You can’t have missed the news that Linden Lab have released a Mobile App for Second Life for Alpha Testing. If you did, here’s the press releases:
Second Life Mobile – Now in Private Alpha
The Alpha Testing is open to Residents with a Premium Plus subscription, so I put in an application straight away and was accepted.
A couple of days later I have the app running on my phone and it’s so much better than I’d have expected at such an early stage.
After a few false starts (there are issues with passwords and mine was too complicated) I was able to log in.
The first thing you’re greeted with is a basic movement tutorial:
The movement controls felt a bit like Roblox, which is no bad thing, it means exiting phone gamers will get the hang of it pretty quickly. However I’m not one of those and I was dreadful at playing Roblox, so will need more practice.
My avatar and the skybox around me loaded up surprisingly fast and looked pretty good quality for an Alpha mobile app. Although my avatar does look a little perturbed it’s only because I had been fiddling with face animations on my previous login on my laptop.
Since the skybox was pretty cramped,I thought I should check out some more spacious surroundings, fortunately some are provided. These are accessible from the login screen, or a menu once logged in.
I chose the Nom Nom Cafe Library from the list and hit Teleport. This was an interesting experience, in that your view switches to one form above, as if you are being dropped from a great height to your destination, but looks quite cool.
On the ground the surroundings rezzed in pretty quickly and the place looks quite lovely on a mobile screen.
So far I’ve just tried basic moving about and teleporting to places and I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve seen. The graphics are detailed and didn’t appear to stutter as I moved. However a fairly modern smartphone or tablet is required to run the app, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. I will have to see how it works on my untidy homestead and other non-showcase locations.
I’ve not tried any kind of communication yet, so I’ll follow up with another post on how well those aspects work at a later date.
If you have a Premium Plus membership and want to give the app a try, you can find the details for applying in the press release above.