The app installs quickly. Opening the app I hit a massive wall of text license agreement. Past that, I can use my existing OnLive account. But very quickly I hit a wall. No free 20 minute trial at this point, they want my credit card and demand I purchase minutes right now, they give me a link and disconnected me. Damn. How rude.
The OnLive site is really bad with my S4. You need a bigger screen to use it. Tablets are what they say they support, so I know I’m pushing it. But, lots of us will. Of all the people I know, no one carries their tablet around. The tablets are just too big. But, my S4 is too small for playing or using the web site, which ignores pinch gestures in most places. But, I think with a stylus it will be quit usable n my S4.
Once you give them a credit card, no PayPal – which with all the hacker break-ins seems like a must have, you have the choice of a Free 20 Minute Trail, 1 Hours US$3, 3 Hours $8 or 10 hours $25. So, it’s one of those lame its free but give me your credit card sites. I guess they have no idea what the demographic for SL is. Of course OnLive and Linden Lab may both be counting on new users unfamiliar with Second Life.
No anonymity here. But, I doubt it would be easy to track back to OnLive from within SL.
After signup you then you come to the tutorial video I have below and a link to the Google Play Store. At this point I can move back over to my S4 and play. SL works amazingly well on my S4. I am horribly clumsy with my Controls. What I find very quickly is that I need a stylus. Between my fingers and the length of my nails it’s very hard to select controls. I’ve even shortened them since getting my S4.
OnLive SL Go Login
You can imagine how small the ‘viewer’s’ controls are when the above image is 4.375 inches (11.11cm) wide.
On my S4 the controls are very touchy. I need some way to adjust the sensitivity of the controls. I know that there are settings within the standard SL Viewer for the Space Navigator and joysticks. But, until I have a stylus I am not going to attack that task. Plus, I don’t know if it’ll work for the touch controls. But, this is certainly an area for improvement in the app.
I found I was running a new install of an SL Viewer. All my UI choices are gone. But, that would be the case when I start a viewer on any new device. I won’t try to change them until I have a stylus. But, as much stuff as is tied together on mobile devices it was a bit of a surprise, like Oh! Duh!
Performance
The OnLive system tests your connection if it encounters problems. I was multi-tasking and watching a video and downloading software when I first tried to login. It takes 3 minutes or so. If your connection is not cutting it they will not stream to you. They link you to their support pages if the test fails. Close off all the other users on your access point and run the test again.
My experience is I DO NOT want to play a combat games via OnLive from my S4. I’ve tried. The controls were too sluggish. And for many games my fingers are just too big and they really aren’t all that big. For use with Second Life, the speed should be just fine. At least it was for me.
This morning I find the OnLive site especially slow from my Android. But, the SL Go app was fine. I saw no more lag than I would from my desktop and generally less.
“OnLive is having to maintain some high-end servers and burn bandwidth. I’m surprised they have it down this low.”
Really? I know you mentioned their other services, but considering they’re offering games like Witcher 2, Borderlands and hundreds of other games all for $9.99 a month, and have a $14.99 a month offering for games we’ve purchased from places like Steam that they’ll stream over the cloud…how’s it surprising Second Life for $3 an hour is “down this low”?
I get it that operating the Second Life client is different than Witcher 2, or multiplayer games on OnLive. Second Life is constantly downloading stuff and writing to disk, it streams music and each client has to know about tens of other avatars about, it loads shared media webpages and does some other exceptional things that escape me right now, but does this different really create the gulf between $3/hour and $10/month?
Surprised that you think this price point is low, I’m not sure what compared to. It’s insanely high even compared to OnLive’s other services.
If it is so high, you should be able to compete.
Or you know, as a consumer, just opt out.
But I was wondering how you arrived at being surprised that the price was “this low”. Guess you don’t want to discuss that, no biggie.
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