Just posted by Linden Lab: This long-awaited update to the Unity-based Second Life app for smartphones project teased back in March. In all honesty that early preview seemed a bit pokey, but the current build being unveiled now is much more impressive.
"It looks like they're greatly limiting the texture resolution, which makes a lot of sense," expert developer Kallisti tells me, approvingly. "It looks like they have some very good framerates, much better than I expected for the amount of stuff they're showing, and I'm very happy that they're making the progress they are." (Kallisti, of course, is the dev behind Crystal Frost project, converting Second Life to Unity for PCs/VR, so knows from Unity.)
Some screengrabs below. Even more important to me than the graphics: Greatly simplified and much more intuitive user interface. When I talked to Philip for the book, he strongly suggested that an SL app for mobile should have most/all the features of the standard viewer, but this demo suggests they're going for simplicity.
In other words, this could be Second Life's first chance in a long time to actually grow its user base! The only drawback is Grumpity Linden suggests the Beta version won't be available until late this year/early next. It would be kinda ironic if VRChat's mobile viewer came out first.
Anyway, click for screenies!
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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