New World Notes

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?

Citing Failure of OpenSim to Evolve, Lead OpenSim News Site Closes After 9 Years of Operation

Sad but not entirely surprising news: After operating on a regular basis for over 9 years, HyperGrid Business is slowly closing down. By far the biggest news source for virtual worlds built on OpenSim, the open source spinoff of Second Life, publisher and lead editor Maria Korolov savvily built up a strong and passionate following for her outlet. But in her closing note, she suggests that OpenSim -- and Second Life itself -- has already been remanded to irrelevance:

[T]here was once a strong possibility that OpenSim would evolve into an open source, virtual reality metaverse. That’s not happening. Our viewers are still stuck where they were ten years ago, without any real support for web or mobile access or for virtual reality headsets. All projects to address that issue seem to have faded away. Instead, the focus has shifted to VR-native platforms from Google, Facebook, and, to some degree, Microsoft. We don’t know yet what Apple is cooking up, but they’re busy as well.

It’s increasingly looking like the whole SL-OpenSim ecosystem has hit a dead end. It will probably continue to exist as a niche platform for its half million active monthly users, shrinking slightly each year until it’s just a nostalgia thing, like text-based adventure games or manual typewriters.

I don't quite buy that last bit, because unlike OpenSim, Second Life is still backed by a profitable company with a highly engaged, highly monetized userbase, giving Linden Lab enough money to evolve (as we see with Sansar, albeit in fits and starts) . As with many open source-based projects, OpenSim was relying almost solely on the community spirit and voluntary work of assorted tinkerers and enthusiasts -- and that rarely leads to a commercial product with a consumer userbase.  Still, would be a shame for HGB to totally go away, especially because much of the OpenSim community is still around -- the site gets almost 150,000 monthly pageviews, a quite decent number -- maybe a benefactor could buy the site and take over?

Weekend Open Forum: Say Anything About Virtual Reality & Virtual Worlds

As always, self-promotion is always encouraged, as long as it comes with useful links. And if it's at least half as cool as the new BABYMETAL video, I promise to feature it on NWN.

What Are Your Virtual World Predictions & Resolutions for 2018?

Happy New Year, NWN readers! Here's an open forum for favorite predictions and resolutions for 2018. Anything related to Second Life, High Fidelity, Sansar, Sinespace, and any other virtual world, along with any other VR product or platform, and even virtual currency, the more specific, the better. To get things started, I'll start with some of mine:

Resolutions: Start a new book or major feature article on the new wave of virtual worlds/VR. 

Predictions:

• 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).
• 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. (See below.) 
• High-end Rift & Vive VR install base will remain low. Holiday sales haven't been counted up yet, but my guess is the cumulative remains below 2 million this year. (It was roughly 1 million toward the end of 2017.)  
• 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.)

Will check back on these in 2019. NWN readers?

Pictured: Mixed reality New Year's party featuring VR fan Deadmau5.