New World Notes

Coming Soon to New World Notes: "Nylon Pinkney is Online", Weekly Comic Adventures in VRChat, Second Life, and Beyond!

I'm utterly stoked to announce a new weekly series on New World Notes coming soon: "Nylon Pinkney is Online", from acclaimed indie comic artist and illustrator Danielle Feigenbaum. Longtime readers know her most by her Second Life avatar Nylon Pinkey, whose virtual fashion and housewares are so well-known and beloved, even Drew Carey is a fan. As the title suggests, Danielle will document her many surreal and hilarious adventures in SL, VRChat, and online worlds beyond.

Along with her awesome Flickr and Instagram, Danielle's work has been featured in Old Pal and the book Blocked: Stories from the World of Online Dating. As a preview for the epic humor that's about to drop, take a look at some of her recent comics. And join me in welcoming her to New World Notes!

Cajsa’s SL Flickr Choice Of The Day: The Melancholy Textures of Tinker Drew

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

"I love 'Majorca Glow' from Tinker Drew. I love the colorful house in the light of the setting sun. Drew uses a texture overlay to add a painterly finish to her screenshot and responsibly links to the texture artist. I appreciate that because it is an obligation more honored in the breach.

"As you can see from Neva River, Drew has an affinity for the aged and slightly decrepit setting, for houses on the downside, beautiful, but past their prime. Again, a texture gives the picture an aged, artistic feeling with another texture by another texture artist.

"In 'She Dreams of Ships and Far Away Places' we get to See Tinker Drew take on a human subject...

Artist Gets Canadian Government Grant to Create VR & Machinima Experiences in Second Life & Sansar

RL grant for the artist known as Bryn Oh, next to bronze castings of her virtual world art

Great news from "Bryn Oh", avatar name of an acclaimed, anonymous Canadian artist who's been using Second Life and Sansar as her canvas for many years:

I was just informed a few days ago that I have been awarded another grant from the OAC, a Canadian government arts funding organization.  I am so pleased and would just like to thank the OAC for their continued support over the years... [The grant] is substantial and will allow me to further embrace working with the Oculus and other technologies to create immersive spaces.  

This is actually the fourth grant for virtual world art that she's received from OAC (she received one in 2011), and since then, she's expanded the reach of her work, even creating bronze statues based on her 3D sculptures from Second Life. However, as she tells me: "The grant is not for making bronzes but to film and build a story called 'Hand' in Second Life and Sansar, in Sansar as a VR experience."

More on her blog and on her Instagram.

RL photo courtesy Bryn.

How "Live" Was Marshmello's Fortnite Show Really & Does It Matter?

When Suzanne Vega performed a live virtual concert in Second Life back in 2006, roughly 80 people attended as avatars. She performed via an audio stream from a sound booth with interviewer John Hockenberry, and perhaps most key, there was actual interaction by Vega and the audience -- at one point, for instance, her avatar's guitar had trouble displaying, and she thanked a fan for offering to give her a copy of his. (Watch above.)

While 10 million concurrent players reportedly watched Marshmello perform live in Epic Game's Fortnite last weekend, the only thing that seems to be "live" in terms of real time input by the artist named Marshmello, i.e. Christopher Comstock, is an audio stream (or pre-recorded audio?) going into many thousands of Fortnite servers while copies of the scripted show and his avatar played.

That's all probably hair-splitting, because as Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka puts it, Epic took a totally different approach to deploying a "live in-game concert":

Cajsa’s SL Flickr Choice Of The Day: The Playful Portraiture of Mila Maesar

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

"Sweet...but psycho" made me crack up. I was browsing Flickr and scrolled past, then scrolled back up asking myself "What did I just see?" Mila Maesar kindly linked to her musical inspiration, an acoustic version of the song 'Sweet but Psycho' that was a perfect fit, especially the lyric, 'you'll be coming back, back for seconds.'"

