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!
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Category: Uncategorized
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In this seven part (!) video series, veteran cyberpunk YouTuber Ayla Pants (who's pretty damn charming and fun for a cyberpunk!) let's us watch her transform a large and empty plot of land into a seriously moody and detailed fantasy post-apocalyptic town — "Last of Us, but with magic", as she puts it, helpfully establishing…
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In the run-up to the launch of Second Life's long-awaited mobile app this year, Linden Lab is also updating SL-related web services and various in-world features. We know this because, well, Linden Lab is currently hiring two people to work on those projects: Server Application Engineer We are looking for a Server Application Engineer to…
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PBR before/after comparison from the official Firestorm blog If you're a Second Life user excitedly waiting for shiny and reflective PBR graphics to get added into Firestorm and other popular third party viewers, here's an important update: After some 13 years project managing the large volunteer developer team of Firestorm, the most popular TPV, Jessica…
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Here's a Friday flashback to watch today or over the weekend: Bruce Branit's moving short film "World Builder" from 2009. I wrote about it back then for NewTeeVee/New York Times after metaverse art maven Bettina Tizzy sent it my way, saying "This is what Second Life should be like (and sometimes is)." It definitely remains…
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Sorry Matt, but the math says we can't actually go… interstellar. Philip Rosedale, who actually started out studying Physics in college, has a fun post that throws water on the popular notion (at least among technophiles) that we'll soon be traveling to the stars. Philip says the math doesn't add up: Consider the very closest…
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The Sphere in Vegas isn't what we usually define as VR, except that it's a massive wraparound LED display in a giant concert dome, effectively putting up to 18,000 people inside virtual reality. Lately I've been wondering if the Sphere and technology like it will become VR for the mass market — that is, the…
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Wagner James Au · What the Metaverse is — and what it's not. (Excerpt, "Making a Metaverse That Matters".) Making a Metaverse That Matters is now available on Audiobooks, and I hope you consider buying a copy to listen on your way to work, on vacation, or anywhere you want to hear my words. Stream…
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You’ve probably seen this new Meta demo of podcaster Lex Fridman interviewing Mark Zuckerberg as ultra-realistic avatars while wearing VR headsets. While technically impressive, there’s a small problem: Decades of evidence that few people actually want ultra-realistic avatars mirrored after themselves in virtual worlds, that they undermine a unique value of the Metaverse — and…
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Finally bringing Second Life to the modern age of online communication, emojis are coming to the official Second Life viewer. You can even start playing with them now via this release candidate. As befitting its status as a metaverse platform, this addition didn't come directly from Second Life publisher Linden Lab, but from a community…
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[To the tune of "Guns and Ships":] How does a metaverse platform in need of a showerSomehow become a global superpower?How do we emerge from the Age Cliff quagmireLeave the virtual world waving stock prices higher? Yo, turns out we have a secret weaponA Broadway brand you know and love, that's unafraid to step in…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 