Who - aside from users - will benefit from the Mobile Ap

[CaerolleClaudel]

3 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Why not just go back to the streaming service they had a few years back. 10 bucks a month and you get a fast frame rate, long draw, everything rendered perfect, would be like watching a movie, but you still had all your controls.

If you mean the things where the game was run in the cloud and just the graphics were downloaded and inputs shuffled back to the cloud for processing, weren't there are couple, and they both went broke? I considered something like that, and it does seems like something interesting for mobile devices. However, while a lot of us spend a LOT of money in SL, and ofc there are Premium and Premium+ subscribers, my impression has always been that SL users in general do not like spending money, or honestly, just do not have the money to spend.

I have known quite a few people who were shut-ins for various reasons and barely had money to live on, but SL gave them enrichment in their lives. These might be some of the people who have a decent (though not flagship) mobile and no computer, maybe at best a Chromebook. But $10/month might be a cost they cannot justify.

ETA: Also, that model failed before, and I can't think of a good reason it would succeed this time around.

Edited May 27 by CaerolleClaudel
add another thought on SL streaming services

[Arielle Popstar]

38 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I have known quite a few people who were shut-ins for various reasons and barely had money to live on, but SL gave them enrichment in their lives. These might be some of the people who have a decent (though not flagship) mobile and no computer, maybe at best a Chromebook. But $10/month might be a cost they cannot justify.

Phones are pretty much a necessity these days where a gaming computer is a luxury. I was at my phone providers kiosk yesterday and perused the lineup of "no money down" and 2 years of equal payments for a plan that included enough internet to even use SL fairly regular. They are practically giving phones away that are good enough for android at least to handle SL. 

To buy a gaming computer to handle SL OTOH, is a luxury many couldn't afford or justify.

[gwynchisholm]

On 5/22/2024 at 8:58 PM, Codex Alpha said:

60% of Roblox's current users are around 16, soon to graduate off the platform, with their experience of LUA, building worlds, etc and might look for something more.

I don’t think you’d really see a lot of Roblox’s users here, they’re not looking for this type of game.

Any creators on Roblox are going to go straight to bigger development platforms, and have done so in the past and are currently doing so. “Graduation” from Roblox for that platforms content developers isn’t a virtual world from 2003. They go to play with unreal and unity and such.

The everyday players? Maybe. For those who are looking for social experiences off of conventional social media, SL is an option for what they’re looking for with a more mature context. A lot of people play Roblox to just stand around and talk about nonsense for hours, that’s something SL is really good at while offering little to no restriction on what you can talk about. 
Accessibility in that way in the form of a mobile app will be desirable for that audience, even if they aren’t full featured. They just need to stand around and chat.

You might get some of their more complex roleplay communities, though SL will need more accessible building for that to really kick off with Roblox users looking for more. Roblox is really intuitive with its development tools, it’s jokingly referred to as online legos for a reason. You can keep it as simple or make it as complex as you’d like, and anyone can figure it out. SL relies a lot on externally created content imported into the game for anything complex. And while that’s also true of Roblox, the point where external software becomes mandatory is far later, you can use stock Roblox studio to go extremely far before you gotta start up Maya. You reach some walls much faster in SL. That’s going to keep casual developers and creative groups away unless they get really dedicated to it.

Mobile might still be an inlet for them though, expose them to the options, see if this is what they’re looking for.

I still think it’s too late to really grasp onto an audience like what happened in the mid 2010’s

[Arielle Popstar]

3 hours ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

😲

OK, I am not surprised your SL mobile viewer works ok on those older mobiles; I used it on Android back 10 years ago or more. And I dunno, perhaps I am wrong, but I just can’t see something similar to Lumiya being very tempting to the demo SL is hoping to reach. Ofc, perhaps the LL app will be far better than Lumiya and still use the same resources? Time will tell I suppose…

What made/makes Lumiya nice was that the features it included were well laid out and easy to learn, so that the app was not difficult the learn. I hope SL's version is as easy though judging by their official viewer, I'm leery.

Lumiya still works fine on the other grid and is only limited here because of network protocol changes the Lab made since Lumiya's last update 7-8 years ago. The view, which is highly ram dependent, is still able to render acceptable graphics. I would be quite satisfied if LL manages to at least equal the graphics Lumiya has.

[Dorientje Woller]

3 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Phones are pretty much a necessity these days where a gaming computer is a luxury. I was at my phone providers kiosk yesterday and perused the lineup of "no money down" and 2 years of equal payments for a plan that included enough internet to even use SL fairly regular. They are practically giving phones away that are good enough for android at least to handle SL. 

To buy a gaming computer to handle SL OTOH, is a luxury many couldn't afford or justify.

Giving phones away ... keep on dreaming. You pay for the phone, one way or another in your payment plan. In fact, with those plans, you are renting/leasing the phone.

[Alwin Alcott]

3 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

They are practically giving phones away that are good enough for android at least to handle SL. 

lol.. compare a phone subscription with the data you need, and the amount you pay, with or without phone included.

You'll see you fully pay the price of that phone, or even more if you keep that subscription running to long.
( and don't forget your provider doesn't pay the same price for your new shiny apple/samsung toy, but a lot less)

[Istelathis]

Phones are pretty cheap now, plans are as well.  I can't comment on how much it would cost for my unlimited 5g alone, because I am in a plan with three other people.  $120 a month, so for me it is $30 a month.  The phones are pretty inexpensive, and I believe I get to trade it in for another phone every two years.  If I recall correctly, I get a discount on more capable phones.

My phone is a bit older, so it only picks up 4g.

Download speed: 70.9 Mbps and upload a measly 2.02 

I can also use it for when my regular internet goes down, converting it into a router for my computer to connect to.  I think that is limited to something like 30gb a month, although they probably have raised it by now to compete with other providers, I barely even bother with that feature and haven't checked in a while.

I wonder what it will be once I upgrade.  I go through Metro-PCS, which is a monthly plan so no commitment if I want to change.  I think it will be likely I can get a phone that will exceed the requirements for probably under $150 considering I've had this clunker for three or four years now.  I've been holding off, because it still does everything I need it to for now.

 

Edited May 27 by Istelathis

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

lol.. compare a phone subscription with the data you need, and the amount you pay, with or without phone included.

You'll see you fully pay the price of that phone, or even more if you keep that subscription running to long.
( and don't forget your provider doesn't pay the same price for your new shiny apple/samsung toy, but a lot less)

You'd think so, but in the US and Canada, not necessarily. Of course, if you take the carrier's phone, you'll pay for it in the cost of service, but they might very well charge the same or more when you don't take their phone. My Canadian carrier makes a selling point of allowing customers to bring our own unlocked phones without a special fee for doing so. There are better and worse carriers each offering a bewildering array of better and worse "plans" so if anyone can imagine a way to swindle a North American mobile subscriber, somebody has a plan for that.

Edited May 27 by Qie Niangao

[Sid Nagy]

There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Phone companies and providers have to get their money back and a profit one way or the other. Otherwise they will put themselves out of business long term.

[Sid Nagy]

9 hours ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I guess when LL actually releases the app to the hoi polloi we can see what the experience is like. Perhaps LL will have nailed it, good on them. However, it seems to me the only way SL will work on mobile is if they massively simplified the whole thing, either making the process or using SL far simpler (seems unlikely, or at least they have not gone that direction up unti this point) or they are going to have simplify SL itself to the point it can reasonably work on mobile devices using touchscreens as the primary interface rather than trackpads or mice. Buh-buh to a lot of current users?

I guess a third way (and probably there are others ofc) is to make a separate level of experience for mobile users, such as the extreme limitations of mobile productivity apps vs computer apps.

Experience and functionality will not be the same, that is for sure. The big question will not be if the phone app is a success for the people who are already in Second Life.
People who know the MS Word version from the desktop will most likely never become a fan of Word on the phone either, but there are tons of people who still are satisfied with their Word on their smartphone.

IMHO the main concern has to be, to make the SL app so, that new people like what they get with the phone app. Can do things that appeal to them.
The phone app will not replace the desktop version for most of us.

 

Edited May 27 by Sid Nagy
Small text improvements.

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

You'd think so, but in the US and Canada, not necessarily. Of course, if you take the carrier's phone, you'll pay for it in the cost of service, but they might very well charge the same or more when you don't take their phone. My Canadian carrier makes a selling point of allowing customers to bring our own unlocked phones without a special fee for doing so. There are better and worse carriers each offering a bewildering array of better and worse "plans" so if anyone can imagine a way to swindle a North American mobile subscriber, somebody has a plan for that.

phone plans in the Netherlands start around 5 euro's a month, nearly all providers have sim-only subscriptions, might be a difference between US and EU ? 
for example, my subscription is € 6.35 .. 2 gb data and 100 minutes calling, monthly
a 15gb data 500 messaging and 250 minutes calling subscription would be € 11.63
I have no ideas about the prices elsewhere on this world  
my phone is a alcatel, bought one around € 150 , it's giving all options i need.. taking a subscription for a samsung newer model around 25-60 monthly would be just stupid ... 

a big difference with many other phone users here .. i don't buy a new model every year 

not sure it's mentioned yet.. what's the data use with SL on a phone?

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

might be a difference between US and EU ? 

Yeah, I think so. Hard to get apples-to-apples, but the plan we use would be about € 23 per month, plus some taxes and nuisance fees, but it's unlimited data, text, and voice including Canada/US roaming, with up to 50GB of that data on 5G before it falls back to slower rates.

(This is a relatively new offer by "Freedom Mobile" in Canada, probably a side-effect of regulatory approval of a big merger. In the past we suffered through a bunch of other carriers and MVNOs with plans designed to trick customers into huge overage charges and special fees. Similar plans still exist and one could easily spend twice that much for essentially the same service with either of the two incumbents, Bell or Rogers.)

Ever since the Nexus 4 we too always bring our own phones, and we too don't upgrade that often—probably even less often now that Pixels come with 7 years of updates.

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

what's the data use with SL on a phone?

That's an excellent question, not only for cost but also for performance appeal. I'm sure SL features were designed to be bandwidth efficient originally, but mobile could uniquely benefit by being able to maintain a usable session when throughput fluctuates. No idea if any engines are especially good at that.

[AmeliaJ08]

12 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Mobile screen sizes (including tablets) are always a huge sticking point for me. I still for the life of me cannot imagine what it's like to watch a movie on a phone or tablet, let alone do any serious multi-hour gaming. I'm over here wishing I had space for a much larger monitor ALL the time (I'd need a new desk first - this one has shelves in the way, grrr).

With how reliant SL is on the inventory I am very interested to see how LL handle this for small screen sizes.

I mean you could just have a big dirty scrollable inventory which is probably going to have to be an option but maybe they'll take the initiative and finally introduce an visual alternative that can make use of tags etc..

[BilliJo Aldrin]

13 hours ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

If you mean the things where the game was run in the cloud and just the graphics were downloaded and inputs shuffled back to the cloud for processing, weren't there are couple, and they both went broke? I considered something like that, and it does seems like something interesting for mobile devices. However, while a lot of us spend a LOT of money in SL, and ofc there are Premium and Premium+ subscribers, my impression has always been that SL users in general do not like spending money, or honestly, just do not have the money to spend.

I have known quite a few people who were shut-ins for various reasons and barely had money to live on, but SL gave them enrichment in their lives. These might be some of the people who have a decent (though not flagship) mobile and no computer, maybe at best a Chromebook. But $10/month might be a cost they cannot justify.

ETA: Also, that model failed before, and I can't think of a good reason it would succeed this time around.

There is LL blog entry march 5 2014 announcing SL GO from Online. LL was very excited about it , It would give the full SL experience on mobile, or even for those with a crappy computer.

It was basically second life in a browser.

It died after a couple of years though, I no idea why.

[CaerolleClaudel]

48 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

There is LL blog entry march 5 2014 announcing SL GO from Online. LL was very excited about it , It would give the full SL experience on mobile, or even for those with a crappy computer.

It was basically second life in a browser.

It died after a couple of years though, I no idea why.

I thought I heard that the uptake was low and the companies that tried it went broke. I could be mistaken though. As I said earlier though, I just can’t see most SL users paying a monthly fee, esp new mobile users. I would guess it would be more expensive than $10 now, too, maybe more like at least &15?

I think you have to be pretty enthusiastic about SL to subscribe to something like this, and if this is needed to have a good experience on mobile, I can’t see what would make people try it. On the desktop version I would guess most people start with the free level and perhaps start paying for higher levels if the really get into SL.

Once again, I am assuming the reason LL wants to get into mobile is to attract people who do not already use SL rather than as a convenience for established users.

Even if full SL was available through streaming for free, I still feel that getting started will be overwhelming, and that mobile users will not want to spend the time to figure it out. 

[CaerolleClaudel]

4 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

With how reliant SL is on the inventory I am very interested to see how LL handle this for small screen sizes.

I mean you could just have a big dirty scrollable inventory which is probably going to have to be an option but maybe they'll take the initiative and finally introduce an visual alternative that can make use of tags etc..

Tags might be a reasonable replacement for Outfits, if you can apply a tag to all the attached items at once. I am not the target demo, but if Inventory was just one folder I would be very unhappy. We do have Search (on desktop at least), I use a lot of nested folders and find that easier. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

47 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

I thought I heard that the uptake was low and the companies that tried it went broke. I could be mistaken though. As I said earlier though, I just can’t see most SL users paying a monthly fee, esp new mobile users. I would guess it would be more expensive than $10 now, too, maybe more like at least &15?

I think you have to be pretty enthusiastic about SL to subscribe to something like this, and if this is needed to have a good experience on mobile, I can’t see what would make people try it. On the desktop version I would guess most people start with the free level and perhaps start paying for higher levels if the really get into SL.

Once again, I am assuming the reason LL wants to get into mobile is to attract people who do not already use SL rather than as a convenience for established users.

Even if full SL was available through streaming for free, I still feel that getting started will be overwhelming, and that mobile users will not want to spend the time to figure it out. 

well figure, you can pay 100 bucks a year for premium  and suffer trying to enjoy SL on a crappy computer ( my life story) or stay basic and you pay a bit more and get an experience equivalent to a top line gaming computer. 

If LL can’t offer the full SL experience with this new mobile viewer, they are wasting their time and the time of anyone apart from current members trying ti use it.

Will existing SL members use it? for sure, even just for texting.

Will it draw new users? Yes, just for the hour or so it takes to realize trying to play SL with it is a total waste of time.

Whacha mean no smexy time on mobile?

uninstall

Edited May 27 by BilliJo Aldrin
added stuff to clarify

[VeeTach Littlething]

Personally, I am not interested in the mobile app at all.  What I would like to see is larger sims, more land with the same number of prims now.  I'm sure that won't happen though.

[Istelathis]

5 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

With how reliant SL is on the inventory I am very interested to see how LL handle this for small screen sizes.

I mean you could just have a big dirty scrollable inventory which is probably going to have to be an option but maybe they'll take the initiative and finally introduce an visual alternative that can make use of tags etc..

With a lot of people unfamiliar with directories, I would think that to be a priority before releasing mobile to the masses. 

Depending on the severity of regulations, I would not be surprised if each individual item had a rating assigned to it.  It would be a massive expense, a huge undertaking,  but if LL did not want people teleporting into "G" rated regions with "M" rated skins, or "A" rated outfits then there would need to be fields added to items.  If they are going to go through the process of having to assign almost every asset a rating (pure speculation) then they could likewise work on the GUI at the same time.  

But then, to maintain it, they would also have to approve every upload made.  It would probably raise the rates on uploads, at least I think it would.  Having a small team of people reviewing each asset uploaded would be a chore, an added expense, which would have to be paid for.

This is the problem with Apple and Google, we are playing by their rules now.  SL is not small enough to go under the radar, and not big enough to have very much of a say.  Apps like speedlight, were insignificant, hardly worth the expense in looking into, same with Lumiya, there was no money to be made from them either, or clout from various groups out there.  You know the second mobile hits the app stores, there will be people just itching to share with everyone on social media that SL is the land of heathens, we will have groups out there, demanding it be removed from the app store, it will become a corner stone for many to rally against and share in their concern (i.e bored people that spend too much time on social media)

With that in mind, I think there are going to be a lot of changes, to try to maintain keeping the app on these stores.  

 

Edited May 27 by Istelathis

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Istelathis said:

With a lot of people unfamiliar with directories, I would think that to be a priority before releasing mobile to the masses. 

Depending on the severity of regulations, I would not be surprised if each individual item had a rating assigned to it.  It would be a massive expense, a huge undertaking,  but if LL did not want people teleporting into "G" rated regions with "M" rated skins, or "A" rated outfits then there would need to be fields added to items.  If they are going to go through the process of having to assign almost every asset a rating (pure speculation) then they could likewise work on the GUI at the same time.  

