Mobile and the Future of Second Life

[Istelathis]

It will be nice for when I am away from the house, which is often enough.  A lot of my time in SL is just exploring around, so that should work out fine for SL.  Fishing and playing lindo is another option I would probably partake in while mobile, I'm not sure how well other games will work on the mobile viewer,  if they work I might play a few other games.

Most successful apps have a monetary system where you can earn currency through watching advertisements, they also incentivize people to log in with daily rewards, I'm pretty sure the mobile app will likewise take advantage of this because it only makes sense to do so.  I wonder if they will have a separate currency with their own content for sale if they do wander down that path or if it would stick with $L.  If they do that, I'll probably just log in every day for the free cash, and watch a few advertisements for a few extra linden dollars.

 

 

Edited March 29, 2023 by Istelathis

[Love Zhaoying]

I suspect the "in-game game apps" will be a big draw. We need to get creatin'!

[Ayashe Ninetails]

10 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

I agree. I don't spend much time shopping, but when I do I at least want my full-size monitor screen. I don't really need the desktop for dancing, chatting, or sorting inventory, though.  In a pinch, I could do those things on my phone or a tablet. My guess is that there are plenty of SL residents who rarely do anything else or who are casual visitors.  If nothing else, a mobile version would be an easy, cheap way to try out SL until you are addicted sure that it's time to take the training wheels off.

So much of my SL time is shopping, decorating, and photography. None of that would feel good to me on mobile, unfortunately. BUT, for people who mostly dance, explore, socialize, maybe even play around with vehicles and things - mobile sounds like a great option. 

 

3 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Under the way it is currently done I agree but it is more than possible to do the whole process much more efficiently that the current implementations wherein one would demo clothing in a window where the parts are not automatically put in inventory and are just temporary until actually purchased.

If that's planned, that'd be awesome, because the way it works now - oof, it's a lot. Much of that is my own fault, though. I'm always wearing something I need to fit accessories and clothes around (big ears, horns, antlers, a big ole head with eyes in crazy places, tails, fins, etc.). Shopping tends to be a lot easier for standard avatars, but a streamlined process would still be a very welcome addition.

[Istelathis]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I suspect the "in-game game apps" will be a big draw. We need to get creatin'!

I wonder if there will be addons people can download, with Unity I imagine the old way of scripting might be abandoned for gaming in favor of unity driven games.  That brings with it a host of other questions, such as where these games would take place, if it would be on LL servers or if they could be hosted elsewhere, it would change SL significantly.  

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I wonder if there will be addons people can download, with Unity I imagine the old way of scripting might be abandoned for gaming in favor of unity driven games.  That brings with it a host of other questions, such as where these games would take place, if it would be on LL servers or if they could be hosted elsewhere, it would change SL significantly.  

If there's a new scripting language, I hope it's better than the God-awful C# library style used in Sansar.

[Flea Yatsenko]

Mobile client isn't for building. The benefits of it will be more users to fill up empty sims and places. Mobile users will be strictly content consumers, which SL desperately needs. The fact there are so many empty sims and parcels means there's too many content creators for the amount of content consumers there are. Which is an extremely rare situation for a social platform as usually there's not enough creators. And I wouldn't just limit creators to just people who make mesh, it includes people who create their own social spaces, whatever you want to call them.

Mobile SL isn't meant to replace desktop, you won't be building on it. But it has the possibility to bring in a lot of users whose only objective is to explore, be social, work on their AV, etc. If successful, SL mobile could easily increase the population and breathe life into a lot of places in SL that are fantastic and really deserve the traffic but are rarely populated as much as they deserve.

Desktop will be for building and power users, mobile will be for people to explore the world and be social. And honestly SL really needs more users who just want to explore, be social, and do things in SL. Mobile client isn't going to replace anything. Even if they make the Unity viewer work on Windows, OSX, and Linux they'd still keep the legacy viewer around because it has all the features to build. But honestly I'd be happy to see a simplified Unity viewer and for the official viewer to be treated like the power user editor for the world, and for LL to be able to add advanced features for building and creating worlds while not having to worry if it'll confuse new users.

[Love Zhaoying]

I didn't hear yet (or remember reading) but, the mobile client certainly would be more popular if it streams whatever audio is playing at clubs!  I personally would go to more clubs if I didn't have to use my PC for the music stream.

[benchthis]

On 3/17/2023 at 2:57 PM, Arielle Popstar said:

It is an SL problem in that any other app of the S/L viewer size would have included a file manager of some sort that would push a user to specify where the unpacked file or folder should go instead of just default dumping it at the bottom of the system folders. Then as we seen recently, they had to come up with a script that fixes those inventories that exceeded 5000 items on one level because of TP issues, which wouldn't have been needed had they done it properly to this century's sort of standards in the first place. 

Just imagine how much simpler it would be too if one could just r-click a folder and send it to the appropriate system or user generated folder instead of relying on a drag and drop method that is highly prone to errors as well as time consuming.

ive been thinking about folders recently. would be simple to have a file and within two folders one for items (especially avatar attachments ready to wear/add) folder and folder for secondary items that come with the primary object. 

That would make it easier for seller to organize the folders so when someone buys they just have to add the contents in one folder to be not crazy and then can mod with the secondary folder. 

I'm interested to learn about inventory thumbnails or forget what they are called a change that is not greatly special. Not sure too much more about that, other than what i've recently heard at lab gabs. 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 3/10/2023 at 1:14 PM, diamond Marchant said:

The first part of this Lab Gab is a promo video for Linden Lab's effort, begun in October 2022, to develop an iOs and Android Unity-based viewer. Mojo says there is much more work to do but it appears to be an excellent start.

Usually, we wander around in the weeds but the question for this particular topic is "the big picture". Pretend that you own Linden Lab and want to make money... what would you like to see happen?

The "sandbox-game-that-runs-on-gaming-computers" may (or may not) have positive cash flow and  may (or may not) have stalled resident growth. Is there a game changer?

Consider this speculation (keyword is speculation). Is Linden Lab developing a capability that gives either the Lab or a new owner the option of novel business opportunities. By novel, I mean not the current SL situation., which is a free or subscription-based sandbox game with practically zero connection to real world commerce and a suppression of advertising.

Imagine SL now split into the tethered-world and the mobile-world. The tethered-world is for creators. The mobile-world is for real world consumers, anyone with a mobile device (that meets h/w requirements). The barrier to entry for mobile world is very small with an obvious UI. You download the app, sign up, and off you go with your NUX avatar. You don't need a linden home or inventory or buildy things like that. All you get is attachments for your NUX. And your primary activity is BUYING stuff that gets delivered to you in the real world (powered by Tilia).

Is Linden Lab back in the metaverse sweepstakes?

It's interesting to me that after a recent round of intense Metaverse hype, and then a lot of tech bro journos declaring "Metaverse Winter" and Meta's "and also the Metaverse" falling into a decided second place after AI, there are a few posts -- and yours is one of them -- saying, hey, maybe this Metaverse thing is still going to take off. 

Not everyone does everything on their phone. And even if they do, the same people who don't do virtual worlds (because RL or their phones or other screens are more compelling) will still not be drawn into a Metaverse. 

I recently had to use Speedlight for a week to keep up with my rentals while away on a trip, and I was glad for its existence as it enabled me to do crucial things like send group invitations to change roles in the group (there was no other way; normally I don't send invitations at all but change it on the group menu); answer queries, TP around to see land, make payments. Had there been some super limited important sale, in theory I could have TP'd there and made a payment to buy a thing. But I didn't buy anything that entire time because...why would you? It offers the opportunity to enter a 3D mode and walk around but my phone was too  ancient for that and frankly, I couldn't be bothered.

I'm one of those people who doesn't even take a phone around with them everywhere because...can't it wait? That boss or even child frantically IMing or emailing you with some urgent thing -- let it age even an hour and it will solve itself, you know? As for entertainment, even while in the hospital I'd rather have a book or magazine than a tiny screen. To be sure, young people are welded to their phones and maybe a shallow Metaverse will finally be the thing that grabs them. I'm skeptical.