{"id":3738,"date":"2014-03-05T20:01:32","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T20:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=3738"},"modified":"2014-03-05T20:01:32","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T20:01:32","slug":"sl-go-brilliant-technology-shame-about-the-pricing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=3738","title":{"rendered":"SL Go – Brilliant Technology Shame About The Pricing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

If you’re wondering what SL Go is, Linden Lab have blogged about it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

OnLive, the leader in cloud gaming, today released an exciting new service for Second Life users. SL Go<\/a>, now in open beta, is a mobile Second Life viewer for Android that delivers a fully immersive desktop-like experience on tablets.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019t have to sacrifice frame rate or draw distance for high fidelity inworld explorations. Thanks to super-fast gigabit connections with OnLive\u2019s 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In terms of overall performance, it feels smooth. The service itself claims to be able to deliver the following:<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stay connected to your in-world friends and events. Manage your virtual business from anywhere you can get online. You\u2019ll 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.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

UK Pricing<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n