, Low-Detail Avatars

Continuing in its now familiar "Where's the fricking whale we were promised?" theme, Magic Leap just announced Avatar Chat with media and browser sharing features in (what looks to be) a small, augmented reality chatroom setting. If you were hoping to see vivid recreations of your friends as full featured 3D avatars displayed right in front of you, seeming to be sitting on your couch or resting against a wall or whatever, this is not for you: The avatars are extremely low-detailed, disembodied heads.

In fairness, the limited graphics seems to be by design -- probably because this is meant to be a light application for content sharing. Still, the lack of "Wow" factor continues to be a frustration for Magic Leap:

Flickr Announces It Won't Delete Creative Commons-Licensed Images -- Escape Hatch For CC-Tagged Virtual World/MMO/Game Screenshots?

Above: Political satire image created in Second Life, given a Creative Commons license, and uploaded to Flickr before November 2018

Many virtual world users who upload mass amounts of screenshots to Flickr are concerned that many of them will soon run afoul of the company's new policy limiting free accounts to 1000 images, with images over that number to be deleted (unless a user becomes a Pro subscriber). However, it looks like there's a possible escape hatch for at least some of those images -- the Creative Commons license. As Flickr's CEO just put it in a blog post:

We won’t be deleting anything that was uploaded with a CC license before November 1, 2018. Even if you had more than 1,000 photos or videos with a CC license. However, if you do have more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded, you’ll be unable to upload additional photos after January 8, 2019, unless you upgrade to a Pro account.

So that implies a Second Life-based image like the one above, by Cajsa Lilliehook, won't be removed. In my observation, most SL screenshots on Flickr ironically carry the default "All rights reserved" tag, however, so this conversation wouldn't apply to them. But a substantial number have a CC tag -- partly because Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig was an early adviser to Second Life, and even appeared in SL on occasion, so the CC concept is fairly well known within the community.

The next question, of course, is if this policy applies only to photos and videos, or also to screenshots and video. And that raises a whole host of follow-up questions:

Since Second Life is So Difficult to Use, Linden Lab Should Pay New Users to Learn How to Use It (Comment of the Week)

Minecraft's simple building interface

Great long comment from Will Clip, who's developed popular games for both Second Life users and for other platforms, responding to the point that understanding Second Life's complexity has become a kind of game in itself:

In my opinion Linden Lab could do so much more helping to ease the 1st steps for new users to improve the user retention rate.

I am a content provider in SL myself. Whenever I find some time to create something new I try to come at it with understanding that for most of the people facing something new, something they are not used to is scary and frustrating.

Creators goal should be to make 1st steps for people when they are trying the new product as easy and fun as possible. Good user interface experience makes distinction between a good and bad product.

Often to the point that even if the product looks better looking, most users will prefer to use the product that is easier to use because using something that is easy to operate is already rewarding by itself.

In my opinion Linden Lab should maybe employ or temporary hire an user interface specialists that would look at SL as a whole and come out with some pointers about how to make SL more easy to use. LL should use the new knowledge to organize content developers, give materials (invest, market) and provide new and better tools for content creation in Second Life.

Will says he's seeing similar complexity in Sansar. But unlike most other virtual worlds and social VR platform, Linden Lab has a key advantage. Which leads Will to propose a novel idea: Pay Linden Dollars to new users to learn how to use Second Life. As he writes: