Source: Second Life's Official Mobile Viewer Pauses Development

A veteran Second Life insider just sent me this message they received as a member of the test group for Second Life's long-awaited, official mobile app:

After reviewing the current state of the SL Mobile Viewer and the helpful feedback from residents, we have decided to pause development on this branch. The team is actively working on a new direction to take from here. We should have some news on that soon.

We’d like to thank you all for your time and feedback. It was very valuable to us! We will be closing TestFlight and the mobile regions on October 29th, 2021. Again, thank you for participation! Linden Lab

I'm reaching out to Linden Lab now for an official comment, but this message is surprising and likely to disappoint the community. We received word only last July that this app had been approved for publication by Apple.

That said, my source (who also shared the app images here), tells me the app itself had pretty limited functionality:

"It had been stagnant for months. Didn't have push notifications, and until a recent update would only work when you had the app open on your screen," they tell me.

Apparently there wasn't even a 3D graphics display -- but as expected, there was a special chat zone for app users:

"You logged into a special mobile users only region and would remain there while the app was running, you couldn't be teleported, seen on the map, had no attachments etc. IM messages worked well .. and that was all we ever got."

Screencap of that above.

Hopefully Linden Lab sends me an update soon. It's quite possible that they are only pausing this particular app development and planning to release a "new direction" SL app with different functionality. But I'll let you know more when I know more.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

Eventually they’ll say “oh, the best way to do this is to do cloud computing” and then they’ll set up a system where you have to pay a subscription fee (because cloud computing is never free) that no one will pay for.

[Skate Foss]

Waiting for the SecondLife Mobile Viewer is the virtual world version of Waiting for Godot. I remember asking Rod Humble when will the mobile viewer be ready and he said very soon. Maybe its more an inside joke then an actual project since its been dangled before us for so long and seems to never materialize. But then again to jaded long time Second Life residents, anything Linden Lab promises we already know what to expect.

[Mondy]

They already know how to do a mobile client that could let residents teleport around the grid, IM other other people and check inventory. There are two other clients that have that functionality on Android and one on Apple that I'm aware of even if some haven't been updated for a long time.

Perhaps the reason they don't collaborate with any of the authors of those apps is that they don't have any genuine long term interest at all.