New World Notes

David Lynch Appears as Avatar in Breakroom from Sinespace to Accept Award at First Major Film Festival Hosted in a Virtual World

Acclaimed artist and filmmaker David Lynch recently appeared in avatar form in Breakroom, the virtual world for live events from Sine Wave Entertainment (a sponsoring partner to New World Notes). Lynch did so to receive an award from Mexico’s Guanajuato International Film Festival (or GIFF), one of world’s largest annual cinema events. Due to the pandemic, GIFF moved many of its scheduled events to a virtual campus built in Breakroom, so hundreds of registrants could safely watch short films in competition, attend panels, even participate in a studio pitch session.

As a longtime Lynch fan, it was a professional highlight to help bring the master creator of dreamlike alternate realities into a virtual world for the first time. Lynch and his assistant safely logged into Breakroom from his home in Los Angeles, from the very same spot where he shoots his famous weather reports. As you might have guessed, getting his iconic hair as accurate as possible for his avatar was the most challenging task. To make it a truly Lynchian event, the entrance to the theater lobby where the director received his award was even made to look like the Red Room from his cult series Twin Peaks. (We did consider adding a backward-talking midget as well, but that’ll have to wait.)

More details and video below. With this event, GIFF became the first major film festival to move its activities to a virtual world, but with the global pandemic still raging, I expect many more will follow. As for Breakroom, it’s recently hosted virtual world conferences for Stanford and the United Nations, and will soon launch a speakers’ events series open to all -- stay tuned.

Sinespace New Feature Launch Party With the Virtual World’s Founders, August 5 at 9am PT -- RSVP for Exclusive Access!

Click here for exclusive access to a new Sinespace feature launch party for Sinespace community members and all other virtual world explorers/creators. The event opens August 5 at 8:30am PT, then starts at 9am PT. You don’t need a Sinespace account to attend, but it will be held in a secret virtual world location, so you must RSVP here for access. 

As a media partner to Sinespace, I’m highly biased, but I think what the development team has created is pretty amazing, and if you’re a regular New World Notes reader, you’ll want to join the fun. 

Adam Frisby and the other founders of Sinespace will host the event, and talk about what this new feature means for the future of the virtual world. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get the first glimpse of some other impressive features about to go live very soon.

This launch comes after a period of relative quiet for the Sinespace development team, as they’ve been deep in the launch of Breakroom, and perfecting this feature they’re about to unveil. As Adam puts it to me:

Tomorrow in Sinespace: Miro Shot Presents a Virtual Interactive Radio Show with DJ Tobi Lynn, Powered by Dash Radio

UPDATE: Show embedded below!

Tomorrow: Miro Shot, Rising UK Rock Band, Puts On Immersive, Interactive Concert in Sinespace -- RSVP for Free Tickets!

Miro Shot, the acclaimed alt rock band inspired by virtual worlds, is performing a special concert tomorrow inside a virtual world: Specifically at their virtual headquarters in Sinespace (a NWN media partner).

Show starts July 4 at 2pm PT -- go to the band’s site to RSVP for free.

In the Sinespace concert, Miro Shot will perform music from the band's debut album “CONTENT” (featuring classic rock star Manfred Mann and Mary Wilson of the Supremes -- yes, those Supremes.) The band is signed to Believe Recordings (Bjork, James Vincent McMorrow), East City Management (Alt J, Wolf Alice), and published by Warp (Brian Eno, Stereolab, many more greats), so this is your first chance to see a rising star music group in the unique MMO-meets-mixed reality format they created.

Unlike many virtual world-based concerts, however, tomorrow’s show won’t simply be the band streaming in via audio, or performing as pre-recorded characters. It’s going to include an immersive, social game experiment, and in-person interaction with the band.

As frontman Roman Rappak puts it, that’s very much part of the plan:

Sinespace Partners with Unity Asset Store to Sell Content Directly to Users

Above: 3D character in the Unity Asset Store (left), and what it looks like imported into Sinespace (right, click to embiggen)

Gamasutra has the story on a new Sinespace partnership and while I'm highly biased as a media partner of Sinespace myself, I think is quite cool:

Sine Wave Entertainment, the studio behind free-to-play MMO sandbox Sinespace, has partnered with Unity to allow Asset Store creators to sell their 3D models to players through the in-game shop. As of today, Unity Asset Store users can opt in to sell their content to a global audience of Sinespace players, and will receive 70 percent of revenue from all sales...

"We’re excited to announce this opportunity both for gamers and our community of content creators, who will now have access to over a million assets through Sinespace, and be able to sell their 3D models directly to consumers," said Unity’s Peter O’Reilly, head of commercialization. "It’s a great opportunity that allows us to develop the huge, fast-growing virtual goods market."

Much more info here on Unity's site, some other examples of Asset Store-to-Sinespace content below:

Starting Free Today: Attend BlockDown, the Sinespace-Based Virtual World Conference for Blockchain Users & Entrepreneurs

Click here to register for a free ticket to BlockDown, the blockchain-focused tech conference kicking off today that’s being hosted in Sinespace’s Breakroom (a media partner to this blog).

As VentureBeat reported recently, the first BlockDown in Sinespace (video above) brought in a pretty impressive number of attendees to network, hear talks, and of course, dance in the after-hours club:    

BlockDown is a direct response to the worldwide quarantine, which effectively canceled an April conference EAK Digital had been planning to host in Istanbul. CEO Erhan Korhaliller ... considered simply staging the event on a video conferencing system but found the options boring — especially at a time when most people are working at home and yearning for a colorful, engaging alternative to boost their spirits.

In April, Korhaliller held a pilot conference for BlockDown, attracting 1,000 people from around the world, who paid $25 each to hear talks and network online. The pilot event also had 10 paying sponsors, who set up 3D exhibit booths that automatically grab the details of visiting attendees.

This month’s BlockDown is free with an option to pay for premium upgrades -- plus some new features including a virtual world/LinkedIn contact exchange, and a giant party yacht. (Better than just watching a web video conference in your underwear.)

Now in Sinespace: Adjust Clothing Tint in Real Time With Color Wheel Feature -- Plus Creator Tips from Gaby of PrettyDeceased

The Eris Bodycon is a new strapless leather dress in the shop of Sinespace (an NWN media partner) which includes a new-ish feature -- the ability to adjust the tint of a clothing item in real time to a near infinite degree, using a color wheel user interface. (See above.)

Created by Gaby, owner of the PrettyDeceased brand, the color wheel feature has actually been part of Sinespace for some time.

 “But current clothing isn’t taking advantage of that,” she tells me, “so I decided to make an outfit that is properly set up to fully use the material tinting option.”

She even wrote this tutorial here for other creators to incorporate the existing color wheel option into their own items.

Gaby also sells clothing on the Second Life marketplace under her PrettyDeceased brand, so has some insight on the color change differences from world to world.

“Sinespace does it in a more in-depth way and not just like a surface tinting, as in SL. In SL, you have a texture for your item and the tinting option; now if you try to make it black you will just cover the texture and lose details like shadow etc… 

“If you have a correctly set up item in Sinespace that has a normal map and an ambient occlusion map; the game will respect each map no matter the color. As a matter of fact, except for the pattern options, the tintable dress doesn’t have a texture at all. The final texture, or what you see, it’s brought to you live directly there.”

Gaby started creating content for Sinespace earlier this year, and has tips and insights for other SL content creators who might want to try their hand on the Unity-based platform:

Tech Conference Almost Cancelled by Quarantine Moves Whole Event & 1000 Attendees to SInespace's Breakroom

Cool real world use case on for Sinespace's Breakroom (a media partner to this blog) featured on VentureBeat -- a virtual world-based tech conference:

BlockDown is a direct response to the worldwide quarantine, which effectively canceled an April conference EAK Digital had been planning to host in Istanbul. CEO Erhan Korhaliller said in an interview that he had worked on the event for five months and wasn’t prepared to let it go. He considered simply staging the event on a video conferencing system but found the options boring — especially at a time when most people are working at home and yearning for a colorful, engaging alternative to boost their spirits.

“The current virtual events are like one-way communication, and it’s very difficult for people to interact,” said Korhaliller. “Sinespace is more like a cinema-style 3D world. It really allows people to immerse themselves in the experience.”

During the first virtual world hype phase of 2006-2007, a number of startups tried doing this, but the return on investment was negligible. BlockDown, by contrast, brought in lots of paying customers:

Wall Street Journal Features Sinespace's Breakroom in Story on Virtual World Offices for Remote Teams

"Miss Your Office? Some Companies Are Building Virtual Replicas" is a new Wall Street Journal story from Katie Deighton featuring NWN media partner Sinespace, creator of Breakroom:

Stay-home orders and the shuttering of workplaces have given corporate employees some respite from getting dragged into time-wasting water-cooler conversations.

But some companies and their employees don’t want to leave everything about the office behind, it turns out, and are replicating their offices in “SimCity”-like simulations online...

Sine Wave Entertainment Ltd. last month introduced Breakroom, a virtual-world product for remote workforces. It can accommodate all-hands meetings, secure one-on-ones and document sharing. Clients of the product include Virgin Group Ltd. and Torque Esports Corp.

Many customers initially assume they will recreate their offices, then realize they can make tweaks that would be impossible in the real world, said Sine Wave CEO Rohan Freeman.

“We spend our lives wishing we were working in open, sunny campuses with butterflies outside,” Mr. Freeman said. “Here you can realize that dream.”

Read the rest here. Speaking of which, here's a new video showcasing Breakroom's use for virtual world-based conferences and events:

Couple Who Met in Sinespace Now Quarantined Together in Real Life Create Virtual World Hangout for People Who Want to Socialize Beyond Zoom -- Including Themselves

The Localhost Connection Cafe is a gorgeous new cyberpunk-themed hangout in Sinespace, and it’s amazingly detailed and sumptuously, stylishly lit. It was created by Carsten Stark and Artemis Bane, who also host “Geek Weekly” get-togethers there. And it would probably not exist, at least in its current form,, but for two occurences: 

An unexpected romance. 

A global pandemic, quite frankly.

First the romance: It also started virtually, and wasn’t part of either creator’s original plan.

“We just happened to start talking about projects we wanted to do in Sinespace,” as Carsten puts it. “[We] just really hit it off… It was totally unexpected. Neither of us was looking for anything.”

They made the trip to meet each other in person last Summer -- back in the olden days, when people could still fly, and go on first dates -- and things proceeded swimmingly from there.

“The spark we had translated really well into real life and we both felt like we've finally found our other half (soulmates if you will),” says Carsten. “She moved up here in January so that we could be together.“

And then they were really together. Because shortly after she moved in, the quarantine was imposed in Carsten’s home state. So now they were also in lockdown together,

But being creatively and technically compatible (along with the relationship part) helped inspire and drive a new collaborative project:

“Immediately Carsten and I had synergy and the brainstorming on localhost just blew up,” as Artemis puts it. “He’s a coder and I’m a texture artist. We both model in 3D. There was pretty much nothing stopping this idea from happening.”

A virtual traveler who has explored many online worlds, Artemis once owned a version of localhost in Second Life: