Will mobile SL client for iOS = eventual version for macOS that's optimized for Apple Silicon?

[Snanny Smythe]

Hi. I saw in these forums and on YouTube that Linden Labs is working on a mobile client for SL that will work on iOS (and I'm guessing iPadOS too). I believe that macOS apps are pretty similar to iOS apps when it comes to the code base (though I'm not a programmer). So I'm just wondering: is there hope for an eventual SL client optimized for macOS? I bought a Mac computer with an M1 Max chipset and I still have keep my graphics settings in the middle (using Firestorm). I'd love to be able to set my graphics settings to high, which I think should be possible if a client were optimized for Apple Silicon. 

Am I just being naive in hoping for such a client?

[Fionalein]

Is the IOs version even still a thing?

[JeromFranzic]

I think there could be a better desktop client for sure, once the desktop API moves from OpenGL to Vulkan. The M1 and M2 CPUs have MoltenVK, which is the MacOS layer for Vulkan. It all depends on how long LL takes to move everything to Vulkan, we'll see. That will affect all desktop platforms, not just Macs.

[Spiffy Voxel]

I suspect some of the work on the mobile client will dovetail into the ongoing work around updating the graphical back-end (currently OpenGL) used by Linden Lab and most third-party viewers. But at the moment, there's no timescale set in stone for any of this. So we will just have to wait and see.

(I'm currently using a 2017 iMac 27-inch system, which works great on Ultra graphics settings using the latest Firestorm Viewer, so it is more than a little disappointing to hear that an M1 Max machine can't handle that sort of load. Part of that, I think, is due to the way in which the unified memory is shared between the CPU and GPU parts of the chip, and Second Life perhaps being conservative in how much of that memory it uses?)

[Flea Yatsenko]

Mobile client is using a game engine not developed by LL. It uses Unity. LL won't be responsible for all the backend and graphics stuff with the mobile viewer, only making SL work with another game engine. The current SL Viewer is basically a game engine LL has created to handle SL. It has to do graphics, networking, graphics API (OpenGL, Vulkan, etc) support by itself and LL has to make it.

Mobile viewer will be capable of whatever Unity Engine is capable of, which is a lot. Here are the platforms it supports

https://support.unity.com/hc/en-us/articles/206336795-What-platforms-are-supported-by-Unity-

Meaning mobile SL viewer could be ran on everything on that list (theoretically). For APIs (directX, OpenGL, Vulkan, Metal), here's what Unity supports

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/GraphicsAPIs.html

So yeah, theoretically, it's possible to get all sorts of optimized builds and LL doesn't have to do much work compared to the official viewer. LL has the potential to make SL much bigger than just a mobile client, but we'll see what happens. This is one of the most exciting things to happen in SL in a long time since it has so much potential to reach new users.

[AmeliaJ08]

Not even sure we have any confirmation of what platforms the mobile client will run on. People are assuming IOS and Android of course but I don't recall having read anything that confirms this.

It should be cross platform of course and no good reason for it not to be given the engine it is using but nothing confirmed. Also app store policies from both Google and Apple have been discussed and it isn't clear how you make an SL client fit into these given the adult content inherent to the platform.

I have mentioned that I think the mobile client may well prove to be an important future codebase though and the Mac definitely needs a native ARM/Apple Silicon client so this may well be the basis of a desktop client for that platform eventually.

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Hara Surya]

On 11/14/2023 at 8:52 AM, JeromFranzic said:

I think there could be a better desktop client for sure, once the desktop API moves from OpenGL to Vulkan. The M1 and M2 CPUs have MoltenVK, which is the MacOS layer for Vulkan. It all depends on how long LL takes to move everything to Vulkan, we'll see. That will affect all desktop platforms, not just Macs.

MoltenVK is more of a kludge for Vulkan and Apple officially doesn't recommend it. (Apparently, there's a lot of weirdness in feature compatibility between the three big graphics APIs.) If MoltenVK requires pre-compiled shaders, as opposed to dynamically recompiling them, then it's a no-go because the last way I'd describe the graphics on Second Life is "optimized." Either way, if they're using an engine that can output native Metal graphics then that's the way to go.

If it's being built on Unity I'd imagine its a near-total ground-up rewrite of big parts of the client. A lot of Second Life is built on Intel-only binary blob middleware that'll have to be replicated on an ARM native version. On the one hand, a lot of those blobs have newer ARM-based versions, on the other hand that doesn't mean they're even remotely compatible. There was talk back in the day of converting from Havoc 2 to Havoc 4 and part of the issue was that a lot of Second Life was built around weirdness and bugs in Havoc 2, so dropping in Havoc 4 meant stuff would break unless they replicated said weirdness and bugs. (I have no idea what happened, that was like 12 years ago and I stopped paying attention.)

Of course, that's all assuming they didn't drop Unity over the recent unpleasantness about licensing.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Hara Surya