New World Notes

Prince Harry & Meghan Markle Spend First Week of Independence Looking at Art Made in Second Life

New World Notes has spent little or no time covering the British Royal Family over the last 14 years, but here we are: This Tuesday, a day before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced an official withdrawal from their royal duties, they spent some time looking at art made in Second Life.

Yes indeed they did:

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle took in Skawennati’s exhibit "Avatars, Aliens, Ancestors" on Tuesday while visiting Canada’s high commissioner to the United Kingdom to say thanks for the hospitality they received during their recent trip to Canada...

The show imagines indigenous life past, present and future. It opens with the video work Words Before All Else, in which Skawennati’s avatar recites the Haudenosaunee’s Thanksgiving Address.

“My avatar, who is named xox, is an extension of myself,” she said. “She allows me to go places I might not be able to go.”

The artist Skawennati is pretty amazingly ambitious, and makes amazing use of SL in her art. Here's a talk she did about it a few years ago:

SL Fashionista Blogger's Tips for Customizing Sinespace Avatars

On her blog Honeyjunkies, famed virtual world blogger/YouTuber Daeberethwen Arbenlow has some impressive sneak preview pics of the Shyla avatar from DAZ 3D, a new developer for NWN partner Sinespace. (Read about it on Forbes here.) Daeberethwen has some starting tips for avatar fashion fans:

 

"Starting with the default shape and then tweaking it was the easiest way to modify the shape to look decent," she tells me, "but also it is important to have a general idea of facial anatomy ratios."

 

Here's the extremely handy reference guide she uses for those ratios:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Manis Lane's Utterly Charming Virtual World Images

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

I love reading, so “Hiding Behind” from Manis Lane drew my eye immediately. I get a kick out of how she was inspired by the polaroids hanging on the line to add a filter or texture layer to add the kinds of scratches and abuse a photo that is handled a lot might accrue. The photo is full of good humor and frankly, just looking at it made me smile and lifted my mood. 

Watch: Trailer to Stömol, a Feature-Length Machinima Shot Completely in Second Life

OK this is impressive and is among the most ambitious Second Life-related projects I've seen in years: A feature-length machinima shot in SL. The brainchild and director is the avatar known as Huckleberry Hax, who's also written a full-length novel set in the virtual world, and is among Second Life's best photographers.

"The final movie will be about 1 hr 10 mins long (give or take)," Hax tells me. "I'm keeping the finer plot details about the movie secret for now. It's essentially a story about truth set at some unspecified point in the future, following climate collapse."

Production is almost complete, with a handful more scenes to be shot/reshot, then onto adding dialog and special effects. It's already been nearly a year in the making, he tells me, with many SL creators collaborating in the production:

I Was Going to Blog an Uncanny Valley Think Piece About Samsung's NEON "Intelligent" Avatars But Then Laughed My Ass Off Instead

Samsung's NEON! It's getting much buzz at this year's CES, so much so that I planned to write a thought provoking think piece about them with a mandatory Uncanny Valley reference, but then I watched this video and got to 4:20 (no I'm not high) and just laughed. Does any human in the history of the world say "pizza" like that, unless they have a gun pointed to their head?

Anyway, more on the official homepage:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Jarla Capalini’s Fantastic Fashion Photostream

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

Wow! I love “Crimson” by Jarla Capalini. It’s very Richard Avedon. It’s a stunning fashion photo with a perfect pose highlighting the hat and bracelet. 

Watch: Brain-Melting Unity Demo Turns Polaroid Photos Into Slices of Interactive, Manipulable Reality

It's difficult to describe what's happening in this astounding Unity demo by game design student Matt Stark, but I'll go ahead and try: He's created an interactive world where the user can take a "Polaroid photo" of the surroundings -- and once taken, the photo becomes its own little interactive, manipulable, physics-enabled world.

As you might expect, Mark tells me he created this effect for a puzzle game he's working on. "I think the puzzles could be open-ended, allowing the player to approach them creatively," he tells me. "I'm at the stage of brainstorming level mechanics and trying to decide what the anatomy of a puzzle in the game should be." 

As for achieving this effect, here's how he does it:

PSVR Sales Not Growing Much in Relation to Playstation 4 Install Base

This week Sony is touting strong sales for the Playstation 4, along with sales of its VR peripheral, the PSVR. As expected, the PSVR install base is now at 5 million, making it the most popular mid-to-premium virtual reality headset on the market. So that's a milestone of some kind. 

Then again, it also reveals a troubling pattern: The PSVR install base is not expanding. Look:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: The Friendly Otter Turns Second Life Screenshots Into Beautifully Composed Black & White Imagery

“The Crows Watch” is an amazing image by The Friendly Otter and one that typifies his stream with high contrast black and white imagery that are all about form. I love the leading lines created by the roof and the row of crows. The composition is very much about contrast and empty space and uses the rule of thirds in situating the birds.

VRChat & Rec Room See Some Steam User Growth; Sansar, Not So Much

Nice to start the New Year with some good-ish news for social VR: We're seeing somewhat significant growth in usage among the leaders on Steam. Through most of 2019, peak daily concurrency for VRChat hovered between the 7000s and 8000s; in recent months, however, that's ticked up to the 9000s and 10,000s. 

Note that I said "leaders", because as you can see here, peak daily Steam concurrency for High Fidelity, Altspace VR,  Big Screen, and Sansar generously remain in the low three figures. (Or less generously, mostly in the one to two figures.)

However VRChat isn't the only one to see some growth on Steam: