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.

The Virtual Worlds Museum. Click here to teleport to their Second Life hub with tribute to sunsetted worlds!

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

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Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.

Today’s Flickr Pick: Breathtaking Second Life-Based Images by Drew Lukas

July 20, 2022

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

Drew Lukas’ “Aberration” is phenomenal. It makes me think of the cover for some James Bond thriller. I love how it overlaid a red version on top of a blue creating a kinetic energy to a static pose. It’s all very sharp and exciting. His stream is also exciting, full of a wonderful mix of tastefully erotic pictures and creative surreal pieces that are breathtaking.

For more magnificent pics, click here:

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Breaking: Axie Infinity Lost 1 Million Daily Active Users In the Last 4 Months!

July 19, 2022

Above screengrab taken from the Axie Growth Data spreadsheet

When we last checked in with Axie Infinity, widely touted as the model of "play-to-earn", NFT/blockchain-based games, it had dropped from 1.3 million daily active users in April to under 600,000 in June. That's a huge drop, but 600K DAU is still quite impressive, ranking it (for example) in the top 20 of Google Play mobile games by daily usage.

Since then, however, DAU rates have continued plummeting — from under 600K DAU at the beginning of June, to under 300K DAU as of yesterday.

If you pull back the camera to April, 16 weeks ago, the drop in usage is even greater:

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Watch: Guy Recreates Bizarre Images from Dall-E Mini in Fortnite Creative

July 19, 2022

As a fun companion video to two themes discussed last week, the future of art in the AI era, and the future of 3D creation on next gen metaverse platforms, here's both at the same time: A guy creating builds in Fortnite Creative based on images suggested by Dall-E mini. The images themselves are pretty mild (an alien mountain, Darth Vader celebrating his birthday), so I'd love to see someone try to recreate the more bizarre and nightmare images Dall-E often extrudes from its cursed system.

As demonstrated by the dulcet-voiced Mustard Plays, this is also a good demonstration of the Fortnite Creative tools, which include a huge assortment of prefab mesh objects and primitives, both of which can be imbued with physics and other interactivity. And yes, it also enables multi-user creation, which Mustard Plays leverages to host a collab creation contest — watch below:

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Powerful Abstract Imagery Created in Second Life & Inspired by Songs from Lennon, Machairitsas & Sinatra

July 19, 2022

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

Mihailsk, on his Flickr photostream’s About page writes, “I don't see myself as an artist, I am a passenger with open eyes in this journey of life and Second Life…”

I wonder, isn’t that what an artist is? Someone with their eyes wide open who can capture those moments of grace and synchronicity that make our lives more beautiful. I love the feeling that this picture conveys, of a spontaneous revelation that just happened. It’s quite possible that this was very deliberately constructed, as many SL photos are, but it has the feeling of just falling into place. Mihailsk chose the song “Cycles” by Frank Sinatra [Click here] as a musical companion to this image. It seems perfect:

"There isn't much that I have learned

through all my foolish years.

Except that life keeps runnin' in cycles.

First there's laughter, then those tears."

For more extraordinary imagery, click here:

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In Praise of Rec Room’s Live Creation & Teaching Features — and a Defense of Its Cartoonish Graphics (Comment of the Week)

July 18, 2022

Many interesting comments in last week's post about Philip Rosedale's desire to bring back in-world, collaborative creation as the gold standard, including this one by Martin K., going into detail about how many resources it has for that feature.

Have a look at this page, it links to Discord servers of dozens of classes that are taught live in VR. (Discord is typically used for scheduling classes and other asynchronous communication.) These are not videos but live classes in VR.

How many such live classes about creating worlds are there in VRChat? In Second Life? Supporting a culture of live teaching is probably reason enough to support live collaboration.

Rec Room the company also has a very active YouTube channel devoted to in-world creating and scripting (see above).

Writing further, Martin somewhat objects to my comment that Rec Room's cartoonish, blocky graphics may not be broadly appealing:

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Top 5 Posts: The Future of Artificial Intelligence & Art, 3D Creation, and a Chat About Live Music in the Metaverse

July 18, 2022
Pioneer Metaverse Artist Jeffrey “AM Radio” Berg on the Future of Art in the A.I. / DALL-E Era

July 15, 2022

From AM Radio's Flickr

Update, 7/15: Bumped up as long-ish weekend read and conversation for the weekend!

