I think over the next five years or so, in this next chapter of our company, I think we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company. And obviously, all of the work that we’re doing across the apps that people use today contribute directly to this vision in terms of building community and creators. So there’s a lot to jump into here. I’m curious what direction you want to take this in. But this is something that I’m spending a lot of time on, thinking a lot about, we’re working on a ton. And I think it’s just a big part of the next chapter for the work that we’re going to do in the whole industry.
My cynical take (and it's hard not to be cynical, when it comes to Facebook) is this move is made in great part to stave off anti-trust regulation that is now looming over his company. ("Hey we're not really a social media monopoly, look at us trying to compete with Epic/Apple/ROBLOX etc!") But in fairness, Zuckerberg has long been passionate about VR, buying Oculus (with founding Linden Cory Ondrejka's guidance) many years before the Facebook backlash reached fever pitch.
Related to that, the Metaverse may be the one technology platform that Zuckerberg cannot conquer:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Azaria is a photographer in both her first and Second Life. She is skilled in taking pics in both worlds so sometimes it’s hard to know what world a picture came from. For example, “Hunted” is realistic enough, I had to check to confirm it was from Second Life. In her About section, she wrote, “Shadows, light, emotions, depth, and movement are the things that make any image good!” You can see that in play in this great picture. (I also confirmed that she placed it in a few SL groups on Flickr to be certain.)
I remember chatting with a metaverse developer early last year on a potential project in Avakin Life, a mobile-based virtual world in the IMVU category, and it seemed like another niche also-ran. Avakin Life has a limited social media footprint, to judge by the relative dearth of user-made YouTube videos. (This build tutorial/speedrun above is one of the few out there that quickly pops up.) But as with Rec Room, this seems mainly to do with Avakin Life being targeted at young teens who aren't yet on social media in a major way.
Avakin Life has more than 200 million registered users [note, see below – ed.] on iOS and Android and more than a million who come back at least once a day. Previous investors Novator Partners, David Helgason, and Hilmar Pétursson also participated in the funding round. All told, it took about a year to close the deal, said Lockwood Publishing CEO Halli Bjornsson in an interview with GamesBeat.
Registered users aren't the same as monthly active users, but with 1 million daily actives, I'd estimate the MAU as being about 10 million give or take. (I.E. a bit larger than IMVU's 7 million monthly users.)
Reminds me that longtime reader "Pulsar" mentioned it as a way of thinking about virtual worlds apart from the Second Life model — and a mobile alternative to it:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Blip Mumfuzz has a thing for lines. You can see it in the leading lines that draw us into “Path.” She illustrates a couple of facts about leading lines, they don’t have to be straight so long as they take us somewhere and although they usually go off into the horizon, they are allowed to veer left if they do so as subtly as this path does. The turn is so close to the edge of the frame, it is only perceptible with your second look. On one level this picture is very simple but there is real thought in how it was framed. There are six pictures in this series and they should be considered as a single body of work. They are all so good I thought about featuring just this series, but then you would be missing out on so much more.
For the side of a house and a window like you’ve not seen before, click here:
Matthew Ball’s epic, nine part metaverse primer is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the technological components to make the Metaverse possible. Former global Head of Strategy at Amazon Studios, the widely-sought analyst and VC is most recently the founder of the Metaverse investment fund, the first of its kind.
I’m planning to interview Matthew later this Fall; so over this Summer, I’ll be blogging each part, highlighting the key themes that stand out most to me, then following up with commentary of my own.
Advances in image capture technology are making mirror world concepts feasible:
Long sought by Metaverse advocates and investors — over a decade ago, founding Linden Lab investor Mitch Kapor mentioned it to me as a major necessity to drive adoption — the rise of smartphones and their component technology has made it possible to convert our real world into the virtual one. Most crucial of all, perhaps: Our very selves, into our avatars.
You can see how far we’ve come in this demo (watch above) of Epic’s Live Link Face app, which uses the latest smartphone-based facial capture to map a user’s expression onto high fidelity avatars.
Similar capture technology is also being used to convert the entire real world into high fidelity 3D models that can be shared in the Metaverse. (See this iPhone-driven mirror world demo I wrote about back in 2019.) The technology has vastly evolved since then, as Matthew writes:
Apple’s Object Capture, meanwhile, enables users to create high-fidelity virtual objects using photos from their standard-issue iPhone in a matter of minutes. That all of this is possible through standard consumer-grade hardware is astonishing.
Underlying technology like this, he goes on, can power some unexpected use cases far beyond enabling your Fortnite character to share your expressions:
In the future, this sort of tracking system will be used to reproduce these users, in real-time, in a virtual mirrorworld. Technologies such as Google’s Starline will then allow remote workers to be ‘present’ in the store (or a museum, or a DMV, or a casino) from a sort of offshore ‘Metaverse call center’ — or perhaps at home in front of their iPhones.
Hardware advances may help drive consumer adoption:
Motion sickness is often fingered as a barrier to mainstream adoption of VR, a key access point for the Metaverse. Matthew notes that recent improvements may soon address those:
The Oculus Rift also peaked at a 72hz refresh rate, while the most recent edition achieves 90hz, and up to 120hz when connected to a gaming PC via Oculus Link. Many believe 120hz is the minimum threshold for avoiding disorientation and nausea in some users. And ideally this would be achieved without needing a gaming-level PC and tether.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Lola Ghost posted this picture on Facebook with the title, “Sometimes there is beauty in something broken.” It really spoke to me because I, too, see beauty in what others see as broken. The flowers reclaiming the broken road and overpass, adding color to the gray of the concrete are beautiful, but so is the rust that adds traces of color to the metal. There is also something admirable in the will to survive that keeps the houseless getting up to face each new day. I wish their lives were easier, but they do not succumb to despair and carry stones into the water.
This also spoke to me of my city. Portland, Oregon is beautiful and lately it has been characterized as broken due to an ever-growing number of houseless people and months of sustained violent confrontations between police and protesters. But when you look out the window of the bus and see a tarp stretched among trees in a greenway, with a painting hung on a hanger from the rope, the struggle from those who are in extremis to still hold beauty in their lives gives me hope, more hope than a home in “Architectural Digest.” Clearly, we need better answers for people without housing, but there is an indomitable spirit among the houseless that is admirable and beautiful.
If you have ever seen something in a picture and you can’t unsee it, click here:
Over in last week's post on how Second Life might find a new audience on mobile, New World Notes' super savvy readers are picking up clues and speculating that Linden Lab is going to — or at least should — create what I'd describe as a lightweight, IMVU-like experience for mobile.
Take it away, Pulsar:
They are making dedicated mobile-regions now (just instant messages, but they plan to add a 3D view later). Here is the opportunity to start a sort of new SL from ground up: mobile-avatars on mobile-regions; meanwhile you keep your account, friend list, chat, L$ etc, that keeps you on the SL grid. And you would still be able to use the old style stuff in the old regions as before.
Mobile regions may have a clear grand total upper limit in texture and polygon count, instead of an obscure and exploitable "land impact". And they could be on demand, cutting the costs.
A mobile avatar could be a single item or it could be customizable by replacing the body parts with dressed parts, as other games do. Not that pile of attachments on top of each other that you see in SL. You could still colorize the parts, change head textures etc.
This approach would also make sense from a technical perspective, as "0xc0ffea" explains:
I'm thrilled to announce that Season 3 of LANG, a full-fledged streaming series shot entirely in Second Life, will premiere here on New World Notes next Friday. Fresh from lead creator Zatch Ixchel, here's the exclusive trailer above.
"This season takes place a few months after the events of Season 2," Zatch tells me, "but we also get a few glimpses into the past, and where some of these people came from. Characters from Season 1 reappear, some as their younger selves. There is one character briefly mentioned by Teddy in Season 2, 'Jack', who is featured prominently throughout this story. I think this season will be a real treat for anyone who has been watching since the beginning."
So now is a good time to binge watch the first seasons — they're embedded below. Easily among the most ambitious Second Life machinima projects ever made, LANG has great noir visuals and voice acting, and dialog with a wry Tarantino-esque wit. As you might have guessed, theses seasons take quite awhile to create, and involve a dozen-plus SLers along with Zatch:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Parthenoid 2. 0 is a blog by Sian who focuses on cyber-fashion for trans avatars. Sian’s most recent post “xx:xy tryouts” is a fascinating and insightful exploration of how Second Life offers freedom of exploration to individuals. They write, “one of the unexpected, unintended niches of Second Life has been its use as a testing ground for trans identity, for the sexuality of unaccustomed bodies, a relief from a dysphoria we might not even have known we had. We wanted to investigate another possibility of who we were, tried on gender in the cheaper off-the-rack way, the better to know what worked and what didn't.”
The fashion is interesting in its exploration of cyberkink, but secondary to the intriguing and deeply introspective writing as Sian explores trans identity in their first and Second Life. I particularly loved Sian’s plea for acceptance of making mistakes:
“Whoever we are, however we are, we have to be allowed to trial who we are without harming anyone, with full consent, as messy and transgressive as that might be, because for many of us, in the worlds we live in, in the closets we inhabit, so often padlocked on the outside, a trial is the best we might get.”
