Why are there no Official mobile viewers?

[Kaleaon]

Today's new devices can handle a lot of complex items and tasks, so why hasn't there been a SL full viewer for Android/ iOS besides Lumiya, which works well, but it would be nice with Unreal Engine level of performance, with windlight, and voice. Could Unreal Engine be used with SL? Why, or why isn't it used already? I would love to see beautiful graphics on a tablet, or web-based browser, but no one has an answer why it isn't used already.

[Ebrech Aridian]

I would love to blame it on the fact that SL been in decline in the past years and that LL does not care much about what happen to us.

But. In the meantime, there are some good app, paying or free that can be used.

Littlesight by example, is free, and will let you talk, to any of your friend on your list. And will not do much more than this. 

I have tested and it is safe, well at least I have not been hacked yet and I use it fairly often. When my phone is not declaring war on me. *Sigh* 

There is a new one where you can actually walk around and do more but I believe it is 2$ Called Lumiya. It has great review but I have not tried it yet. 

I also like to use a 10$ app called SplashTop, it is a remote control app, that enable you to log on your PC from your phone. It's fairly easy to set up, but requiere your PC to be turned On, and a Wifi Access from anywhere as long it's Wifi, and it link it to your Google (gmail account) to link the 2 devices. It works great, sound is perfect but the only issue I have is it's very clunky to walk around without a Keyboard and mouse click + Drag does not seem to be an option.

If any of you have something even better to recommend, Please let all of us know :3 !!

 

[Jewel Laurasia]

Lumiya rocks and is worth the money. Renders mesh well too. I love it on my droid phone.

[Paul Hexem]

There are no official viewers because despite advances in mobile technology, the performance would be beyond terrible. The current SL architecture just couldn't handle it in large doses.

 

As for the Unreal engine... That would be wonderful, but LL would never spend the money for the licenses that would be required.

[Nalates Urriah]

Whether Linden Lab would spend the money to license Unreal or Unity is debatable. They spend money for other licenses, even when some open source products could be used in their place.

Mobile devices  lack 2 key support items. SL, Unreal, and Unity place high graphics processing demands on the system. Mobile devices lack power in that area. So, 3D real time graphics rendering is WAY lame on mobile devices.

Next is the huge amount of data that needs to be transferred. I use a 4gb cache. Average memory consumption by the viewer is 2gb and the video card is using another 1gb. Even at that users are complaining about slow render times. 

An iPad has no video ram. It uses Unified Memory Architecture which mean that both the CPU and GPU share system memory, which is generally a WAY SLOW way to handle video memory. Light weight laptops using shaded memory have problems. Tablets just can't cut it.

What happens in the phones and tablets, for now, is a memory bottle neck. The more textures and 3D mesh vertex lists you have the less you have for game processing. But... there is nothing to keep them from developing and adding more power in the future. It just isn't there for now.

The next problem is energy. My GTX560 requires two additional power leads from the power supply. It takes electricity to move all that data around and process it. As yet the batteries to supply that much energy do not fit in mobile devices.

So, the reason we do not have a good 3D real time render engine in a mobile device is not software but hardware limits. But, it is coming.

 

PS: Oh did I not mention bandwidth? SL has over 200 terabytes of assets... A person can eat up 5 to 10gb of bandwidth per day exploring in SL if they work at it. My average SL data use is under 1gb per day. But with a data plan having a 10gb limit per month before they start charging extra or cutting delivery speed... that is going to be a problem.

 

[Sayrah Parx]

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Jewel Laurasia wrote:

Lumiya rocks and is worth the money. Renders mesh well too. I love it on my droid phone.

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I also think Lumiya is worth the money, if you have an android device that the google play store says is compatible. Once you buy it, you can use it on any device registered with that google account. I bought it for my phone and it works just as it claims to, which is better than I thought I should expect, and I'm still surprised. It offers a genuine 3D view that actually renders objects and textures, and amazingly even avatars including attachments like hair.  After I got a tablet it let me install there too with no problem.  It is still being updated and improved, so it's a good investment.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory/Lumiya