New World Notes

Visit in Second Life: Mitsumi-Town, an Ultra-Realistic City Sim Modeled from Google Maps & RL Photos of Tokyo 3 Months in the Making

Click here to visit Mitsumi-Town, an intricately detailed Second Life sim painstakingly modeled after a Tokyo neighborhood. Lead developed by Eripom Moonwall, an SLer who actually lives in Japan and has built up a successful SL weapons business in her spare time as a Tokyo-based financial consultant. Working with two producers, four builders and one "advisor of traffic laws and infrastructures" (as she describes the role), Ms. Moonwall and her team took three months to make Mistumi-Town what it is today. And they're only 70% done, she tells me.

"Our main business in SL is 'gun maker'," she says, "so we always research meticulously before we start building... In this case, a whole month we have researched and referenced a small town in Tokyo, walked around in real life Tokyo towns to take photos and shared them with my staff as base knowledge, and used Google Maps to get more details of city growth."

As she describes it, Mitsumi-Town even reflects recent history of Tokyo from its post-World World II rebuilding period and how it became what it is today:

Visit in Second Life: SSOC, Ultra-Realistic City Sim for Urban Combat Roleplay

If you were blown away by the cinematic action SL photography of Eripom Moonwall that Cajsa profiled last week, you'll probably be just as gobsmacked by the incredibly detailed and believable city sim she's created as a backdrop for her urban combat scenes and machinima (as above). It's called SSOC (same name as her brand of virtual weaponry: Click here to visit.

The city is basically just begging for special ops missions, rampaging mutant dinosaurs, and, of course, GTA-type shenanigans on is many highways and roads. (Some examples on German SL blog Echt Virtuell here.)

Visit in SL This Weekend: Giant Recreation of the Kitchen from The Simpsons

Click here to visit a pretty fun, temporary build in SL: A massive recreation of Homer and Marge's kitchen from The Simpsons. (As you can see above, a can of Homer's beer is about 6 feet tall.) It's created by JanosX, who tells me he's going to leave it in-world until next Monday, so visit soon. "It covers 2 of my parcels," he tells me, "and it's several maximum size meshes, some made in SL and meshed with a mesh generator, some with Blender... it's all optimized meshes to get the lowest land impact possible, [you] can make giant meshes with low land impact if you play good with the physics shape types."

When you click this teleport link, go through the giant purple door to get into the kitchen. (Going through the small door that's there is also worth doing, because it'll take you to JanosX's other madcap creations.) Old timers may be reminded of the famed Greenies kitchen from 2007, only JanosX's kitchen comes with much more Doh-ness.

Video below featuring Janos (who as it turns out, is a fricking hedgehog), and share Flickr pics in Comments!

Come to Chess Wonderland to Feel Like a Pawn in a Mad Man's Game

Chess Wonderland in the Second Life sim of Egypt (click here to teleport) is among the best SL experiences I've visited in quite awhile (that's me dwarfed by the bow and arrow), full of giant, looming chess pieces in a distorted chess board that is also the world itself, lit up by a strange aurora borealis.

Steelhead Returns: Beloved Second Life Steampunk Sim is Back!

Speaking of SL sims becoming more cost-effective lately, click here to visit Steelhead Bay. (That's me above on a quick visit just an hour ago.) Regular readers will remember that Steelhead City, a cluster of five beautifully designed steampunk-themed sims, closed last year from an inability to cover monthly tier. This new sim, owned by longtime Steelhead community member Fuzzball Ortega (oh yes) is restoring that lost glory:

"With the blessing of the previous owners of Steelhead," Ortega tells me, "I named the sim Steelhead Bay. Those who called Steelhead home for a very long time, me since year one in 2006, did move on and settled in other places, Caledon, New Babbage, St. Johns, etc. but, it was never the same. I'm sure a lot of people in SL can understand that. It was time to bring them home."

He did this after enduring a real life bump in income, but the good news is, the sim's costs and construction already look like they're being covered by supporters:

Marfa,Texas Recreated in Second Life for Your Hipster Fashion & No Country for Old Men Cosplay Photo Needs

Click here to visit The Last Forever, a new sim inspired by the small iconic town of Marfa, Texas. Inspired by a tip from master metaverse explorer Pepa Cometa, I just teleported there myself and was duly impressed. Rather than try photograph it myself, though, here's some pics of the place from Melusina Parkin. If they look eerily familiar, there's a good reason for that: Marfa was a backdrop in contemporary classic films No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. In recent years the town has has attracted a rather large community of artists and hipsters, especially from nearby Austin, so I fully expect to see Second Life imitate real life with frequent virtual fashion and art photos from The Last Forever.

What to See in Second Life: Interactive Site Inspired by German Expressionism

Created by ini Inaka, it's a build inspired by classic German Expressionist movies like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang's M. Video capture of the experience by Grady Echegaray above, and a photo of it below.

Click here to teleport there.

YouTube Video Directory of Beautiful/Interesting Second Life Places

Where to go in the virtual world? Visit Marcus VanDouser's YouTube page, which features dozens of well-shot videography of beautiful and/or interesting Second Life sims, with the map/teleport link thoughtfully added in the info box of each. Such as this one, which seems like somewhere in Montana but is actually a sim named Burger: Click to visit here.

Harvard Still Has a Sim in Second Life, But I'm Not Sure Even Harvard Remembers That

When I noted the decline of "the most prominent and active presence of a major university in Second Life" on Monday, I added "active" as a qualifier because there's still some other prominent universities in SL, up to and including the most prominent in the entire world: Harvard University. Click here to visit Berkman, sponsored by Harvard's law college of the same name.

Thing is, you may be one of the few visitors in quite some time.

That wasn't always the case, because a decade ago, it was quite active, hosting events like "Avatar-based Marketing: What's the future of Real Life Companies Marketing to Second Life Avatars?", which spun out of an article from the Harvard Business Review. I was a panelist at that event, and another time, distinctly remember first meeting Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on the sim, as he was exploring SL as an avatar named Jimbo Berkman (yes).

The place is more or less empty now, except for a public sandbox, and to judge by the surroundings, hasn't been updated in many years. For instance, clicking a nearby bulletin board produces this notecard, dated 2011:

Metaverse Art to Visit This Weekend: "The Pillars" Featuring Four Lonely Bots & Massive Stone Spires

The Pillars from Tizzy Canucci on Vimeo.

Click here until October to see "The Pillars: Four Moments of Contemplation" by Oberon Onmura in full 3D. Ms. Tizzy Canucci shot the machinima documentary above, with a description of what visitors are about to see:

"[A] forest of mountain pillars inhabited by four bots, each in his own soundscape. And then, something flickers.... Oberon is known for his minimalist yet evocative style, sometimes highly scripted, and other times (such as this) more metaphoric."

Caitlin Tobias took a visit too, and has this write-up on her blog: