Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.

“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.

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  • Giant Sculpture Built in Second Life Exported to Burning Man in Real Life

    SL to Burning Man Butterfly

    Above: Jolhoeft's Burning Man installation in Second Life and (inset) at Burning Man

    I just wrote about how Second Life was inspired by both the Metaverse of Snow Crash and Burning Man of orgiastic arts festival fame, and the SL20B exhibit has a cool installation that demonstrates both: A giant butterfly and flower created in Second Life – that was then exported as a design and built in real life at Burning Man!

    "The butterfly and the flower were all built out of prims," Jolhoeft explains, "and I would continue to model in-world with prims until I started building it out of wood."

    Here's more about his process, and some behind the scenes:

     

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  • Watch: ATG, a Cable News-Style YouTube Channel for Second Life News & Sports!

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

    ATG Grid News is brought to you by a cadre of vloggers who successfully produce news segments that cover the latest happenings in Second Life. This most recent update covers some new features, news on the mobile app, new premium plans, and Linden homes to name a few. In the description, they link to their news sources, including New World Notes for the final story in their most recent update. 

    Their team includes Tim Huntsman, Lilly Anne Smith, Missoni, Jack Haiku, Katheryn Llewellyn, Tsukino Suki, and Dolly Suarko. For more great sportscasting, click here:

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  • ChatGPT Outpaced By Leading Metaverse Platforms on Google Trends as Visits to OpenAI Website Trend Down

    ChatGPT versus metaverse platforms google trends

    In contrast to the "The Metaverse is dead, long live generative AI!" narrative you might have heard recently, here's some data strongly suggesting otherwise: On Google Trends, ChatGPT for all its recent buzz has never eclipsed general interest in leading metaverse platforms Minecraft and Roblox. (See above.)

    Even more notable, ChatGPT has been consistently trending downward on Google Trends since April.

    According to François Chollet, who works in Deep Learning at Google, the reason for that is obvious:

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  • Take a Short Academic Survey on SL Identity & Virtual Goods — Results Shared Soon!

    Metaverse goods academic survey

    This is an interesting and short survey (should take less than 10 minutes) for a master's thesis on Second Life avatar identity and virtual items. It's overseen by Professor Diana Falcão of Oporto University in Portugal. "The survey aims to assess buying behaviours of identity items in SL, namely avatars, clothing and accessories. This is for a master thesis of a student that I supervise."

    Best of all (for you, dear reader), she's agreed to share the survey results with me, which should give us some valuable insights into the Second Life economy around avatar identity. Take by July 20!

  • Three Stunning Second Life Landscapes to Visit This Summer

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

    Ellen Saint shoots landscapes that are warm and inviting. Take “So Tangled in the Wild” with the field of Scotch broom brightening the landscape, brighter and bolder than the sky. In an odd way, this picture is enhanced by what you don’t see. Right behind what I hope is a house because it’s lovely and the view is spectacular, we can see a lighthouse, so we know right over the crest of that hill is the ocean. We don’t see it but we know it’s there and so we know that whoever lives in that house is a very lucky person, indeed.

     You can check it out yourself as she provided the teleport SLURL. [Click here to visit]

    For more of her landscapes, click here:

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  • Fact-Checking the “MMO Meets 3D Editor Meets Social Network Meets TV Remote” Complexity of Second Life’s User Interface

    Second Life complex user interface atlantic

    One fun thing about writing about Second Life for The Atlantic was going through a rigorous fact-checking process. Take this passage:

    The utopian paradox even extends into how Second Life was developed by employees at Linden Lab. Under the idealistic direction of Rosedale and his CTO Cory Ondrejka, the startup operated with a no-managers, "choose your own work" policy, cheekily dubbed the Tao of Linden. Their creativity thus unleashed, Linden developers wound up adding a farrago of persnickety features to the product with little unifying direction that might create a seamless, user-friendly experience. To this day, the Second Life application resembles an MMO game welded to a 3D graphics editor duct-taped to a social network crammed into an ancient television remote with infinite buttons.

    But the program’s very complexity became a kind of initiation rite. Some 99 percent of new users would quit, overwhelmed and aggravated, usually within their first hour in the virtual world. Those who did stay long enough to learn how to use the software—usually guided by a patient “oldie” community member—found themselves welcomed into a rare, exclusive club.

