Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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  • Meta’s “Smart Glasses” Stepping Stone to AR Has Only Stepped Into Obscurity

    Ray Ban AR Meta poor sales

    Where it started for Meta (last February):

    Ray-Ban Stories let you capture video and photos, share your life’s moments and listen to music or take calls hands-free… We see smart glasses as a stepping stone to true AR glasses, and an important element of this is building something you’ll want to wear regularly for extended periods of time.

    How it's going for Meta (according to the WSJ this week):

    Less than 10% of the Ray-Ban Stories purchased since the product’s launch in September 2021 are used actively by purchasers, according to a company document from February reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Meta sold a total of 300,000 of the wearable devices through February, but the company only had about 27,000 monthly active users.

    Emphasis mine, because wow. Normally people make a concerted effort to get their money's worth from a relatively expensive piece of hardware ($299+) but that's not even happening here. 

    This is notable, because "XR glasses that are the size of sunglasses" has been a constant goal among enthusiasts for decades — a topic I just chatted about with Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz:

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  • Today’s Second Life Flickr Pick: Dramatic Dude & Dog Photos by Fulvio Macchi

    Gargoyle


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    Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

    Fulvio Macchi is a dog lover. So many of his pictures feature him with a dog. This picture cracks me up. He cleverly positioned his dog to align with the gargoyle so they look of a piece. He’s sitting in his chair with a walking stick, looking all officious, but how stern can you be when you have a doggoyle by your side? His musical inspiration was And then I noticed she was a gargoyle by Nanowar of Steel.

    For more boy and his dog pictures, click here:

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  • How Did ChatGPT “Solve” This Challenging Logic Puzzle?

    ChatGPT explained Hilary Mason

    One ongoing paradox to ChatGPT is this: Even professional developers using it for business applications aren’t quite sure how it works. 

    The co-founders of Qurrent, for instance, a stealthy SF-based startup developing an agent-based approach to software development, have been experimenting with GPT to incorporate into their product. But lately they’ve been wondering how ChatGPT was able to “solve” a complicated logic puzzle that most humans would not be able to answer.

    Here’s the puzzle:

    A king wants his daughter to marry the smartest of 3 extremely intelligent young princes, and so the king's wise men devised an intelligence test.

    The princes are gathered into a room and seated, facing one another, and are shown 2 black hats and 3 white hats. They are blindfolded, and 1 hat is placed on each of their heads, with the remaining hats hidden in a different room.

    The king tells them that the first prince to deduce the color of his hat without removing it or looking at it will marry his daughter. A wrong guess will mean death. The blindfolds are then removed.

    You are one of the princes. You see 2 white hats on the other prince's heads. After some time you realize that the other prince's are unable to deduce the color of their hat, or are unwilling to guess.

    What color is your hat?

    Note: You know that your competitors are very intelligent and want nothing more than to marry the princess. You also know that the king is a man of his word, and he has said that the test is a fair test of intelligence and bravery.

    After some failed attempts, here’s the prompt that Colin Wiel of Qurrent fed into ChatGPT, which then outputted the right answer:

    Provide a step-by-step logical reasoning plan for how you would approach this puzzle, then step through the plan to achieve the correct answer. Here is the puzzle [insert puzzle text]

    After a moment, ChatGPT came back with this correct reply — spoiler alert if you’re still trying to solve it yourself:

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  • Today’s SL Flickr Pick: Stunning Photos of Virtual Nature Turned to Abstract Art

    Screenshot (474)Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

    GoddessWhispers [Prettyflower Vale] has created a few abstracts in her feed that make me want more. Take this one from 2019, “Abstract: Gazing Through The Ice” has these deep, rich blues and greens in which we can discern shapes such as the trees she mentions in her description, but also we can see things that are not there. For example, on the right-hand side, the black and white shapes seem to be a woodpecker landing, but I think that is all in my head. She describes the picture, “Winter trees viewed from below the icy pond's surface. Using "miniaturize" filter to give a bit more depth and pop the colors.”

    For more abstracts, click here:

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  • Veteran Virtual World Educator Reviews Making a Metaverse That Matters!

