Second Life Mobile: Video update from the Lab, with summary

On Tuesday, June 27th, Linden Lab released a new video highlighting the development work for Second Life Mobile App. This video is embedded below, with what follows intended to form a short summary of comments made on the work during the SL20B Lab Gab session with Grumpity and Mojo Linden (and for which I’ll have a text summary available soon.

Key Points

• Development work is continuing, with an emphasis on performance and rendering (for example: the capabilities of the hardware running SL Mobile is assessed to see if it can render with shadows enabled).
• The user interface has been revised and improved.
• The overall aim remains to provide an immersive an experience as possible, and provide users with an many of the capabilities found within the viewer as makes sense to include in a mobile device.
• As it is, SL Mobile provides:
  • Chats and IM capabilities.
  • Friends on-line information.
  • Destinations / Places.
  • Teleport capabilities.
  • Groups and Group chat functionality.
  • High-quality rendering.
  • Avatar navigation via an on-screen joystick (only visible when in use).
• Work will continue in adding features and capabilities and refining SL Mobile over the next two quarters.
• The current time frame for releases is:
  • Limited “private” alpha testing towards the end of 2023.
  • Broader user beta testing in 2024.
• Further news and updates will be made available as and when there are updates to share.

The Video

The new video – embedded below – provides insight into the work carried out since the last update / video released at SL19B, and highlights some of the purposes LL sees SL Mobile being put to.

Note that elements such as the UI as seen in the video are subject to possible change as the product develops.