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.
Continue reading "Weekend Open Forum: Discuss Anything Virtual Here & On NWN's Discord!" »
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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.
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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?
Continue reading "Open Forum: What Are You Doing in this Summer of Virtual Doldrums?" »
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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?
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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.
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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:
Will check back on these in 2019. NWN readers?
Pictured: Mixed reality New Year's party featuring VR fan Deadmau5.
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I'm compiling a list! On a basic Flickr search, the top three groups are:
However, I don't trust raw Flickr searches, since they're likely to miss groups with poor SEO titles. Also, the last time I looked into this 6-7 years ago, there were several SL-themed groups with members in the five figures. So which groups are larger?
Continue reading "What Are the Largest Second-Themed Flickr Groups?" »
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Time to say something related to VR, SL, HF, Sansar, Sinespace and so on? Post here, with links and such where available! And yes, grotesque self-promotion is not only allowed, but encouraged.
Pictured: Razor Cure's "Leap of Faith"
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I'm thrilled to welcome Leslie Jamison, celebrated author and journalist, to this New World Notes open forum to discuss her provocative, much-discussed Atlantic Monthly feature article, "The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future". If you have questions for Leslie (one at a time, please!), post them in Comments below, and throughout the day, she'll reply to as many as possible, time permitting. To help prime the pump, I've included some key excerpts from her article below.
And with that, I turn this post over to Leslie and NWN readers. See you in the Comments section!
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Some icy and moody SL machinima from 2010 by a man named BobE Schism, based on a true story recounted by author Paul Auster in The Locked Room, almost entirely shot using in-world physical effects.
And after watching that, here's an open comment thread to say or promote anything about VR and virtual worlds, from machinima to beyond:
Continue reading "An SL Machinima to Watch This Weekend - And an Open Forum!" »
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