Her stream is interesting, including several romantic photos, but her true metier is exploring portraiture with intriguing closeups on her face or her hands, taking full advantage of Bento:

Top 6 Posts from Last Week: Facebook Making an MMO, VRChat Growing Strong, Reimagining Great Black Artists With Deep Dream & Much More

• Facebook Creating Virtual Game World With NPCs, Stories, Levels
• 30% Of VRChat's Daily Users Wear HMDs -- That's About 40,000-100,000 Monthly VR Users, Which Would Make VRChat The Most-Used VR Game!
• Afrofuturist Artist Creates Stunning Portraits Of Black Artists With Deep Dream AI Algorithms
• Fortnite Follows Second Life's Footsteps Further Hosting "Live" In-Game Concert Of RL Popstar Marshmello
• Location-Based, Instagram-Friendly VR Startup Gets $68M From Andreessen
• Social VR Steam Stats: VRChat Peak Concurrency Grows Strongly To 10,000+; Strongly Suggests Monthly Active Users In The Low Six Figures

Facebook Creating Virtual Game World With NPCs, Stories, Levels

Well this is an interesting job post Facebook uploaded just a few hours ago -- some kind of narrative designer for a "game world" or "interactive world" that connect between different levels and an overall story conveyed at least in part by NPCs (i.e. "characters in-game"). Facebook has long been a platform for social games, but hasn't really gotten so directly involved in game publication before. My guess is this will become some kind of portal to multiple games in Facebook Spaces, the social network's VR-based chatroom -- which the lead developer fully admitted last year that there isn't much there there to do. A kind of casual MMO experience linked to multiple games or levels would certainly change that.

More details hopefully soon!

Sinespace Has an Official Discord for Developers & Social Gamers

Click here to join the official Discord server of NWN partner Sinespace, with channels for both developers and social gamers into fashion, housewares, mini-games, etc. My favorite channel is "Show Off Your Work", where developers give sneak peeks of what they're creating and soon planning to launch. So for example, it's where I noticed someone is creating a pet game for Sinespace -- more on that soon (hopefully).

30% of VRChat's Daily Users Wear HMDs -- That's About 40,000-100,000 Monthly VR Users, Which Would Make VRChat the Most-Used VR Game!

Quick update to Monday's story that VRChat is now boasting 10,000+ daily peak concurrent users. The most noteworthy stat reported by VRChat is how daily users are logging in with a VR headset. Some experts have estimated that only 5-10% VRChat users are actually wearing HMDs -- but VRChat reports that it's nearly 1 in 3 daily users, 30%. Since daily peak concurrency is 10,000+, that suggests about 40,000-100,000 VRChat daily users in HMD rigs.

Which is crazy big. That strongly suggests VRChat is the most used game among VR headset owners.(By contrast, single-player VR hit Beat Saber is currently getting daily peaks of 4000+, i.e. about 16-40K DAU.) In other words, VRChat is likely the most used VR game on the market.

The other noteworthy point from these stats is how many total people regularly use VRChat:

Afrofuturist Artist Creates Stunning Portraits of Black Artists With Deep Dream AI Algorithms

This utterly gorgeous image of British singer Sade was created by Nettrice Gaskins, an African-American artist whose work explores "techno-vernacular creativity" and Afrofuturism. As that suggests, her medium for creating this image and others in her series of portraits is unique: Deep Dream, the neural network AI.

“I used Deep Dream Generator's algorithm, which is inspired by the human brain," she tells me. "The generator uses the stylistic elements of one image to draw the content of another. The first picture defines the portrait I want to create and the second picture I upload gives the program a style to simulate. The process may include more than one pass in the generator, using different style images, until I get the image I want." This portrait of Sade, for instance, "[Is] a composite of multiple Deep Dream images."

Here's another one I love below, a portrait of Pulitzer-winning hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar, re-imagined by Dr. Gaskins and Deep Dream through a symphony of sharp angles that evoke his epic, staccato rap style: