I mentioned the Unity-based mobile app for Second Life this week, so I should also mention the latest update to Crystal Frost, the crowdfunded project to convert Second Life to Unity for PC and VR.
"Provided I can figure out a few rigging issues, I should have the base Linden avatars and body shapes fully supported by August," lead dev Kallisti tells me.
And yes, she adds, that means Crystal Frost will eventually support mesh bodies:
"Afterall, there's things that happen to the underlying [default] Ruth mesh that affect mesh avatars in general. Namely to the skeleton. Examples of skeleton changes are head size, arm length, leg length, etc. So when I get the Ruth avatars replicating correctly on screen, I can be certain that rigged/fitted/bento mesh avatars will line up too once they're implemented, since they use the same skeleton."
Join the official Discord server for more info and to chat with the creator, and consider joining the Patreon to get premium updates and accelerate development. And yes, I do mention Crystal Frost in the book:
When I was briefly in Second Life to do a quick errand for this book, a longtime developer who remembered me from my Linden Lab days and casually IMed to say she was launching a somewhat ambitious project dubbed Crystal Frost — a new third third-party Second Life viewer that runs on Unity.
“Having a modern graphics engine that’s multi-threaded, easier modability, implementing ray tracing and proper VR is super easy,” the dev, known as “Berry Bunny” in Second Life, explained to me. “I have ideas about how to implement VR and make it feel like VRChat.”
If she succeeds (and early previews are impressive), it will be possible to finally create a native smartphone app for Second Life on a smartphone. Just as notable (and on brand for the platform), I first learned about Crystal Frost through a casual, serendipitous encounter in-world — and is an innovation put forward by a Second Life community creator, not the company itself.
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Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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