[Audio for speed light viewer]

SpeedLight does not support music streaming yet. We are working on voice and music support but it tends to be very complicated (especially regarding voice).

SpeedLight is the most advanced Second Live viewer on iOS at the moment

 

[SpeedLight unlimited online experiment for all users]

 

TL;DR: We're experimenting with removing the online time limitation for all users. Feel free to login with SpeedLight, engage in your usual Second Life activities, and help us test our server capacity. Your feedback on missing features is welcome, except for voice support, which we plan to release later this month.

Details

Here at SpeedLight, we're excited to push the boundaries of our server capabilities and accommodate a larger number of residents online. Currently, we have successfully handled thousands of users and are eager to take it further.

I kindly invite you to participate in our experiment by logging into Second Life using SpeedLight and carrying out your regular activities, such as IMing, exploring in 3D, and managing your virtual endeavors:

In browser: https://speedlight.io
Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/speedlight/id1519467733
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.speedlight.viewer

Your input is highly valuable to us. I appreciate any comments or suggestions regarding missing features (except for voice support, as we have plans to release a preview version later this month). Thank you for participating! Your contribution is greatly appreciated. ^_^

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

2 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

I don't get it.

Please describe a single valid reason for anyone anywhere to ever want to need to use Second Life on a battery-powered handheld wi-fi device with a microscopic screen covered in greasy fingerprints.

Nope.

There's a bunch of various reasons actually: 

 

For me the reason is to :

1. Access Second Life from anywhere (mostly IMs and payments, 3D from time to time)
2. Access it really fast: without looking for PC, launching desktop client, logging in. Mobile app usually starts faster than a desktop SL viewer.

[Your mobile Second Life expectations and demands]

1 minute ago, anomaly Mellow said:

2. In world voice. 

Oh, voice! I forgot about the voice. It is very important.

Second Life uses an extremely complicated approach. However, we have some ideas how to make it working, trying to develop a working prototype.

[Your mobile Second Life expectations and demands]

I would like to ask what are the mobile features you expect most of all? Not related to any viewer, just what you personally want to do on mobile.

Few options to choose from follow, feel free to copy, rearrange or add your own.
Multiple options can be selected indeed:

1. Be able to react on IMs and group chats as fast as possible
2. Use mobile viewer as a messenger app
3. Stay online so avatar stays in a specific location (store, home)
4. Build, adjust or edit in-world objects (or even edit LSL scripts)
5. Travel in Second Life from mobile, visit various locations

 

I believe this short survey could be helpful for all SL creators and developers. And may be determine new ways of mobile SL experience! 🤓

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

2 hours ago, davidventer said:

I see white cubes and the 3D world view doesn’t utilize all screen real estate on iPad Pro… 

 

Can you please IM me? To avoid flooding in this thread.

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

Just now, Nae Mayo said:

I'm using it. But graphic is really bad. Mesh don't render well.

Please check the latest version (released yesterday, will update automatically). It solves exactly your issue: meshes now load in high resolution.

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

it is much different than the web browser version? 

The app uses the same assets as web version, so you can use both. App works slightly faster tho plus saves battery.

 

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Note: I have not tried the web browser version in several months so do not know if there have been many changes or improvements since then.

We significantly update SpeedLight every month so there's definitely a lot of changes. The most significant updates of last month are high-resolution 3D, support of all avatars rendering (by request tho, we don't load avatars by default), avatar animations. In-world object payments and typing notifications update was just released. Discord update channel: https://discord.com/channels/533240770728034305/652176470994845729

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

3 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

It would be really cool and useful if LL made it possible for agents to stay connected without avatar presence (or at least the ability to send/receive messages without presence, like we can with email).

The mobile SL app announced by LL about 3 years ago (it was never launched as far as I know) was working exactly this way: agent connected to the network without an avatar presence on any sim. Basically, it would be a simple IM client.

From my experience with SpeedLight viewer nobody wants a bare IM/chat client. At the very beginning of SpeedLight it was a business-targeted chat client without 3D world support. We had to develop a full-scale 3D engine.

3D is essential (including SL business owners). 3D allows user to actually feel the presence in a virtual world: walk, stand, pay to in-world objects, feel people wandering around.

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

I'm waiting for a mobile release (at least beta) too. The most interesting question for me is how the new mobile viewer maintains an online status.

Regular SL viewer requires PC to be turned on to stay online (if your PC goes to sleep, avatar disconnects). At SpeedLight we use servers to keep avatars online. This allows turning off phone and even switching between devices. On the other hand this makes the whole system a bit more expensive.

I'm curious how LL got around this important problem. Users got used to stay online without keeping a device screen turned on.

On 5/29/2023 at 8:02 AM, Nae Mayo said:

Finally. I have waited so long for the mobile hardware to catch up. And also a mobile viewer on IOS.

SpeedLight has an iOS version, please take a look. I appreciate a feedback.

 

BTW iOS is even more strict killing background apps (speaking of staying online).

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

50 minutes ago, Monique Bellambi said:

I can't wait until I can play from my chromebook.  Sometimes I just want to hop on really quick or my kids are hogging the desktop. This would be great.

Can you please check if SpeedLight viewer runs well on Chromebook? We have no such device available for tests

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

On 4/27/2023 at 4:12 PM, Trinity Blakewell said:

I looked back over the demo video recently and I believe there's no shadows. I don't mind sacrificing shadows on a mobile viewer.

On one hand, shadows seem like an optional feature. On the other hand, they aren't too demanding on modern hardware (including mobile devices).

Take a look at the difference in our SpeedLight mobile rendering on an iPad. Adding shadows doesn't affect FPS but definitely enhances the visuals.

There are many nuances (like which objects should cast shadows and which should receive them). However, skilled developers can certainly tackle this challenge.