    The Atlantic's fact checker highlighted the passage in bold and asked me to demonstrate that the SL viewer really was that complicated. So I actually launched the program, and tallied up the default onscreen UI options:

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  • Here’s How SLers Grandly Celebrated Independence Day on Flickr

    A Buddy & Fireworks (Part II)

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

    Divos Titanium and Parker Droverson have celebrated the Fourth together for eight years and they both marked the holiday with a photo. Divos’ pic is above and Parker’s is below. They’re both drinking beer which is a tradition as old as the Declaration itself. My uncle used to say “A brandy a day keeps senility away” but Benjamin Franklin was a beer man who wrote, “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy.”

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    I think Independence Day should be a two-day holiday continuing through to the Fifth. After all, after the founders went out drinking to celebrate their accomplishment, they didn’t get into a bar brawl. Not so for the Constitution, that time George Washington hosted the party and his enumerated bill included 54 bottle of Madeira wine, 60 bottle of Bordeaux wine, 8 bottles of old stock whiskey, 22 bottles of porter ale, 8 bottles of hard cider, 12 jugs of beer, and 7 large bowls of punch. The staff and musicians also drank 16 bottles of Bordeaux wine, 5 bottles of Madeira wine, and seven bowls of punch. There was an additional charge of $300 in today’s dollars for breakage. Rowdy bunch, those founders. 

    A lot of our founders made money with alcohol, either smuggling it or brewing it. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration, made rye whiskey. So let’s continue the celebration to the Fifth in appreciation for the fact that their hangovers did not lead them to change their minds. 

    For more Independence celebration, click here:

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  • Highlights from My Reddit AMA for Making a Metaverse That Matters

    Thanks to everyone who participated last week! Here's some of my favorite exchanges: 

    Judge_posner_pwning_slPhoto of Judge Richard Posner in Second Life by Sam Sellers 

    Did you expect to be writing about Second Life and the Metaverse for 20 years? (bce13)

    The first few years I thought Second Life was a very interesting niche MMO. Then when the hype wave started up and it got attention from like, everywhere — like top US judge Richard Posner giving a talk in Second Life [above] — I started thinking it really could become the Metaverse.

    But then there was a lull between about 2010-2018, as people shifted to social media and mobile, and I started thinking it was going to remain a niche. But then other platforms like Fortnite, Roblox, and VRChat started picking up steam and then a 2nd hype wave started, but this time with a huge user base around it.

    So it's been super cool to see renewed interest in the idea, and see that this time, it's going to last!

    What, if any, role do you see all the current interest and advances in AI playing in the Metaverse? (franker)

    In terms of generative AI, quite a bit — we're already seeing early use of ChatGPT wired up to NPCs/bots and use of programs like Midjourney to advance virtual world visuals.

    Another really interesting application of AI is using metaverse platforms to experiment with and test different applications. "Experts" keep warning us AI could endanger humanity. If they really believe that, they should test their hypotheses in metaverse worlds where millions of people can safely engage with it. On the other side, AIs could potentially be more rapidly (and again, safely) trained with virtual world content, such as categorizing images or navigating a 3D space.

    After the break: Hilarious SL incidents, competing against the giants, and my fund encounter with a reporter who kept expecting Second Life to die:

     

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  • Top 4 Posts Including Updates to Second Life on Mobile & Second Life on Unity for PC/VR

    Second Life mobile preview

  • Crystal Frost Update: Customizable Avatars for SL-on-Unity 3D Project Coming Soon!

    I mentioned the Unity-based mobile app for Second Life this week, so I should also mention the latest update to Crystal Frost, the crowdfunded project to convert Second Life to Unity for PC and VR.

    "Provided I can figure out a few rigging issues, I should have the base Linden avatars and body shapes fully supported by August," lead dev Kallisti tells me. 

    And yes, she adds, that means Crystal Frost will eventually support mesh bodies:

    "Afterall, there's things that happen to the underlying [default] Ruth mesh that affect mesh avatars in general. Namely to the skeleton. Examples of skeleton changes are head size, arm length, leg length, etc. So when I get the Ruth avatars replicating correctly on screen, I can be certain that rigged/fitted/bento mesh avatars will line up too once they're implemented, since they use the same skeleton."

    Join the official Discord server for more info and to chat with the creator, and consider joining the Patreon to get premium updates and accelerate development. And yes, I do mention Crystal Frost in the book:

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