1
 
  AW News (jan. ->feb. 2023)
 
* AW Version 8.1
 
* New Material Effect : Green Screen
 
On 23th december a new feature has been added to the AW program : the green screen.
The green screen is often used in movies and videoclips : the actors or artists are in front of a green background, which makes it easy to cut out their masked silhouette and replacing the background by another background. This is called the Chroma Key technique.
* Now in Activeworlds you can do the same by adding the green screen material effect, then the green background becomes invisible and only the actor/artist remains (which is in front of the green background).
* In order to use this feature in Activeworlds, you must of course have a .gif or video file where you have a green background. If you search on the internet for "green screen", you will find enough examples.
 
The green screen is an option of the Matfx command, example:
 
create media url=<mygreenscreenvideo>, matfx type=5 coef=0.15

Green Screen example in the Alphaworld landing zone. Go to the AW Wiki (F9-tabsheet Notepad) to read more about the command script.
* Community Meeting on 8th January
 
On 8th January there has been a community meeting in the world AWWelcome with Chris (#290065) and MeL (#341444).
For this meeting, there has been used Voice Chat. This feature can be found in the AW menu under : File > Addons > YouMe3D: Collab.
There has been talked about various topics , some of them were:
* The "green screen" material effect, which was introduced on 23th december
* Vulkan was added to the AW program in 2022. If you use Vulkan as the renderer (compared to Direct3D or OpenGL) , you will have a higher frame rate.
* Former members of the building world AWTeen talked about reactivating AWTeen again as a building world , so that ex-awteen members would be reunited. (Finally another decision was made - see article below )
* The RPG-world FutureRPG has returned to Activeworlds, which is good news. There has been asked for more games , like quest games, trivia games and board games.
* Wayne's website (Micromouse.ca) with the Accutrans program has now video tutorials added to the website. (41 videos in total).
* During the lasts months, there is a citizen (or citizens) which abuses the movers by bumping away people from their location, and trolling them that way. Gremot proposed to have the possibility in the AW program , that the user gets first a message accepting to use the mover or not, instead of being bumped away immediately by a troller.
Old Chinese Man (#427489) talked about his plans for Activeworlds :
* Last year he started the worlds Zuul and Ahoy, where he offers new 3d models, which he modeled himself and he has the plan to offer more 3d models.
* He advised to use more 4K textures (referring to 4K resolution), useful for instance for skyboxes. Currently, in AW, people are using small texture files of 128x128 or 256x256 or 512x512 pixels for their builds , which has been used 20 years ago.
* The question of using more 3d modeling programs : Blender , Wings3d, (Truespace)
* In addition to that , there was the question of introduction of additional file formats in Activeworlds (announced since version 7.1 in the AWWiki, but still not realized).

 

Presentation during the Community Meeting about how to use the renderer Vulkan.

 

The worlds list has been shortened
 

* On ±17th of february, the number of worlds has been reduced from ±540 worlds to ±256 worlds. The worlds that have been removed from the worlds list were worlds owned by Activeworlds . Most of these worlds were closed worlds, demo worlds , and worlds with less important content. This cleanup was necessary.

* Unfortunately some nice demo worlds have gone offline, like October (RiverCity) ,StarWars, SIAW, Space, Primo2 and Stacey2.
the world with River City has gone down
Community Meeting on 19th february
 

* The Community Meeting on 19th february was hosted by Arsène (#152438) and was about the AW Landing Zone Contest : there will be hosted a new Landing Zone building contest for the Landing Zone of 2024.

* There will have to be teleports to the best places in Alpaworld and the best places in the AW universe. There will be more meetings this year, and in 1 meeting, the participants can present their project to the public. For the rest, the rules remain the same as the previous contests.
* There was also the question about forming a group moderators to welcome new users in Alphaworld.
 
New popular Youtube video about Activeworlds
 

* On 14th of february, a new youtube video was released that brough a lot of new users to Activeworlds. This video had 2.9 million views after 2 weeks, that is a bit more than the 2.6 million views of the Vinesauce video in 2016. The new video has the title "Exploring Dead Games" and shows several gaming programs on the internet that have no visitors. Only the first 15 minutes is about worlds in Activeworlds.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNDfvNqPILg is made by the Youtuber Redlyne, in Activeworlds, he logged in as BigCoolTony1991 (#448543).
* As the video has been released only a few days before the worlds in Alphaworld has been shortened, there were some worlds in that video that were not online anymore when the new visitors entered in Activeworlds. (Primo2 , StarWars, Bugs, SIAW, KoolAid), so Redlyne was just in time to make a movie about those worlds.
* New worlds
 
* FutureRPG
 
FutureRPG is owned by Jackson (#351335) and working RPG game. This P40-world existed already in 2020 en 2021 and is back again since early january, with modifications and improvements (e.g. a new supportive website). More info about how to play the RPG game can be found in the "games&events" webpage of 2023.
 
* FutureDEV
 
This world is still closed (startup late january), but will be related to the world FutureRPG.
 
* Zuul
 
This world is owned by Old Chinese Man (#427489) and the world started in january and is currently under construction. OCM also owns the worlds zZzZz and Ahoy.
 
* Pops
 
This world started in january and is owned by The Real Pops (#34745)
 
* Sera
 
This world has been started in february and is owned by Yan. (#354127)
 
* LakotaNation
 
This world is still closed to the public.
 
Citizen Mondo is busy with fishing in the world FutureRPG
 
 
 
*Activeworlds 2022 statistics
 
* There is no article in AWTimes about the visitor statistics in 2021, but as AW policy in building has changed now in 2023, this article will explain why this happened.
* First of all Activeworlds has had a constant decline of online users (even after 2013) , and has tried to "mask" the number of visitors. For this, AW counted the online bots and real users together as "clients", but some world owners kept multiple bots online with the intention of having their world on top of the worlds list, the consequence was that there were more bots than users online, and impossible to know the real number of users.
* Later , Activeworlds prohibited in 2016 to use of bots in the AW Landing Zone, later in 2021 for the entire world. Strike Rapier published all the incoming citizens on his website AWPortals, and also Tomas published the citizens numbers and names on his website . Both couldn't publish this anymore after this measure has been taken.
* Activeworlds also published their own statistics ( F9-tabsheets >tabsheet Notepad ->"Current Online Stats"), showing data that cannot be analysed. (see picture "AW user stats")
AW User stats on 11th march 2023
* There are alternatives to "measure" the activity in Activeworlds. First method :you add all the contacts to you contact list, then you make a"moment overview" (for instance once a month) : you note down the number of contacts online, the number of clients online, the number of worlds online, the VRT time and date ,and remarks (if there was an event going on ), and you put these data into a table. And if you do that, you will notice that the number of clients have dropped to an average of 50 now in 2023, compared to 70 in 2021.
* The second method is making an overview of the private worlds. Purchasing private worlds is the only way that citizens pay something for Activeworlds (besides bots and avatar clothes). And here the number of worlds has dropped too : some world owners have passed away ( Keshi, Cleet, Pastorbob), some loyal citizens did not renew their world (Karten, Horsy, Nursemom). And there were less new private worlds compared to the number that have stopped.
Private worlds overview made in january 2022
* On this picture, we see a drop in the number of worlds compared to 2021. As most of the money for Activeworlds comes from selling private worlds, Activeworlds could not wait any longer to change its policy towards other visitors that don't pay anything at all for building in the public worlds....
* Colors of the signs :
yellow = existing world
green = new world
orange = closed world (new or existing world)
blue = name of the world owner
Private worlds overview made in march 2023