Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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  • Second Life Fashion Friday Finds from Flickr Blogger Kitty Revolver!

    commute

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

    Kitty Revolver has recommended a few people for me to feature and they’re great and I am likely to feature them soon, but I wonder why Kitty has never asked “How about me?” I mean, look at this most recent pic, “Commute.” Who hasn’t tilted their head in puzzlement at a transit station? It’s such a universal experience, a quality that Kitty excels in capturing.

    And speaking of universal, look at that SL version of the Stanley cup! In real life, I want that bag.

    Tumbler: Peony Tumblr – Fatpack – Sparkle Skye – Kawaii Project ends Feb 12

    Bag: Lulu Bag – spectacledchic

    Skirt: gear skirt – neutrals – neve

    Shoes: Superstar Sneakers – Black – Fashionably Dead

    For more that expresses that universality I associate with Kitty, click here:

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  • Vision Pro Hair Tips By a Los Angeles Stylist to the Stars — How to Be Virtual While Maintaining Your Real Life Coif

    Since Vision Pro reviews frequently bring up the problem of tangled and messy hair from wearing the head-mounted display — it's even a key complaint in the much-read Verge analysis — I asked an actual expert about the topic!

    Isadora McKenna, an LA/Denver-based stylist, has been giving celebrities excellent hair for years, from Alanis Morissette to Billie Eilish, so I showed her Apple's new Vision Pro commercial, and asked her advice for various hair types.

    How to minimize muss while preventing hair damage, especially during long Vision Pro sessions? Read Isadora's recommendations below!

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  • Join Philip Rosedale’s FairShare Discord to Discuss Digital Currency & UBI — And Start Getting a Basic Income of FairShare Currency!

    Fair Share Philip Rosedale Digital Currency Discord

    Philip Rosedale is starting to roll out his FairShare digital currency universal basic income project (read my 2023 interview with him here) with Second Life-based meetings (of course!) and a very active Discord.

    The FairShare server is already pretty active and chatty, so Philip recommends new users introduce themselves — and ask another member to sponsor them to join the currency group. (To do that, enter "/join" in the Intros channel.)

    When you're a member of that, you start getting a basic income of FairShare currency — which is already starting to be used:

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  • ChatGPT Can Help You Create Working LSL Code for Second Life! Plus Other Experimental Applications Suggested by Soft Linden.

    ChatGPT LLM Second LIfe useChatGPT might seem pretty useless for a legacy virtual world like Second Life (I certainly thought so last year), but recent updates have somewhat changed my mind. In his off-hours, Linden Lab's infosec head (known by his avatar, Soft Linden) has been playing around with OpenAI's Large Language Model, and discovered some pretty impressive Second Life-related applications.

    For starters: You can use ChatGPT to help script in Linden Script Language!

    "GPT-4 (paid) works reasonably well for LSL," Soft tells me. "It will hallucinate some functions that don't exist, but it can save time on the overall first pass, and it can usually correct the code when flaws are pointed out. It can find some bugs if you ask it to find the defects in code you paste in. GPT-3.5 (free usage) is weaker on code."

    The older free version is the one I blogged that hallucinated LSL like crazy. But Soft has seen some improvements since then:

    "OpenAI’s ChatGPT lacks up-to-the-minute information, but simulates human reasoning to a much better degree. It knows what Second Life is, and shows evidence that it’s probably scraped our knowledge base and some old third-party Second Life forums. It can debug or suggest improvements to Linden Scripting Language code." Here's an example on OpenAI.

    "You can ask it to proofread notecards. Try pasting, 'This is a notecard written for non-technical Second Life users. Suggest a bulletpoint list of improvements for clarity and ease of understanding' followed by your notecard. See what happens.

    "You can ask it to help you brainstorm improvements on a business plan for your store or roleplay for your community. You can even ask it how to make your store listing sound more fun. Some suggestions will be bad, but sometimes it surprises you."

    He's even used ChatGPT for Firestorm, the popular third party SL viewer.

    "As an experiment, I  tried taking a screenshot of the items listed in Firestorm’s 'area search' floater, and asked for 'additional items that would fit a Second Life scene with these items.' It didn’t balk. It read the text out of the snapshot, made a few suggestions, and it suggested a beer cooler and some roasted marshmallow gear for an SL camping spot. Hmm!"

    None of this suggests ChatGPT is great with Second Life — it's literally coded to give you the most mediocre content on the web — but it's worth playing around with your various SL projects:

    "Find a friend or three," Soft advises, "bring up ChatGPT in a browser window, and brainstorm together. Treat it like an unbusy friend or an intern and you may have fun or learn a few things. Or, failing that, you'll better understand its limits."

    Soft Linden has also been experimenting with Elon Musk's LLM Grok, and so far the results are notably less useful — but also hilarious:

     

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  • Virtual Worlds Museum Site Launches XR Resource Page For Metaverse Fans, Researchers, and Developers

    Virtual World Museum XR page Julian Reyes

    There's a new XR Resources page of the Virtual Worlds Museum (a proud sponsoring partner to this blog), expanding on founder Julian Reyes' mission to make the site a central community and information hub for people fascinated with the Metaverse and virtual worlds in general.

    “Researchers and world builders can visit the VirtualWorlds.museum,” as Julian told me on a recent call, “and find useful information in one place; our XR resources page includes videos, podcasts, use cases, etc. 

    "We’re also building a 3D visualizer of immersive platforms and that’s what the crowd funding page is for. The digital museum website will connect all the platforms’ communities, which is our end goal — there’s not a solution like that anywhere.”

    While I'm highly biased, I'm pretty excited by Julian's goal — reliable information about virtual world history and active user communities around them are hard to connect with on the Internet. (Ironically enough!)

    Start exploring here. To get involved, connect with the Museum on Twitter/X.

  • Here Are My Estimates for Top-Selling Premium VR Action Games on Steam & Quest With Unique / Experimental Gameplay Mechanics

    Hit hardcore VR games Steam Quest

    I'm helping develop a VR action game with unique/experimental gameplay mechanics (but don't tell anyone yet), and put together these rough sales estimates of virtual reality games which fit that category on Steam and Quest:

    • Blades & Sorcery: 4,250,000 copies sold at $19.99
    • Bonelab/Boneworks: 3,200,000 copies at $39.99/$29.99
    • Ghosts of Tabor: 705,500 copies at $19.99 (Mid-2023 launch)
    • Half-Life: Alyx: 3,700,000 copies at $59.99 (Steam only)
    • Pavlov: 1,855,700 copies at $24.99/$19.99
    • Superhot VR: 1,290,000 copies sold at $24.99 (VR version only)
    • Vader Immortal series: 1,450,000 at $9.99 (Quest only)

    Emphasis on "rough", based on reported figures and user ratings! Interestingly, the creator of Blades & Sorcery reports having 10 million players; he's possibly including players on PICO, the VR headset mainly targeting the Asia market.

    At any rate, it's an interesting list! (And please correct me if I'm missing any key datapoints.) It strongly suggests the Steam/Quest market for hardcore VR game is 5 million at the very high end, though of course most games will only sell much less than these hits. 

    So it's a small market! But I've already said that a lot. There's an interesting twist to that fact: For indie developers or publishers willing to work with a modest budget, the very smallness of the premium VR ecosystem might sometimes be an advantage:

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  • Today’s Flickr Artist: Marina Münter Creates Fresh & Exciting Images Which Treat Second Life as a Serious Medium

    Tout le temps du prélude

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

    Marina Münter’s “Tout le temps du prélude” made me think of those old rotating color wheels people used to cast colors onto the tinsel or, if it was a vintage aluminum tree, color the entire tree. Look at the vivid blue, green, and yellow. The pose is bold and sensual and her outfit is a shocker. You can get a closer look on her Flickr that takes the word bodysuit literally. This picture, though, is magical with the way she uses color to define space, the distant street in blue, the green framing from the buildings, and then the heart of the picture all in a gorgeous golden glow. Magic. 

    For more of Marina’s magic, click here:

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  • Vision Pro Pre-Sold Rumored 180K-200K Units — But Will Mostly Glowing Reviews Help Sell 250K+ This Year?

    Apple VisionPro sales forecast

    Tantalizing rumor tidbit from the largely reliable MacRumors:

    Apple has sold upwards of 200,000 Vision Pro headsets, MacRumors has learned from a source with knowledge of Apple's sales numbers… Last Monday, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that Apple had sold an estimated 160,000 to 180,000 Vision Pro units during the pre-order weekend for the device, so sales may have slowed somewhat since then.

    … Kuo has warned that demand for the Vision Pro could taper off quickly because of the niche market for the device. 

    So let's say 180,000-200,000 Vision Pro units have likely been sold even before its officially gone on sale this Friday. That's still significantly below my prediction of 250,000 being sold this year — and as Kuo suggests, there's only so many people left who are willing / able to buy the pricey device now. 

    Continued sales of this year's pilot model depend in great part on good reviews, so let's round-up some prominent appraisals from a top tech news site and two highly-regarded Apple enthusiast sites:

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  • Antheia Aurelia Shot This Raw Stunning Screenshot in Second Life — Plus Other Spectacular Images of Strong Women

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

    Antheia Aurelia made magic with projected light and the shadows created in this raw screenshot straight from Second Life. I wonder what she regrets, certainly not this magnificent photo. She has a stream of portraits, editorial fashion, slice-of-life, and tasteful erotica, all unified by consistent attention to detail and composition, making magnificent pictures many of which have the vibe, in this vibe-acious year, of those great movie stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, think Lauren Bacall and Audrey Hepburn. 

    For more, click here:

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  • Is the Vision Pro Really Practical as a Computer Replacement — And for People With Long Hair? (Comment of the Week)

    Apple VisionPro AR

    Really interesting comment thread on the Vision Pro, and how it compares with the launch of the iPhone back in 2007. Good points from reader "Nadeja", highlighting its limitations as a computer replacement — and coming challenges for Vision Pro owners with long hair:

    I also remember the iPhone critics comparing it to the contemporary devices with similar functionalities (even the PDA/phone hybrids) or dismissing it by telling it was nothing new, but in fact the iPhone was more handy and offered a better user experience.

    The Vision Pro specs are comparable to an iPad Pro and the plethora of sensors, the OS, the novel interactivity and usability could again make a difference. I'd surely like a secondary portable computer with an AR screen; even though not for that price. On the other hand, by looking at the first reviews, the virtual keyboard doesn't seem as usable as a touch keyboard, even less an actual keyboard.

    There is a voice input too, but I won't use it on a train or an airplane (also, unless it's widespread, I won't feel so comfortable to be the weirdo in the room with it on my head and moving my hands around). And I suspect that pulling out a phone or a tablet out of my bag for just a moment and putting it back is quicker an more practical than having to strap something to my face.

    But, as a woman, weight aside, there is another thing I've noticed:

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