New World Notes

These Incredibly Moody & Realistic Apartment Photos Are Actually from a Second Life Skybox Using Custom EEP Settings

Update: Marketplace listing and description for EEP settings has been updated below!

Elie recently posted gorgeously grungy photos like these to his Twitter and the lighting was so moodily perfect, I first thought they might be photos from his real life apartment.

But no, this is his skybox in Second Life, shot with Firestorm and some of his custom-made EEP and WindLights:

New Website Tracks Genuine Second Life Activity, Filtering Out AFK Users & Traffic Bots

Most active sims in Second Life as of 1:30pm PT

BonnieBots is a new website tracking genuine Second Life activity, and the homepage is an incredibly useful guide for finding SL sims with real, active users -- as opposed to traffic bots used by many sim owners to artificially appear popular.

"The biggest complaint we hear is, 'I logged in and couldn't find anyone else,' or some variation of, 'Seemed abandoned'," as site owner Bonnie Belle explains. "The Destination Guide is worthless. Official traffic numbers just take you to 'AFK" places or worse'."

"We wanted to do better."

A developer in real life, Bonnie's solution is elegant: Create better bots. Hence the site's name.

Here's how:

Fun Web Tool Turns Virtual World Screenshots Into Classic Paintings, Including Frame & Visible Brushstrokes

わー。これは、楽しい(*´▽｀*)#SecondLife #sljp #Dinkieチャレンジ https://t.co/PwysGxa5nG pic.twitter.com/D3uDiAlA33

— Sanny Yoshikawa🌻🌻🌻 (@sannysquirrel) May 10, 2022

Classic Frame is a fun image converter that our Japanese correspondent Sanny Yoshikawa was playing with recently (above), and while it was designed to turn real life photos into classic paintings (frame and all), yep, it also works just as well with virtual world images, even turning pixels into paint swathes and blotches and brush strokes.

Here's one from another Japanese SLer on Twitter:

Reddit's /SecondLife Gains 10,000 Subscribers; Great Community & Resource

/SecondLife, the largest SL-related subreddit, recently grew past 10,000 subscribers. Over the years (it had only 2,000 subscribers back in 2015), it's evolved into a solid go-to hug for interesting and informative SL/virtual world-related content and conversation. Since it's on Reddit, the participants tend to skews towards SL veterans, especially developers and scripters, and unlike most (all?) social media hangouts for SLers, isn't an unceasing cascade of fashion pics and shopping announcements. (Though there's still a lot of that!)

Some recent stand-out threads:

• Robin (Sojourner) Wood has passed away, after an extended struggle with cancer (phyllodes tumors)
• Through fire, Iron becomes Legend
• Has Second Life improved? 2008/2009 - 2020/2021
• Metaverse - Our Existence, Our Reality, a Second Life Existential Machinima
• Explore 10 tranquil and artistic Second Life destinations!

Much more here. And thanks to u/TrinityDejavu, u/zebragrrl, and u/0xc0ffea for their moderating skills!

How to Deep Fake Your SL Avatar Into an Expressive Popstar With Wombo AI

Well this is the most expressive I've ever seen my avatar or for that many any other avatar in the virtual world (don't hurt me, don't hurt me):

This thanks to Wombo.AI, a new smartphone app that's designed to convert a RL selfie photo into a lip-syncing popstar via some pretty impressive deep fake machine learning algorithms. But my first thought when seeing it, of course, was: What will it do to my avatar? (And frankly I might not recommend using this on photos of real life people, for security reasons.) 

After fiddling around with it last night and getting some bizarre results, this video above is my best version so far.

Tips to getting your own avatar properly Wombo-fied? So far, I'd suggest these:

Turn an Avatar Image Into a "Photo" of Their RL Twin Via AI-Driven ArtBreeder

The dapper AF avatar on your left belongs to TheVirtualGent on Reddit; the "photo" on your right is what he might look like in real life -- a process made possible via Artbreeder, which uses Generative Adversarial Networks to create "children" of an original image along user-selected parameters.

This particular "photo" was created by a Redditor called Ugleh, who gave me the basic how-to of how they made it:

Gumroad Online Marketplace "Another Peg in Place for the Metaverse"

I mentioned how there's a growing real cash economy for VRChat-based content on Gumroad, an online marketplace for digital content, and reader Joey1058 explored the site deeper, then came back with this brief report:

I took a look at Gumroad. This site is awesome. It's not tied specifically to a particular VR world. This means that somewhere up the road, creators can expand their line for any world they see fit to sell to. One more peg in place for the metaverse!

Quite possibly! In all honesty I didn't know much about the site before this, but it claims that nearly 72,000 creators are selling content on the platform; according to SimilarWeb, Gumroad gets over 12 million monthly visits in recent months, which is quite decent. My pal Leigh Alexander sells her fiction on Gumroad and has this endorsement on the homepage, which is good enough for me.

Also to Joey's point, the content for sale on Gumroad isn't locked to any specific virtual world. (It even has some Second Life-related items for sale.) I don't know if Gumroad will ultimately become the main commerce site for the Metaverse (single or plural), but I think he's right that some kind of independent marketplace like this will be key to making it viable.

Content Creator Goldmine: Studio Ghibli Releases Hundreds of Movie Images for Free Use, Including Stills from Miyazaki's Masterpiece Spirited Away

If you're reading this blog you're probably both a virtual world content creator on some level and a fan of Studio Ghibli films, so this news should come as an incredible gift:

Now the studio is making another unprecedented move, by announcing they’ll be releasing hundreds of images from their movies for the public to use free-of-charge, with one caveat: they’re to be used “within the scope of common sense.”

That includes stills from Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece Spirited Away (like this one above). Click here for all the free images.

There's already quite a lot of Studio Ghibli tributes in virtual worlds, of course, like this Second Life recreation inspired by Laputa: Castle In The Sky. So I'm excited to see what's created with this trove of legit content.

As for using it "within the scope of common sense”... I'm pretty sure that's a polite way of saying, "No hentai, you freaks." 

Anyway, here's another from Tales from Earthsea:

Treasure Trove for Creators: 100,000+ Classic Art Images for Free Use

Here's a treasure trove for art lovers and creators of new art including digital remixes and reboots of old art, including virtual world platforms: Over 100,000 digital photographs of great art from Paris Museums, including works by Monet, Picasso, and Cézanne,  licensed for free use and re-use. As the press release announces:

Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, and the Catacombs. Users can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work, and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image.

“Making this data available guarantees that our digital files can be freely accessed and reused by anyone or everyone, without any technical, legal or financial restraints, whether for commercial use or not,” reads a press release shared by Paris Musées.

Link via Jason Kottke, who has some wonderful examples of the art available for download and use.

Guide: How to Tell Steampunk, Dieselpunk & Cyberpunk from Other Punks

I'm not sure of its original source -- and if you know, please let me know -- but someone recently posted to Reddit this handy visual guide at right to the various "punks" of online/gaming/popular culture we talk about a lot on New World Notes, categorized by features and fictional era. (Click to embiggenate.)

Steampunk is surely the most well-known and practiced at the moment, though thanks to Keanu, cyberpunk is seeing a second (or fourth?) resurgence.

Cyberpunk, arguably, is the godfather of them all, since its leaders drove an ironic revival of old science fiction tropes from many previous era, only now seen from an anarchic post-modern point of view -- first starting perhaps with William Gibson/Bruce Sterling's Difference Engine which popularized  (pioneered?) steampunk.

Perhaps more interesting are the styles in between steampunk and cyberpunk, since they're less popular:

I guess you could argue that the post-cyberpunk Star Wars films are a kind of raypunk, since the original movies jumped off from the old Buck Rogers movies/comics (the OG raygun genre).

Far as Dieselpunk, I'd say Captain America: The First Avenger qualifies, while the Fallout game series has a lot from Atompunk, such as the ironic Pip Boy iconography. (Or as someone pointed out, Fallout is a Dieselpunk apocalypse built on top of an Atompunk past.)

Meanwhile, the Stranger Things series revels in Cassette Futurism.

(Those are all actually pretty obvious off-the-cuff examples -- I'd love someone to out-geek me with better ones.)

Interesting question for longtime NWN readers: What well-known Second Life experiences fit into these categories?