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For months the people at Onlive have been secretly working together with Jessica Lyon to build a version of Firestorm that works in SL Go!
In a press release Onlive says that an update to SL Go now allows its users to choose between the official Linden Lab viewer or the Firestorm one.
It works for both PC and Mac but not yet on mobile devices, development for that starts in the new year.
When you launch SL Go you will be presented with a choice between the two viewers.
You should have access to the full Firestorm interface, the edit menus, preference settings, etc.
All customizations are saved from session to session, even if you played on a different device.
The best thing about SL Go, for me, is that it allows me to run SL at ultra graphics settings on pretty much any computer.
You get to enjoy SL the way it should be enjoyed without having to use a top of the range device.
Even my 5 year old macbook can now be used to enjoy SL with shadows and more.
However, I don’t just use Firestorm because I just prefer it to the official viewer, I use it because I need all the extra options it offers.
Yes, I really do need them.
When building and managing a busy roleplaying community, I depend on the building tools, the radar, etc.
I’ve written about why I prefer Firestorm to the official viewer in detail here.
So although I really like SL Go and the ability to see SL at ultra settings again (I blew up my graphics card on the Alienware laptop), I didn’t use it very much because once in SL, I wasn’t really able to do very much as I missed all the Firestorm options I needed.
Unfortunately, for this first version, according to Jessica Lyon, some of the featuresI love a lot have been disabled, for now.
For instance, the contact sets you may have been keeping (like I do) won’t be found in SLGO because there is no access to the contact sets you’ve already created as the SLGo server is not connected to wherever your contact sets are stored normally.
You can start from scratch and make new contact sets in SLGo and those will be remembered.
You will probably also have to reset a few of the settings.
Nevertheless for me it is the difference between running around hopelessly not quite knowing how to do things, not having a proper radar and not being able to instantly see who is visiting my sim and if they are wearing proper 1920s clothes or a latex miniskirt with a Viking horned helmet (Vikings didn’t have horns on their helmets!).
This new option will make me use SL Go a lot more, now I no longer have to carry my Macbook (for RL work) and heavy massive Alienware Laptop (for SL and gaming) with me when I leave my home for a few days, I just use the Macbook for both.
If you aren’t using SL Go yet, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial by clicking here.
A monthly subscription costs $9.95 (£6.95) per month for unlimited access.
Yes, SLGo allowed me to explore SL at ultra settings on my 5 year old macbook!
Jo Yardley's Second Life 
I envy 🙂 Unfortunately SLGO doesn’t cover my region. I can’t even open my account there. I asked them several times about this but the only answer I heard from them was, “We don’t have any plans to extend our service to your region”. It’s a pity for the international SL users. Oh well, that’s life.
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And Firestorm on SLGo is ever so much more of what Firestorm is than regular Internet access… but that works both ways, so be warned if you’re a Comcast subscriber – a month of SLGo access at my usual hours per day puts you over the free 300 gigabytes a month of downloaded content you get a month. They just growl at you over the phone once you exceed 270 gigabytes for the first three months. After that, you’re “upgraded” to another fifty gigs for ten bucks more on your Comcast bill.
SLGo is incredibly good. It makes Second Life worth playing when I, like many of us, were one crash during slow dancing away from quitting until we could afford Quad Core processors. I will NOT stop using it.
But I do find it necessary to repeat this warning to everyone who loves SLGo so they can – if that added ten bucks on their cable bill (and perhaps another ten bucks after that if you push it over 350 gigs) is a deal-breaker for you – if you’re on a limited income, perhaps – then check your download numbers after the middle of the month. Avoid the arrythmia I had this week.
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