On Thursday, April 3rd, 2025, Linden Lab announced a further promotion to encourage the use of the SL Mobile app through a giveaway of Linden Dollars. The promotion – called Dash for Cash – is available to all Second Life users – Basic and any subscription tier.
How It Works
Throughout April, the Lab will send out a notification to Mobile users.
Users then have a limited time period to log-in to Second Life via the Mobile app and claim a L$ prize.
To ensure a chance to claim:
Make sure you are using the latest release of the Mobile app (at the time of writing, 2025.3.548 (Android) / 0.5.537 (iOS)).
Enable push notifications on the app to receive the Dash notifications via Menu → Settings → Notifications → enable App Communications, per the images at the top of this article.
Note you may have to click on a blue button at the bottom of the Notifications screen and confirm you wish to allow the app to send notifications, if you are doing this for the first time.
You’ll also see a Dash for Cash announcement in the mobile app’s Lobby, reminding you to check in daily.
You can view the official Dash for Cash blog post in your device’s browser directly from the SL Mobile Lobby, if required.
Wait for the Dash for Cash notification & on receipt, log-into SL via the Mobile app.
Those doing so within the specified time will have the amount specified in the notification credited to their SL account.
Notes
Linden Dollar amounts may change.
Everyone can win, but Premium Plus, Premium and Plus members are eligible to receive higher L$ rewards than Basic users.
Note that Dash for Cash is in addition to the Streaks Rewards, which currently remain unchanged in format and availability.
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Three views of the Lobby
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.
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 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.
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.
The Destination Guide on the SL Mobile – part of the first March Mobile Millions challenge
On Monday, March 3rd, 2025, Linden Lab announced a new promotion to encourage the use of the SL Mobile app, with a stated prize pool of up to L$31 million, with up to L$1 million in individual prizes to be claimed. The promotion is available to all Second Life users – Basic and any subscription tier – with no purchase necessary.
How It Works
Log in to Second Life Mobile and complete each week’s challenge every day in March.
Challenges will be announced every Monday through until March 24th, 2025 and will run through until 12:00 noon on the following Monday.
Each challenge must be completed every day for the time it is running.
One participating user will be randomly selected for a “March Millions MegaWheel Ticket”.
Winners get access to the “VIP Spin & Win Event”, where they can spin for up to L$1 million Linden Dollars (winners will be notified in-world).
Prize amount start at L$10,0000, approx. USD $40.00 (15 in 48 opportunities), and rise to L$1 million, approx.: USD $4,000 (1 in 48).
Winners of amounts valued at USD $600 or above will be required to submit either Form W-9 – Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification (US citizens) or Form W8-BEN – Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding and Reporting (Individuals) (non-US citizens).
This “Spin & Win Event” will take place weekly in a mystery inworld location inside Second Life, and will be streamed live to the Second Life YouTube channel.
For full rules and prize details, please refer to the official blog post.
Week One Challenge
Open from Monday, March 3rd through 12:00 noon, Monday March 10th.
Use SL Mobile to log-in to Second Life and teleport to three different locations listed in the Mobile Destination Guide.
Launch SL Mobile.
Navigate to Places in the menu.
Select the Destination Guide and pick a Destination to visit.
Then pick two more from the Destination Guide and visit them as well.
Note that the next challenge will be announced on Monday, March 10th, 2025.
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
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.
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.
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.
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
The new Bone Attachment Developer Tools option (requires restart)
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.
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.
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.
Coming soon: the SL Mobile: Lobby
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 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.
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.
Second Life accounts can new be created directly through SL Mobile
On Tuesday, February 4th, 2025, the SL Mobile app updated to version 2025.01.542 (Android) / 0.5.533 (iOS). Chief among the enhancement included is the promised Create Account options, together with the ability to delete an account (if you really want to).
Account Creation
The Create Account workflow is similar to that found when signing-up to Second Life via the official Second Life website, but laid out in a manner suitable for smaller screens, and the key points aspects are:
Account creation is initiated directly from the SL Mobile log-in splash screen, which now has a Create Account option directly under the account credentials fields.
Tapping this option takes the user to the Account Creation screen where a user name, password, email address, date of birth, etc., can be entered.
As per the web sign-up process the e-mail account must be verified within 24 hours by replying to the message that has been sent to it.
