New World Notes

What Are Your Favorite Virtual World Locations for Great Ambient Sound?

You'll likely need to wear your headphones to hear it, but on a recent visit to my office in Waterhead in SL, I noticed the location was starting to sound really lovely. Not just due to my artificial tide, but recently a neighbor added one of those lonely pier bells, while another had installed a clocktower chime. So lovely, in fact, when I went back to RL work, I kept the virtual world running in the background, so I could keep hearing that soothing ambience. Most locations in Second Life are pretty scant on atmospheric audio, so I'm lucky to have this for my own location. 

What are your favorite virtual world spots for ambient sound? Post in Comments so we can give a listen.

Oh, and about my shrine to Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash:

Open Forum: What Should New World Notes Feature This Week?

Events, announcements, products, videos, social trends, research, anything roughly related to virtual worlds and VR, Second Life and its many official and unofficial spinoffs -- and definitely also great Flickr feeds for Cajsa's column -- please post details and links in Comments!

Here's My Predictions for Virtual Worlds & VR in 2021 -- What Are Yours?

Image credit: Klaus Reinherz, "Socially Distanced New Year 2020/21"

Here's mine:

• There will be a departure in Linden Lab's C-suite, i.e. CEO/COO/CFO/CTO.
• Both VRChat and Rec Room will finally surpass Second Life in peak concurrency numbers.
• Related to the above, either VRChat or Rec Room will be acquired by a major platform/company.
• Second Life's long-awaited "mobile app companion" will launch but see a disappointing reception, failing to earn over 100,000 downloads on Google Play.
• Sales of Oculus Quest 2 in 2020 will under-perform expectations: Despite a major marketing push, under 2 million. Slow sales will continue through 2021, with an install base under 3 million.
• Unreal and/or Unity will announce an official metaverse platform.
• Bowing to public and government pressure, Facebook will discontinue mandatory Facebook log-in for its Oculus headsets.
• Roblox will announce $1 billion in revenue for 2021.
• Core will announce a major platform partner or be acquired outright, with Epic the likeliest suitor.
• Apple will not announce its long-rumored AR headset in 2021.

Share yours in Comments below and I'll share my favorites next week -- the more concrete and easy to verify, the better.

Open Forum: What Events Should We Attend This Weekend, and What News Should I Cover Next Week?

The mic is open! (Hot mic! Got a hot mic here. Check!)

Open Forum: What Are Your Virtual World & AR/VR Predictions For 2020?

Happy New Year, all! Once again it's time to think about the virtual world road ahead with predictions -- the more specific, better. I'll start:

• Magic Leap will fold.
• There will be a major corporate transition by Linden Lab -- possibly a change in executive leadership, a substantial round of lay-offs, or even a sell-off of Sansar.
• We will see at least one Second Life-type virtual world (monetizeable user-generated content in an open world with collaborative content creation) reach six figures in monthly active users.

So two pessimistic predictions plus an optimistic one. How about you? Post away, and I'll feature the most noteworthy next year.

Reader Challenge: What's The Most Uniquely Second Life Image Ever?

For reasons I'll hopefully get to explain soon, I recently spent several hours plunging through Flickr in search of The Most Uniquely Second Life Image Ever. At 3am or so, I found this glorious one above, by Nomi Gothly, "I'll search the flight of whales". (Yes, there's flying whale islands in SL, or at least there once was: Click here to check.)

Why'd I dub this the most SL pic ever? I have several criterion, and I'm challenging readers to top this example:

What Great Second Life Artists on Flickr Should Cajsa Consider Choosing?

I love Cajsa's thrice-weekly column devoted to great Second Life-based artists on Flickr and hope you do too. It's amazing to see how massive and deep that community has become, and Cajsa tells me she'll accidentally discover new (to her) artists on a fairly regular basis.

Speaking of which, are there any she hasn't covered, but should? (Here's her complete collection thus far.) Please post their Flick account links in Comments and yes, that can include your own, too. 

Pictured above, some of my personal recent favorites (from left to right):

Weekend Open Forum: Discuss Anything Virtual Here & On NWN's Discord!

The party is always happening here on New World Notes' Discord, with channels devoted to Second Life, Sansar and High Fidelity, VR and games (especially MMOs and virtual worlds), general chat, and a channel for dropping tips and announcements. (The more links, the better). We're now about 150 members strong, and we're welcome to all.  

Weekend Open Forum: What's Most Interesting in the Metaverse Lately?

And by "metaverse" I mean Second Life, VRChat, OpenSim, High Fidelity, Sansar, Sinespace, and yes, also Dual Universe. And by "interesting" I mean events, experiences, updates, creations, news. And yes, self-promotion is encouraged, as long as you post helpful links too. To start things off, here's a web-based portal to a scale, 3D interactive replica of Fallingwater in Sinespace (an NWN partner) created by University of Edinburgh's Austin Tate.

Open Forum: What Are You Doing in this Summer of Virtual Doldrums?

30 regions leave and 30 arrive this week - Overall no net change on #secondlife grid - Grid stands a 23299 regions https://t.co/EV9uMcJ3RL pic.twitter.com/ucFu9V0tCq

— Tyche Shepherd (@tycheshepherd) August 12, 2018

Pardon the slow start in NWN blogging this week due to a short Summer vacation. Then again, virtual world news seems fairly slow overall as well -- no growth in Second Life last week (according to Tyche Shepherd), ending a small streak of post-land discount swelling. Then again, in the next generation of VR, High Fidelity is showing growth on the local concurrency level, but for overall concurrency, VRChat remains tops -- but its usage levels are also flat. What's fun happening lately in your strip of the virtual beach?