Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: AI
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Remember HoloBike from Saga, a new indie project which recently launched a Kickstarter, raising 4x its target goal? It basically integrates a virtual world with an exercise bike — without needing a VR headset. Courtesy founder/lead engineer Samuel Matson (who last worked in Google's VR division), here's some video which shows how Saga intends to…
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In Sign of Growing Protest Over Heavily AI-Enhanced Images, Primfeed Adds Restrictions to AI Content
Here's a small but notable update from Primfeed, the new, quickly growing social network/Flickr alternative for the Second Life user community: AI is allowed on Primfeed, however it needs to follow simple rules: If it's a vendor ads, you must use the AI tag. If it's not, it doesn't need the AI tag. – Your…
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Scaniverse, a new-ish app from Niantic (they of Pokémon GO fame), is one of the cooler products I got to play with at AWE last week. It's a consumer model version of gaussian splatting, an annoyingly obscure term to describe a new process of quickly converting real world objects into usable 3D file data. What…
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Aspiring filmmaker Tim Hannan has been experimenting with using generative AI programs lately for an upcoming project he's developing. Hannan also has a background with shooting Second Life machinima back in the day, when he was creating videos for Metaverse TV. (Avatar name: Robustus Hax.) So he's been using raw SL footage as a visual…
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Here's the result of last week's survey, asking how much (or how little) generative AI programs like Midjourney and Leonardo AI have penetrated the Second Life economy, specifically in advertisements or product displays for SL content that clearly leverages that technology. (Example below.) Among 64 respondents, a heavy majority (59%) say they "often" see AI-enhanced promotions,…
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Tiny Glade is an upcoming game with a free new demo on Steam, and it's a perfect counterpoint to the prompt-based creation depicted in Readyverse yesterday. Watch above! There's quite a lot of procedural/automated graphics happening in the background, but unlike prompts, Tiny Glade puts the emphasis on user choice and creativity. The goal with…
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Loading… Here's a survey asking how much (or how little) generative AI programs like Midjourney and Leonardo AI have penetrated the Second Life economy. (Take with a mouse/trackpad for best results.) In the last couple years I've started seeing SL images heavily upgraded with gen AI, but I'm specifically referring to advertisements or product displays…
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Here's a first look at Readyverse, the upcoming metaverse platform based on Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, with Cline himself helping guide development. What the teaser video actually depicts doesn't much resemble RP1 (neither the book or movie), beyond an avatar that resembles the lead character. What it does heavily focuses on is generative…
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Unemployment data via Statisa I keep seeing ridiculously bold predictions that artificial intelligence is going to wipe out massive numbers of jobs in the very near future — within the next five years, even! — but these forecasts seem to overlook a highly inconvenient fact: The US is currently enjoying historically low unemployment. Actually, two…
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When I recently wrote about all the impressive innovation happening on Wolf Grid, an OpenSim-based virtual world developed by small team, I didn't even mention one of its coolest breakthroughs: Wolf Grid has an option which uses ChatGPT to generate usable terrain with a prompt. Watch above, with the money shot happening around 6:30 in. In…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 