This page also requires the acceptance of the Terms of Service and Second Life Terms of Service – again, just like the web-oriented sign-up, and which are presented to links to read both.
There is also an option to opt-in to the receipt of emails, etc., from the Lab, and a requirement to check a Capcha box.
Initial steps in account creation via SL Mobile: the splash screen option (l) and the sign-up page ((c) and (r)
Once completed, the form is processed and the user moves on to avatar selection – gender, facial appearance, hair style, outfit selection / clothing selection, etc, again much as the web sign-up process operates.
This section uses sliders and tap options to move between selections and to make specific choices (e.g. skin, clothing hair colours, style on clothing, footwear, etc.).
Once that avatar shale, gender, skin, clothing, etc., have by set to the user’s satisfaction, tapping the Continue button at the top of the screen will complete the avatar selection process and take the used back the the SL Mobile logging splash screen, complete with their user name entered in the top field.
The avatar selection process through SL Mobile flows much the same workflow as seen when signing-up via the SL website
The new account password can then be entered, and the account logged-in, delivering the avatar to Campwich Forest, the default arrival location for those joining via SL Mobile.
Account Deletion
It is now possible to delete an account directly from the SL Mobile app, should you wish:
Display the app’s menu.
Tap Help
Tap the Delete Account option and follow the required steps. Options to progress through the deletion request process will become enabled as required fields are completed.
It is now possible to delete accounts through SL Mobile, with options to progress becoming enabled as required fields are updated by the user
Additional Updates
The new Bone Attachment Developer Tools option (requires restart)
A fix for the formatting issues with off-line Group notices.
A new setting in Developer tools – Bone Attachment Point Handling.
This is off by default – so no behaviour change from previous versions of the app.
When enabled, can improve avatar mesh appearance handling – although a restart is required after changing the setting to see the results.
Warning: this option might also cause new problems! If you see anything untoward as a result of enabling – please provide feedback to the Lab.
More debug information relating to rigged meshes is sent for developers to use.
Personal Feedback
My own experience of the sign-up process was – painful, with the first page of the sign-up process repeatedly causing SL Mobile to repeatedly freeze.
I have no idea where the problem lay (my hardware – Android 13, with Octa-core (2×1.6 GHz Cortex-A75 & 6×1.6 GHz Cortex-A55) CPU; Mali-G57 MP1; 8Gb primary RAM + 8Gb from 256Gb internal storage -; my wi-fi or something within the app and how it was processing the sign-up page (the avatar selection / customisation process was a lot smoother). Hopefully, this is not a common problem, as adding account creation to SL mobile is a good move for obvious reasons.
As a general note to the Lab, I would suggest placing an avatar mover at the default landing point at Campwich Forest. My test avatar arrived among a group of 12 so tightly packed together no-one could move without slamming into one another (and getting stuck, as push did not appear to be working).
By contrast, account deletion was straight-forward (bye-bye test account!), but I did not experiment with the new Bone Attachment option, as I’ve not noted any issues with the rigged meshes I routinely wear, so see no reason to toggle the setting.
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, January 30th 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. For this initial meeting, video recording was not permitted, we hope that changes with future meetings.
The Monthly 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.
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.
Ability to create accounts via Mobile, including creating an initial avatar and logging in using the existing new joiner workflow.
SL Mobile – the ability to create a Second Life account from within the app
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.
Coming soon – the SL Mobile: Address Bar
The new Lobby 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.
This is also seen as a means for those on lower / mid-tier mobile devices to make use of the App as a communications tool.
Coming soon: the SL Mobile: Lobby
Other work in progress includes:
Providing quicker access to chat when using the app.
Providing the means to indicate which Group notifications you wish to see pushed to your mobile device.
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.
The identification will initially likely be the display of a timer under the finger when placed on an interactive object – when the timer expires (approx. 1 second), the interaction (e.g. a dialogue box) will be initiated.
Once available, this will be iterated over time to include selections form things like list views, where appropriate, limiting selection by distance, etc.
Roadmap Approach
Grumpity Linden reiterated the approach to Mobile development is focused on batching together requests and feedback on what users would like to see (allowing for us all having different expectation / needs / wants), to build end-to-end experiences covering a specific aspect (“journey”) in using the app.
