Tag: SL Mobile

The following notes were taken from the Thursday, April 24th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting. These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Resources Release Updates and “Coming Soon” “Coming Soon” Avatar Updates In Brief Date of Next Meeting

Meeting Purpose

• The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
• These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In Voice and text.
  • At Campwich Forest.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Resources

• Second Life Mobile Beta website.
  • SL Mobile on Google Play.
  • SL Mobile on Apple Store.
• Second Life Mobile on the Feedback Portal:
  • Bug reports.
  • Feature requests.

Release Updates and “Coming Soon”

[Video: 2:57-8:46]

Version: 2025.3.548 (Android); 0.5.534 (iOS)

• Issue: Not receiving items! – inventory offers received when using Mobile failing to appear in Inventory once logged-in on the Desktop viewer. This has now been fixed.
•  Dash for Cash has proven popular, and has seen a small update in that it now references avatars by name.

“Coming Soon”

• If you teleport whilst in the Lobby, a teleport pop-up will be displayed in addition to the teleport progress bar at the top of the Lobby screen.
• Settings clean-up:
  • The Max Avatars drop-down is due to move from the Developer tools list (Menu → Settings → </> Developer Tools) up to the main Settings menu.
  • Group notifications are to become more granular, allowing notifications for specific groups to be turned on / off.

• Initial groundwork so that people can access the Lobby feature without their avatars having to be physically in-world:
  • This will see the the Sign Out button move from the Menu up to the Profile bar, and a new button introduced to the Menu: Return to Lobby.
  • When implemented, avatars will still be rendered in-world and seen as on-line, as this is only the groundwork.  However, it is hoped that things will progress over the next few months to reach a point where using the Lobby, as noted, does not require the avatar to be present in-world.
• Additional quality of life updates are also targeting the May update, but the meeting was considered “a little too early” to discuss them.

Avatar Update

[Video: 9:27-43:00]

• The core of the meeting was a presentation from Adam Sinewave on some of the challenges involved in rendering avatars on SL Mobile, the approach taken, status to date and work that should be appearing in upcoming releases.
• This presentation took the form of a slide show with comments from Adam, and I’ve embedded a video of it below, with a concatenated summary of Adam’s comments. to see the latter in full, please watch the video directly in You Tube and click the transcript button in the video’s description area.

• SL Mobile is a fully ground-up rebuild of Second Life for Mobile devices (utilising the Unity engine), utilising a very different architecture compared to the Desktop Viewer and with no common code, in order to work within the constraints of most Mobile devices.
• This is particularly evident in the case of avatar rendering, where the different approaches to avatar skeletons as substantial:
  • The SL system is largely “monolithic” (for want of a better term): a single skeleton per avatar containing multiple bone sets, all capable of being positioned be shape, deformer animation, with no deterministic (or even an entirely random) approach to the ordering / priority of such changes.
  • The Unity system is more flexible and robust, but as a result can bring rendering quirks and issues hidden by the SL system into sharp relief.
• Testing such avatar for issues and the effectiveness of fixes applied (regression testing) has until recently been manually-intensive requiring eye-on testing for each an every issue / fix. However, time has been spent building an in-house testing / regression system to automate a lot of this work, greatly speeding the process of issue identification, fixing and testing.
• Outside of the above, there are still areas of work associated with avatars (some of which impact in-world objects as well) still to be address, and doing so will take time. These include at the time of the video:
  • “Not Working”: Animesh; avatar lighting; transparency on avatars (alpha layers); PBR materials rendering. All of these will be addressed, but the time frame is liable to be longer-term and the priority of work subject to change.
  • Partially working: Flexi wearables (partially supported, but in need of improvement); system eyes (positioned based on a “average” placement within the skull and which requires further improvement).
• Silhouetting (avatars appearing transparent in the Mobile app): this is viewed as overly-aggressive, but has been necessary to ensure avatars only render when “complete”, so as to avoid any nudity that might collide with Apple’s rules on such. Unfortunately, this exposes a number of areas where avatar loading can fail and the avatar becoming such as a silhouette. Work is progressing on addressing these issues, but it will require a cycle of multiple updates.
• A look at (at the time of the meeting) some of of the  upcoming avatar fixes improvements – including expanding the avatar test suite and, for users: improvements to resource loading and texture handling, allowing more to be seen and enabling avatars to be loaded / unloaded as they enter / leave view.
• It was noted that much of this work has yet to reach the Mobile app (Alpha or Beta), be will be doing so in upcoming releases.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following and other questions which may have had a simple “yes” or “in progress” reply.

• [Video: 45:56-47:10] A question on whether mesh creators simply using the default right-hand attachment point of avatar items can cause issues with losing items or how alpha blends work when compared to Desktop.
  • In terms of alpha blends, Mobile uses a different approach to layering (order-independent transparency using Z-depth rather than attachment order), such issues of layer ordering doesn’t apply.
  • It’s acknowledged that this might not quite match what creators are expecting, but it allow for a more efficient use of resources.
• [Video: 47:38-48:48] SL and Unity handle rotation differently.
  • SL’s coordinates are based on right-handed rotation with the Z axis as up; Unity uses left-handed rotation with the Y axis as Up.  Thus, a translation system between the two is required, which can lead to issues.
  • Further complications can be introduced as a result of animations using rotation.
  • Fixes have been developed to address the more noticeable issues, which will be appearing in the next “update or two”.
• [Video: 49:37-50:44] Inventory access through Mobile is on the roadmap. However, it is a very large, resource-intensive project with a lot of impact.
  • As such, as, when and how it is tackled is a matter of strategic consideration alongside other priorities.
  • Currently, it is not something that has seen any “substantial” work carried out.
• [Video: 50:52-50:54 (text]  Mobile app hanging with “Not Responding” and the options to Close App or Wait:
  • The workaround for this at present is to go to the Developer Tools (Menu → Settings → </> Developer Tools), locate the Max Memory Limit drop-down and reduce the amount of memory (e.g. to 30% or 25%).
  • Further work has been made to general performance, which should be going into upcoming releases. As such, reports on the issue would be appreciated if it continues to manifest after these are available.
• [Video: 51:01-52:53] Has anything been learnt from Mobile (thus far) that can be used to improve the Desktop experience?
  • Suggestions have been passed to the Desktop viewer team from Mobile.
  • There is a desire to unify experiences between the viewer and Mobile where possible (e.g. such as unifying chat history) and which may require changes to the viewer as well as updates to Mobile. However when such work will be carried out was unclear at the time of the meeting.
  • Outside of user-facing work, the avatar testing tool is something potentially of interest to the Desktop team as well.
• There is an issue with certain fonts in name tags not displaying correctly on Mobile. This is known and will be investigated.

Date of Next Meeting

• 12:00 SLT, Thursday, May 29th, 2025, at Campwich Forest.

The following notes were taken from the Thursday, March 27th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting. These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Resources Release Updates Alpha Testing Update Lobby Update PBR Support Animesh Support In Brief Date of Next Meeting

Meeting Purpose

• The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
• These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In Voice and text.
  • At Campwich Forest.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Resources

• Second Life Mobile Beta website.
  • SL Mobile on Google Play.
  • SL Mobile on Apple Store.
• Second Life Mobile on the Feedback Portal:
  • Bug reports.
  • Feature requests.

Release Updates

[Video: 3:18-4:09]

• Version: 2025.1.543 Android / 0.5.534 iOS – Lobby release (see Below).

Alpha Testing Update

[Video: 4:11-6:38]

An update to the Alpha version of Mobile was pushed out on March 27th for those in the Mobile Alpha program.

• New ‘touch timer’ to make interaction much more obvious.
• New forward/backwards buttons for navigating to different locations.
• Location bar new accepts input.
• You can now:
  • Create Favourites by tapping on the heart icon in the parcel tray.
  • Share your location via other apps.
  • View and visit your Landmarks and Favourites
• Performance and rendering improvements (incl. defaulting to new bone attachment handling functions – see the February meeting summary) + fixes for duplicated IMs.
• New Developer settings:
  • Lower Resolution When Hot/Low Battery – defaults to on, but can be turned off
  • Lower Resolution When In Menu – try this to increase app performance while in Lobby
  • Disable World Loading – try this to test the UI without loading the world

Lobby Update

[Video: 9:29-14:42]

As regular users of SL Mobile are aware, Lobby is a feature designed to put key information before a user when logging-in to SL Mobile and while the world is still being loaded in the background. This information includes:

• A world loading bar with your avatar’s current location.
• Menu access.
• Details of friends in-world.
• Messages received whilst off-line.
• Suggested places to visit.
• Event listings.
• Access to official blog posts.
• relevant links to expand any of the above.

The following points should be noted:

• The lobby will only be displayed when you actually log-in to a new session of the app – that is, you actually use the menu option to log-out between sessions. It will not be displayed if you close the app without logging-off and then re-open it.
• Currently, your avatar will still be in-world when using the Lobby and will show to all those you have allowed to see your on-line status as being in-world.

Future Plans / Feedback

• There are plans to have the lobby be accessible without an avatar requiring an in-world presence.  However, this is going to take time to implement, and so should not be expected as an update in the short-term.
• At present, there is no means to “return” to the Lobby once a user has switched to using the in-world view. However, the option to return to it is being considered – and this gained some support from those at the meeting, so is likely to be implemented.
• I’ve provided feedback (with screenshots about the app at times loading the in-world view fully / partially and then loading the lobby, which has apparently been experienced by others.

PBR Support

[Video: 14:50-17:33]

• As has been previously stated, SL Mobile has to work within extremely tight memory constraints – 500-800MB – in order to do everything required of it (including the app itself, rendering all in-world objects, avatars and surfaces, etc.).
• This obviously impacts the amount of content the app can have loaded at any given time – and PBR has a much higher memory footprint than textures on their own (as much as 3x the memory use).
• While high-end mobile devices may have increased RAM support (e.g. 8-12GB), supporting PBR could run the risk of impacting lower-to-mid-range ‘phones of the types perhaps most commonly in use.
• Therefore, the focus at the moment is not directly on PBR rendering in the app, but rather on reducing the app’s overall memory footprint, notably with regards to textures through a mechanism the Lab calls “variable textures”.
  • This amounts to a more intelligent loading of textures based (IIUC) on what can currently be seen within a given scene, rather than loading all the textures for a scene, regardless as to whether or not they are visible.
• The hope is that this work will reduce the overall memory used by the app, and thus pave the way for PBR support. However, it is in the R&D phase, so not something that currently has any kind of potential ETA.

Animesh Support

[Video: 17:41-20:33]

• Animesh creations come with their own skeletons  / bones, which in turn come with all the required computational needs – joint placement, rotation, etc., which tend to make Animesh resource-heavy for SL Mobile, both in terms of memory use and in terms of CPU use + power requirements – particularly when it comes to Animesh avatar attachments working in concert with the avatar.
• The decision thus far, therefore, has been to simply ignore Animesh objects, whether in-world or attached to avatars.
• However, the data for in-world Animesh objects is available to the Mobile app, so there is the potential for that data to be used and in-world Animesh objects rendered in the future.
• That said, any decision to do so would only be made after there has been extensive testing on Animesh behaviour and hardware resource use.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following.

• [Video: 7:24-9:02] Rewards, etc.:
  • A recap on the March Mobile Millions L$ spin to win challenges.
  • LL “sort-of want to give more people more chances to actually get Linden Dollars”, so the next “thing” (/challenge?) “to give nearly every person practically a chance every day to do the thing and get the cash”.
• [Video: 21:02-22:44] Beanies tips’n-tricks – a re-cap on friending people / offering teleports through Mobile:
  • With the avatar to be friended in-scene: long-press on the avatar Context Menu → Send Friend Request or Offer Teleport.
  • Via People → Nearby → avatar profile → long press the  Context Menu → Send Friend Request or Offer Teleport.
  • Via Chat →  click the three dots next to the avatar name for the Context Menu → Send Friend Request or Offer Teleport.
• [Video: 23:46-23:29] Mentors and helpers: the Second Life Mobile – Welcome group is available to provide help and support to new users / those new to the SL Mobile app, and mentors and those willing to offer support to other Mobil users are welcome to join it.
• [Video: 24:39-end] Q&A:
  • Object chat – coming “in about a month”.
  • Gestures: no current plans for implementing either in-scene or voice-activated gestures.
  • Ability to close an IM session and clear it from the list on the app – “on the list” of things to be done.
  • Messages Getting Stuck – seems to be a mixed issue as to whether people experience it or not, but it is under investigation, with a request that if anyone experiences any issues in sending / receiving messages to file feedback / a bug report on it before logging-out of the session in which it occurs.
  • I can’t teleport anywhere – same as above. This may be account related, and logged out of the app and then back in is reported as helping to clear it.
  • A reported issue of avatars getting getting stuck jumping nonstop – this has been noted by LL but “not seen in a while”. Reports again, please, if encountered.
  • A request for documentation on the Developer Settings to help users set their devices. Short answer to this was “no”, as the settings are not intended for general use, but are rather for internal testing purposes. As a result, they can give differing results depending on hardware, and documenting them as options perhaps not a good idea.
    • That said, anyone who does adjust a developer setting and finds it improves their experience is asked to report what they’ve done and how it improves things on their hardware.
    • Anyone who does want to start an SL Wiki page on the topic (subject tot edit rights) is welcome to do so, but please inform Adam Sinewave so he can sanity check to ensure the information is correct.

Date of Next Meeting

• 12:00 SLT, Thursday, April 24th, 2025, at Campwich Forest.

The following notes were taken from the Thursday, February 27th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting. These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Resources Re-Cap on Recent Releases Bone Attachment Point Handling Campwich Forest Cloning Roadmap Updates Lobby Alpha Testing Texture Loading Beanie Linden’s Tips’n’Tricks In Brief Date of Next Meeting

Meeting Purpose

• The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
• These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In Voice and text.
  • At Campwich Forest.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Resources

• Second Life Mobile Beta website.
  • SL Mobile on Google Play.
  • SL Mobile on Apple Store.
• Second Life Mobile on the Feedback Portal:
  • Bug reports.
  • Feature requests.

Re-Cap on Recent Releases

[Video: 2:58-3:49]

• Version: 2025.1.542 (Android) / 0.5.533 (iOS).
•  Create / Delete accounts – see: SL Mobile gains account creation workflow (and more).
• Improvements to the format of Group notifications.
• Streaks rewards (see here for more) broader release among subscription accounts.
  • [Video: 8:59-9:25] There is no guarantee as to how long the Rewards scheme will run. However, it will not end at the start of March, and there is potential for “new cool things happening with log-ins in March”.

Bone Attachment Point Handling

[Video: 3:56-5:31]

• A new Developer Tool option (Menu → Settings → Developer Tools).
• This is off by default – so no behaviour change from previous versions of the app.
• When enabled and SL mobile is restarted, it can improve avatar mesh appearance handling.
  • However, it might also cause cause new problems!
• More debug information relating to rigged meshes is sent for developers to use.
• A request was made for users to enable the option an provide feedback either through the app (Help → Feedback) or via the Feedback Portal.

Campwich Forest Cloning

[Video: 24:26-26:54]

• In line with the account creation capability mentioned above, Campwich Forest in Bellisseria is currently the initial Landing Point for users signing-up to Second Life via SL Mobile.
• As this has seen a lot of traffic with new users within the Linden homes around the Campwich location, the decisions has been taken to clone Campwich Forest and use that as the Landing Point.
• The clone will be located separately from Bellisseria.

Roadmap Updates

[Video: 5:59-7:01]

Still in progress:

• Addition of an Address Bar to the app,  making it possible to:
  •  Search landmarks /create landmarks.
  • Share SLurls with people on other apps (Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp, etc.) via the native share cards found in Android and iOS.
  • Allow maps.secondlife.com work on the Mobile App.
• Providing quicker access to chat when using the app – e.g. a button on the in-world view to go directly to Chat, rather than having to go via the menu.
• Improving in-world interactions within the app – making it easier to identify objects with which an avatar can interact, and know that something is happening when long-pressing an interactive object.
• [Video: 14:17-15:51] Pluto Linden indicated:
  • The work on improving in-world interactions may be surfacing in the Mobile app during March.
  • The work to provide quicker access to chat is also a step along the road to having chat as an overlay on the in-world view.

Lobby Alpha Testing

[Video: 11:41-14:16]

• Lobby is a new feature, intended to enable communications, allow users to see who is on-line and provide general information whilst the app continues to load things like the 3D world view in the background.