Jeffrey Berg, the artist and technologist who became famous as the Metaverse artist known as "AM Radio", a Second Life avatar who created profoundly surreal and poignant immersive installations like "The Faraway" (above), a rusty train lost in the wheatfields, recently discovered a surprising thing:

It is now possible, using programs like Craiyon, a text-to-image generation tool powered by AI (a variation of OpenAI's DALL-E), to automatically create images strikingly similar to the Second Life installations which took him many hours if not days to create in 3D.

See below:

"Was messing with Craiyon today and I wondered the impacts it could have on metaverse space creation," as he mused to me recently, sharing the results above. "3D geometry rather than a generated image from plain text input doesn’t seem like a huge stretch."

That started a long, fascinating, and — this being AM Radio, after all — moving conversation with Jeff on the future of art in the era of DALL-E, AI and machine learning in general, and promising AI-based art like that by Dr. Nettrice Gaskin:

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Dutchie Update: Beloved SL Housewares Creator in Recovery from RL Surgery. Help Support Her By Buying Dutchie’s Special Summer Bundle!

July 15, 2022

Good news from Froukje Hoorenbeek, owner of the popular Dutchie housewares brand in Second Life. As I mentioned in May, she was preparing for some serious RL surgery to repair two fractured vertebrae. Mutual friends tell me the surgery has been done and was successful, so she's now offline in recovery.

That also means she's not able to actively update her houseware offerings. So if you're inclined, now would be a good time to consider getting The Dutchie Spa Bundle, a special discount Summer offer from the beloved creator.

And speaking of mutual friends of Dutchie, if you're on Plurk, you may want to get in touch with Solitary Star. I can't say why, so just get in touch.

More Dutchie bundles below, and all my best for a speedy Dutchy recovery!

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Fashion Friday Tribute: Preciosa Benelli, an SL Style Blogger I First Befriended During Out Virtual Nightclub Days

July 15, 2022
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

GLITZZ | B(U)Y ME is a recent post from Preciosa Benelli’s blog Preciosa’s. It made me laugh because I thought of the sea lions who went viral this week after chasing people off their beach in California. [Click here to watch!] While Preciosa’s blog post features her bikini and the pose set, I had to hunt down those sea lions, too.

I like that she adds a personal note at the start of her posts. Her Spanish language message on this one hit home, as it’s about the friends who stay in touch, that reconnect after an argument, and those that stay. (Or don't.)

It hit home in a strange way, as Preciosa and I were friends when I worked picking up prim trash at a club where she worked as a dancer. For some reason, the club allowed anyone to rez prims, and many patrons would leave behind all sorts of random stuff. My job was to go through the club twice a day, inspecting and returning discarded prims.

Anyway, that was back in 2007 before I started doing photography. We just drifted apart which is sad because I remember her as a lovely, positive, and optimistic person, but I definitely failed the vale la pena (“worth the effort”) kind of friendship.
- Set: [Glitzz] – Monick Set – Panties & Top – Legacy/Perky, Maitreya/Lara & Petite, Kupra, Reborn/Juicy, Freya, Hourglass & Nerido Push Up
- Pose: B(u)Y ME – Free Mind Poseset SF – 5 bento female poses & Mirror – Hat & Rocks Included @ eBEnto Event (30% off during the event)
- Sea Lions – Sealion/Seal at TLC Animals, by True Redrose on Marketplace, Inworld
For a great casual outfit, click here:

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This Second Life Photographer Defies Convention to Shoot the Grungiest, Least Glamorous Virtual Lifestyle Images Possible

July 14, 2022

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

Karma Weymann’s photostream is unique, avoiding the usual conventions of Second Life photos. Instead of high fashion and luxury seaside homes, she gives us low-rent apartments and making do. There’s no luxury on her timeline and that makes it unique and fresh. She’s resolutely iconoclastic and imaginative. This made me think of Portland and the persistence of the protesters, many of whom wore bike helmets to protect their heads from police batons and other hazards. However, Black Bloc members would not be caught dead with a flowered shirt tied around their waist.

For more of Karma’s unique vision, click here:

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