To help with this, Grumpity also indicated that feedback (preferably through the Mobile app using the Feedback option in the menu) is greatly appreciated and does go into thinking about the roadmap and feature set for SL Mobile.
Avatar Rendering
As there are numerous differences between avatar rendering / operation in Second Life and Unity (e.g. in SL the Z axis references vertical movement; in Unity it references horizontal back / forth movement; each system handles rigged meshes differently, etc.), the entire rendering system for SL Mobile has had to be built for the ground-up over a period of over a year.
While much progress has been made, the team acknowledge avatar rendering within Mobile is not as yet on a par with avatar rendering in the viewer, therefore more work is to be done in this area.
However, because the SL avatar system is so open, there are still numerous specific issues where avatars may not render correctly in SL Mobile for assorted reasons (such the the way an attachment has been made, how it attaches to the the avatar, etc).
These issues require fixing on a case-by-case basis (and the team already have a library of 50 such “avatar classes”), and each one must undergone extensive regression testing to make sure any custom fix does not break avatar rendering elsewhere.
This is a current focus of work, and users noting persistent rendering issues as a result of clothing / attachments are asked to report it via the Mobile app’s feedback option, including information on the attachment / item which seems to cause the problem they are seeing, and where a copy of it might be obtained.
Once the focus can turn from the above work, there are plans to further improve avatar rendering performance, making it more efficient – and thereby improve app performance as a whole.
There are some tonal differences in how avatars appear SL Mobile (e.g. skin tone). This is because SL and Unity use different approaches to rendering ambient light. Again, the hope is that in time, lighting in the Mobile app can be made more “viewer-like” to help reduce such issues, but, this work will take time to develop and deploy.
Avatar Transparency Issues
During the run-up to the initial release of the Mobile app there was concern as to whether or not the app would get through the vetting process and onto the major app stores, particularly in terms of the risk of avatars appearing nude during rendering.
The transparent avatar approach was specifically to solve this risk; keeping the avatar transparent until such time as it has fully loaded and be preventing it from rendering properly should an attachment fail to apply as expected.
Unfortunately, the system is not fool proof, and false positives can be received which result in an avatar becoming “stuck” in the transparent mode.
There is thought being given to help overcome this (e.g. by forcing the avatar transparency mode to time-out after a set period to allow the avatar to complete loading), but this has yet to be finalised.
Those who do have repeated issues with being stuck in transparent mode, even after an outfit change (e.g. via the Desktop viewer) should file a feedback report, and if possible indicate the item they think might be causing the problem.
Memory Use (and PBR Rendering)
Another key difference between Mobile and the viewer is (obviously) available system and video memory.
Computers running the desktop viewer generally have at least 4Gb of memory to play with, with those with dedicated GPU cards also have dedicated VRAM.
Mobile has around 500MB-1Gb to play with. This necessarily limits Mobile in some ways (e.g. dropping texture resolutions as limits are more easily hit, etc.). However, there is work being put into this in the hope of again making Mobile more efficient in its use of memory.
In the meantime, the fact that memory is limited is one of the primary reasons why, as yet, there has been no attempt to implement PBR rendering into the Mobile app, and it significantly ups memory use.
The memory limit is also the reason why the number of avatars SL Mobile can render is set so low: avatars have a high rendering / memory cost, and can push the app to its limits, stopping other things from rendering – including leaving avatars transparent.
HUDs: something the Lab would like to implement for Mobile, but the volume and complexity of HUDs in use, the screen space they require, etc., does make coming up with a suitable means of handling them difficult.
The likely approach to this will again be iterative: initially offering support for very basic HUDs, and then working up from there.
However, team resources are such that focusing on this as a multi-month project when there are other areas of Mobile to be enhanced and features possibly more easily implemented, means it is somewhat lower on the list.
Inventory:
Another intensive task.
A preview of the work currently being done is in the Mobile app – the Select Outfit option, which is seen as a first step towards inventory support in Mobile.
Exactly what will follow this as it is implemented, is still subject to a final decision.
Mobile is generating a lot of new user traffic into SL, although precise metrics were not available at the meeting.
Date of Next Meeting
12:00 SLT, Thursday, February 27th, 2025, at Campwich Forest.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 