Wagner James Au / New World Notes

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  • Second Life Still Struggling With a Crisis of Poorly-Optimized User-Made Mesh Items — But a Pro Game Artist Has Some Solutions

    SL Poor optimization fashion

    Above: A single Second Life fashion item with nearly 50,000 triangles (Courtesy Penny Patton)

    Longtime SLer and professional game artist Penny Patton recently bought a Second Life shirt and then saw something that shocked her. That one mesh item (see above) had nearly 50,000 triangles.

    God of War Kratos 32 000 trianglesAs a point of comparison, characters in AAA console games with high end graphics rarely have this many triangle. The ultrarealistic lead character in God of War, for instance, has on the PlayStation 4 version only has 32,000 total triangles. For the entire character and their clothing items, while looking even more detailed than that one Second Life shirt. (Click Kratos at right to see.) 

    But when Penny contacted the creator of this shirt in Second Life, she got an interesting response: 

    "They informed me that they could not reduce this because it results in a 'decrease in quality'.

    "The [shirt has] 11 faces. Each face has three maps. Diffuse, Specular, and Normal. It's even worse because the specular actually only uses one map, a black 1024×1024 texture that was uploaded 11 times instead of reusing the one.

    "It's absurd. It's also, sadly, common in SL these days.

    "This is why SL needs hard caps on avatar resource use."

    It's not only common, it's an ongoing problem, and hasn't really been sufficiently addressed. As a former Linden Lab staffer told me about poorly optimized mesh, "These items are effectively DDOS attacks on everyone around them." 

    Five years ago, we pointed out that most of the top-selling mesh bodies in SL are poorly optimized, and have even more triangles — 200,000 or more. (Penny has also been writing about the issue on her own blog for years,)

    Fortunately there are ways Linden Lab can address the issue head-on. 

    "I really want to stress there is not one thing Linden Lab should do to fix a problem like this," Penny tells me. "There's no 'silver bullet' solution that will fix the problem and make everyone happy."

    That said, here's the solutions she recommends:

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  • Here’s Why March 2023 is the Month Which Launched Metaverse 2.0

    Roblox frontlines interview

    In my personal narrative for the evolution of the Metaverse, I'd arrange the historical timeline roughly (and very simply) this way:

    Metaverse zero point, 1992-1996: Snow Crash published; VRML and several very early metaverse platforms launched, including Active Worlds and Cybertown.

    Metaverse 1.0, 2003-2008: Second Life launched, along with a number of other metaverse-aspirational virtual worlds including Roblox in 2006.

    Metaverse 1.5, 2014-2022: Facebook purchases Oculus and its "Path to the Metaverse"; VRChat, Rec Room, and other next gen metaverse platforms launched; Fortnite's crossover success and Roblox's huge IPO and Matt Ball's essays help catalyze excitement and awareness around the concept within the mainstream business world, culminating in Facebook changing its name to Meta.

    Skepticism over Meta's approach to the Metaverse, not to mention crypto, started toward the end of 2022, echoed by Meta itself, when its roadmap to the future failed to mention "the Metaverse" even once. Unsurprisingly, an internal survey of Meta staff last January showed waning confidence in the Metaverse, while a leaked presentation last February also showed Meta execs deigning to mention the Metaverse behind closed doors. 

    With Meta effectively out of the picture, it's fair to say Metaverse 2.0 started this month:

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  • Today’s Flickr Pick: Kat Verde-Dillingham Creates Complex Images Using Second Life & Midjourney as Her Base

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

    Kat Verde-Dillingham has been creating a lot of AI images lately, but I love to see her Second Life pictures where she is far more experimental. For example, Television Nation. The pop art aesthetic, the repetition, the frenetic energy really captures the over-stimulus of the 24-hour constant news cycle of reporting without thought or context. You can listen to the picture's soundtrack here. 

    For more of Kat’s Second Life pop art, click here:

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  • Tim Sweeney: Set Aside NFT & VR Hype, Metaverse Platforms Already Have 600 Million Users Now, “Billions” by This Decade

    In case you missed it, Tim Sweeney laid out his vision for the Metaverse last week after his company Epic unleashed a number of metaverse platform-related announcements — watch above at around 1 hour in: 

    Let’s take a long term look at what we see here. And the core of it is some very real growth. Starting with Fortnite’s 70 million monthly active users, Roblox’s 250 million monthly active users, Minecraft’s 100 million, and PubG mobile and Apex Legends, and numerous other metaverse-inspired games, is leading to an identifiable audience today of over 600 million active users in these virtual worlds. And it’s on a growth trajectory that’ll put it at billions of users by the end of this decade.

    So we can set aside the crazy hype cycle around NFTs and VR goggles. These technologies may play a role in the future but they are not required. This revolution is happening right now. And the core of it is something every gamer already understands. It’s you and your friends, getting together online and going around as a group on voice chat, having a fun time and social entertainment experiences. And some of these experiences are serious games like Battle Royale. Some of them are going to a concert and dancing or chatting with friends and just having a good time. We see this as the next big change in gaming and then Epic’s evolution as a company.

    Hard agree on the hype around NFTs and VR goggles (looking at you, Meta), while I’d quibble around the “billions” target — 1 billion is more realistic. Fortnite, for example, has seen some slippage in its monthly active user numbers (though of course remains quite large).

    Sweeney also got into his vision for the open metaverse:

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  • Today’s Flickr Pick: Surreally Hilarious Adventures of a Second Life Chicken

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

    Imaozgrl Tucker is one of those SL/Flickr denizens who rewards those who not only enjoy the pictures, but also read the titles and descriptions. She loves wordplay and puns and you could hurt yourself laughing at some of them. This is one of her Chicken Adventures, the Second Life antics of a chicken avatar she has collected in an album.

    For more chicken adventures, click here:

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  • Apple Staff Unsure About Apple’s XR Goggles: I’ve Heard Internal Dissent Too

    Apple XR NYT internal dissentThere was a good if unsurprising story from the New York Times last weekend which helps explain why Apple is constantly rumored to be putting out an XR headset soon… only for us to then get subsequent reports that the release has once again been delayed.

    As it turns out, there’s quite a lot of internal dissent within Apple about whether the company should be involved in XR at all:

    [As] the company prepares to introduce the headset in June, enthusiasm at Apple has given way to skepticism, said eight current and former employees, who requested anonymity because of Apple’s policies against speaking about future products. There are concerns about the device’s roughly $3,000 price [emph mine!], doubts about its utility and worries about its unproven market.

    That dissension has been a surprising change inside a company where employees have built devices — from the iPod to the Apple Watch — with the single-mindedness of a moon mission.

    Some employees have defected from the project because of their doubts about its potential, three people with knowledge of the moves said. Others have been fired over the lack of progress with some aspects of the headset, including its use of Apple’s Siri voice assistant, one person said.

    I say “unsurprising” partly because we’ve been tracking Meta Quest headset sales for the last few years, and its sub-20 million install base is really a bad sign for a larger XR market. If Meta can only move 20M units on headsets selling under $500, why would Apple think they could do well selling an HMD that is 6x that price?

    I’m also unsurprised there’s reported dissent at Apple, because I’ve heard implicit objections around XR myself while preparing my book.

    For instance, an insider at Apple I spoke to echoed dana boyd’s concern that VR may be inherently biased to be difficult for females to use:

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