School uses Opensim and Oculus Rift to teach history

When I saw this, my heart jumped with joy.

During my regular google search for VR and Oculus Rift stories I stumbled across this on the Technology.ie website, thanks for writing about it folks, it made my day.

As you may know, to me the main, if not only, reason for being part of virtual reality is the ability to “time travel”, to recreate and explore the past.

But since I (re)discovered Second Life almost 5 years ago, I’ve been recreating 1920s Berlin and having a great time doing that while also getting a chance to educate people and see them learn stuff, not to mention that they teach me a thing or two as well.

I’ve always felt that virtual worlds are such a great tool for education, especially by using real immersion.

That is why I was so excited to hear about the really cool students from St Kieran’s National School in Broughal, Ireland, who recreated a historic site after a field-trip to Clonmacnoise, a group of preserved Medieval ruins .

Often people complain that Second Life is too difficult to learn, although I think that they do have a point, it is pretty amazing to see a bunch of 10-12 year olds become such experts in it and get to grips with it pretty easily.

Mind you, everyone knows kids are better at computer stuff than us anyway.

After recreating the ruins they had visited in real life in the virtual Opensim world, they got to explore it with the Oculus Rift.

Not only that, they then get to share it with kids in other schools, where the  pupils guide each other around the virtual place.

How fantastic is that?

I have to confess that seeing history being taught to kids in such a way brought tears to my eyes, I am so passionate about history and helping children realise how awesome that subject is that when I see it brought to them in a way that I think works very well and may leave a huge impression on the next generation, I just can’t stop smiling.

And I keep saying it, of course Gaming is going to be a huge market for the virtual reality headsets but I am pretty sure that within a couple of years all the other possibilities offered by them will make up a much larger percentage of what it is actually used for; movies, tv, shopping, working and of course education.
This is how I think classes of the future will be taught history, welcome to class kids, put on your VR helmet, lets to travel back in time!

Of course, the next project might be to restore the ruins to see and explore them as they looked hundreds of years ago!

I can’t wait and really can’t put into words how happy this video made me.The project was set up by MissionV, who provide “a highly creative, totally immersive, game based learning environment for schools and industry”.
They seem to be doing a very good job at it because, as the teacher in the video said, the kids queued outside the class room, installed ‘Imprudence‘ at home and their parents got involved as well.

But above all, they learned a LOT, not just history.

Of course this video also was hugely frustrating to me.
Why can’t we use Second Life for this?
Why can’t I make 1920s Berlin safe enough for a class of children to come visit it?
Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, very recently spoke about Education in Second Life and I think that he has to move heaven and virtual earth to enable schools and projects like these to come (back) to Second Life.

MissionV will be available to ALL schools in Ireland from September onwards and they should have been using Second Life, but I doubt they will.
There is something worth fighting for Linden Lab, forget about profits, think about using VR for what it should be used for, be a leader in VR being used for education and give educators the tools they need; more freedom, more security, more options and much, much lower tier.
Imagine what it will do to SL when a whole generation of kids grows up learning with SL, not to mention what it will do for SL’s reputation.

Roleplaying is fun and I truly love the community in 1920s Berlin, but being able to see children run around my recreation of Berlin in the 1920s and learn from it would be a dream come true.

Thank you pupils and teachers of the school and the people behind MissionV, you have no idea how happy you’ve made me.

Enjoy the videos and spread the word!

And the end result of what they’ve been building;

First new starter avatar revealed!

For a while now, every new user gets to choose from a selection of avatars.
A while ago Ebbe Linden announced that these would be updated soon.
And just now I’ve learned that the first of these starter- or stock avatars has already been revealed… by none other that Ebbe himself!

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the new starter avatars as worn by our lovely model Ebbe Linden;

This is interesting news for more than one reason.
Not only is it nice to see more realistic and dare I say it, handsome avatars being given to new users who join SL.
But it is also interesting to note that this avatar is a lot closer to a more realistic scale (aka Prim Scale) than the previous ones.
It seems that the many topics about scale in SL by people as Penny Patton and myself may have gotten trough.
Either way, I think this avatar is a step forward and I can’t wait till the other avatars are announced,

However… there is of course a downside to this.
I think that mesh avatars are harder to customise and finding clothes for them that go with the mesh avatar may be trickier as well.
Especially if you’re new to SL, it can be quite frustrating to discover that the old types of clothing won’t fit and that mesh has issues of its own.
For instance, Ebbe himself took some while to rez properly in my viewer today.
This was of course in an extremely busy area of SL, but still.
I can imagine quite a few confused and frustrated new users who aren’t sure how to deal with mesh avatars.
Having said that, coincidentally 😉 Linden Lab just announced that they are going to try and make it easier for people to buy the right clothes for their avatar.

Ebbe speaks about a variety of subjects

Ebbe Linden (AKA Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, makers of Second Life) spoke to a crowd of several hundred listeners at the 7th Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference.
Although the topic was of course Education in Second Life, many other questions came up as well.

It was a bit of a shock when Ebbe walked onto stage completely naked.
Luckily this was not some sort of statement about nudism becoming compulsory in SL, but just a bit of mesh clothing loading lag.
And no, before you ask, I will not put those screenshots online.

It was very nice to see Ebbe inworld (again) and it was clear that most people there were very excited about meeting him.
It also seemed that what he said was welcomed with much enthusiasm.
I think Ebbe managed to make a lot of people excited and positive about the future of SL.

There was some exciting news, or should I say potentially exciting, as the proof is in the pudding and we can’t judge it yet till things actually start happening.
But if things are going the way Ebbe apparently wants them to go, the future of SL is going to be very interesting indeed!
More and better communication between Lindens and us users, cooperation between SL and High Fidelity, easier exchanges of goods, people and money with other virtual worlds, etc.

I was also very glad to see that his avatar was not gigantic, but a more realistic (prim)scaled one.

I’ve tried to catch a few of his answers and share them here with you.
But as I had to do this while the actual talk was going on, and while I sometimes had to just copy/paste things from public chat and the (excellent) transcript, in stead from what I was actually hearing.
So please be critical and make sure you watch the video below to be sure of what Ebbe actually said.

Ebbe on education;

“We’ve made a mistake”, talking about taking away education discount.

On content and ToS;

We do not want to steal or profit from your content.
We’re not trying to lock you in, getting content in and out of SL should be easy.
We don’t want to lock in content. You should be able to export to other environments.
Nothing we are doing technically prevents export. Many get their content out.
maybe it is third party solutions
we are not preventing. Are we making it simple enough from our interface?
there may be few people who do this.
Maybe we need to make that more streamlined, we are not preventing it, but we don’t want it to be easy for others to rip people off.

On what is happening in the industry;

There is industry interest in solving the things we are trying to solve.
It gets more competitive but anyone of us moving the ball forward moves us al forward.
Yahoo’s acquisition was a tech talent acquisition.
I don’t think they want to get into our space
Facebook buying Oculus is excellent.
They see the future we have all been working on.

On new users experience and improvements;

The conversion rate of people staying with SL isn’t great
You have to be determined to make it through on your own.
We need to make this easier for normal consumers to use.
This is a challenge for a small company.
I lean to making it easier to use before focusing on interconnection.
We have a lot of work ahead, but a lot has been done, it’s better than 2 years ago.
There is still a lot to do in subcomponents of SL.
Most are not great.
It needs to go from a minimally appealing product to a product that appeals to hundreds of millions.
I know we can solve this.
My dream is to make this something a huge number of people can enjoy and contribute to, this is just the beginning, there is more to come.
It should be easier to get a nice plot of land with a mesh house.
improve the quality of that experience.
We have discussed how people navigate.

Communication between users and Linden Lab;

We are here. We are willing to listen and dialog. We want to talk about the future. The doors are open again.
We want to know how to make you successful.
I want to learn and listen.
You can reach out to individual Lindens if you think they are interested.
Maybe we can think of a place where we can list interest groups and what they are talking about, so we can hop in.
Like an interest group catalog to know meeting times and formats.
The general communications with you and us had deteriorated before I got here, from what it was years ago.
We want to be more transparent.
We want feedback, to learn from you, to correct things
If the community has things to do, if they want to invite us to participate, today you will find more people who can and are willing to participate.
There was a policy that Linden avatars being inworld, They could always use alts. That policy has been removed.
we had an all hands meeting yesterday, they told me to interact more with users.
That may create formal meeting plans between certain Lindens and interest groups.
As people start to be inworld, with their relevant projects, they will see how their work can improve.
I hope more Lindens will come inworld to interact with users so that can be a more normal comfortable thing.

About the Oculus Rift;

We released a beta viewer compatible with Oculus.
we will have an improved version in a week or so
You can be truly inworld in a realistic way I am glad Facebook bought Oculus.
it shows the market that this isn’t a niche.
It will have broad implications for many people.
We are the ones who have been working on *a* version of a virtual experience
the most advanced to this date.
I trust FaceBook will do the right things to benefit all of us, not just them.
With Oculus we have worked focused on viewing experience.
not yet the user interface
and it becomes harder to interact with SL
We want to explore how to make changes in how you interact with the world.
Without relying on keyboard/mouse
PHilip (rosedale) is doing interesting things and other companies.
We want to work with things that may become mass market.

About current state of SL;

Nobody else has an environment this open and where users take it where they want to take it
The GDP inside SL is hundreds of millions of dollars
we are ready to take it to the next level
nobody else is this far.

On education;

If there are groups not qualified as an education institution by our current rules, they don’t have credentials, maybe we can explore this.

About customers asking for changes;

When they express a need, that’s right.
When they tell us how to meet that need, it’s often wrong.

On Sl’s reputation;

It is unfortunate.
I don’t know how much is self inflicted, or dynamics of the market.
People need to understand the depth and breadth of what SL offers, no single vertical.
Not exclusive to any segment, just like RL you want to allow everybody.
It has as much variety in content as the internet itself.
One good thing, looking back, SL got overhyped too early, some was self inflicted.
Maybe there was a hope that tens of millions would use it
but complexities, it got as big as it got because of how easy or difficult it was to use.
The idea that a concept like this would displace the internet was swollen head thinking.
Our wish and the reality were too far apart.
that is unfortunate, there is a lot of good stuff happening here, not seen outside
We want to correct this.
The market is starting to embrace virtual reality, there is an opportunity to restate our role,we don’t want to over promise but we spend a lot on marketing

On expanding;

We want to make safer high volume transactions
There is a lot of extra eyeballs on this space because of what is happening with bitcoin
what that offering would look like, a virtual currency that goes out of SL, that’s another step
Ultimately, in order for SL to grow, it has to become easier to use.
we can’t go mass market as we are today.

Drax and I asked; what tech from High Fidelity will be used in SL?

I hope a lot!
I hope it will create many advances many can benefit from to move virtual worlds and virtual reality forward.
the more new hardware and interfaces, it moves us all forward.
Philip and I know each other well
Some of us will visit them in a couple of weeks to see demos
how we can help each other
it is early stages
I am transparent with Philip
we have assets that are valuable to them, and I hope we can collaborate
I am interested in the work they are doing with bringing emotion into your avatar experience
look them in the eye
they are working in that area
I want to be sure we provide that level of emotional capability to our avatar

Wow, that was pretty much exactly what we were talking about in The Drax Files Radio Hour!

The last words Ebbe spoke trough the microphone were;

How do I…

I couldn’t help laughing at that, he is still a bit of a noob 😉

Let’s hope this goes a bit towards fixing the disconnect with the educators that have left SL and that LL is working on getting them back.

SLGo will cost $9.95 a month with unlimited usage

When I first wrote about SLGo, the service that lets you use Second Life on mobile devices but also on old computers at ultra settings, the reactions were very mixed.
In general everyone agreed that the technology was impressive, many of us can’t enjoy SL at ultra settings at all, so it was quite exciting to be able to do that not just on our old computers but also on mobile devices.

But people were unhappy about the fee.
Being Dutch I hate paying for anything, except stroopwafels of course.
During the beta testing that I was a part of, you can read my experiences here, Onlive had set the costs of their service at $2.50 a hour.
But it seems that the people at OnLive have actually listened to our complaints, suggestions and tips because they have lowered the prices dramatically and offered some really good subscription deals.

As Beta users we filled in some surveys and trust me, I filled it in with a Dutch mind; I wanted it for cheap.
Well they actually listened and even cut in half what the average amount was the beta testers said they wanted to pay.

The full press release explains in detail;

It’s been almost a month since we launched the beta of SL Go, our mobile viewer for Second Life, and the response from the SL community has been very positive. Second Life residents have said they love being able to access Second Life in full 3D using Wi-Fi or 4G LTE on a tablet or lightweight laptop. We also know they want a subscription plan with unlimited usage and would like broader international access.

So today, we’re releasing updates that will allow more people to experience SL Go and that offer more choices and flexibility in our pricing.

SL Go updates (effective immediately):

• Monthly unlimited usage subscription plan for $9.95US/£6.95UK.
  No commitment – cancel anytime.
• Reduced hourly rates – only $1US/£0.70UK per hour
  (the free 20-minute trial remains in effect).
• Expanded international support: now 36 countries (listed below).

SL Go is now supported in the following countries:

• Andorra
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Greece
• Hungary
• Iceland
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Latvia
• Lichtenstein
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Malta
• Monaco
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Russia
• San Marino
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Turkey
• United
• Kingdom
• United
• States
• Vatican City

We’re grateful for the opportunity to support the Second Life community, and pleased to be working with such a passionate and creative group. We look forward to further developing SL Go with their feedback and suggestions.

Rick Sanchez, VP Product and Marketing

And check out the interview Drax had with Dennis Harper, senior product manager with SLGo;

Make sure to check the Drax Files episode tomorrow where talk more about this subject.

Late addition;

I asked SLGo why Germany is not on the list;

When compared to other European countries, Germany has a number of rules governing online purchases which aren’t a perfect fit for models like this. We’d love to open up SL Go to users in Germany, and will certainly do so as soon as the opportunity presents itself. It’s understandably an important audience for us and for Second Life.

I also asked the SLGo team if it would be easy to change subscriptions, for instance what if you have the pay per hour plan but suddenly your super computer explodes and you have to start using SL on your poor old 5 year old laptop, in that case you’d want to switch to 10 bucks a month.
They said that you can subscribe to the monthly option at any time and the time you’ve already paid for on the hourly plan will not be lost but kept in a ‘credit bank’, so when you switch again those unused credits become available again.
But if you’ve got a LOT of SLGo time already paid for you can contact their customer support team who have been instructed to give a free month’s subscription to customers who feel they’ve been disadvantaged by the change of pricing.

Good customer service all around I reckon.

I still hope Linden Lab makes a nice deal with them to offer SL premium members a discount and perhaps SLGo should look into creating an inworld presence where people can pay for their subscription with Linden Dollars.

The official announcement on the Onlive website can be read by clicking here.

The Linden Lab press release can be found by clicking here.

Second Life advertising hits new low

I’ve written before about how I think that the bad reputation SL has is a problem and about how I think that LL should work on improving it.

As far as I am concerned it is a big deal that so many outsiders think that SL is either dead or that it is a cesspit of filthy perverts and shallow people who just want to look like barbie.

Don’t get me wrong, SL IS both those things, but it is so much more.

I think that LL and the SL users need to work on getting SL a better reputation.

Not only do we have to make people realise that SL offers so many different kinds of entertainment, art, social interaction, etc, but also that it has some pretty amazing graphics that really are not as bad as those 2007 screenshots you see with every article seem to suggest.

You can imagine how delighted I was when I spotted this advertisement today.

Seriously Linden Lab?
Is this how you want to lure people to Second Life?
Is this what SL is?

I am not even mentioning sexism, objectification, etc.
Don’t tell Anita Sarkeesian about this ad.
Is that guy in the back winking?
But if I had seen this advertisement before I had joined SL… I would not have bothered.

What is Second Life to the PR department of LL?

A place where you can make friends with bikini wearing models?

Why not have one bikini wearing model and one astronaut, or knight in shining armor, or librarian or detective, or builder, etc, etc.

This advertisement tells me that SL is not for me, that I do not want my family members to ever hear about it, that if my friends told me they were into SL, I’d be embarrassed to know them.

This advertisement does not only strengthen the bad image SL has, it reinforces and promotes it.
It says; “Yes SL is exactly what the media thinks it is”.

That is disappointing.

We all know that SL is a great place for Barbie and Ken wannabes who want to spend all their virtual time on a beach.

But that is what the rest of the world seems to think SL is, worse, they seem to think that that is ALL SL is.

For as long as I can remember, SL has never advertised with any of the subjects that I find appealing.
As far as I know most of the people I know in SL are also more interested in those things LL never advertises with.
Yet all these people are hardcore SL users who spend a lot of time there, not to mention money.
But LL keeps trying to lure the kind of people who perhaps prefer IMVU.

Every time I mention SL to outsiders, I have to defend it, explain that it is NOT what the media says.

But it seems that LL is saying those things as well.

I’ve heard it many times before; “LL doesn’t get SL”.

Thanks Grizzla for finding this picture.

And although I wouldn’t say that, I do have to agree that they at least aren’t sure about how they should advertise it.

Either way, I don’t think this is the right way.

Sure, maybe I am overreacting a bit, but how do you want the rest of the world to see Second Life and its users?

I’ll say it again, I don’t mind LL advertising this side of SL, but I do mind that they seem to ignore all the other sides.

And to me, the option to look like a model and run around in bikini is not what I find interesting about SL.

The best part about SL is not only that you can be whatever you want, but that you can BUILD whatever you want.
It is the ultimate sandbox!
Not the ultimate sand beach.

Maybe LL should start a competition, ask us, the users who have been loyal to their world for years, who keep throwing money at it, what kind of advertising we think might work.

LL is spending money on these advertisements, someone is writing them, designing them, making the pictures.
But I have to wonder if they just hired an agency and if that person who makes them is an active SL user.

Finally, look at this charming, civilized and educational advertisement for Kaneva.
Is that the level we want SL ads to be at?

How would YOU advertise SL?

Although I do not want to play a vampire either, at least this advertisement showed a different side of SL, although it does still remind me too much of an IMVU advertisement.

Widely Linden talks about the Oculus Rift SL viewer

Draxtor and I have just finished an interview with Widely Linden, a senior producer at Linden Lab who works on the Oculus Rift implementation.
Only yesterday Linden Lab announced that their Oculus Rift viewer was ready for Beta testing and today Oculus VR let know that their headsets are now officially out of stock.

So, plenty to talk about!

You can hear the interview tomorrow in the Drax files radio hour but I couldn’t wait to share some of what was talked about.

• Viewer has full integration.
  “We support the entire Second Life experience and that includes building, chatting, every bit of UI (User Interface) is accessible when you’re in the Oculus Rift.”
• There is no solution (yet) for not being able to see your keyboard, you may want to consider using voice chat more often or get better at typing blind.
  There isn’t a virtual keyboard at the moment, I suggested this a while ago and hope that they are going to experiment with this option as not everybody is able to touch type.
• The present SL UI has been projected “onto a 3 dimensional space that follows you and hovers in front of you and you can completely customize it “.
• It works in a similar manner to the huds inside the helmet of Tony Stark in the movie Ironman.
• Development started at the end of August and it worked pretty quickly in a very basic way but then they decided that the viewer would have to be able to offer everything the regular viewers offer as well.
  “It became very clear to us that we have to make this work and we weren’t just going to slap dash something together and get it out there just to be first.
  We wanted to do it right.”
• “People who are familiar and comfortable with the Second Life UI and how Second Life works, will take to this no problem. There is not much of any kind of a new learning curve for them to get over. You’re in and running if you have a Rift.”
• The viewer supports a third person view, a first person view and mouselook mode.
  Third person is as we’re used to having in the regular SL viewer.
  In “mouselook HMD mode” (HMD = head mounted display), the mouse no longer affects your camera view, buttons still work, etc. Your head direction will steer your avatar.
  First person mode has the camera where your head is, the UI is visible on demand and you have a cursor.
  In this mode where you look will not change the direction your avatar is going.
  It is like walking around in the real world.
• People may still experience some nausea while using the Oculus in Second Life, but Widely Linden reminds us that a lot of people say that the next version of the Rift is already makes the ‘sea sickness’ a lot less and most people attribute it to the original developers kit.
• Beta viewer supports the Mac.
• A destination guide list has been created of places that look fantastic with the Oculus Rift.
• “Second Life is particularly well suited for the Rift.”
• “In a way Second Life was build with this hardware in mind, just the hardware didn’t exist yet.”

I’ll end with my own conclusion;
Second Life & Oculus Rift, meant to be together, a marriage made in heaven.

Please make sure you listen to the actual interview on the Drax files radio hour tomorrow.

The Oculus Rift Test area in 1920s Berlin

Second Life’s Oculus Rift Integration is Ready for Beta Testers

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oculus rift

Linden Lab has just announced that the Oculus Rift integration is going into its Beta Test phase:

The Oculus Rift offers exciting possibilities for Second Life – the stereoscopic virtual reality headset brings a new level of immersion to our 3D world, making Second Life a more compelling experience than ever before.

Though a consumer version of the headset isn’t available yet, we’ve been working with the development kit to integrate the Oculus Rift with the Second Life Viewer. We now have a Viewer ready for beta testers, and if you have an Oculus Rift headset, we’d love to get your feedback.

If you have the Oculus Rift development hardware and would like to help us with feedback on the Viewer integration, please write to sl_oculus_beta@lindenlab.com to apply for the limited beta.

First place to go for the Beta testers should of course be the Oculus Rift & Real Scale Test Area!

SLGo Q&A

After listening to a few interviews with the people behind SLGo and hearing many people share their opinion on this new service, I’ve decided to share a few facts and figures here.

• The idea for SLGo came from the owner of OnLive Gerry Lauder, based on discussions he had with Rod Humble, former CEO of Linden Lab.
• Nate Barsetti who worked on SLGo for OnLive is a long time SL user and a former Linden himself, Scout Linden.
• OnLive can also connect to Steam, allowing you to play all your steam games on any mobile device.
• One of the SLGo data centers is in the same building as Linden Lab Servers.
• About a year has been spend working on SLGo.
• You can’t download snapshots to your computer but you can save them to your inventory, however this costs you L$10 a picture.
• Advanced and development menus not available n SLGo.
• Current status is Open Beta.
• At the moment it costs $2.50 for one hour, $8 for 3 hours or $25 for 10 hours.
• Dennis Harper, senior product manager at OnLive, also tried Second Life but was not heavy user, he did a lot of research to try and understand SL better for this project.
• The goal is not to replace SL on home computers but to offer a mobile alternative for irregular use.
• Current pricing was decided when it was not clear what the user user patterns were going to be, once they understand how people are going to use SLGo, they may be able to provide subscription packages where you can use as much as you want for a single fee.
• Dennis Harper says that you don’t have to use SLGo, you can use Lumyia but you won’t get the same kind of immersive experience.
• IOS is in the works but they would prefer to fix some things first.
• OnLive wants your feedback.
• Dennis Harper hopes that SLGo will benefit the growth of Second Life.
• SLGo customer support team is manned by SL users.
• You can’t save snapshots to your inventory (yet) but you can email them to yourself or place them on your SL profile page.

UPDATE;
I’ve asked James Beaven of OnLive a few of your questions and can add the following information;

• SLGo will work throughout Europe but currently only major credit cards charged in USD or GBP are accepted.
• OnLive is looking into expanding their payment methods in the near future and PayPal is under consideration.
• As soon as Onlive has more information on customer usage patterns and general usage behavior has been analyzed, different pricing options may be offered that benefit both SLGo users and OnLive.

Make sure to turn into the Drax Files Radio Hour tomorrow to hear the full interviews and much more.

And just because she is so cute, here another picture of my three legged dog Lili with the tablet.

Spam, lovely spam

We’ve all seen it on a forum at one time or another; spam.

Lots of nonsense posts trying to lure people into clicking on something that will either make you visit an advertisement somewhere or some sort of scam that will try and steal your password or install some nasty virus on your computer.

This is relatively easy to avoid by installing some sort of captcha, an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.
This is is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human.

They have been around for over a decade and can be installed without too much effort and it will keep a lot of spammers from accessing your forum as most of these use software that can’t get past the Captcha.

It is quite surprising and frustrating that this somehow seems to have been forgotten to be installed in the official Second Life forum!

For as long as I can remember the forum is plagued by spam, quite regularly you will find walls of these posts plastered all over the forum.
Often it is quickly cleaned up by forum moderators, but it is of course ridiculous that it has not actually been fixed.
Spam like this can be avoided!

Second Life goes Mobile

Recently several SL users were invited to review the beta version of a new Second Life service; SL Go, by OnLive.

It has been a goal of Linden Lab to try and make SL work on mobile devices for a long time but it has always seemed near impossible.

Many claimed it couldn’t be done.
Well they’ve done it, and how!

Imagine being able to use SL on a tablet anywhere you want at ultra settings.
I’ve been doing just that.

OnLive offers ‘cloud gaming’, that means that you’re playing a game on one of their super servers and they stream it live onto your screen via the internet.
This does not just allow you to use SL on a mobile device, it also means that you get to use it at ultra settings.

Yes, shadows, dynamic lighting, far distance rendering, it all works!

See the official video here;

Smooth ad, but Second Life is about so much more than just shopping and dancing…

And here some official instructions;

I am not a very mobile type of person, as some of you may already know, I have a vintage lifestyle and don’t own any modern devices, except my computer that I need for my work.
I do not even have a tv or mobile phone.
Luckily OnLive was kind enough to lend me an android tablet, a whole new experience for me.
I also have a 5 year old macbook pro that barely managed to run SL at the very very lowest settings, so I tried SL Go on these two devices.

SL on my old Mac, regular top screen, SLGo bottom screen.

OnLive also offers the chance to use SL on your television and also works on other mobile gadgets.

When my SL laptop stopped working I was forced to use the old macbook pro for a while and it was a horrendous experience.
Everything grey, all the time.
But  now, thanks to OnLive, I could visit my favourite sims with pretty much no lag whatsoever and with graphics set to ultra!
As I don’t really have a need for mobile SL, I found this the most impressive use of the service.
If my main laptop breaks down again, I can still get to SL.
It opens SL up to people who don’t have top of the line computers, it allows everyone to experience SL at the settings it deserves.

I went outside with the tablet and tried it in a few public places, quite strange to be visiting 1920s Berlin while sitting on a bench at a canal in Amsterdam!
SL worked smoothly and without lag even with graphics settings set to ultra.
And 1920s Berlin can be a rather laggy place!
It does sometimes get a little fuzzy, but I expect that to be due to bad internet connection.
You see the regular SL viewer screen but a special overlay user interface has been added that makes using it with a touch screen a lot easier.
I even tried building with it and although it was a little tricky, it worked.

Of course it can’t be compared to the experience of using SL on a Alienware top of the range computer, like I do at home.
But as a mobile way to experience SL, it is a lot better than I could have imagined.

So in short, SL has managed to offer something that once seemed impossible; high quality SL for mobile devices.

At the moment a few things aren’t quite working yet, such as saving snapshots to your hard drive and voice chat.
Hopefully this will be possible in the near future and of course you can save your ultra settings made screenshots into your inventory, to be downloaded later.

It is no surprise that OnLive managed this so well, one of the people who worked on this is not only a regular and longtime SL resident, he is an ex-Linden!
Nate Barsetti, formerly Scout Linden, has been in SL for 7 years and now works for OnLive.
You can imagine that as someone who still uses SL regularly, Nate was in a very good position to help SL Go work properly.

OnLive is opening the Beta up to everyone as I write this but they expect to lose the beta label very quickly.
So why not give it a try yourself right away?

The SLGo website can be found here.

You can read the official Linden Lab announcement here.

As soon as you’ve signed up, you get a 20 minutes free trial.
If you plan to become a more regular user, you’ll have to purchase SL minutes packs,

• 1 hour will cost 2.50$
• 3 hours will cost 8$
• 10 hours will cost 25$

Will this open up SL to a lot of new people?
Regular OnLive users may be tempted to give this a try and people who’s regular computer can’t handle SL may give it another go, but I am not sure many people will be willing to pay what OnLive are charging for it at the moment.

Would you pay 3 bucks to go into SL for an hour?
I would only consider doing that for emergencies, when I need to be inworld for a few minutes to fix something or kick a griefer in the unmentionables.

Having said that, the OnLive experience is impressive, there is almost no lag, it loads a lot faster than most computers, it is mobile and it allows you to use your TV for SL.

So although I am very impressed with SLGo, I fear that the costs may keep a lot of people from using it more than just occasionally.

I hope Linden Lab realises this and makes a good deal for people with a premium account.
I think that this would be a great idea; Become a Premium SL user and get 100 minutes SLGo online for free each month!

Or maybe offer a free hour free for new accounts.
Signing up for SL? Welcome! Here is an hour of free SLGo.

I would also prefer a subscription fee, pay one amount per week regardless of how many hours you are online, in stead of per second.

Either way it IS a big step forward, something has been done that at first seemed impossible.
And also, not unimportant, this has mostly been a OnLive project, so it has cost Linden Lab very little time and effort.

Draxtor Despres made a video about his experience with SL Go, take a look;

And of course we will be discussing this in the next Drax Files Radio show this friday, make sure to call us at Skype; draxfiles

We want to hear what you think about this and if you have tried SL Go, let us know what it was like and end up in the broadcast!

For more (technical) details and background, make sure to check out Inara Pey’s blog.