Pictured: Pocket Metaverse, a third party iOS app for accessing select Second Life features from 2010
With the iOS app for Second Life coming soon, reader and blogger Devin Vaughn sketches out a fascinating vision for how it could transform the virtual world. While the app itself is launching with very limited features (the late-lamented Pocket Metaverse from over a decade ago was actually more robust), Devin sees a chance to bring in a new wave of mobile users:
[I]t might be a sneak peek into Linden Lab's strategy of bridging SL and SL Mobile. This is baby steps for now, it takes time to develop code and app. But I could see it working that there are SL mobile-only sims that enforce both avatar and environment efficiency.
Imagine this: You want to 3D chat live on the phone with your friends? Teleport to SL Mobile Island 1. Oops, you are not allowed because your avatar is bonkers heavy with scripts and complexity. BUT you forgot to switch to your mobile, low lag, fast avatar first. So you just go to appearance, change outfit, and teleport is accepted. You land in a beautifully crafted environment, perhaps created by a well known genius designer who excels at kickass and fast. Much good time is had!
…..And later, you want to meet up with your special friend after work in the posh main grid where you wear as much scripts and fancy mesh as you want, or decorate to max, because the maingrid is still the wild wild west of freedom and zero enforced avatar or sim limits (if you don't mind the lag).
VRChat actually does something like this, for users of the Oculus Quest, enabling them to teleport to worlds that have been optimized to run on the Quest. That way, VRC users are able invite their Quest-owning friends into the "kiddie pool" of VRChat. (That's how I first got to meet Syrmor in VRChat!)
"Imagine if SL had mobile-only sims for mobile style avatars," Devin muses:
I'm sure SL would dramatically bring down cost of avatars. And what makes SL the longest lasting of all virtual worlds is content and being fleshed out with so much capability already. Sims that require efficient-only decor, landscaping, scripts, and avatars solve the problem. No exploding phones over content anyway. The app also needs to be efficient. And if you done doing what you want in 3DChat, but yearning to do all the nice things you can do on the main grid, you can. You just teleport into SL proper.
It's actually more likely that, as with IMVU when it went to smartphones, the userbase would grow much larger on mobile than it ever had on the PC client. But this would also be a great way to gently ease the mobile generation into the broader virtual world.
But do you think Linden Lab is planning something as ambitious as this?
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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