• Announced in December 2024, Lobby was made available to users on the SL Mobile Alpha testing programme on Thursday, February 27th, 2025.
  • This is an initial release, and will be iterated upon and improved, potentially with more information being provided.
  • Note that currently, when using the Lobby, scene loading will continue in the background, and you will arrive in-world at the last location at which you were previously present, be it when using the viewer or SL Mobile; you are not held in a separate environment.
  • However: the plan is for Lobby to be accessible to users without any in-world loading taking place, thus making SL Mobile even more of a “lightweight client” for those on lower / mid-tier mobile devices to use it as a communications tool.
• As I am not a part of the Alpha Testing, I will have an article on Lobby as it is made more generally available.

Texture Loading

[Video: 19:41-22:35]

• Texture resolution, as currently handled, is not very well optimised in terms of resolution.
• In short, two channels are used for loading textures, one for in-world objects and one for avatars. however, as neither are currently optimising, they can load larger objects requiring higher resolution textures using the same resolution as small objects that can get away with lower resolution textures.
• One of the reasons for this has been trying to get everything rendering under the memory constraints imposed by mobile devices (e.g. 500-800Mb), with the intent of then going back and adjusting things for better rendering / performance.
• An outcome of this is particularly noticeable on avatar rendering (see also the discussion from the January meeting), is where avatars may not load, or only load as far as a transparent outline.
• Adam Sinewave is currently working to optimised texture resolution when loading, and this is now at a point where it allows avatars to be automatically refreshed on loading, which should help make the problems of avatar load failures / transparency be greatly reduced / go away.
• This work will also help towards the proper prioritisation / re-prioritisation of texture loading within Mobile, making more efficient use of memory.
• The plan here is that as memory use is improved, then it will be possible to start looking towards PBR materials support within Mobile (PBR requiring 2x or 4x the memory compared to textures).
• Adam also noted that there have been a “couple of tweaks to the defaults” on texture handling, but these have yet to surface in any version of SL Mobile.

Beanie Linden’s Tips’n’Tricks

[Video: 27:14-34:03]

• View account  / L$ balance: Menu → tap the down arrow alongside account name to open the Account draw. Can be used to verify payments made via SL Mobile have gone through.
• Reporting a bug: Menu → Help → Feedback. Can also be used to give general feedback / suggestions.
  • If you encounter issues while logging-in via Mobile, tap the gear icon at the top right of the screen, and this will open the Feedback form.
• Abuse Reports: can be accessed several ways:
  • Log-press on the avatar responsible for the abuse display the context menu → Report Abuse.
  • In Chat (nearby / IM) locate the three dots alongside the avatar’s name to access the context menu
  •  → Report Abuse.
  • People list: tap on the avatar name to open Profile → tap the … More option → Report Abuse.
• Togging audio stream on/ off: tap the menu → tap the location displayed at the foot of the screen to open the Location Tray → tap the audio icon to toggle audio stream. Use the volume slider to increase / reduce audio stream volume.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following.

• [Video: 23:23-24:20] Culling distances: currently the app has a set of “fairly pessimistic” set of default culling distances.
  • This will be changing in future updates to respond according to hardware (e.g. those with new mobile devices with better capabilities / more memory will show more content before culling commences; with culling on devices with lower specifications also better optimised for memory use).
  • These changes will also allow for the loading / unloading of avatars as they move out of / into range.
• [Video 34:45-49:48] A run through of some of the top bugs / features, including:
  • HUDS:
    • HUDs are difficult to render in a meaningful way because of the form factor involved with size of the screen on mobile devices, coupled with the fact that HUDs can function in multiple ways(expanding / collapsing, paging etc), all of which requires careful consideration in order to be implemented/
    • As such, the work is liable to b split, with an initial focus on addressing HUDs, etc. that call for llDialog menus / responses, as these seem to be the easier option to implement, and then build towards more complex HUD support over time.
  • Inventory:
    • Regarded as a very large project that needs to be broken down into areas of functionality that can be implemented and built upon.
    • Current thinking is to enable the ability to buy items from the Marketplace and receive them in inventory using SL Mobile, and then interact with them.
    • This would require an initial view of inventory and a number of functions to allow the required interactions with items visible in that view (e.g. potentially the ability to add / remove items to / from your avatar; view sub-folders, etc.).
    • Use this as a bassline to build-out inventory functionality.
• A further note, following from those at the January meeting, that work is continuing to improve avatar rendering and to try to chase down those issues where avatars do not render correctly.

Date of Next Meeting

• 12:00 SLT, Thursday, March 27th, 2025, at Campwich Forest.