Please create a good version of Second life app for iPad 3 , any suggestions??

[SonaliChang]

Hi, there are no really good apps for Second Life on the iPad 3. I would love to access SL on iPad . The current dBoard and Pocket MetaVerse app are too basic and unreliable. If Second Life could sell/ offer an official app that would be brilliant !! I hope some entrepreneur's will take this up and provide us users and customers with what we want . Thank you x)

- Even accessing my avatar and being able to change my already bought clothing would be a good start as an app.
Blue Mars and SIMS type app / version would be good, I am not expecting a full on SL experience at all. ps thanks for all your answers so far x

[Ariel Vuissent]

Here's the thing - SL is extremely graphics heavy. Even low-end computers have trouble running it, because the world is constantly streaming and updating new information. There's really just no way, as it is right now, for an iPad or other tablet or smartphone to effectively run a full SL client because the graphics simply aren't good enough to handle it. Added to that, wireless tends to be too unreliable for SL; it's almost always better on a wired connection.

Now, I have heard that one or two mobile clients CAN run SL with visual and world interaction, but they're still slow and unreliable and more basic than the full client. But until tablets are able to run with high-end graphics on par with what's offered in mid- to high-end computers, it's what there is.

 

[Rolig Loon]

In passing, you ought to know that we are all SL residents like you.  Lindens never visit this resident-to-resident Answer service, so they'll never see your suggestion.  You can be sure that they have heard from other tablet users, though.  As Ariel says, however, you're not very likely to see a tablet-based SL viewer soon, if ever.  Tablets simply don't have the computing power that you need for handling SL's graphics, and they can't get rid of the heat that all that work would generate. 

[sirhc DeSantis]

Well please create a pared down toy that can run SL then Seriously, its a pretty intensive thing this SL - needs a real computer.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

I'm afraid  this answer will be a bit more to read again:

As the above already mentioned the SL environment is not a simple flash game or 3D game that is similar to some 3D games written exactly for the limited resources, graphical powers, computing and memory of a mobile device.

Thus as far as it goes for now is apps with functions like this: http://www.pocketmetaverse.com/

Making SL fit onto a mobile device would not just require to create a viewer which would limit the graphical output drastically, it would also mean to recreate SL itself for that purpose.

Take The Sims 3 Freeplay (for iphone and android) as example, it has a graphic quality similar to the looks of SL. But here we are in a controlled environment / level design with limited objects, and a maximum of 16 avatars being displayed at any given time. (meaning a limited and controllable amount of vertices, faces and textures) and also this game already needs a fairly high amount of resources as in file space (700 MB min. ) and in computing / graphical power of the mobile device.

Now lets think in SL terms, the uncontrollable amount of textures in all possible resolutions that could already be on one avatar, depending on what they are wearing and have attached. Same goes for all objects in a Region which could be in worst case scenario up to 15 thousand prims with each having a different 1024x1024 texture.  And you would need to load all of these textures (at least the ones within your view distance) into the mobile device's graphic memory. (plus an SL avatar has quite a few more vertices then the meshes in games made for mobile devices)

So you would need to replace each avatar with a lowpoly version, and also maybe limit its texture / skin  to a predefined number of looks / sets. The viewing distance would need to be decreased dramatically so you would only see and render a  tiny area that your mobile device could handle. and it still would not solve the whole object and data realtime updating system that sl runs in the background.

Even Minecraft's Version for iphone / android is still extremely limited - to find another comparison. The world is extremely smaller and there is way less functionality, and a lower render quality - less things going on compared to the PC version.

You see its not a matter of 'just' writing a simple client or viewer. The few approaches being done (as the other users here also have mentioned) are rather instable, also very limited, and I'm afraid until the mobile devices reach similar power to our personal computers or the SL engine and environment would be overdone in a version just for those.. it won't happen : S

[crypticzynergy]

Not sure about iPad, but I was able to find a paid app for my Android smartphone called "Lumiya". It allows me to do a lot of the features in SL, such as see the 3D world, access inventory, chat, etc. (It also happens to be listed on SL's 3rd party viewer list.) Is it possible that something similar was created for the iPad by someone other than LL?

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

@ crypticzynergy : 
yeah there are several non-linden clients for secondlife on mobile devices (just as for the pc as well). A version similar to Lumiya I didnt see for iPhone yet. 

But also Lumiya has very limited funktionality. (as described above especially of course on the graphical side, limited view distances only up to 20 meters, etc) For a client for mobile devices that work with all full blown features like the pc version of SL we either need to wait a while until the mobile devices become even more powerful or until there would be an extra version of the SL engine itself to tap in with viewers from mobile devices which would be optimized for their limited ressources.