New World Notes

Cassie's Clips: Holiday Shopping Tips - Equal 10 & Lelutka Powder Pack

Just in time for the long US holiday weekend, NWN's Cassie Middles has some shopping tips from Equal 10 and Lelutka:

"Equal 10 is an event that caters to both genders, filled with stores of all types and opens on the 10th of each month."

And Lelutka? 

SL Merchants: Take This Pre-Holiday State of the Virtual Economy Survey

Note: Scroll down to take full survey

Click here or take this survey above if you're a virtual world merchant and want to share your perspective on the state of the Second Life economy, your place in it, and your thoughts on the economic potential of Sansar. (And please consider sharing with acquaintance merchants.) Deadline to take it, appropriately enough, is "Black Friday" this week. (I'll be posting the results on New World Notes next week.)

The survey was created by a long established Second Life merchant based in Japan who I'll call John Doe. And who tells me his performance in the virtual economy has taken a sharp, concerning turn in recent months:

How Linden Lab Could Create a Minecraft-Style Game Mode in Second Life

Last week's Comment of the Week included the toss-off line "Second Life cannot be changed to be like Minecraft," but reader Will Burns has this week's Comment of the Week arguing just the opposite:

I have to disagree that SL cannot be evolved closer to the Minecraft model. You already have object materials. You already have the damage indicator. There's just no compelling reason to use them. This is because they were never fully fleshed out and implemented as their own options.

That is where LL dropped the ball. Evolving those already existing attributes and giving them purpose baked into the very nature of SL experience itself and not an arbitrary or superficial addition.

By creating the need for it, it makes the experience compelling long term.

Effectively, you'll end up with a Game Mode sim option where items have durability, people have various stats like and RPG, materials can be harvested and used for items to determine durability and so on.

This wouldn't be a foreign concept either, because you'd just be building the mechanics of Life2 HUD and its various components into the grid itself native.

For those who want to set their sim to God Mode, then those game rules are suspended in such spaces and SL operates in those zones like it does now. Leave those zones and the mortality may resume.

Then you start new users out in the mortality mode in an area that can help cater to those needs. They will figure it out from there. Just like in Minecraft where nobody specifically tells you to punch trees. It's emergent behavior.

Yes. In Second Life's early days, the damage-enabled Outlands had much of this spirit and consequently, had a vibrant culture of its own. It really wouldn't take much effort or cost for Linden Lab to experiment with creating a whole new Gamer continent, and see if it gets any traction. And there's already numerous Second Life users building Minecraft-type content. One or two developers could do this in a year or two, so what's the downside?

Watch Thomas Dolby Performing in High Fidelity and Decide if Social VR is the Future of Live Online Music

Notwithstanding some technical difficulties here and there, and occasional herky-jerky movement from his avatar, this is pretty impressive and mind-bending: Coming in live from his studio at Johns Hopkins in Maryland to High Fidelity's servers in San Francisco, in front of an audience of 200 or so avatars, here's pop star Thomas Dolby rigged to a full body VR rig, performing live in the virtual world last weekend. While he does his hit "Hyperactive" in this long clip (toward the end), he doesn't do "She Blinded Me With Science". However, High Fidelity's Ryan Downe does get the entire audience to shout "SCIENCE!" at the same time -- which in itself demonstrates how real time and low latency High Fidelity's technical performance is. (You can even hear a lot of audience chatter in the background, just as you would if you saw Dolby at a real world club venue.)

Back in 2006 when Suzanne Vega performed live in Second life in front of some 80 people, many people (i.e. me) were prompted to wonder if virtual world performances were the future of live music online. Clearly it was too early to ask that question back then -- during Vega's show, the system groaned to handle that many audience members -- but now, finally, is a good time to raise that topic again:

Philip Rosedale: Why Virtual Reality Offers a Better Consumer Experience Over AR Devices Like HoloLens & Magic Leap

Interesting NWN comment from Second Life/High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale, responding to Magic Leap's just announced, no frillys avatar chat app:

It seems possible that VR headsets like the Quest or Focus, with pass-through video capabilities and wide field of view at a consumer price point ($400) will provide a better experience than can be delivered with AR. You can't see a person's eyes when they are wearing the HoloLens or Magic Leap, so why not just wear a VR headset?

