New World Notes

Watch: Matthew Ball's Metaverse Fireside Chat With WaPo's Gene Park & Myself in Breakroom -- Topic Timecodes in the Post!

As promised, here's the full video of my recent metaverse fireside chat with metaverse analyst/VC Matthew Ball and The Washington Post's Gene Park in Sine Wave Entertainment's Breakroom. While we chat, Sine Wave founders Rohan Freeman and Adam Frisby (the large bunny) dynamically edited the world's Unity-based environment, which is why an actual bonfire and assorted random objects and effects suddenly appear around us.

Here's the time codes for all the key topics we discuss:  

2:35 -- Was there a personal experience for you which led to an “ah ha” moment that inspired your thinking on the Metaverse? (Answered by both Matthew and Gene.)

7:55 -- We discuss the elephant in the virtual room, on why Zuckerberg is reportedly changing Facebook's name to be more metaverse-like -- is it just a cynical PR move, or is it genuine? Matthew then goes into his sense of where Facebook is currently positioned in the wider ecosystem, while I discusses how Facebook brought on the founding CTO of Second Life nearly a decade ago, and he subsequently helped put together the Oculus acquisition.

14:00 -- Social graphs and the metaverse; is social media as we know it coming to an end? And how can its next generation be built to serve the metaverse? Matt discusses that in relation to Epic Games and Tim Sweeney's tweets about its own ambitions around the Metaverse, and the evolution of identity on the Internet.

19:00 -- Is there a metaverse age cliff (as I put it)?  The platforms we generally describe as metaverse-like are extremely popular with pre-teens and teens, then usage seems to rapidly drop off once people age out of their 20s.  

24:55 -- Interoperability and regulation. How does Matthew see regulation happening? Is he optimistic that we'll create shared open standards?

Coming up: ROBLOX and "scrip" (as documented in this video by Quentin Smith), the Metaverse and NFTs, and a guest appearance by Philip Rosedale:

Watch: Talking the Metaverse & Demoing the Breakroom to Brian Solis

Starting at around 27:20, going into a demo of Breakroom at about 46:19, futurist and digital marketing guru Brian Solis chatted earlier today about the metaverse, virtual worlds, and related topics with Sine Wave Entertainment CEO Rohan Freeman and myself:

Watch: I Interview Philip Rosedale & Adam Frisby About the Metaverse in Breakroom

Update, July 2: Bumped up for viewing during the long holiday! Discuss in Comments below, and I'll nudge Adam and Philip to participate if they have time.

Appearing in his original Philip Linden avatar with a notably sparkly upgrade, here's a lightly edited cut of my fireside chat with Philip Rosedale and Adam Frisby on "The Metaverse as a Shared Imagination", hosted in Breakroom from Sine Wave Entertainment (a media partner to this blog). Yes, Sine Wave CPO Adam is the rabbit.

I'm highly biased but I think this was one of the most interesting metaverse conversations in quite awhile, covering the alchemy of user creativity, VR adoption, NFTs, and lessons that Second Life can teach the current generation of metaverse platforms.

Here's an annotated breakdown of questions:

Next Breakroom Talks: Aerospace Engineer Discusses Coping Strategies for Isolated Astronauts on a Virtual Version of Mars - RSVP Now!

RSVP here for the next Breakroom Talks virtual world session from Sine Wave Entertainment (a sponsoring partner to this blog), which will take place on the lonely landscape of Mars, and feature Dr. Jeevan Perera, a seasoned aerospace engineer who's led risk management for the International Space Station, Orion Spacecraft, and other space missions. His experience working with astronauts in the vast and lonely void of space gives him a unique perspective on something many of us have experienced to a lesser degree while quarantined during the pandemic:

Images from Philip Rosedale & Adam Frisby's "Metaverse as a Shared Imagination" Fireside Chat in Breakroom - Video Coming Soon!

Thanks to everyone who came to my fireside chat with Philip Rosedale and Adam Frisby on "The Metaverse as a Shared Imagination"! Many old friends and metaverse veterans were on hand, which was great to see. I'm fairly biased but at some point, I was pretty blown away by how all technical pieces came together (the 3D spatial audio, the web-based streaming, the Unity 3D graphics) into a sense of true immersion, to a point where it really felt that we were chatting by a fireside in a magical realm. That culminated in the moment when Sine Wave CEO Rohan Freeman instantiated a 3D sculpture of a horse over the roaring bonfire -- which was a work of art originally created by his illustrator mother in Tilt Brush. (Above.)

Video of our conversation coming soon. Meantime, more images below, including the Sinespace versi0n of Philip Linden, which you must see in its full animated flowering:

Tomorrow: Join Philip Rosedale, Adam Frisby & Me for a Fireside Chat About the Metaverse & Imagination Inside the Metaverse of Sinespace's Breakroom

Click here to RSVP for a literal fireside chat with Philip Rosedale and Adam Frisby tomorrow at Noon PT inside Breakroom from Sinespace (a proud sponsoring partner to this blog), which I am thrilled to moderate. (And yes, that's Philip's classic SL avatar, updated for today with a glittering codpiece.) Event info:

Since its inception in the early 90s, the Metaverse has inspired our wildest imagination -- even if the technology to fully realize that dream has seemed just out of our grasp. But now, with advances in edge computing, VR, and 3D graphics/audio, nothing seems impossible. Given such powerful tools at our fingertips - what could this look like?

The fireside will also showcase Philip's High Fidelity spatial audio, which was just integrated into Breakroom, while the world itself will be streamed onto Chrome browsers (no install needed). If you can't make it, no worries: The Breakroom team is recording the event and will be broadcasting in coming days.

How to Add & Customize an Audio Reactive Display to Your Sinespace Scene

Click here to get a free copy of a Sinespace furniture item that shows off a cool feature to the virtual world, a proud sponsoring partner to New World Notes: 

An audio reactive display that dynamically responds to music being streamed into a scene. (Watch above for a club scene demo.)

Sinespace staffer Xu (Xulain #4636 on Discord) has some tips for installing the Display in your region:

"Sometimes when you place objects in room edit [mode] the object cannot find a collider to line up against but just place at any rotation and edit after with the "e" key to rotate.

Apart from that you just needs some music a radio or anything that uses an audio source." For instance, this free oldtimey radio, also by Xu.

 

At the last Sinespace office hours, Xu recently gave an in-depth tutorial for creating and customizing your own audio reactive displays, -- watch below:

Virtual Pet Rabbit Designed With Behavior-Based AI Born in Sinespace; New Addition to Growing Bestiary of Artificially Adorable Creatures

Just in time for Easter, you can buy a pet rabbit in Sinespace (a media partner to New World Notes), and unlike most virtual world pets, Buddy Rabbit is special, built on a complicated AI architecture. As seen above, Buddy can inquisitively explore an area, flee from trouble -- even doing flying spin-leaps to get away from pursuers -- and follow its owner.

Well, somewhat follow: “You see the rabbit is a wild animal and is difficult to control him exactly,” Buddy’s creator Kokostar warns me, grinning. (He's Kokostar #1902 on Discord.)

A leader in the Swiss Society of Virtual and Augmented Reality, Kokostar has been creating virtual pets in Sinespace for over a year: “I have always been interested in agents which simulate human or animal behaviors.” 

His first attempts at pets were rather mechanical, however, so he turned to a sophisticated back-end structure, to give them more life:

This Week's Featured Banner: Archipelago in Sinespace

Built by Carsten Stark, the Archipelago region in Sinespace (a proud NWN partner) is over 20 square miles big, and comes with free physics-enabled vehicles (a stunt plane and an offroad jeep) for driving and flying fun. Read about it here; to jump in to play, download the latest Sinespace viewer here and search “Archipelago” in Explore. 

Submit your own favorite virtual world locations here or in Comments below!

Now Streaming Sinespace from Chrome Browsers - Click Below to Join Us!

Click here between 3pm and 4pm PT today on a Chrome browser running on any computer and join us in Sinespace (a proud NWN media partner) for a Sinespace fireside chat on building massive worlds with co-founder Adam Frisby and Adam Goodrich, founder of Procedural Worlds, creator of the powerful Unity terrain tool Gaia. If you miss the event, watch the YouTube stream below: