Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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Bio / CV

https://www.reddit.com/user/slhamlet

  • SF Friday Fashion Featuring Farm Animals from Calvin Lyle

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

    I featured Calvin Lyle’s bears on the highway picture for Wednesday’s bear-themed post, but I really struggled with which bear pic to choose, and decided to save this one for featuring his blog which he named after himself. Calvin Lyle has a blog post featuring the bears. I thought this was wonderful. A blog post featuring animals! How new and exciting! And then there is that gorgeous bridge. 

    For more with animals and Calvin, click here:

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  • What New-ish Second Life Brands Should New World Notes Feature?

    Promising new SL brandOne thing that's clear from the general reaction to the anonymous rant about the Second Life economy: People feel like it's increasingly impossible for newer brands to get attention in such an established virtual economy.

    And then writing this blog post, it suddenly occurred to me: Oh right, I have a blog, and  might be able to help!

    Starting soon, New World Notes will highlight new, emerging Second Life brands which deserve more attention and potential customers. And I need readers' help! 

    Specifically I'm looking for help with suggestions. Are there new-ish SL merchants/brands you think deserve more attention?

    Here's some rough criteria for nominations:

     

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  • Does the Metaverse Matter More in 2024? An Online Afterword to My Book!

    Making a Metaverse Barnes and Noble

    It’s a bit more than a year since Making a Metaverse That Matters reached bookshelves in June 2023. Barbenheimer be damned, my awesome wife Brooke even thoughtfully placed it above American Prometheus (the basis of Chris Nola’s biopic) in our local Barnes & Noble. 

    Much about the Metaverse has changed since then, while much has remained constant. Here’s an update of relevant highlights since publication in four parts: 

    • Vision Pro & “Spatial Computing”

    • The Metaverse Platform Landscape, 2024 

    • New/Upcoming Metaverse Platforms to Watch

    • Where Are They Now: Philip Rosedale, Neal Stephenson & Beyond

    The first section addresses the waning hype around the Metaverse as a term, while the second section addresses its continued relevance in the only area that ultimately matters: Active users.

    First up, the Metaverse in the post-Apple era:

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  • Cajsa’s Choices: Versailles & One Piece SL Cosplay from Len Teardrop

    Len Teardro SL Flickr

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

    Len Teardrop’s “Madame” makes me think of Versailles and the many glamorous women who lived before the unlucky Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. I love the way she uses today’s lingerie to suggest yesterday’s stories. Speaking of stories, did you know you can read the memoirs of various royals and courtiers of France for free on Kindle? A good place to start is with Memoirs of Marguerite of Valois, Queen of Navarre. She writes well and was an eyewitness to the power struggle between her brother and her husband. There are dozens of memoirs. You can also find them at Project Gutenberg. They could add realism to your role-play. 

    For more from Len, click here:

     

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  • The Making of Second Life’s Mobile App: Inside the Multi-Year, Multi-Team, Multi-Country, Hilariously Buggy Evolution

    First SL mobile testOriginally published on my Patreon

    Second Life’s long-awaited mobile app launched last June to Premium subscribers, and is showing decent adoption so far, already attracting about 1 in 3 of them. While development and design was led by a team at Linden Lab, the company had a secret weapon in its creation: Sine Wave Entertainment, the developer of Unity-based virtual worlds Sinespace and Breakroom.

    “It wasn't very stable,” Sine Wave CEO Adam Frisby allows, showing me the very first test version of the app (above), which his team slapped together in two weeks. “Crashed every sixty seconds on the device, but we got one of the Welcome Islands rendering, and some of the avatar content. It was quite a while before we then actually officially started on this.”

    While Adam is not with Linden Lab, his history with Second Life stretches back nearly 20 years, when he was better known as content creator and land baron Adam Zaius. His engineer Joshua May, better known in SL as Karsten Rutlledge (creator of popular SL game Greedy Greedy) also drove mobile development on Sine Wave’s side.

    Once the mobile app project was launched, this early test version was scrapped. Sine Wave’s team stretched across the globe, with Adam in Australia, Joshua in the US, with development and QA support with Sine Wave’s office in Shanghai.  (“Poor Miklos and Kristoff have been running thousands of QA tests every week. And sometimes that includes the rest of our QA team too, particularly for scalability testing — Louie and his team.”)

    Even with all that development over nearly 2 years, Second Life’s mobile app is far from complete:

    "It's going to take a while before we get mobile exactly the same as the desktop experience (and some of that may prove impossible or impractical),” as Adam puts it. “But there's definite resolve from Linden Lab to make it happen, and a lot of the effort up to now has been focusing on the hardest problems first — just getting the world to render at more than 20 frames per second on device took an insane amount of work.

    For the first time, Adam tells the story of creating Second Life’s Unity-based mobile app from Sine Wave’s point of view, shares all the strange and hilarious bugs which popped up along the way — plus offers tips for both users and SL creators who want to get the most from their iOS/Android experience:

    If you enjoy reading this interview, please consider joining my Patreon for free or subscribing for premium benefits.

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  • Second Life Creator Feedback Wanted: Could You Use This Web-Based, Multi-User 3D Creation Platform in Your Creative Process?

    Equimake world builder web

    Equimake (a proud NWN partner!) is a web-based, multi-user 3D creation platform that was partly inspired by Making a Metaverse That Matters and designed to be a tool for creators in worlds like Second Life. I've recently been discussing ways Equimake might best work for Second Life creators with founder/lead developer Alex, and we landed on these potential applications:

    • Prototype SL sim design / layout on a free multi-user platform — up to five spaces (5KM in size) for free starter users
    • For SL brands: Showcase your 3D mesh content on the web in an interactive setting (see below)
    • For SL game creators: Export web-based versions of your SL games to Equimake (Javascript support coming Aug/Sep)

    Equimake fashion 3D demoClick here to visit this space

    But we should put the question to SL creators: Would Equimake help with your creative pipeline? Or what changes/updates would you first want to see?

    Check it out for free here, and if you have questions/feedback, please post in Comments below!

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  • Cajsa’s Choices: Amazing Pics of the Many Virtual Bears of Second Life

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

    Calvin Lyle’s “We’re On the Road” captures one of the more common man and bear encounters of the modern world, on the highway. These bears seem to be helping Calvin flag down a truck to help him with his broken-down car. 

    Bears were on my mind recently after my great niece shared a pic of the bear that comes to inspect their yard every evening. She seems content to watch the kids play and has not once tried to use the swing. Bears are common where I grew up and I had plenty of encounters. The worst that ever happened was a mama bear and cubs hogging the spring where I had hoped to refill my water bottle. This got me curious about bears in SL.

    Oddly, it seems man and bear encounters are much more common in real life than in our Second Life. A search for “bears in Second Life” returns mostly teddy bears or gay bears. I had much better luck searching for Jian bear, specifying a creator who created a slew of bears. 

    For more fun with bears in Second Life, click here:

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  • SL Social Network Primfeed Now Gets Nearly 1 Million Monthly Visits Since June Launch. It’s Already One of the Top SL Community Sites Online.

    Primfeed similarweb traffic Flickr

    Primfeed, the new social media service for Second Life users — positioned as an alternative to Flickr after SLers on the photo sharing site experienced a wave of penalties and bannings — basically just launched last June. Since then, it's seen pretty amazing growth in its first two months. By July, according to SimilarWeb, it reached nearly 1 million total visits for the month (938K, to be more exact).

    It's safe to say Primfeed is already one of the very most popular third party site devoted to Second Life. For instance, it's running right behind Seraphim SL, the hugely active Second Life shopping site, which earned 944K visits last month.

    Interestingly, SimilarWeb reports Primfeed has a younger demographic than SL itself, with nearly 60% of the user base between 18-34. (SL skews Gen X and Boomer.) Not a huge surprise, as Primfeed is mobile friendly and resembles Instagram and Twitter.

    Anecdotally, at least, images posted to Primfeed get better engagement than social media platforms like X/Twitter and Facebook:

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  • VRChat Rockets to Popularity in Japan Thanks to Conference, TV Show, Etc.

    VRChat japan popularity

    Longtime reader Martin K just shared this stunning Google Trends results, showing that interest in VRChat in Japan has hit an all-time high. SimilarWeb tells a parallel story, with Japan-based traffic to VRChat's website second only to the US, and nearly 20% of the total. (Compared to 40% of traffic from the US.)

    Why the explosion? My indispensable Japanese translator Sanny Yoshikawa points to a huge trade show for virtual world fans, VKet Real, held in several cities in Japan and in VRChat. That's one of an entire talk show on Asahi TV (a top broadcaster in the country) hosted inside VRChat. Google translate tells us the show is:

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  • Cajsa’s Choices: Fascinating Fractured Avatar Portraits by Zib Scaggs

    freyr

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

    Zib Scaggs is one of my favorite artists. I love her surreal view of Second Life and I have no idea what the more adventurous stylists, fashion bloggers, and photographers without her wild creations that she markets under her brand Zibska. She has a wild imagination that she makes real and you see her work all over Flickr. This is called freyr, perhaps from Norse mythology, and I love this optical illusion of a fracturing avatar. Look closer, you can see she is intact, the illusion is created by the headpiece. You can see it on the Marketplace and see how it creates the illusion. 

    For more of her wild world, click here:

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