New World Notes

Readings: Why The Fight for Real World Racial Equality is Just as Crucial in the Metaverse

It's a common misconception that virtual worlds are a safe escape from our offline prejudices. This is sometimes true but often not the case. In fact, the anonymous nature of metaverse platforms and other virtual worlds can make expressions of racism worse - especially when avatars are based around a realistic human model. Our best hope is being aware of that reality, and preparing for it.

Here's some New World Notes readings on theme:

Top 3 Posts: Acclaimed Second Life Artist Expands to Steam, Metaverse Platform Usage Grows to 520 MAU+, and a Warning to Students About ChatGPT... from ChatGPT

• Second Life Artist Exports Her Latest Experience To Unreal & Steam -- Here's What Bryn Oh Learned Along The Way!
• Professors Warn Students About Cheating With ChatGPT With Stern Warning… Created By ChatGPT
• Metaverse Platform Usage Grows To 520M MAU -- Q1 2023 Metaversed Chart

Fashion Friday: Fantasy Roleplay Style Suggestions from a Flickr Microblogger

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

"A." is a Flickr microblogger who revels in roleplay. “A Heart Made of Yarn” is a gorgeous picture. I love the feeling of one thing on top of another on top of another. The woman’s face lies there as though in a dream. That arm covering, the staff, and the amazing background seem like something out of a fairy tale. 

• From Cerridwen's Cauldron
• Orb Slime- Variation 1 (No Spores)
• Twinkle Ivy - Tree/Columne Patch
• Twinkle Ivy - Large Patch
• Mythspire Arch Small Scales- White
• Prism Type 4- Small Scales/ Mythspire Edition
• Gorgon Lilly Set- Fatpack
• NightFire Aloe Set
• From Arkivet + /Vae Victis\ ::
• Nix Solis Staff

For more, click here: 

Second Life Artist Exports Her Latest Experience to Unreal & Steam -- Here's What Bryn Oh Learned Along the Way!

Above: Lobby Cam in Steam/Unreal. See below for the SL version

Lobby Cam by Bryn Oh is a free new game experience on Steam, and like the name suggests, it's actually created by famed Second Life artist Bryn Oh. Since publishing it to Steam last Friday, it's garnered 7,2000 downloads -- quite a lot, for an indie developer on the platform, and a bit better than the visits her experiences get in Second Life. (Which range from 300-1000 a day, she tells me.)  

Steam only publishes games, so Bryn added a mini quest, but also decided to keep it free to play: "There are things such as a HUD for the letters you find and you can pick up and inspect some models on tables, lots of little things," she tells me. "I was able to monetize it but I chose to make it free. I figure people can support me on my Patreon if they like what I do."  

This is a really exciting move. I'm a huge advocate of Second Life creators expanding to other platforms so they can build their audience and market. It's also very cool to see her SL creation transformed to Unreal. (Compare and contrast the pics in this post.)

"Most of the changes involve aesthetics," she tell me. "Unreal Engine is a really powerful tool where you can spend lots of time on the minute details ranging from how shadows should bounce off an object to creating dozens of layers of ground textures."

While Unreal's graphics are incredibly powerful, her Second Life version has an innovative feature that couldn't make the transition to Steam (possible spoiler ahead):

 

Roblox Launches Creator Hub This Week, Rumored Quest Support This Year

First the news, then my commentary:

On the Creator Hub:

Roblox is officially completing its rollout of the Creator Hub, a new hub that gives developers more tools and centralizes things like documentation and a developer forum into one place. Making the information easier to find seems like it could be quite helpful for developers, and that has an important aftereffect for Roblox, too: Roblox makes its money by taking a cut of what its developers earn, so it’s incentivized to make things better for the creators on its platform.

Intrance, co-creator of the popular Roblox game "Starving Artist" (more on that soon) is impressed so far: "I'd say the most noticeable improvements are the faster loading times and user interface. The addition of verified users helped with filtering out lower quality assets. They've also implemented lots of new analytics dashboards displaying all kinds of stats including retention, engagement, and monetization."

