First things first, I haven’t been involved in the beta testing for SL Go, I haven’t been lent a tablet by the people behind the project and I haven’t spent much time using it. If you want an in depth and what appears to be a very balanced review, go and read Inara Pey’s blog post on the matter. Inara’s post is important as it explains some of the pitfalls of SL Go and how it’s not the full Second Life experience, due in part to security issues. However it’s not that watered down an experience.
If you’re wondering what SL Go is, Linden Lab have blogged about it:
OnLive, the leader in cloud gaming, today released an exciting new service for Second Life users. SL Go, now in open beta, is a mobile Second Life viewer for Android that delivers a fully immersive desktop-like experience on tablets.
With SL Go, you can experience Second Life from anywhere you have Wi-Fi or 4G connectivity, with ultra high-quality graphics, full shaders, shadows, and the Advanced Lightning Model on Android devices. Not only can you get high-quality graphics on a low-powered device, but you also don’t have to sacrifice frame rate or draw distance for high fidelity inworld explorations. Thanks to super-fast gigabit connections with OnLive’s high-performance gaming servers, objects and textures rez quickly when logging in and teleporting. OnLive has clocked the SL Go viewer at upwards of 200 fps set to Ultra with Maximum Render Distance, allowing people to participate in events, engage in combat games, and generally enjoy immersion in Second Life at a level never before possible on a mobile device.
With SL Go, OnLive has brought touchscreen interaction to the Second Life experience, but if you prefer keyboard and mouse, you can opt to connect these devices and interact with your friends in the same way you always have. SL Go gives you access to edit menus, inventory, preference settings and chat management just like the Second Life Viewer on your home computer.
There are more details in the blog post, such as how you go about signing up for an account, pricing etc. First things first, it works and it works bloody well. There are no two ways about this, even during my brief testing period I could see that this service delivers.
Obviously the experience is different to using Second Life on a PC. Movement and such like are different, but for those who have experience with tablets and especially playing games with them, the experience is likely to be quite rewarding.
Point and click and mouse view, concepts I barely touch in Second Life on a PC are life savers on a tablet for me, but of course with a tablet you also get to pinch, zoom and drag, which actually adds something to the experience.
In terms of overall performance, it feels smooth. The service itself claims to be able to deliver the following:
Enjoy Second Life at speeds over 50 FPS with a 512-meter draw distance. During each secure session, a powerful cloud-based server streams SL in full 3D to your mobile device in real time over any fast Internet connection.
Stay connected to your in-world friends and events. Manage your virtual business from anywhere you can get online. You’ll have access to the full Second Life Viewer interface, plus touch controls for navigation. Leave your desktop computer at home and let us do the heavy lifting.
A point to note here is that although the talk is mostly about the mobile experience, you can actually use this on a PC, MAC or even your television if its capable. This may well mean that people with older hardware get a better experience via this technology. I can’t vouch for that as I haven’t configured my firewall to work with the desktop client, but there could well be potential there.
However, there has to be a however and in this case it’s the pricing, which may well be a massive hurdle. Second Life users are well used to pricing being a massive hurdle. The pricing for this service is:
UK Pricing
- 1 Hour – £2.00
- 3 Hours (10% Off) – £5.40
- 10 Hours (15% off) – £17.00
USA Pricing
- 1 Hour – $3.00
- 3 Hours – $8.00
- 10 Hours – $25.00
I don’t know what the pricing is for Canada. The service is currently only being advertised as being available in North America and the UK, although Jo Yardley was involved in the beta testing and she lives in Holland.
The pricing would get very expensive very quickly for anyone who used the service often, which means it’s unlikely to be used often by anyone. I don’t know if Linden Lab can negotiate a deal to give premium members and estate owners some free time per month for this, there should be wiggle room for that and it may create an opportunity to offer different premium packages, for example you get a couple of hours of SL Go time per month instead of your free 512M tier. As an option that may work.
However like tier, the SL Go pricing is a tad on the high side. Used infrequently there’s a lot of potential here but for a regular service, it’s a very expensive proposition.
This launch is as much about the relaunch of Onlive as it is about the SL Go client for Second Life. Many felt Onlive was dead and buried, however its clearly not, it’s back with a vengeance. Over time it may develop into the sort of streaming service people hoped it would. In terms of delivery and technology, this really is a good product but the pricing certainly needs some careful attention if it’s to have any longevity.
The pricing model is an issue – particularly where the idea of SL Go being an alternative for those on low-end computers. In terms of the very occasional use while on the move, I’m not so sure it’s that bad. Not brilliant, but not at all a case of the entire sky falling in, as is being painted across Plurk right now.
As it is, an hour of *needed* on-line time costs less than a cup of coffee from Costas. If it allows someone to take care of something like a customer issue or get in-world for an event they’d otherwise miss, it’s potentially not a big ask.
But if we’re talking about broader use of the service (which, despite the comments about low-end systems, OnLive acrutally aren’t – and Drax’s interview with Nate will hopefully show), then most certainly, the pricing structure does need to be revisited.
The security issues, from a usage perspective, are likely to be minor for “casual” users (who are unlikely to use the Advanced and Develop menus that much anyway). But if you like to have certain settings tweaked, the lack of the Advanced menu in particular is a nuisance – no debugs settings, so no way to adjust LOD or set better camera offsets, for example.
The capabilities which are lacking are on something of a roadmap for further development – but time will tell on these.
As I replied to you in your blog post, the costa issue gets brought up when people complain about the cost of Elder Scrolls Online and that’s only USD$15 a month, that’s 50 cents a day but people don’t think in those terms.
Like the Elder Scrolls Online, this pricing model is in many ways out of date and flying in the face of where pricing models are headed in general. In Virtual World terms, the lessons from Kitely haven’t been heeded. Although the Kitely time based model was different, it was also a lesson in how people don’t like clock watching.
The pricing model will be the downfall here, I don’t do Plurk, so haven’t seen the comments but it will be the number one hurdle to widespread acceptance by a country mile. I honestly can’t see this having any longevity with that pricing model and that is a shame because the technology is brilliant.
Don’t get me wrong; as stated in my reply to your comment on my blog (are you sure it wouldn’t be easier if we didn’t simply combine blogs? 🙂 ), and stated above, I do see the pricing model as a issue. But one that needs a little perspective from other quarters.
Reaction in some quarters has been ranging from *any* cost to the user is outrageous, through to this being some kind of initial run by LL to introduce a subscription payment system by stealth.
And that said, the coffee analogy does stand, although very clearly demarked, as I’ve again said above. What doesn’t stand at all, is that with this model, SL Go can never really become a true alternative means of accessing SL – say, for example, when on is away on vacation and is in need of a casual SL fix of loitering in-world with friends. But again, in some fairness to OnLive (or at least Nate Barsetti), that isn’t the kind of use OnLive are aiming at.
Yet.
We also potentially need to remember this is a beta; much is in a state of flux. There may still be tim to constructively persuade OnLive to reconsider pricing.
For me is not the product in itself, is that they use it as a justification regarding the change of the Tos!
So now lets see, cause if the product will not have a lot of impact on a reg user, the Tos changes did!
Who said this was the reason for the TOS change? I saw that argument used early on in the process, but from users rather than LL.
I suspect that putting SL Go on a subscription basis (as well as pay-per-unit-time?) would be a good move. You tend to forget about a subscription, but unless you are using SL Go to allow access on the move or from an unusual location, the pay-per-hour is going to be offputting for some people.
Not that it’s actually expensive. The comment about an hour of SL Go being the price of a coffee is accurate – a regular latte at Costa in the UK is around the £2.15 mark, and I bet you generally buy a medium (£2.45) rather than a regular, don’t you… So the pricing is largely a matter of perception.
I hope that OnLive will look carefully at the billing model and listen to comments from people using the system – and I hope users will make their views known. The technology is excellent and works extremely impressively and well IMO. So I would not want people to be put off by a billing system they don’t like and thus miss out.
I don’t know how big the crossover is – or could become – between regular gamers and SL Residents. If it’s significant – and perhaps even if it isn’t – then including SL Go is a monthly subscription package with a selection of games would be good and would encourage existing game customers to look at SL. Alternatively, simply offering a subscription to SL Go in addition to the pay-per-hour approach would allow (if priced in line with existing OnLive subs) people who wanted to spend a lot of time in world to do so at an affordable price, while the user who usually comes in a different way would be able to do so via the hourly rate.
In any event, technologically this system is a great development. OnLive simply want to be sure they don’t limit its success as a result of billing models that don’t suit the user. If this was to fail not because of the technology but simply because of the billing method, it would be a great shame.
One final note: to those who think Linden Lab should have been doing something else instead of wasting their time on making tablet access to SL available, bear in mind this is an OnLive project and not an LL one. Think of it as a new third-party viewer.
I’m going to have to do a blog post on the coffee example, also if you work in a place with a Costa franchies it’s cheaper than the high street 😉
I largely agree with everything you say, the technology is excellent, it works wonderfully well and therefore it would be a crying shame if this product floundered because the price is too high a barrier.
All i feel is that i can explore and travel by using planes, cars, whatever but teleport in a much better way!
All i know is that more and more are being able to enjoy Sailing cruises or just pure and simple, trips, where crossing more then 50 sims is as natural!
All i can dream is to see more being able to do so, and if SLGo will allow more to do so, the better!
But SL needs much more the this to survive, still needs clarification about the Tos changes, still needs to let the majority that uses it as a sort of income, to survive!