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.

The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.

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

LGBT Second Life Users Celebrate Pride With Tributes to the Freedom of Virtual World Expression & Identity

June 10, 2021

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

Pitch Wyld’s “Hey Sailor” captures the exuberance of Pride. It is an homage to the “V-J Day in Times Square” shot when World War Two was finally over. A less-famous shot of those four pictures taken that day shows the woman punching the guy in the face for just grabbing her, but that is the past. Today this image celebrates Pride, a kind of V-B Day (Victory over Bigotry) and it is consensual. He also chose perfect mood music “I Am What I Am” with Gloria Gaynor.

Describing what Pride means to him, Pitch writes:

“I have found that being involved in Second Life has allowed me to safely explore different sides of my sexuality in such a way that I can then implement these ideas, concepts, feelings in a more meaningful way into my real life. I am given an arena that is largely non-judgmental, where I can play out different scenarios and think more deeply on who I am and how my sexuality expresses itself. Second life hits my scientific side where I can gather research in the ways that other folks engage in their sexuality. This allows me to be more knowledgeable and hopefully receptive as a loving and engaging partner.”

For more Virtual Pride, click here:

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Second Life-Based Works by Internationally Acclaimed Artist Cao Fei Now Featured By NYC’s Museum of Modern Art

June 9, 2021

Cao Fei, one of the world's most acclaimed artists, is easily the most well-known artist to use Second Life as an artistic medium. And now, some of her SL-based works are being featured by the world's most acclaimed modern art museum, the MOMA in NYC. If you're visiting New York this Summer/Fall, another installation of hers, "Whose Utopia", is on display in the museum itself.

She's still engaged with her SL-related works, by the way, even making an impromptu in-world appearance earlier today via her avatar, China Tracy:

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Second Life Photographer Makes Amazing Use of EEP Environment Controls

June 9, 2021

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

This fabulous picture of Portocorvo in SL (directory listing here) is so fantastic, I knew I wanted to feature it, but the name of the person who shot the picture sounded familiar, Dandy Warhol, as though maybe I had written about him before. Trying to keep finding new people, I checked and nope, I had not. Must have been thinking about the band of the same name. Anyway, the picture is astonishing. I love the color, I love how sharp and clear it is, the complete opposite of my memory.

The word “pellucid” was invented for this next picture, click here:

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Play Palia, a “Community Simulation” MMO Set in a Fantasy World at Peace

June 8, 2021

Palia is an intriguing new MMO now in limited pre-Alpha access with a somewhat odd* name from Singularity 6, a startup I last wrote about in 2019, led by many AAA developers who ambitiously promised to create worlds that built "community, friendships and a real sense of belonging.” I was somewhat skeptical at the time, but Palia announces itself as aiming to be just that:

Palia is a massively-multiplayer community simulation game set in a brand new high fantasy world with elements of open world adventure games. It’s a cozy and welcoming world that we hope fans of the community sim genre will love for years to come.

As all that suggests, there's little or no typical "kill 10 rats" type of gameplay, almost as if it's set in a fantasy world that takes place in between the great battles that get way more press:

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How to Import a Minecraft World Into NeosVR With Mineways; UPDATE: Added GitHub Resource

June 8, 2021

Update, 6/9: This is the Substrate fork on Github that Frooxius created for this Minecraft import.

Here's more info on how Frooxius, lead developer of the crowd-funded social VR project NeosVR, seemingly reverse engineered a version of Minecraft and imported it into his world: He didn't actually reverse engineer a version of Minecraft.

"It's using a Substrate C# library called Substrate (with some updates from me) to read the data [link above – WJA] and figure out which chunks are in the file and then uses another community tool called Mineways to export the chunks as geometry," he explains. "That geometry is then imported into Neos and post-processed with materials, positioning, adding some extra things like light sources where torches are and a culling system to handle large worlds."

And here's how other Neos users can try this out:

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Powerful Virtual World Photos Inspired by Malcom X & Victims of Myanmar’s Violent Coup

June 8, 2021

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

Whiskey Monday introduced me to Illy S’s photostream with this painfully evocative raw photo, part of a six-photo series featuring unedited photos of the same woman with the scars of a whip on her back. Musical inspirations for the series include Nina Simone’s “Isn’t it a Pity”, Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and Outkast’s “Liberation.” The series’ theme is power, this picture in particular, titled after Malcolm X’s powerful quote, “The most unprotected person in America Is the Black Woman.”

I love how Illy S. shot her pics at sunset when a little moonlight brightens the gloaming just enough. In some ways, the way the dusk hides her scars, making us try harder to make them out to recognize what they are, involve us more deeply, invests us in the picture.

As in the Great Migration, her photos move to Brooklyn — click here:

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Monday Memory: My 2014 Interview With the Late Ebbe Altberg After He Became CEO of Linden Lab

June 7, 2021

With the Second Life community and the wider industry still processing the passing of Ebbe Altberg, I went back to read my first interview with him in 2014, shortly after he became Linden Lab's CEO. It's particularly moving how he discovered the virtual world through his son:

Though he is Linden Lab’s new CEO now, one of Ebbe Altberg’s first experiences with Second Life occurred over 10 years ago, and as it happens, actually involved a violation of Second Life policy. It was around that time, you see, that Altberg’s son fell in love with Second Life, and became an avid builder there. Which is usually a fine thing, but here’s the problem: Altberg’s son was a young teen at the time, and back then they were strictly not allowed:

“So yeah, he was underage,” Altberg admits now, “so SL booted him correctly.”

Altberg convinced then CEO Philip Rosedale to be lenient, but by that time, Altberg’s young son had become a well-known content creator in Second Life… Despite all that, Ebbe's son stayed engaged in Second Life for a couple years, and even co-founded an in-world design company. And being among the first explorers of Teen Second Life, one of that world’s original islands was even named after the avatar of Ebbe Altberg’s son. And Ebbe Altberg watched all this amazed: “For a kid to have this experience so early was fantastic,” as he puts it now.

Another interesting point is how he saw VR/XR devices as a potential savior to Second Life's waning user/revenue growth:

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Top Posts Last Week, Including a Eulogy to Late Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg

June 7, 2021
Ebbe Altberg, Ambitious & Inspiring CEO of Linden Lab, Dies After Long Bout With Illness — MULTIPLE UPDATES: Added Personal Tributes from Philip Rosedale, Blueberry & Strawberry Linden, His Moral Leadership & How He Discovered Second Life Through His Son

June 4, 2021

Here's an announcement from Linden Lab that I've been dreading to write about for over two years:

Ebbe Altberg started with Linden Lab as our CEO on February 5th, 2014. He took the helm of the company and immediately went to work on reinvigorating our spirit and culture. Ebbe brought a profound openness, and transparency in his operation which was key and that had many effects on all of us internally, and externally. Lindens were encouraged to be part of the vibrant community in Second Life, to participate in and to cherish it as part of our daily duties… As I am here before you today, it is with profound sadness that I share with you Ebbe passed away yesterday evening restfully and surrounded by the love of his family.

What this means for the future of Second Life, recently purchased by a massive holding company, is a conversation for next week. What I'd rather do now is talk about Ebbe, who in my opinion was the most ambitious and inspiring CEOs of Linden Lab since Philip Rosedale himself. He galvanized the community and the company around a new vision to energize virtual worlds, and boosted company morale beaten badly by lack of revenue growth, layoffs, and the entrance and quick exit of two CEOs before him. (It's why the company made T-shirts for employees emblazoned with Ebbe's immortal words, "We are still the shit when it comes to virtual worlds.")

Also worth noting that Ebbe guided the company through rough waters while dealing with his illness since at least 2019:

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SL Fashion Blogger Friday: Style & Houseware Shopping Tips from Dama

June 4, 2021
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Dama is a lovely blog from Damatjo Magic. I love her Sunny Afternoon post. The picture is lovely. She used the Rule of Thirds in placing her avatar and it gives the picture such great balance. I love her blouse with the lace on the yoke and sleeves. And who doesn’t love a truck full of flowers. She points out that the braid can be worn on the left or right. I only wish that she told us where to get the blouse.
- Hair: Holly – Mina Hair @ Uber
For a lovely set piece she blogged, click here:

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