There are staffs, and then there are simulation staffs..... just cool that they were able to simulate the function of the staff inside the simulation

From the prompt the Owlk staffs are called "Vision Torches".

About the ATP not activating when you enter the simulation via death; my take is that the ATP doesn’t activate the moment you die, it’s just that under normal circumstances you’re not alive (thus aware) of the rest of the time loop UNTIL the ATP does activate and your memories are sent back, which makes more sense to me because I’m not sure how the ATP would know when you die. Also, Gabbro has a line mentioning that he died in space at least once, but our loop is never cut short.

If this is the way it is, I think that also means there is no afterlife in Outer Wilds..

Titling it ‘The Owlks’ Dream Explained’ May have been less spoiler-ey

let's be honest, you could have called this video, Thing Explained and we would still watch it

I do wonder why they made all those strange dream-like things in their simulation (the grabby hands, etc.) because it looked like they just wanted to recreate their homeworld.  Maybe they just wanted to go a little bit further, considering that they can simulate anything

I wish we could grab a vision torch from the artifact lab and bring it to Solanum, or some of the other Hearthians.

If we scanned a Nomai statue with a vision torch, would the statue try to pair with it?

Could a Nomai statue pair with one of the dead Owlks? I know... good luck getting one of those statues on board the spaceship, across the river, and up and down all those stairs in 22 minutes. :)

Detail I noticed going through again. At the top off the tower once the lowland and ember isle base fires are extinguished is that the pluses of light stop going from the antenna to symbols, but pluses still go between the symbols even if the base fire is out. This makes sense as you can still be in the woods and cove after the owlks there have been deloaded but only if you've entered from another point.

It also implies after the nova, probably before the power is exhausted water damage will destroy the connections in time and that will destroy the simulation. Nothing can ultimately escape the end of the universe without the eye.

Hey babe, wake up, new The Lore Explorer video!

Thankyou so much for making consistent uploads about outer wilds. I'm so glad there's an outer wilds youtuber who posts regularly 6 months after the latest expansion and 2 years after original release. Thankyou so much. If you keep making outer wilds content I guarantee you will blow up as the game blows up more.

I feel like the nomai statues and the owlks staff must be similar technologies.

The staff can record memories from someone and project them directly into someone else's brain when they sleep (notice how you close your eyes, that means it makes you go to sleep so you can record the memories in your brain).

Similarly the statue can record your memories and project them directly into your brain when you sleep (notice how you start the loop being asleep), the only difference is that it sends those memories back in time through the ash twin project which sends those memories to your statue and which it then writes those memories directly into your brain.

Maybe the simulation works similarly, maybe it just writes the memories of you being in the simulation while you sleep so when you wake up you feel as if you had lived it but in reality you were just sleeping...

Dreams irl work similarly, the brain processes lots of random scenarios and for some reason you only remember some of them.
From the pov of someone who just woke up, consciously processing a dream and remembering it is exactly the same as never being aware of it but something else implanting those fake memories into your brain.

Maybe the artifact somehow scans your brain and it creates a perfect copy of your consciousness, which reacts to things the same way the real you would, which then connects that fake consciousness with the simulation fire, and as the simulation and the copied consciousness interacts with each other it stores the new memories the fake consciousness creates directly into your real brain as if you did them yourself.

And and that's why the statue can record your consciousness in the simulation even after you die, because the statue can't distinguish between the simulated perfect copy of your consciousness and the real consciousness.

Here's how I think the ATP and the simulation work: (Note: Extremely long, so I broke it up into segments)

The ATP works by sending our consciousness through the super-powered blackhole, sending it to the next loop. Our consciousness records everything we experience, then when the supernova happens, the ATP sends it back and injects it into our mind. IMPORTANT NOTE: The ATP does not record your memories, it just takes your consciousness and sends it back. It is able to do this after death as the brain can function for hours after death.

In order for a computer to inject a consciousness, the recipient's brain must not be controlling their consciousness (e.g. Subconscious, unconscious, or dead). Whenever the person's consciousness or brain experiences enough stimuli, the person's brain wakes them up, taking control of their consciousness again. This is why when you die in the simulation, you wake up. It's also how you wake up when the bells are ringing. Of course, if your brain is dead then it cant wake you up or experience stimuli. It's also why you start each loop by waking up, because you were in a subconscious state, so the ATP could inject you with the previous consciousness. This is why each loops' start is affected by the last loop's end type (Large breath if you ran out of oxygen, etc). This is also why we start each loop at exactly 22 minutes, as when our brains receive a consciousness, the consciousness already has enough stimuli to wake up the brain immediately.

