Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

Making of Second Life

Making a Metaverse That Matters

Contact me — links below!

My Patreon Supporters

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.

The Virtual Museum Team hosts several museums in Second Life, Wolf Territories Grid and Roblox. Check out all the teleport links here.

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

  • Today at 9am PT: Join Us in Sinespace’s Breakroom For the First Public Demo of the Social Hub for Remote Teams & Conferences

    Update, 8:15am: If you can't join us directly in Breakroom, here's the livestream on YouTube!

    Today at 9am, Adam Frisby, his development team, and myself are doing the first public demo of Breakroom, the 3D social hub for remote teams and virtual conferences built on the Sinespace platform (a sponsoring media partner to New World Notes). I am highly biased, but I think it's a cool new way to work and collaborate online — and the Sinespace team would love your feedback!

    To join us there, just go here to download and install Breakroom for PC or Mac.

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  • Watch “Hand”, Bryn Oh’s Latest, Bitterly Beautiful Machinima Shot in Both Second Life & Sansar

    Here's the latest machinima from beloved metaverse artist Bryn Oh, who now has a Patreon page which you should definitely consider supporting if you're among the hundreds of thousands who've loved her artworks over the years. This new piece, called "Hand", was shot in both Second Life and Sansar, and as with some of her other works, was sponsored in part by an Ontario Arts Council grant. (Yes, the Canadian government will pay you to make virtual world art.)

    "I decided to use footage from both Sansar and Second life because each has their strengths for machinima," Bryn tells me.  "Sansar can actually have really wonderful graphics.  Unfortunately their filming tools were quite limited.  Second Life on the other hand is great for filming in.  Also my machinima are a catalogue of my artwork so I wanted to capture a bit of both."

    The locations for "Hand" are both still virtually explorable in Sansar here and in Second Life here.

    Her inspirations for "Hand", as she tells me, include smartphone addiction, and the culturally corrosive power of advertising:

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  • Fortnite is Succeeding at Becoming a True Metaverse Where Actual Metaverse Companies Have Mostly Failed

    Travis Scott Fortnite virtual world performance

    Reader Tan Mojo saw the literally massive Travis Scott performance in Fortnite, and says something succinctly that's been hovering in the air:

    This was life changing. For a person like me who wants to become a content creator, this was a huge realization that the metaverse does not lie within known pastures. SL, Sansar, OpenSim, VRChat, High Fidelity, Sinespace — all of these platforms INTENDED to become the metaverse have all failed in their own way (although I still have hope for Sinespace).

    And here comes Fortnite with cartoony graphics, player base of kids, twitchy gameplay, and now live social events! Not intended to be the metaverse, but is starting to morph into one. The goal of Epic Games CEO is to transform Fortnite into a social hub that supports monetized user created content. Fortnite already has a creative mode and now offers a non-combat hub/map.

    Yeah, the music was prerecorded and the entire event was pre-scripted. But, it was one of the most visually stunning things I've ever seen. The audience was not passive either. The event manipulated player actions, clothing, and surroundings.

    This is a significant event. 12.3 million in attendance. Epic Games has the technological infrastructure to spin up 100,000+ virtual instances to accommodate that many people. It has made me rethink what the metaverse could be and who might be involved in actually creating it.

    I downloaded Fortnite last night. I'm looking forward to this weekend of exploring the non-combat aspects of it. I also plan to do this Core and hopefully soon, Crayta, via the Stadia platform.

    Minecraft was the writing on the wall. This Travis Scott Fortnite event just broke that wall.

    I agree that Sinespace is still in the running to be a metaverse, but I am of course highly biased. What's fascinating to me is that a conscious intent on a company's part to become the metaverse (i.e., roughly defined, an open and shared 3D world that unifies all content and varieties of imagination), almost by definition insures that this goal will not be met. But when the original goal is just to make a fun and broadly appealing game — as Minecraft did years ago, and Fortnite is doing now — your chances of evolving into a metaverse seem to be much higher.

    Mr. Mojo's point echoes a tweet storm recently unleashed by VC Matthew Ball, who wrote this must-read essay on the metaverse earlier this year:

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  • Cajsa’s Flickr Pick of the Day: Orion Octane Wonderfully Documents His Adventures in Second Life

    Light Up The City

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

    Orion Octane brings us action and adventure in high-energy photos that are full of life and color. “Light Up the City” is a perfect example of his work, though I have no idea what kind of arachnid superhero goes about on a hoverboard surfing the air, but the superhero is very exciting and is in a city alight with color. The entire spectrum of blue to red to yellow and purple and as bright and brilliant as possible. 

    There is more light, color, and adventure to follow.

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  • This Friday, 9am PT: Meet Adam Frisby & Team in Breakroom for a Public Demo of the New 3D Social Hub for Remote Teams

    Breakroom Sinespace online social hub work

    This Friday at 9am, Adam Frisby and his development team are giving a public demo of Breakroom, the 3D social hub for remote teams from Sine Wave Entertainment (a sponsoring media partner to New World Notes). To join us there, just go here to download and install Breakroom for PC or Mac.

    Previously a co-founder of OpenSim and a developer for numerous projects in Second Life, Adam will share what he’s learned about creating virtual worlds for education and enterprise use, and how that influenced the creation of Breakroom. He’ll also demo Breakrooms features for remote work and teaching, including webcam calls, a dynamic whiteboard, screensharing, and a group quiz system. And if there’s time at the end, we may even play some rounds of Greedy Greedy or an FPS called Humans vs. Coronavirus.

    Unable to join the event in-world? Don’t worry, we will stream the demo live on Breakroom’s new YouTube channel, and here on New World Notes.

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  • Follow on Flickr: Lori Matthews Makes Amazing Second Life Avatar Photos

    I MISS YOU

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

    Lori Matthews’ photostream is full of stunning photos, mostly of her avatar, such as this picture called “I Miss You” with a poignant quote from Lemony Snicket. This is a lovely example of the Rule of Thirds, the avatar is centered two-thirds from the left and the bed to pillow “horizon” is one-third from the bottom. It’s a nice reminder that there are horizons, then there are “horizons.” 

    I decided to feature Lori when I saw the following picture, one that prompted me to ask her how she did it. 

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  • As She Was Dying from COVID-19, Longtime Second Life User Uccello Poultry Wrote a Farewell Letter to Her Virtual Friends & Family

    Uccello Poultry SL user COVID RIP

    It's the first Coronavirus-related death I'm aware of to hit the Second Life user community, but it certainly won't be the last: Longtime SLer Uccello Poultry reportedly succumbed in real life to COVID-19 recently.

    I say "reportedly", but this news comes from Uccello herself. Before she died, she wrote a number of letters to friends and loved ones in her hospital bed, on her iPad. After she passed, her real life brother, who also plays Second Life as CC Columbo, discovered these messages in her iCloud account.

    And so he posted her message to her Second Life community on her long-running blog, The Poultry Report. It's also a memoir of her troubled childhood in real life, and a tribute to the SLers she met in the virtual world and who became her adoptive family, and then nurtured her in both realities:

    At Lesbos I met my soon-to-be sister, Threshin. She helped me become a strong (if willful) and confident woman over the subsequent years. Always encouraging and loving, I learned that I didn’t need to cling to my brother. I also met my wife, Angela, there. Marriages in SL are real, if you let them be so.

    I’m also proud to say I was a citizen of Bay City, the BEST community in Second Life. So many close friends, especially Marianne, Pygar, Rachel, Roc, and the eternal Ever Dreamscape. This was truly the life I did not have growing up. And grow up I did. The strength I gained from being accepted into the city and becoming a contributor (the year I was Miss Bay City was the best year in any of my lives) led to me becoming a productive citizen in Real Life. Getting a job, paying taxes, and becoming responsible for others. Just like a real person!

    … Take my Love. I have plenty for all of you. Perhaps I’ll see you all on the Big Grid and we can swap stories. I hear there’s no Grid goo and the Feed there works. Until then, there’s so much I haven’t done. Go out and do it for me.

    Much much more here. Much thanks to Dusty Jamberoo (Michael Shaw IRL), who also counts himself as among Uccello's friends, and has his own remembrances of her:

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  • Cajsa’s Tuesday Flickr Pick: Lidsa Turns Second Life Screenshots Into Gorgeous, Story-Rich Images

    Lidsa SL Flickr Cajsa

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

    Lidsa’s photostream features complete scenes that tell a story like this one called “Feed the Share.” I love the details, the street outside, the coffee, pizza slice, coffee, cupcake, and even some spilled soda. The backpack is full of snacks with a click-me to share the food. How clever. 

    More stories in pictures below:

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  • Keep Submitting #NoAvatarSocialDistance Virtual World Photos for a Chance at Virtual Fame, Glory, L$10,000

    Maerin Tamura NoAvatarSocial Distance SL

    Had fun in a crowded virtual world lately? Of course you did, you're in quarantine. Don't forget to take some great pics of that, and submit it to this Comment thread for Cajsa and I to judge. (And maybe first give the guidelines a glance.)

    Here's the most recent submission, an amazing one by Maerin Tamura. (The red head really ties the world together.)

    Deadline is the end of May 4th! 

  • In Case You Missed It, Travis Scott in Fortnite Set the New Gold Standard for Virtual World Performances

    Somehow during its seventeen years of existence, "virtual concert in Second Life" has generally come to mean just that, and not much more: One or more avatars performing on a stage pretty much like they would at a real world show, with the possible bonus of synchronized gestures and out-of-sync mouth movement. Late last week, however, hiphop star and Fortnite showed how much more amazing, immersive, and only-in-a-virtual world a virtual concert can truly be. And to a truly massive audience:

    More than 12 million players logged in for Fortnite's concert featuring Travis Scott, with reviewers calling it "stunning" and "spectacular". It included a skyscraper-sized version of Scott teleporting across the landscape as he performed his songs… A digital version of Scott performed a fully-animated, scripted 10-minute set – shorter than a concert performance. As Scott moved from song to song, his virtual avatar changed – first into a cyborg, then a fluorescent spaceman. The landscape shifted and crumbled around players on an enormous scale. After it was over, Scott tweeted: "Honestly today was one of the most inspiring days. Love every single one of you guys."

    Watch above, and expect to see many more such virtual world concerts by major performers soon, especially with real world shows cancelled during the pandemic. Now that Scott showed what's doable in a virtual world, that's the gold standard going forward. Indeed, beyond a live DJ set in the zero gravity nightclub of Inspire or the live performances of the Skydancers, I'm hard-pressed to think of many "not possible in real life" (TM Bettina Tizzy) music events in SL. It's been 14 years since Suzanne Vega performed live in Second Life, so the novelty value of "popular music star performs in virtual world" in and of itself has long since faded. 

    And yes, yes, the Scott performance is (far as I can tell) completely pre-recorded while Scott himself is not directly involved, but I'm not sure that completely matters.

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