I'm not sure why many insist on assuming VRChat's graphics options are low end or limited when I keep coming across walkthrough videos like this: A humanoid cat called Coopertom exploring a jaw-droppingly realistic Airbnb in VRChat. The least surprising part of that sentence is "humanoid cat", as furries seem to dominate the cutting edge of creativity in VRChat as they still do in Second Life. (See also: This furry aeronautics educator who recreated Mirror's Edge in VRChat.) What's more surprising is the vividness of the recreation, possibly followed by the fact that people are now creating and renting out Airbnb-style experiences in VRChat.
To be honest, I wasn't completely dazzled by Coopertom's walk-through until about 2:00 minutes in: When you see… dynamic shadows! Of his avatar! Cast on the floor!
As for finding a place as amazing as this in VRChat, he has some advice:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Lisa Pia’s “Sakura” highlights one of the true joys of Second Life, hanging with friends. In this time of social distancing and staying-at-home, it’s lovely that people can still congregate and enjoy each others’ company with easy and safety. This so captures the mood the day, too. I don’t know what the weather is like where you are, but here, there is a fresh breeze, sunny skies, and blooming fruit and flower trees. It’s would be a lovely day for walking the Japanese American Historical Plaza if not for social distancing.
Environment objects that you can keep in your inventory and share with others
Parcel-level control of environments
Up to four different, independently controlled sky layers
More options for customization
So for instance, you could use EEP to turn a sim into an entire space flight simulation, with daylight on the ground, and different looking layers of atmosphere (and then finally, deep space) the higher you go up. However, I'm not sure if many developers are still around to take on a project as ambitious as that. (Hope I'm wrong there.)
"Yes," he posted a few weeks ago on the official Sansar Discord, "many of your old fave ex-Lindens, now Wookey-(suffix TBD) are back in action… we'll have more to share soon!"
As for what they've been sharing on social media about Sansar, it's mostly featuring the virtual world as a platform for immersive live music shows:
Got 70 minutes to spare? What am I saying, of course we all do. Fire up some popcorn and your favorite adult beverage and watch "Ticket to Hell" from popular YouTube gaming star Mr. Moon. Content warning: Occasionally veers from hilariously crude to just crude, and is definitely not worksafe viewing if you're actually working in an office, but then again who is. And it is hilarious as hell.
Unlike Second Life trolling videos which were in vogue for awhile (and more lazy than funny), Mr. Moon and VERTiiGO, his collaborator/partner in crime, go all out, creating a feature-length stoner comedy that combines staged sequences with what looks to be actual gameplay footage with random SLers spontaneously reacting to their a-hole roleplay hi-jinx.
Their goal: Earn enough Linden Dollars to afford mesh avatars, so they can then hook up with SL's hottest hotties in the world's best clubs. It does not go as planned.
And notwithstanding Moom's foul-mouthed, cynical film noir narration, he even finds times for some perceptive scenes:
You can also play a free version on region owned by the creators: Click Explore and search “Fishing” — it’ll teleport you the playable demo at Punkarella and Booradley’s place. If you’re lucky, they’ll be online and you can play with the creators themselves!
It’s designed for social fun with friends who aren’t necessarily hardcore gamers, and the approach this husband/wife team is a good case study for other casual game developers to think about:
“[W]e wanted something that didn't involve shooting/guns and would not be intimidating to players of various skill levels,” as Punkarella puts it. And she designed some clever hooks to encourage multiplay gameplay sessions for different kinds of gamers:
“Although there are people who want high scores and will come back to games to take over leaderboards, that doesn't really appeal to more casual people or those who just don't have the quick reflexes to ‘win’,” she tells me.
“For those reasons we made it so there was both a table scoreboard so you can just mess around with a few friends and do little challenges, and tickets that would let people save up over time to work towards the various prizes. You can also reset the whole machine so that they can be used for tournaments and special events. I wanted to game to bring people back and to appeal to those who care about collecting and socializing rather than just scores.”
While it seems like the game uses Sinespace/Unity’s physics, that’s not the case — and while it plays like a multiplayer game, it’s not quite that on the back end. Booradley,who handled the game’s scripting, explains what he did instead. And this is another master class in game development:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
The Mr. Showman Fashion Blog highlights the individual pictures he teases us with using a composite on Flickr. It is a Look of the Day blog and LOTD 78 is all about joy. Look at that smile! Don’t ask me where it came from!
If you have the right kind of glasses and you want to experience Second Life in 3D, Kirstens' Viewer has a brand new update you can download here (for Windows). Though overshadowed by Firestorm and Black Dragon in recent years, Kirstenlee Cinquetti's third party client for Second Life has been among the very best of its kind, but it also hasn't been updated in quite awhile. But as Kirsten explained to me in an IM, the quarantine lockdown gave her time to do a major update as explained on her blog:
For those of you with red/cyan glasses the above screenshot will make perfect sense 🙂 The code for this has been completely re-written the reason for this is simple, the effect is the system now renders at native frame rates! Previously each eye had to render the entire scene and required viewer display having duplicate coding resulting in quite a performance hit. The system is now integrated much more elegantly and some selected components only render on alternate frames.
More info here. So that's one more positive outcome to this incredibly horrible pandemic.