On the rumored Quest support:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Maloe Vansant is a Long Time Favorite for Imaginative Images

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

Maloe Vansant’s photostream has been a favorite for close to fifteen years. I assumed I had written about her in the seven-plus years I have been writing this column, but what a huge oversight on my part. I have not. She is now doing a small series of pictures of women wearing veils. See here, here, here, and here. I love the richness of this pic. The sharp detail of the light and the statue. We can see the face through the veil to her vivid and striking face. I love that Maloe adds a bit of red by placing a flower on the papers. 

For more extraordinary pictures, click here:

Professors Warn Students About Cheating With ChatGPT With Stern Warning… Created by ChatGPT

You've probably heard about students using ChatGPT to cheat on their essay writing work, and it's something developer Catherine Winters knows about first-hand from colleagues at a local university.

"[They are] freaked out because of ChatGPT -- it looks like there was a lot of cheating the last couple weeks of last term," she tells me. "So they've banned it, added the use of it (and anything the prof doesn't allow) to be academic misconduct, etc."

Catherine came up with an even better solution: Asked ChatGPT to create the ultimate warning against students using ChatGPT. (See above.)

"I know at least two of them have since put that in their syllabi as warnings that they know what ChatGPT is," Catherine tells me. "Which is doubly hilarious." (Educators, the full anti-ChatGPT text is below, for your own copy/pasting needs.)

 

This, plus news of an AI programmed to detect AI, is starting to remind me of the artificial intelligence arms race in Philip K. Dick's classic short story "Second Variety": The AIs on opposing sides kill off most the actual humans in the war, keep on fighting against each other... and then set to work creating new AIs programmed to appear human enough to fool the enemy AI. 

 

So could students could train ChatGPT to generate answers that are designed to disguise their origins as coming from ChatGPT?

New York Times Features Creator of Second Life's Famed Tesseract House. Who Wants to Help Rebuilt It?

"A New Puzzle Turns Earth Into a Rubik’s Cube, but More Complex" is a fascinating New York Times story about Professor Henry Segerman, who's been creating fun and mind-bending mathematical sculptures and 3D puzzles for years. I've featured several of them on New World Notes (see below), but the Times missed what could be Segerman's most brain-melting sculpture ever:

The "Crooked House" in Second Life, inspired by a classic science fiction novel about a tesseract house with infinite rooms (watch above). 

Sad to say, the Crooked House no longer exists in the virtual world, but reached on social media, Henry tells me he'd be happy to help rebuild it.

So: Anyone have room to host a tesseract house? Let us know in Comments, and let's try to make it happen.

As for how the house has infinite rooms, here's what it looks like when you pull the camera back:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Visually Arresting Images from Titanxxx

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

Titanxxx has created a deeply personal photostream with pics of him and him with his “love pea” Candy. I appreciate that he comments on his pics. Without his commentary, I might never have looked at the titles of the books which are hilarious. Some of the titles include The Narcissist, Selfish: The Healthy Approach, and Life as a Balloon. They are a great reminder of the gentle sensibility of the late Kean Kelly who created the book models.

For more, click here:

Love Cajsa's Coverage of Second Life's Flickr Community? Consider Contributing to Her Ko-Fi!

Cajsa's October 20, 2022 post featuring Mara Telling, bear

Cajsa Lilliehook's Ko-fi account is a great way to send a "thank you" to Cajsa for her Tuesday-Friday column celebrating Second Life's massive creator community on Flickr. I often get messages from individual Flickr creators she features, profusely thanking her. I'm grateful too. She vividly illustrates how Second Life screenshots can go far beyond pretty avatar pictures (as fun as those are) to become an art platform and attract a community of fellow creators too.  

Here's some of my favorite posts from her in 2022 below. I say "some" because I started to compile a Top 10 favorites list for last year, and realized that'd be impossible. Thanks to her sharp eye, most of her posts are my favorites. See for yourself: