The Second Life to Discord text bridge I featured the other day is not available on the Marketplace (at least not yet), but there are already other options there. This one from Peter Strindberg is well-rated and has similar features: Once activated, the relay announces itself in open chat, indicating how many lines of chat and for how long it will relay. This is in accordance with SL-ToS and SL-CS (see below), and gives any avatar present enough warning to stop talking, if they don't want their chat relayed. Consequently, the relay also announces when it stops relaying the chat. It only relays ..read more

As I recently noted, an Iowa State University study funded in part by the National Science Foundation seems to confirm danah boyd’s early research that virtual reality tends to make women nauseous: As part of a larger study on adaptation to cybersickness, the ISU researchers recruited 150 participants to play up to 20 minutes of a VR game with a headset. The participants were new to VR and could stop if they felt too sick to continue. The researchers found women ended the game early twice as often as men and reported a sickness intensity that was 40% higher. Emphasis mine. Notably, as study ..read more

The Crush House, an upcoming indie game on Steam, is one of those "I can't believe no one's thought of this before, but I'm glad a quirky creator got the idea first before a bloated AAA publisher did" titles. The creator in this case is digital artist Nicole He, and the idea is basically: A first-person shooter where you pay the camera-person for a cheesy reality show, and you get more points for shooting the best sex and scandal -- and maybe some dark conspiracies beneath the surface. (Watch the trailer above.)  More info on the Steam page: Each season is unique based on your chosen ca ..read more

Above: From my 2010 post, "Sexy Scarface: The Story Behind 'Broken Hearts Bleed', the Latest in Stylishly Brutalized Female Avatar Skins" Really interesting /SecondLife Reddit thread about the prevalence of avatars who are physically damaged in some way: My daughter, who does not play Second Life, asked me about the prevalence of avatars showing body damage. Band-aids, bloody noses, cuts, scrapes, bruises, etc. It's so common on SL but I honestly never put much thought into the "why". She hypothesized it is "representative of internal real life feelings". I said it seems to be the current fad ..read more

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting Shun. 沈 [untitled] has a photostream full of wild pictures, some roleplay, some romantic, some simply inexplicable like “The Mysterious Room.” At first glance, it seems like a lovely library in a stately home. At second glance, perhaps the stately home of Dr. Moreau. I definitely see a few Audreys. The plants that provide the spectral lighting are unlike the plants in anyone else’s library. The aquarium does not have the guppies, mollies, tetras, and zebrafish you usually encounter. This is definitely a myst ..read more

So much social activity around virtual worlds now takes place on Discord, since the messaging platform is much easier to use in various everyday contexts (i.e. on the train, in the bathroom, etc.) But here's one solution in a virtual dance club that offers the best of both mediums: A bridge connecting public chat in Second Life to Discord, and vice versa. You can see that in the above screen, with me posting a message in SL (left) that's instantly sent to the club's Discord group (right). The club's owner, Puddles Kayleigh, implemented it a few years ago in her Trance Music Club -- click here ..read more

Like life, the Metaverse finds a way. While the long-awaited, official Rec Room app for Vision Pro is still in development (the company's partnership was announced last June), here's a Rec Room streamer already unofficially exploring the virtual world with Apple's HMD. This is possible, as "Grizzly" explains, via the iVRy Driver for SteamVR, an app which enables you to run an application from iPhone and other devices as a VR headset application from your PC -- and to run Steam VR on Vision Pro. And thus, run Rec Room on Apple's headset. Watch above! As Grizzly notes, hand-tracking is a bit kl ..read more

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting Indie’s “Gold Dust Woman” is an excellent example of “less-is-more.” Imagine if this was a complete headshot. It would still be lovely but it would be less likely to arrest your attention and compel you to look more closely. By showing less, Indie forces us to complete the face in our imagination. We don’t just look at the picture; we interact with it. There is a back and forth that engages us.  For more of Indie’s engaging art, click here: “My love, down, deep into your bones” is another less-is-more ..read more

Commenting on the hilarious trolling by SL player "Wendy" on Convai's new LLM-powered bots, reader Martin K. has some good thoughts on how to better optimize NPC conversation, referencing a classic game design text: To me it looks as if Wendy was intentionally evading the NPC's questions in order to stall the progress of the narrative. Now, participants who are unwilling (or unable) to play their part in a narrative are nothing new in interactive storytelling. And general solutions to this problem have been proposed, for example, by Brenda Laurel in her book Computers as Theatre. Her solutio ..read more

Above:  Real-life model/influencer Kate Purt, generated by Makery.AI creator vAIsual from a few hundred images of Kate -- with her full and prior consent 10 Years Ago, After Facebook Bought Oculus, A Top Academic Warned About VR Causing Females Nausea. No One At Facebook/Meta Followed Up. Virtual World Users Hilariously Troll LLM-Powered Bots -- And Illustrate The Limits Of AI-Based NPCs Second Life Overwhelmed By Virtual Fashion Shopping Events & Consumerism, Argues Longtime SL Blogger Best 3D Engine For Creating In Vision Pro? An XR Engineer Compares/Contrasts Unreal To Unity's Pol ..read more