The way vision torches work is by taking a segment of your consciousness and injecting it into the recipient, who has to be subconscious or unconscious (cant be dead as there is no place to inject to).

Artifacts work in a somewhat similar way. The artifact actually takes your consciousness from your brain (only when in one of the 3 states above), and takes the data from the base fires and renders it to the consciousness. When the brain experiences enough stimuli, it rips the consciousness out of the artifact, waking the person. The artifact renders the simulation to the consciousness, because you only see the realistic render around your assigned artifact, and not any of the others. This does mean that you are fully rendered to the Owlk, even without your artifact. The artifact also sends position and rotation data back to the base fire, who then sends it to the simulation computer. If you step outside of the render bubble, you are shown the raw data that the artifact is receiving, which explains the texture similarities with the antennae in the real world.

The simulation computer cannot be the entire Stranger, otherwise there would be no need for the antennae. The simulation computer must be near the Cinder Isles tower, as it is the only one without a wireless connection. The simulation computer handles all the calculations needed for the simulation, and sends the necessary data to each base fire to be sent to each artifact. (This would also mean that the Starlit Cove would have the best connection, and therefor less ping and lag). The base fire is only responsible for connecting the artifact with the simulation computer, and nothing else. This is what makes traveling between places in the simulation possible.

Because what you experience in the simulation is actually what your consciousness records, when the ATP triggers, it is able to access what you saw in simulation (including the debug mode (my terminology for walking outside the render bubble)).

The cool thing about all this, is that nothing in the loops actually happens. The loops only exist as a "what if", gathering data about the outcomes of setting certain variables, then saving it. The way the Nomai set it up, they would be able to instantly get the coordinates of the Eye, because the people outside the timeloop would only get the results of all the loops, and someone had to stay in the loop to deactivate the ATP when the data was gotten. Essentially, the people outside the timeloop would see the white hole open and dump tons of data 22 minutes before they would have fired the Sun Station (but they dont because the data is already there). For the people connected to the ATP, they would cease all real world interactions 22 minutes before they would have fired the Sun Station, the Sun Station would fire for them, as they are in the timeloop.

You could call it dream explained for no spoilers. I didnt got minor spoiled by this one video, but by another with similar title. Anyways, thanks for the all you do, keep up the good job.

this is just the matrix

I like how the developers managed to make the simulation feel more like a video game than the rest of the game world. I don't know weather or not that was intentional

The Strangers simulation would be even more Ironic than just a simulation in a simulation if real life was a simulation to. ha ha ha. Wait what if it is 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

You could say they were more advanced than the Nomai in some ways.  But just remember that they never invented warp travel and had to get to the eye the normal way.

I really enjoy these videos

*goes to secret fire in towers
*sighs “guess i’ll have to avoi- wait… im stupid”
*blows candles out

I think clearly both the nomai and the owlks had a deeper understanding of consciousness. The nomai statues are able to record our essence, even across species that hadn't even evolved yet. The simulation is able to project with us, again even across species, and after death. I think the artifact, the projection fires, and the memory statues are literally able to interact with our ghost. Like maybe the brains still there it's just a ghost brain lol. Memories are maintained too. To me it's clear too that it's not purely simulation holding our consciousness too, like if that were the case the physical artifact would hold no meaning, just being able to be removed without issues. It still has purpose, can still be extinguished (like via water). When the flood happens or the tower falls the owlks there are killed in the simulation instantly, they're not just beamed into the computer otherwise they'd remain in the simulation. So since the essence of the observer is maintained after death, it does make me think too more about the eye. Like I've seen things about when we find friends in the forest at the eye how they're just memories. This doesn't make much sense to me. The game has made it clear that there is an essence. So at the end, everyone has died. Even Solanum on the quantum moon. With the Owlks simulation and Solanums stay at the quantum moon all thats happened is the inevitable is just delayed. The eye is more powerful than even the quantum moon so it'd make sense that it'd even pass it in terms of the age of things the quantum moon even holds. So yeah solanum still truely dies. She gets her fate. But hey at the end of the universe when the observer is in the eye, she's found again, along with the other remembered friends to learn, and play a nice campfire song as hatchling collapses all the possibilities. So all there essences are there at the campfire, at both the end and beginning of time.