Second Life Bright Canopy Update

Inara has a good summary of what has happened and what is going on with Bright Canopy, the SL Go replacement. The TL:DR is simple. User behavior was not what the Bright Canopy peeps expected. The change from expected behavior drove up backend costs of the service. They were losing money and things had to change. Thus the service shut down.

See: Bright Canopy update

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Basically, no one other than Amazon is making money from this project. If they cannot figure out how to turn that around, expect the doors to close.

There is a future in being able to stream high end games. With VR coming there will likely be more demand for the service. The challenges and/or symbiosis come from Intel, who is working to add more graphics power to their CPU, Apple and others wanting to challenge the NetFlix style streaming services and add gaming, those battling to take over cable and satellite delivery services, and others that want to add gaming as a facet of their entertainment services.

My point is there is industry interest in what Bright Canopy is doing. There may eventually be some way to deliver a SL/Sansar experience to lesser powered hardware.  But, as fast as hardware is developing/advancing the need deceases each year. That makes it hard to predict whether Bright Canopy will find an economic model that fits enough people’s needs for their service to remain viable. It is life and death for them, so the motivation is there. At some point the hardware and tech they need will be cheap enough, it is just a matter of timing.

How to Stream Second Life: Bright Canopy

New streaming services are popping up to replace OnLive. Soon you should be able to once again stream Second Life™ to your device of choice… at least for a time.

I'm just your average ordinary everyday superhero

I’m just your average ordinary everyday superhero by Jordy Zipdash, on Flickr

Ciaran Laval has an article up about possible replacements for SL Go, the app and service for streaming Second Life™ to mobile devices. Bright Canopy is one of those working to take the place of Onlive, SL Go’s creator. See: Bright Canopy Beta Testing Frame For Second Life Streaming In A Web BrowserContinue reading

Second Life: SL Go’s Demise Does Affect You

Touch Arcade has an article up that gets into the politics and corporate infighting that is affecting us all. See: Onlive is Dead – What does this mean for Game Streaming on iOS? Carter Dotson is the author. I think Carter has made several mistakes in his (?) analysis. But, overall however we get there the result is the same.

Nomnomnom!

Nomnomnom! by Caitlin ‘Caity’ Tobias, on Flickr

My primary take away is Carter is saying that Sony is attempting to break Apple’s choke hold on game streaming for mobile devices. He could be right about that. The idea that if something is not available for iOS via the Apple Store, it loses a huge market share is true. But, I am not sure you can base the hypothesis Apple has a stranglehold on the gaming market.  Continue reading

Second Life: Crap… SL Go Closing

They could not announce this yesterday. No one would have believed it. I still chased down the announcement just to be sure. It is on the SL Go site.

SL Go Closing

SL Go Closing

It seems SL Go was bought out by Sony. There has to be some tech there that Sony wants for their VR. But, they aren’t interested in continuing the SL Go services. So, we have a number of users that are screwed.

However, SL Go is free until the end of the month, April 30, 2015. Click.

Tech Crunch has more details. See: Sony Is Buying OnLive’s 140 Cloud Gaming Patents.