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

On 3/14/2023 at 1:48 AM, Kristaki Hudson said:

Great news Lindenlab be a wonderful feature to bring SL in tablets and phone:)

SL is already on tablets and phones with SpeedLight - both on Android and iOS

[Place your bets: Speedlight?]

SpeedLight is an independent project, new LL viewer is not connected with SpeedLight at all. 
There are several major differences between these viewers:

• SpeedLight is mobile + web viewer (you can run it in browser, too) and isn’t  using Unity <=> SL new viewer is a Unity app, which targets to utilize modern mobile graphics.
• SpeedLight relies on servers to allow keeping avatar online and switching devices  <=> SL mobile viewer runs on your device.
• SpeedLight focuses on social features <=> SL mobile viewer tends to bring a great 3D experience.

What unites these viewers is the goal to make the use of Second Life as comfortable as possible

[Second Life Mobile 2023 - First Look]

Congratulations with a beautiful graphics and fully-rendered avatars! Great work!

Finally, SpeedLight viewer is not so lonely on mobile platforms

[Place your bets: Speedlight?]

7 hours ago, Istelathis said:

Here is a screenshot from speedlight while running on my PC, you'll notice textures are off quite a bit and a lot of meshes don't render correctly some don't render at all.

 

At SpeedLight we are using a rendering engine with is compatible with web. There are advantages and downsides tho:

+ this engine can be used in a browser, without installing anything
− the engine is less powerful than a separate app

We try to workaround some things. For example, current version avoids loading huge hi-rez meshes, and load low-rez (optimized) versions instead. This is what you see as "rendered incorrectly".

However, with every new update we find a way to provide a better quality with the same resources. This is what is called "software optimization" and what is rarely done by other developers these days  With a next update we want to introduce a high-quality environment. With a correct mesh rendering.

@Istelathis Can you drop an SLURL of this location please? I would like to check if updated SpeedLight gets a 100% match.

[Place your bets: Speedlight?]

Am I allowed to place an insider's bet? lol

[Issues with mobile Speed Light app]

Hello Camep.

Can you please clarify: do you mean that Firestorm settings revert to defaults? Like graphics preferences?

[Speedlight: right click to pay?]

Hello Aime. We have this feature planned within the next update.

We are developing SpeedLight 3D experience (avatar rendering introduced two weeks ago, will be publicly available soon), and touch context menu will be heavily improved, including the "Pay" button.

[2022 - Second Life Year In Review]

10 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I was also thinking a phone would be too tiny but people who don't know about computers may have a tablet as well as a phone.

A lot of people have no computers, at least at home. Most of people have phones, some have tablets. But tablet experience is much closer to a phone rather than PC.

In my experience 90-95% of regular entertainment website is the mobile device traffic. As for our viewer (we support both mobile and desktop) 75%(!) of residents access SL from some kind of handheld device (the chart below is a today's actual chart).

[2022 - Second Life Year In Review]

On 12/24/2022 at 4:07 AM, HeathcliffMontague said:

How on Earth could SL be usable , other than maybe for messaging, some basic stuff like maybe inventory, on a mobile phone?

Well, it is tricky but it's possible - check our mobile viewer, SpeedLight (it is not ideal yet but we have inventory management, land sell/purchase and other complex things). Messaging is the easiest part but just because users got used to messengers.

Some things can be be done but in completely different way. We are working on 3D world editing possibilities on mobile... That's a nightmare compared to inventory management lol

23 hours ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Sometimes I tell people about SL and some ask "Can I play it on my phone? I don't own a computer."

You definitely can play SL on mobile phone nowadays. Both hardware and user interface allows that. It may be tricky for developer (especially the UI - see above) but modern games are much more heavy than Second Life. Remember that a lot of physics calculations is being done on SL servers.

We even made Second Life run in browser.

What I'm talking about is that LL should pay more attention to mobile devices. Residents _do_ want to access Second Life easily as like as they access Facebook.

[2022 - Second Life Year In Review]

I believe that the major works for LL (not 2023 but all years starting from 2014) are

1. Simplifying the process and customising avatars, especially for new residents
2. Making Second Life accessible from mobile
3. Natural involvement of new residents into games, communities and such

As a (mostly) B2B services provider I'm very interested in a flow of motivated new residents. New users means a development for my SL customers => which leads to overall SL business growth.

The lack of mobile SL experience makes us all suffer: existing residents, new users, LL, SL business... I would work like crazy to make SL accessible from EVERYWHERE: mobile, web, Oculus, Playstation/Switch/Xbox. Especially talking into account it is possible nowadays.

[Speedlight "light " mode]

48 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'd have to login to clarify, then wait a few days for the nag message.

 

Hm. We don't ask to "login every few days" at the moment. You can use SpeedLight every day, or once per month - there's no difference.

[Speedlight "light " mode]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You know full well it is.

How many people would use Discord or Telegram if it kicked everyone off every few hours.

Well, 1 hour (we had before) was definitely annoying. However, the most of people connect to Second Life for 1-3 hours, so we decided that 6 hours is pretty enough. The main problem with unlimited online time is not my personal greed lol. Every online avatar eats some server power so we have to control it somehow.

However, I just got an idea how to test it in a wild, and give an unlimited time to users at community forum who really need it (for free indeed). I'll discuss it with a team and write details a bit later.

[Speedlight "light " mode]

21 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I stopped using it because, if I did not use it every few days it would disable my "free" SpeedLight access.  Unless I would have upgraded, I believe.  I am not sure if this was a strategy to a) inflate user counts and b) get people to upgrade from "free".  Still a great program so far as I could tell!

 

Love, can you clarify please? The free access is always free, it can not be disabled. The most significant limitation of free account is 6 hours online time. You can re-login immediately tho.  Is it that annoying?