Here's a new tutorial for getting started on Equimake, the new indie platform which enables live, multi-user collaborative 3D building on the web. (Skip ahead to 5:25 for a demo of the multi-user creation feature!) Since blogging about it last week, founder/lead dev Alex Yevsyeyev tells me nearly 500 people have joined the community, mainly from the US/Canada, but also (surprising him) from over 45 countries around the world -- from Hong Kong to Argentina to Ghana to somewhere in war-torn Ukraine. As examples of worlds that have been made so far, here's three favorites you can visit: Here's ..read more

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting RigTorok shared this picture of what I first thought was a dogwood before realizing it has one too many leaves. Perhaps it’s a pear tree. Whatever kind of tree it is, it is lovely. It is just one of the nearly 10,000 pictures in the Flowers of Second Life group. With 785 members, it’s fairly active and blissfully well-moderated. The rules are clear, the flowers must be the focus of the picture, not a patch of flowers in the background. Even better, posters must include a SLURL so others can go see the flower ..read more

In February I reported that Linden Lab was investigating allegations posted to social media regarding toxic internal company operations among some staffers, which the company publicly confirmed in March. Now Brad Oberwager, Linden Lab's Executive Chairman, has an update to those investigations which include strengthening regulations against sexualized age play, and policies around favoritism and conflict of interest. Sample: The investigation determined that all Lindens and contractors have stayed in compliance with our own community guidelines, as well as unwritten, ethical guidelines. I do ..read more

Here's the latest luminously gobsmacking Second Life machinima from Teal Aurelia (first profiled here) and this time, it's seriously epic. It also happens to be an ad for an SL-based brand: In this case, Crack Den, the long-running urban roleplay mini-MMO, and Teal's precise visuals allude to the game's detailed backstory right from the start:  "I had to do a ton of research about Crack Den because I'd never roleplayed there, and the more I read, the more annoyed I was that I hadn't known the scale of its worldbuilding sooner," as Teal teals me. So instead of shooting random locations in ..read more

XR developer and blogger Skarredghost has a good long look at the challenges of creating effective mixed reality social experiences with Vision Pro. The challenge is the Vision Pro doesn't use traditional virtual world avatars, but "Personas" which are ultra-realistic maps of the users real life face. As I've written, there's already challenges with real life avatars -- for many reasons, people generally prefer avatars which do not look like them in a virtual space -- and they're made even more challenging when these personas don't even have arms or legs.  Though these ghostly personas d ..read more

Augmented World Expo 2024 is happening next month in June in sunny Long Beach, and I'm excited to say I'll be attending the world's largest XR/AR/VR conference, signing Making a Metaverse That Matters and roaming the conference as a blogger/consultant/etc. Hope to see you there! Speaking of which, the team at AWE gave me this special discount code on registration for New World Notes readers: Use SPKR24D as a discount code on sign-up for 20% off all tickets except VIP. That's on top an early-bird discounted price if you order before May 8. And if you are coming, please let me know in Comment ..read more

Just got word that Life by You, The Sims-meets-Second Life-meets-Garry's Mod sandbox simulation lead developed by Rod Humble, is now available for wishlisting in the run-up for its June 2024 early access launch: Wishlist on Steam here. Wishlist on the Epic Store here. Video on the announcement from Rod above. Humble, as longtime readers know, is a game industry veteran who worked on The Sims franchise and other hit titles before briefly becoming Linden Lab's CEO in 2011. Hopefully I'll be chatting with him on soon,  asking him how he synthesized his experiences with those games into Li ..read more

Following up on a reader's comment to my rant about ChatGPT totally botching my writing, I went with their suggestion to try Microsoft's Copilot instead. I asked the same question, "What is Wagner James Au's definition of the Metaverse?" and got this output: Wagner James Au defines the Metaverse as a vast, immersive virtual world simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology. His book, “Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Cr ..read more

Vision Pro Developer: Don't Expect An Apple IPhone-Level Launch When It's More Like Apple Lisa. Try Equimake: Real-Time, Multi-User Collaborative Building -- On The Web! As A Writer, I Don't Feel Threatened By ChatGPT -- It Can't Even Accurately Summarize My Own Writing! Linden Lab Payment Spinoff Tilia Acquired By Fintech Company Thunes; Second Life Staffer Promises No Additional Costs For SLers Watch Me Talk About Second Life, VRChat & The Metaverse On Belgian TV ..read more

You've probably read rumors that Apple has lowered production numbers of the Vision Pro due to low demand, but a former senior developer of the Vision Pro sees things differently. Avi Bar-Zeev led Apple's Experience Prototyping (XP) team working on Vision Pro, has been working on VR headsets since the 90s, and so has a much wiser perspective:  I don't work for Apple anymore and would certainly never speak for them. But I will say the analysts citing "dramatically lowered production numbers" have lost all credibility. First the analysts said AVP was supply-limited to 180k units. Now the ..read more