If I'm reading this right, Phillip is arguing that you can use the Quest and Focus' video capabilities to create augmented reality-type experiences within VR. (Whereas you wouldn't be able to do virtual reality-type experiences from within most augmented reality HMDs.) Which is a very valid point. I'm also intrigued by his acknowledgement that lack of eye contact is a problem for both AR and VR:

Top 6 New World Notes Posts from Last Week: Metaverse Lessons from The Matrix, Animesh Launches, Aliens Evolve, Much More

• Magic Leap Launches Avatar Chat With AR Chatroom & Media Sharing, Cartoonish, Low-Detail Avatars
• Humans Want Struggle, Not Perfection: What The Matrix's Agent Smith Teaches Us About Creating Successful Virtual Worlds
• Space Invaders Meets Darwin: Mini-Game Where Waves Of Aliens Pass Genes To Next Generation -- And Evolve
• Animesh, Enabling Animated Mesh NPCs & Autonomous Creatures, Officially Launches In Second Life
• Star Is Reborn: Rising EDM Vocalist Briefly Returns To Second Life To Test Out New Material Through His Avatar, Skye Galaxy
• Since Second Life Is So Difficult To Use, Linden Lab Should Pay New Users To Learn How To Use It

Watch Live: Acclaimed Game Designer Warren Spector in Sinespace

Cassie's Clips: Previewing Genus Head's New Motion Captured Animations

Exclusive to New World Notes, Ms. Cassie Middles previews an ambitious new update to the Genus mesh head -- motion captured animations for facial expressions:

"Now the head has mocap and there's several resting animations, fluid moving animations, gestures, and eye, brow, and mouth phases of animations," she tells me. I'm impressed, because it's incredibly difficult to mocap facial expressions, since they involve so many muscle groups.

It's not 100% perfect, she allows, but still smashing: 

Magic Leap Launches Avatar Chat With AR Chatroom & Media Sharing, Cartoonish, Low-Detail Avatars

Continuing in its now familiar "Where's the fricking whale we were promised?" theme, Magic Leap just announced Avatar Chat with media and browser sharing features in (what looks to be) a small, augmented reality chatroom setting. If you were hoping to see vivid recreations of your friends as full featured 3D avatars displayed right in front of you, seeming to be sitting on your couch or resting against a wall or whatever, this is not for you: The avatars are extremely low-detailed, disembodied heads.

In fairness, the limited graphics seems to be by design -- probably because this is meant to be a light application for content sharing. Still, the lack of "Wow" factor continues to be a frustration for Magic Leap:

Humans Want Struggle, Not Perfection: What The Matrix's Agent Smith Teaches Us About Creating Successful Virtual Worlds

If you want to know why some virtual worlds like Minecraft are huge, while others like Second Life remain a relative niche, watch this scene from The Matrix, which is actually about creating the virtual world of the Matrix itself. Agent Smith reveals that the AIs first tried to create a perfect virtual world for its human users, but the humans rejected it. For Will Burns, Vice-Chair for IEEE's Virtual Worlds Standard Group, this is the key challenge virtual world developers face:

"When you build a perfect world without needs or wants, it inevitably is rejected," as he puts it. "Because that's not how humanity works. Humanity thrives in the pursuit of progress and something to work toward.

"So when you introduce those needs, those imperfections and whatnot, suddenly humanity thrives, rises to the occasion. When you stop giving them everything and their entire existence is no longer on a whim of wants, but no needs... something fundamentally changes in how that society works. They strive and overcome. You give them challenges, limits to face and overcome. That way, you no longer end up with 'Bored God Syndrome'. People logging in and saying 'What's the purpose here?'.

"If everything is a matter of want but not need, then it's boring. If nothing really serves a need, people get bored. Introduce those limits to overcome, those challenges, and they come together not just for want, but for necessity. And that's how civilizations arise in their complexity. And by no means should you give them that pre-defined complexity prebuilt. You just hand them the system that lets them do it themselves and ultimately requires it."

 The challenges define and shape how the virtual community evolves:

"In this manner, airports means something when built. It's not a joyride (though you could have tours). But it serves a real purpose of faster travel. Highways, sea ports, etc. They serve a bigger purpose. And they are created with the intention of solving a problem. That's the big take away. What does such a thing solve in a virtual society? Does it have a purpose other than superficial? In that moment, you realize the secret to a successful Metaverse. Is it superficial only? Then you have Bored God Syndrome and it gets rejected. Just like the first Matrix."

That changes if the developer imposes struggles and challenges: