Second Life Viewer for Pocket PC

Hello folks. First off, very impresive and highly active forum. Loving the buzz here.

Now then. Since the viewer has gone open source, is there anyone working on porting it to a mobile version? So us addicts can run our second life in parallal with our first! Obviously, it will be some sort of really cut down version. May even start off as text only but develop to maybe wireframe graphics or something.

I have broadband on my phone so I'm all set to install and run. *shakes leg impatiently*

If not, how difficult would it be to port. What are the issues involved?

BRAINWAVE: What about one to run off the USB stick directly? Go to ANY computer and literally plug right into SL. But leave this for another thread.

sl isn't noted for its ability to run on minimal hardware, or even the average office drone desktop or affordable $1000 laptop. If this were easy to fix, I'm sure it would have been fixed by now, as the stiff hardware requirements are preventing lots of potential Linden customers from connecting up, and we all know how the Lindens feel about turning away potential customers. Pocket pc doesn't have nearly the power sl expects. So I don't think it is likely we will be seeing sl on pocket pcs any time soon.

If you want to do sl mobile, you will need a high-end laptop.

As the first poster noted, you wouldn't be using 3d graphics. This would reduce a good amount of the necessary requirements, as textures also take up most of the bandwidth.

I think this issues been brought out along time ago. And since sl requirews high levels of graphics its unlikey. As much as i like to see it happen but at this stage and time i doubt it.

Usagi

There was something on Reuters this week about someone developing a mobil phone based client for SL - didnt read it but have a look on their site or email Adam if you cant find it

Oh i read vodaphone is doing a working model for commications bewteeen cellphone and game.

I agree, i think a pocket pc version would be greatly appreciated (if it is possible)

considering it is now available for Symbian OS on nokias which has MUCH lower hardware than today's pocket pc, then surely its possible.

I have dropped a message to Salvatore Russose, Whom ported Blender to the pocket pc (that's a MUST see http://russose.free.fr/BlenderPocket/ ) asking if he thinks its possible (i'll keep you posted as to the reponse).

Blender runs openGL or something i think? does SL? if so wouldn't that make it technically possible given enough memory and speed.

as a test to see if it's physically possible to actually USE SL on a 320x240 Pocket pc screen i reduced my SL viewer down and made the GUI buttons the smallest they can go, and i think it's usuable. Although the builders window would need some serious re-jigging to fit on-screen if you wanted to actually build stuff. ok for chat and idle stuff i suppose.

could do with some tech savvy people to look into it as i'm no coder sadly

Wow wow. So it sounds like it's possible from a hardware perspective (I guess the lag can be blamed on bandwith and general SL-owness). Exciting idea that ... being "always on" with a pocket pc thus living rl and sl in parallal. Just need a crack coding team to get a warm buzz on this and start bashing away!

Yes Kode Writer all very exciting.


I've had a response back from Mr Russose of the pocket blender project. and confirmed that it IS openGL. although unfortunately, the openGL aspect of it was also the most pain in the butt to make work.

this is the email info i've received so far from the maker of blender pocket:

----------------------------
Hi,

I am not a programmer and I had to learn many thinks before porting
Blender But I received lot of help from the open source community and
from the Blender community (even Ton answered my stupid questions).
Blender is really coded as a portable application so it eased my job.

What is important before porting an application is to know what
libraries are used and if they are already available for a PocketPC. For
Blender, the most problematic thinks was OpenGL and it requiered me lot
of work and I had to learn it... But it is a really an interesting
challenge

You also have to know how the application is written: in C/C++ or other
language?

But you can ask in the forum of Second Life to receive all these
information.

I hope it will help you,

Have lot of fun
Salvatore

----------------------------------- end quote

i had another hunt around on the net, and would like to ammend my previous post with regard to nokia, SL mobile is being made on the J2ME platform. the screenshot i saw of it just happened to be symbian... and is still not complete, but from what i gathered from the news, they've progressed although no release date set. but that still stands to reason, if they can get that to work through Java, then surely a pocket pc can handle it!

so, where to go from here!?

could do with a coder knowledgable in openGL, and pocket pc libraries i guess

anyone know anything about porting software to pocket pc?!
anyone got a spare bit of webspace to host a site/wiki/repository/forum ?

Found some examples (and tutorials) of PocketGL running on pocket pc...

http://pierrel5.free.fr/PocketGLb/ReadMeFirst.htm

looks promising still.

Good work Spider Webb! There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel. So I guess the point is that openGL IS workable under pocket PC / Windows Mobile. No doubt the most cumbersome and buggy component of this will be the 3D graphics side of things ... especially given how the desktop version's support for graphics card is actually quite limited (nvidea / geoforce only I think).

Assuming that's something that will eventually work, what other libraries are there which may not exist / be supporte for windows mobile?

I guess I'm trying to map out all the bottlenecks to create a road map of potential potholes. Then we can see if there are resources in the community which can chip in at different sections. But that's for later. For now, let's revel in the dream of having and Second Life run in parallal. Cute.

I downloaded the source code for second life and found a folder full of libraries, but dont really know what i'm looking at so cant say.

I can however speculate on some of the aspects of porting that will be difficult and might require writing bespoke code for.

obviously there's the issue with OpenGL
then you'll have the issue of tapping into the devices wifi/gprs/3G hardware which might need some code tinkering i guess.

rework of the controls like having press and hold with the stylus to register a right click. keymapping options and rejigging various menus of secondlife to better suit the smaller screen.

like i said, speculation and educated guessing.

i'm at work at the moment but i'll have a traul through some open source forums and see if i can get any advice, maybe even try recruiting people that know their stuff to tell us if it is genuinely possible. can you do the same?

i'll keep you posted