Second Life Interesting Bits 2014-23

SL Go 7 Days

This past week the SL blogosphere has been talking about OnLive’s announcement that they now offer a 7 DAY trial period of their SL GO product. If you don’t know what SL Go is, OMG! Well, see #SecondLife Gets a Mobile App (early March 2014). Prior to this the trial period was far too short for anyone to get an idea of whether this was a useful service. This longer trail should allow one to use SL Go long enough to learn the basics and actually use it to gain a sense of what it is like.

OnLive 2014-10 Games Page

OnLive 2014-10 Games Page

The last few days I have been experimenting a bit with viewers, something I used to do frequently in my quest for the best viewer. Those were the days when viewers were each very different and had very different feature sets. To some extent that is still true, but I think much less so than in the past.

What I have found is that where FS and SL Viewer get 6 to 20 FPS in a crowd of avatars SL Go runs a pretty steady 40 to 50 FPS on the desktop and my S4 in the same crowds. Impressive.

You might want to give it a try.  Continue reading

Drax Files Radio Show #16

Drax has radio show #16 out. Ciaran Laval has a quick summary of the show, not much detail. See: The Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 16 – Drax Meets The Lindens.

Drax Files Radio

Drax Files Radio

If you do not want to take an hour to listen to the show, below I have my take from listening. Of course with that you get my opinions and biases affecting what I heard. So, listen to the original audio if you take exception to something. Also, I skip a lot and just touch on what I found interesting.

01:15 – Drax is, I think, pretending to be amazed that the Lindens are people with the usual human traits; emotions, hard working, enthusiastic, their own ideas…

01:35 – 04:00 – the obligatory promotional section. SL Go, an OnLive app, is a new sponsor of the Drax Files Radio Show. If you have not heard of SL Go… where have been? This is an app that allows tablets (and my Android phone) and older computers to access Second Life™ or other high-end video games. Drax and Jo relate some excellent user cases for SL Go. At US$1/hour or $10/month for unlimited time, this is a great possibility for many people. Listen to this section if you have an interest in alternate ways to access SL.

Continue reading

Drax Files Radio Hour #13

Drax Files Radio

Drax Files Radio

 Another show is out and I have time to listen and write about it. Ciaran and Daniel both have written about the latest show. I’ll try to add some more information to the topics.

SL Go

This week’s show gets into SL Go and its recent price changes, US$9.95 per month for unlimited use. That is a pretty good deal. SL Go also connects to Steam. So, you can play high-end games on Steam using your tablets and other low end computers.

I think many OnLive users are very happy with the service. I am certainly impressed with it. A number of SL users have commented positively about it too. Continue reading

VR Forecast

We have an ongoing debate… or maybe it is just a voicing of opinions… in Second Life™ about VR and the Oculus Rift. Will it be a game changer or a minor fad? Perhaps like the Space Navigator. A few people use it, but the majority have ignored it. And when will it arrive? We have no guaranteed answers, but we have some good predictions coming out of the game industry.

In January 2014 at Steam Developer Days Michael Abrash gave a talk about the state of VR and what he expects to happen over the next two years. The video runs about 28 minutes. I cover some of the points from it below as well as some other information.

We are starting to hear of industries that will support VR headsets ramping up. Companies have leaks and there are some dandies. See: Massive leak regarding Sony VR headset? The competition is heating up.

Of course the thing with leaks is they usually cannot be verified and are often from anonymous sources. If there is anything politicians have taught us, it is anyone quoting an anonymous source is not to be trusted. So, we do need to salt such information pretty heavily. But, we are starting to get more rumors and hear more little leaks. This we call smoke and smoke usually leads or at least alerts us to the fire, the reality. Continue reading

Drax Radio #9

Drax Files Radio

Drax Files Radio

This show is mostly about the new service SL Go provided by OnLive™. Drax has been trying out the SL Go service on a tablet and in another scenario using the LEAP Motion controller. Check his site for a video on LEAP.

Drax Show #9 download – right-click.

Twitch

Twitch is mentioned as going mobile (05:00+/-). It is another game streaming service, sort of. You can put or will be able to put your video captures of 3D game play on Twitch to show others. Provided game companies incorporate the features into their games as they are currently releasing a developers SDK.

They are thinking it will work by capturing the game play and optionally a  picture within a picture of you as you play from the front facing camera. For those that would like to promote Second Life™ or their Second Life products this seems an interesting possibility. Continue reading