Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Friday Fashion: Killer Male Avatar Styles Made By Matty King

September 13, 2024
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Matty King asks a question we should all ask ourselves from time to time. “Am I the monster?” Perhaps we are all monsters in someone’s life. There’s someone down the street with an overactive car alarm who is a monster in mine, but they have no idea I exist. I wish I didn’t know they exist. None of us can live without impinging on others in ways we may not even be aware of. Fortunately, Matty looks good while doing it. I love those few stray hairs that fall forward on his forehead. That’s some great hair.
- HAIR: Modulus – Reave Hair /NEW@ The Men’s Department – ends Sept 30th
For more looks from Matty King, click here:

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VRChat Guide: Five of the Best Brain-Melting Worlds to Explore

September 12, 2024

Originally published on my Patreon

You know a virtual world is compelling when its inhabitants kick against the walls of reality until they finally succeed at bursting through. Here’s five of my favorite VRChat worlds which create what’s seemingly impossible on the platform to totally rewrite the limits of our virtual experience.

While I can’t claim these are the absolute most boundary breaking worlds, many were recommended by some of the most popular and beloved creators on the platform:

Fractone (pictured above)

VRChat website landing page here

Created by Japanese player “Raii”, Fractone is a fully realized simulation of a music synthesizer replete with all the controls you’d expect from one in real life, which also generates music in real time as you play it. (Watch a demo basic here; watch a live concert, complete with a light show, right here.)

Beloved VRChat game developer Jar considers it among the most technically ambitious worlds on the platform.

“To me that’s impressive because by all means that shouldn't be possible to make and yet there it is,” as Jar puts it. “Also not many digital synthesizers are multiplayer/collaboratively compatible, even outside of VR, so that’s cool.”

Four more below!

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Casja’s Choices: Eripom Moonwall Stylishly Showcases the SL Weapons That She Creates

September 12, 2024

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

Eripom Moonwall is the kind of weapons designer and arms manufacturer I can get behind – a virtual weapons designer. We last visited her armory / Flick stream in 2021, and now with the Combat 2.0 system coming to Second Life, we thought we'd check in again. I am constantly amazed by her stunning pictures and videos and the fabulously realistic sims she has created when not at her day job as a Tokyo security analyst.

Personally the only rifle I have ever had was an 1873 Winchester Octagon Barrel. It was my grandfather’s and given to me when I was around twelve. It was longer than I was tall. I can’t quite imagine shooting an automatic rifle, but if I were to take it up, it would be in Second Life.

For more action-packed pics, click here:

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Second Life Mobile Update: Latest Version Fixes Android 13 Issue — And Now Allows Access to All SL Sims of All Maturity Ratings (UPDATED)

September 11, 2024
Update, 9/12: Added some additional background around Maturity rating access and App Store rules at the bottom of this post!

Pretty big update to the Second Life mobile app project posted by Linden staffer Bridie recently. First off, support for the app on Android iOS 13 has been restored, a problem that popped up (reported by "0xc0ffea") last week.

Even more notable, notes Bridie: "Premium Plus, Premium, and Plus members now have freedom to explore ALL of Second Life — including regions across all maturity ratings!"

So that's something! Here's the direct downloads for Premium users:
- Second Life for iOS on the App Store.
- Second Life for Android on Google Play.
As for the recent problem with Android 13, my guess the previous build had some kind of compatibility issue that was updated?

Anyway, the all region access is quite notable:

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Roblox to Offer Steam-Like Revenue Share to Game Developers for Their PC-Based Roblox Experiences

September 11, 2024

Roblox the company's seriously one-side monetization split for creators on the platform (75/25, in favor of the publicly traded corporation) has been a canker on its truly massive user base for quite some time. So lopsided is it, that more users creators in Second Life still make more revenue from that virtual world's vastly smaller consumer pool.

The latest update announcement from Roblox's CEO, however, promises some fairer revenue splits (with strings):

We are announcing new economics, where developers will be able to price their paid access experiences for purchase in real currency value¹ on desktop and earn a higher revenue share. Experiences selling at $9.99¹, $29.99¹, $49.99¹ will receive 50%, 60%, and 70% revenue share, respectively. We’ll roll this out for people to purchase on desktop this year, with plans to later expand to other supported devices.

The footnotes in that excerpt, by the way, warn that only direct revenue purchases in cash from the PC edition of the platform get that share.

Emphasis theirs, which seems intentional. This will make Roblox PC experience rev shares (on the high end) on par with Valve's Steam, which also pays out 70% to game devs on that platform. (Which also happens to mostly be a PC-based platform.) This makes me wonder if Roblox is also hoping this revenue offer is appealing to PC game devs who want an alternative to Steam.

Overall, the big catch is this:

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Cajsa’s Choices: The Charmingly Oddball Photos of Cocolinox Fhang

September 11, 2024

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

Cocolinox Fhang (DeCuir) says he’s not a photographer, “just a big kid coloring.” Well, maybe so, but he colors outside the lines with verve and imagination. Who else looks at a power line and thinks tightrope? Here we have a daring funambulist daring not only gravity, but electricity. There should be some disclaimer, though, that says “no avatars were harmed in the creation of this picture.”

For more coloring outside the lines, click here:

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Primfeed Stats: In First 2 Months, Social Network for Second Life Users Getting 10K+ Weekly Visits from 35K+ Registered Users — Who Post 4,000 Images Per Day!

September 10, 2024

Primfeed, the new social media platform for Second Life users (positioned as an alternative to Flickr at launch) is seeing some pretty impressive user activity since launching in June. By July, according to SimilarWeb, it reached nearly 1 million total visits for the month (938K, to be more exact); then in August, traffic fell only slightly, to 842K/month.

"The growth is stable," Primfeed creator Luke Rowley tells me, "not as much as the first month's, since there is a limited number of SL residents. But the usage is 100% stable."

As evidence of that stable activity, Luke shares some solid user stats with me (along with some interesting insights on usage trends, and clickthrough rates):

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Cajsa’s Choices: Some Spectacularly Scary Clown Avatars of Second Life

September 10, 2024

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

First Snow recently posted “Do You Want Me to Give You a Balloon?” which made me think of the movie It even if this isn’t the same clown. I guess It's the red balloon. I like this picture quite a bit. It is very moody and evocative of scary things that go bump in the night. OR perhaps I have a different scary clown in my head.

For more scary clowns in the run-up to spooky season, click here:

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inZOI Publisher Responds to Controversy Over Generative AI in Its Upcoming Life Simulation: It’s Proprietary & Only Trains On Our Content

September 10, 2024

There's continued buzz for inZOI, the upcoming life simulator/character creator game from South Korean-based company KRAFTON — but also some gamer grumbling over reports that inZOI reportedly includes content created by generative AI. Such as this rant:

It’s unclear if the database used for these tools draws from stolen work, or if it’s an internal database created entirely with Krafton’s work, but blog posts and videos from the company have said that they use tools like Midjourney and Diffusion to create art, at least in the development process. Either way, it still largely negates the need for the studio to employ 3D modellers, essentially making those jobs redundant, and generative AI also has a well-documented environmental cost that further muddies the ethics of these tools.

There's been enough grousing, in fact, that someone at KRAFTON posted an official announcement on inZOI's Discord:

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Metaverse Interoperability Across Multiple Platforms Was Tried By IBM & Linden Lab But Didn’t Catch On — Here’s Why.

September 9, 2024

Why the Metaverse is Beating Gen AI https://t.co/0CegcGDiSk

— Open Metaverse Interoperability Group (@open_metaverse) September 6, 2024

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Thanks to everyone from the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group especially host @jimmy6DOF for the fun and spicy conversation last Friday — you can listen to the whole thing above (starting around 4 minutes in), with some particular spiciness around 36:30, where I mention that metaverse interoperability of virtual objects has been tried before and fairly failed, a topic I go into at length in my book. So below is a somewhat edited excerpt on that subject:

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Fractone (pictured above)