VBunny Go is quite an entertaining and enthusiastic commentator, as she puts Rec Room through its paces (including playing several levels of a dungeon quest as part of a team). She finds that most of Rec Room’s functionality is still present, despite playing the game on an iPhone.
I need to get a setup like hers, so I can start doing my own in-world videos! She’s a good example of someone who is slowly building a YouTube audience with her videos of her VR gaming adventures.
As a VR only player, I’ve been excited to be able to try the mobile version and see what everyone is ready to complain about. And since today I was invited, I hurriedly downloaded it to finally witness the horror of mobile gaming. And guess what? It’s good. The game runs beautifully and looks absolutely gorgeous. The UI and UX is intuitive and snappy. The controls just make sense. I was literally jealous of the mobile menus compared to the VR version. It’s a smooth, polished ride with all of the content at the ready. It’s GOOD. And you all are going to love it.
I have Strawberry Singh to blame for this one! She wrote up a blogpost and posted a YouTube video about an avatar-based mobile social networking app called Zepeto:
Now, Zepeto reminds me a lot of another mobile app I had covered before on this blog, called Avakin Life, only it doesn’t seem to have as many features (for example, you can’t move your avatar around inside an environment). It takes a real-life self-portrait using your cellphone’s camera to create your default avatar, which you can then modify as you wish. Here’s what I came up with after only a few minutes of fiddling:
And here’s a couple of selfie poses:
Work that camera, gurl!!! Cute, but overall I found there’s not really a lot to do in Zepeto. Basically, you pose for photos alone or with your friends, and you chat… and that’s about it! If you find this sort of thing interesting, then you might want to check out Avakin Life first, since it lets you do a bit more.
Virtual worlds like IMVU and Avakin Life, which are highly popular with tweens and teens, have one strong advantage over Second Life; they can be played on mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), which are now ubiquitous technology in modern-day society. Although Linden Lab has made a few half-hearted forays into mobile clients for SL in the past, these projects never went very far before they were shut down. Second Life is still, after all these years, primarily a virtual world played on a computer desktop (Windows, Mac, and Linux), which limits its potential audience somewhat.
Linden Lab is looking for an innovative mobile app engineer to deliver a compelling, responsive mobile interface into Second Life. If you’re passionate about the latest cross platform mobile technologies and would be psyched to wake up every morning knowing that your efforts will enhance the largest, most successful virtual world on the Internet then we want to hear from you!
Responsibilities
Expand and enhance access to Second Life – the most successful user-created Virtual World ever with tens of thousands of concurrent users.
Collaborate with other engineers in an iterative, agile development environment with a passionate commitment to improving the Second Life experience.
Participate in design and code reviews and discussions both within the web team and with other parts of Second Life development.
Knowledge, Skills, Abilities
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Results-oriented attitude and dedication to the user experience.
Demonstrated proficiency working in a geographically distributed team.
Experience developing consumer-oriented mobile applications for Android and IOS.
Experience with distributed version control (git or mercurial).
Experience with automated testing.
Experience with AWS or other cloud-based deployment models, especially streaming cloud-based rendering.
Demonstrated ability to accurately scope projects and negotiate deadlines within a flexible team structure.
Deep familiarity with and enthusiasm for Second Life is a HUGE plus.
It would appear that they are interested in building Second Life mobile apps for both Apple (iOS) and Android devices, which is good news!
[The] job is remote and “deep familiarity with and enthusiasm for Second Life is a HUGE plus”, so this could be a dream gig for SL’s many talented community developers. My recommendation, of course, is to hire Alina Lyvette, whose Lumiya viewer for Android has already sold well over 100,000 copies.
High Fidelity is really doing some innovative things with their platform! They’ve launched an Android mobile app to allow you to connect to HiFi from your Android-compatible cellphone:
We’re excited to announce that we’ve launched the alpha version of High Fidelity’s Android mobile app (called High Fidelity – Live VR Experiences 32) today! Now, you have the ability to join domains like TheSpot, Mexico, SVVR from your Daydream-ready phone to attend face-to-face events and interact with real people in the virtual world. Please note that this alpha version is not designed for Daydream View.
It’s important to us that testers are able to have an open conversation about feedback and improvements we can make so you can join real, live experiences with other people in virtual spaces right from your phone.
Are you an Android user eager to try out our new app and interested in testing it out?
If so, please fill out this form to add yourself to the list, and we will reach out to you within the next week to start gathering feedback.
Here’s a link to the app on the Google Play store. I’m an iPhone user, so I can’t test this out, but I would be very interested to hear from anyone who is using this app on their Android device. Let me know how well it works!
