New World Notes

Watch: A Christmas Postcard from Japan in Second Life & Japan in Real Life

This is a lovely machinima tribute to Christmas-time in Rieri, a Japanese town in Second Life painstakingly modeled from Google Maps and real photos of Tokyo neighborhoods. (Click here to visit.) Lead developed by Eripom Moonwall, Tokyo-based master creator of realistic cityscapes and military hardware, Rieri in SL currently boasts snowfall and Christmas lights that evoke the holiday season in Japan.

And yes, the Japanese celebrate Christmas in their own unique way -- and it also includes insanely hot sex. As Eripom explains:

Explore in SL This Weekend: Spooky New Orleans With Adventure Game

Click here to directly teleport to Bloodbath New Orleans, a perfect place to explore as October creeps up on Halloween. Star SL YouTuber Naria Panther (with a delicious, mood fitting Eastern European accent) and friends explore the place with a working streetcar, an eerie fair ground, and many gorgeously detailed Gothic edifices to creep through. 

Someone Made the Bates Motel & Mansion of Hitchcock's Psycho in Second Life and Hosts Karaoke Parties There

Click here to visit, but maybe take a shower beforehand.  SL artist Kaiden Tray made this faithful recreation of the classic cinema location, complete with four free motel rooms (date night, anyone?), and the Bates mansion on the hill. Impressively, he made it from scratch, mainly using the recent TV show spinoff of Psycho for reference.  

I know you're wondering if Mother is in the basement, or what happens if you step into the shower, or walk like a stupidly curious detective up the mansion stairs. Kaiden declines to answer any of that, but tells me that he plans to turn this into a full Psycho experience on its own sim.

As for now, there's some social activities. 

"We have karaoke sometimes," says Kaiden, "or anyone can have their own events they just need to let me know." Because one thing you don't ever want to do is do something on the Bates estate without the owner's permission.

More pics below, including Kaiden Tray himself doing a halfway decent Anthony Hopkins impression:

Tech Worker Quarantined at Home Builds Co-Working Space in Second Life

"I built an office for those of us working from home during the pandemic," Annabelle Chimpton recently announced on Reddit, "complete with music, coffee, and a TV for breaks." Replete with a fire pit, garden, and koi pond, it's very much the kind of cool and casual co-working space that tech workers in Santa Monica and other hubs are missing nowadays -- except that this one only exists in Second Life: CliChimptonck here to teleport.

Working from home herself, Annabelle  wanted a place that recaptured her pre-pandemic office environment. "I think the big thing I've missed is the random moments of 'watercooler' talk throughout the day so hopefully this can help replicate that," as she explains.

Unveiled just a few days ago, people also working from home have been showing up to work in her virtual space from all over, she tells me:

Visit in SL: Amazing Sim With Multi-Varied Themes -- With An Open Call For SL Artists Who Want to Freely Host Their Works There

This SL sim called Sinful Retreat (saucy) is a worthwhile explore this weekend, whether you're in search of an artful location -- or you're an artist who wants a location to show off your work. Click here to teleport.

First the location: "[I]is a land of incongruent realities," owner and lead creator Chuck Clip tells me. "A Victorian town built on a bridge leads to a gothic Basilica. all of it looking over a post apocalyptic trailer park, with a portal that leads into a story book forest." Sounds like a club Stefon would visit... with his mom.

And now the opportunity for artists:

Huntington Beach Was Once a Surreal Paradise Hellhole So Of Course Someone Recreated It In Second Life

Pic by Elizabeth Dovgal

Click here to teleport to a new experience in Second Life that's notably strange and wonderful: A recreation of Huntington Beach in Southern California, at a time in the early-mid 20th century when oil rigs dotted the sky, even down to the beach, making the place a surreal combination of placid beach town and industrial wasteland.

To see what I mean, here's the official Rigs of Huntington Flickr page.

Amazingly, the town was created by Jade Koltai, in real life a French woman who's never actually visited Huntington Beach (she tells me), and instead based it on photos from this article, along with other sources... in about a week. Which is all the more impressive to me, because living in Los Angeles, I've been to Huntington once or twice, and Jade gets a lot of the beach town elements impressively right.

Here's a RL pic to compare with the SL pic above:

Visit a Place in Second Life That Looks Great & Has Little Lag, Even On An Old Computer -- If You Follow Some Important Steps First

Last Tuesday we talked about how Second Life, when properly optimized, can look and perform as well as a AAA game, even on older computers. This weekend, you can log in and experience this first-hand, in a small place called Nar Shaddaa - Red Light District.

It was created by Penny Patton, the graphics expert and SL's most passionate optimization advocate,

"The theme is a Star Wars planet of the same name," she explains. "Kind of a Star Wars version of Las Vegas meets Amsterdam. Part of a network of Star Wars RP sims in SL."

Penny just visited it with her near-10 year old desktop computer to take these pics, and as she designed it to be, performance was still excellent: "I was getting a solid 35-45 frames per second. When people talk about FPS in SL they tend to ignore things like stuttering, where SL freezes up for a second or two as you turn the camera. I got none of that even on my aging desktop."

Before visiting, however, you'll need to tweak some settings to get the full effect:

Visit in SL: A Tropical Post-Apocalypse City Called Drune IV - Aftermath

Here's a walkthrough of a quite amazing Second Life sim: Drune IV - Aftermath (SLurl teleport here), a rusted-over city on a small, tropical island, which somehow survived after an unspecified calamity. (Hey, maybe a new kind of twist on cyberpunk: Tropicalypse!)

Your host in this video above is Ayla Pants, a fun and chatty guide accompanied by a friendly drone, who is immediately greeted by an incredible avatar, who compliments Ayla on her fashion choices. The sim comes with great ambient sound (crashing waves and seabird song, to contrast with the rusting skyscrapers), and, Ayla tells me, looks great throughout the day cycle:

William Gibson & Others Note, Celebrate, Mourn SL's Hangars Liquides

Here's the correct teleport link to visit and explore Hangars Liquides, Second Life's legendary cyberpunk city that's still set to close at the end of this month. Thanks to a retweet of my story by William Gibson, this viral Reddit thread, and massive social media shares by Second Life users past and present, the city has been inundated by visitors. However, my post originally included a teleport to a store in Hangars, and not the official landing spot. (Shopkeeper Beev Fallen helpfully added the proper teleport to his showroom.) 

The original post also includes some lovely tributes to Hangars and its lead creator,  Djehan Kidd:

Visit in Second Life This Month: Cica Ghost's Magical Drawn Town

Click here to teleport all through this month (after which it goes away) into the latest gorgeously whimsical experience created by longtime SL-based artist Cica Ghost. It's called Drawn Town, and as that suggests, it's almost like moving through a 3D chalkboard drawing:

"[M]y first public work in Second Life was a black and white world that I called CICA," Ms. Ghost explains. "It was on the Linden Endowment for Arts sim and was mostly black drawings on alpha textures on white background, with some animation script. People liked that place; there are still many who tell me how it was their favorite from all of my work."

But that experience was created quite awhile ago, and she decided to revisit that style: