From: Front Dawes
There is also a thin client now for the Iphone and Ipod Touch, called Sparkle IM.
Rock
Yeah, I saw Sparkle IM, but I saw no real need in spending $5 bucks on something that gives essentially the same functionality as Ajax Life. If that's the case, I'll just log in via Ajax life in the phone's web browser, which I had actually already done first. I logged in as me via the computer and regular SL client, and logged in an alt on the phone via Ajax Life. However, Ajax Life has been having availability issues, plus, you don't get that full rich SL experience. There was a neat looking app called Vollee, but that seems dead, the site (and app) is gone. There's also absolutely nothing in the App Store concerning SL either.
I figured the iPhone was pretty powerful considering what I'd seen, but I hadn't had the opportunity to handle an iPhone for any length of time to get a feel for what it can do, but after having the phone for several days, and having installed a couple of freebie 3D apps, I'm pretty convinced that a light version of the client can be done! And I'm talking a complete, native app, that uses no external servers to stream or cheat (like what I'm doing with VNC).
The apps I installed were 3D World, Cube, and Fast Lane Light. 3D World is a simple app with a few rooms you can walk around in. It's first person, so no avatar, but the phone handled the 3D graphics with no problems. Cube is a first person shooter similar to Quake or Doom, and Fast Lane is a (really cool) racing game. All 3 apps run like a top on the iPhone, and are really amazing.
I'm pretty convinced that if someone used the Mac SL client source code as a starting point that a light version could be done. The accelerometer could even be used for arrow keys where you tilt the phone left or right for left and right arrows, and tilted forward and back for up and down arrows. The iPhone's portrait keyboard is kind of tough to use, but the landscape one is bigger, and much easier to type on. I was able to chat with a buddy for a few minutes with few errors and relatively quick typing speed. I think that the biggest drawback to getting an SL client done for the iPhone is that it would probably be a pretty big project overall, and while the iPhone market is big, and growing, and the SL community is fairly big, and growing as well, over all, at the moment, the total number of L residents that have an iPhone is probably a pretty niche market. On top of that, the price point for the client would probably be fairly low, maybe $5 to $20 bucks would be my guess. Also, I think that if Linden Lab stepped into the picture, and modified the server code to check for mobile apps, and sent lower resolution versions of textures instead of what's doled out for full clients, that would make the job of texture handling easier for the phone. Who knows, perhaps if someone does step up and write a real client for the iPhone, maybe LL would entertain the idea of upgrading the server code for device awareness and send textures of different resolutions based on the device. As far as data is concerned, my plan (all the plans actually) are unlimited data plans, at least here in the US.
The VNC client works fairly good on the iPhone, it does crash occasionally, and the phone seems to have trouble dealing with the immense amount of data being streamed from the PC for the display, and the iPhone complains about low memory at times. The overall frame rate is atrocious, (probably about 1 frame every 5 to 10 seconds), so even something as simple as walking around is a bit of a challenge. However, if you're just standing there chatting or IM, it's about as good as being on a PC or Mac, and it's really really really cool!
EDIT:
After a bit more experimentation I've been able to tweak things so things are much better. I looked into the option settings for the VNC server, but there wasn't much there that would help me out other than the server removing my wallpaper when a connection is made so there is just a plain blue background. But then it dawned on me, I always run SL in full screen in a window. Then it dawned on me... duh, reduce the size of the window! I scaled down the window so that it was much much smaller. The iPhone's display is small, so I could scale down the client running on the PC such that the window is about the physical size of the iPhone's display. With the desktop wallpaper gone, and me zooming in on the much scaled down SL client window I can now actually walk around or fly and get a frame rate approaching 1 frame per second. Terrible by PC Standards, but on the phone it's about 10 times better than it was before. Thing is, it's difficult to get a some of the buttons on the bottom row, namely the communicate window, but I can trigger that using the menu. The phone's keyboard is NOT a pc keyboard, and doesn't have arrow keys, or even a control key for that matter, so I can't use control-T to open the communicate window, but the menus, which now don't fit fully on the screen because the menu's don't scale, but DO have a more selection at the bottom, and it overlays another menu section over the last, so it's not too difficult to get at cam controls, or communicate window. Heck, next up I might just take a stab at building something!