    Metaverse education review

    Grateful for this book review by veteran virtual world educator Valerie Hill, who pinpoints some themes I've been most hoping that readers catch:

    Surprisingly, Au holds the view that interoperability (which has been talked about for years as being essential to the real metaverse) may not be necessary! He argues that it is the communities within virtual environments that need to be able to cross platforms—not the platforms themselves.  He tells us that most virtual world users, my colleagues and myself included, use Discord as the connection between virtual worlds.  The concept of interoperability as a core element of the metaverse is, according to Au, a myth… 

    What are the reasons to be in the metaverse?  There are many!  Wagner James Au provides many stories, such as an elderly blues singer, a clothing designer, and a thoughtful artist.  Most virtual environments provide opportunities for gaming and socializing (such as VRChat, Roblox, Fortnight, and many others).  While Au does mention the potential for education in the metaverse, it is not at the top of this list.  This is unsurprising because there is way more money made in the entertainment industry than in the field of education.  

    Education is definitely an important use case! I'd just consider it as an optional supplement, since many/most people, including kids, find 3D/immersive experiences difficult. But there are ways around that! 

    Speaking of which, join Valerie and me Friday September 22 at 1pm PT for a talk about the topic at The Virtual Worlds Education Consortium in Second Life.

  • Pro-Russia Trolls Reportedly Targeting Trans Flagged Sim in Second Life; Matches Similar Pro-Russia Trolling in Minecraft & Roblox

    SL trans sim Russian bots

    Disturbing if inevitable story in the New York Times documents pro-Russian disinformation spreading across various metaverse platforms and MMOs:

    Molfar’s researchers identified more than a dozen instances of pro-Kremlin propaganda in Minecraft, Roblox, the Russian versions of World of Tanks and World of Warships, Fly Corp, Armored Warfare and War Thunder. Almost all extolled the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, a theme Mr. Putin and his advisers have used to build support for today’s war. Some of it had explicit links to political parties or government agencies…

    Jacob Davey, the head of research of far-right and hate movements at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, said Minecraft and other games could be useful tools for those looking to influence vulnerable young people, especially if those people had already sorted themselves into private groups where they were eager to discuss fringe ideologies.

    "Technoodle", a Second Life user who helps run security for a trans flagged island in Linden Lab's virtual world, tells me of dealing with similar activity recently:

    "People keep coming in, rezzing a prim that broadcasts support for Russia and then leave," as he puts it. "We have had to ban at least a dozen."

    The entrance to the sim looks like the surface of Mars next to an active volcano, which might seem like a somewhat strange place to blare pro-Russia messages. But it might have to do with how the island is displayed on the Second Life map grid:

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  • Why Minecraft is an Example of Pass-Through Technology: Amber Case

    Minecraft UI pass through user interface

    Philip Rosedale and I were just discussing the challenge of creating user interfaces for virtual worlds, and this post on pass-through technology by my colleague futurist Amber Case, really helps crystalize why Minecraft's UI is so powerful (and successful):

    All Minecraft’s on-screen UI functions are based around the game’s initial core purpose: Use your creativity and gathering skills to Survive a night against the Creepers — in-game enemies that you must build defenses against in order to have another day of gameplay.

    That way, players can remain focused on learning all the game’s functions and how they relate to each other, all for the purpose of surviving and defeating the Creepers and the world’s other attacking beasts. It’s only after this that players realize that the UI they first learned for survival purposes can also be leveraged to thrive — creating beautiful and ambitious homes for themselves, or even the collaborative artworks with other players, all of which helps make Minecraft enormously popular over a decade after launch.

    Minecraft's user interface is actually pretty complicated, but its singular purpose makes it become, with repeated usage, intuitive and pass-through:

     

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  • Today’s Flickr Pick: Second Life Vehicular Adventures by Lu Vortex

    #1696# Killer's Productions

    Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

    This picture from Lu Vortex made me realize we don’t see many fender-benders in Second Life. A quick search on Marketplace and it was clear there really aren’t many car crashes at all. That makes this picture a rarity, an honest-to-goodness Second Life car crash. 

    For more intriguing cars, click here:

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  • Roblox on Quest Feels Like a Buggy Rush Job (Comment of the Week)

    Commenting on Meta putting the new Quest/Roblox integration as a key to its metaverse strategy, VR expert "SkarredGhost" believes it was a rush job:

    Yeah, it's clear that Meta is betting a lot on Roblox. I tried today Roblox on Quest and it is so full of visible bugs that it is clear that it has been rushed out to release it for business reasons (Zuck being able to talk about it to investors). 

    In fact Mr. Ghost has a whole blog post and YouTube walkthrough (watch above) on the topic, which is important, because the current version is not officially discoverable — but has already been played by quite a lot of Quest owners:

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  • Top 5 Posts Including: Fortnite Creative IP Infringement Issues, ChatGPT-Powered Spam, and Philip Rosedale & Me on a Metaverse That Matters

    Philip Rosedale Wagner James Au metaverse book youtube podcast