But then, to maintain it, they would also have to approve every upload made.  It would probably raise the rates on uploads, at least I think it would.  Having a small team of people reviewing each asset uploaded would be a chore, an added expense, which would have to be paid for.

This is the problem with Apple and Google, we are playing by their rules now.  SL is not small enough to go under the radar, and not big enough to have very much of a say.  Apps like speedlight, were insignificant, hardly worth the expense in looking into, same with Lumiya, there was no money to be made from them either, or clout from various groups out there.  You know the second mobile hits the app stores, there will be people just itching to share with everyone on social media that SL is the land of heathens, we will have groups out there, demanding it be removed from the app store, it will become a corner stone for many to rally against and share in their concern (i.e bored people that spend too much time on social media)

With that in mind, I think there are going to be a lot of changes, to try to maintain keeping the app on these stores.  

 

Here's a much better idea, just ditch the whole thing, since it won't work worth a crap anyway

[BilliJo Aldrin]

15 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Phones are pretty much a necessity these days where a gaming computer is a luxury. I was at my phone providers kiosk yesterday and perused the lineup of "no money down" and 2 years of equal payments for a plan that included enough internet to even use SL fairly regular. They are practically giving phones away that are good enough for android at least to handle SL. 

To buy a gaming computer to handle SL OTOH, is a luxury many couldn't afford or justify.

You can get a low end gaming computer for a grand, you already have the perepherals, pay it off over 3 years, that's pennies a day

[Istelathis]

18 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Here's a much better idea, just ditch the whole thing, since it won't work worth a crap anyway

They could, especially if they find it just is to complex and expensive to produce.  They might even just try to make it a standalone app, considering how much they have invested in it already.  This is a huge project, and I am not sure if they really considered the factors that would come into play for it.  Trying to make it work with app stores is sure to be a nightmare, what a tangled mess that would be.

From the videos I have seen, it looks as though it would run fine though.  It is just trying to keep up with the rules, and expenses to have it listed on appstores, and unfortunately to have it any chance of being successful, that is exactly what they would need.  

Edit:
If they do abandon it, I hope they release the code for TPV developers, they could make use of it without having as much concern with the appstores.  

Edited May 27 by Istelathis

[CaerolleClaudel]

2 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

well figure, you can pay 100 bucks a year for premium  and suffer trying to enjoy SL on a crappy computer ( my life story) or stay basic and you pay a bit more and get an experience equivalent to a top line gaming computer.

No, I agree! In 17 years, I have only paid for some level of Premium once, IIRC. I won't bore people with the backstory, but I wanted a place to watch the waves come in, so bought a plot and put a house there. I didn't even keep that land for the full term of my Premium sub, and went back to Basic. Other than wanting a house with a certain view, I have never felt like I was missing out by having Basic.

And yeah, at one point I had crappy computers that did not run the desktop SL very well, and looked into the cloud instances. Honestly I think at the time I did not feel I should be paying $10/month for a hobby. I am only one person, but at this point the only reason I would be interested *is* if it would run on my iPad so I could do SL when I go visit my sister for a couple days.

[Katherine Heartsong]

23 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

The Amazon App is at the App Store too.
I don't think that Apple gets 30% of their sales income.

Actually, new purchasers are routed through Apple's payment system and Amaxon pays the 30% (though the rumour is it might be 15%), existing prime users are not.

It's complicated, as Amazon has a multi-billion dollar deal with Apple. LL does not.

[CaerolleClaudel]

17 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

They could, especially if they find it just is to complex and expensive to produce.  They might even just try to make it a standalone app, considering how much they have invested in it already.  This is a huge project, and I am not sure if they really considered the factors that would come into play for it.  Trying to make it work with app stores is sure to be a nightmare, what a tangled mess that would be.

From the videos I have seen, it looks as though it would run fine though.  It is just trying to keep up with the rules, and expenses to have it listed on appstores, and unfortunately to have it any chance of being successful, that is exactly what they would need.  

Edit:
If they do abandon it, I hope they release the code for TPV developers, they could make use of it without having as much concern with the appstores.  

If it is standalone, though, I don't think iOS users would be able to install it? I guess it might be theoretically possible in the EU, but even there Apple is putting every obstacle in the way that they can. OTOH, most of the mobiles in the world run on Android. OTOOH, though, I think most of those are mid- or low-range. Would those be able to run an SL app?