You Can Stream Second Life on an Old Laptop With SL Go & It's Awesome (In My Totally Biased Opinion)

SL Go streaming of Second Life for mobile devices seemed like a good idea when I started consulting with OnLive on the service last year, but as I quickly realized from hands-on experience, many SLers will probably enjoy using SL Go from their old laptops even more. I've been using SL Go on my small Dell netbook for months, and it's my personal preference, because once you launch it from OnLive's PC client, you get full access to the full Second Life user interface. (Which is very necessary for me to easily blog about Second Life, and I'm guessing it's pretty important for many other SL content creators.) But even over that, there's the effortless, "it just works" pleasure of accessing Second Life at its best, with dynamic shadows and little lag.

But don't take it on just my say-so -- here's unedited, untouched footage taken using SL Go that I shot last night. Watch for the giant cyberpunk Minotaur (oh yes):

Video footage shot in an extremely well-attended sci-fi roleplaying sim called Remnants of Earth, which I just stumbled into. (Because virtual serendipity is really only possible without massive lag.)

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Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

I seriously want to use this, especially now that the pricing model is the very one I asked for. But the remote desktop angle is freaking me out since the notion entered my mind.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

I would love to try this but it won't accept my credit card unlike every other company I deal with. Intriguingly my credit card company rang me up to report a suspicious transaction from them as they tried to make a 0.00 deduction (again something normal companies don't do).

[Adeon Writer]

I already pay too much in teir, tacking on an extra 10 usd is just bleeding me dry.

[AmandaD]

It works great on my Nook HD tablet. I tried it on my computer and it worked well but the computer is new and runs SL well anyway so I won't be changing my viewer for my everyday SL.

[TracyRedAngel]

I think they really should add the option to use Paypal, or even purchased game cards.
I've been using it on my 5-year old iMac and it does run very nicely. It is a more limited viewer (no Advanced or Debug menus) but eh, it's great for easily navigating really busy events that have over 50 avatars. If you're into SL photography, you won't be able to take mega-high resolution images. You're limited to screen size and you can't save to your desktop. You CAN email snapshots however.
I haven't played around too much with wind lights, but the viewer only has the bare minimum SL wind lights. I'm not sure if there is any way to import wind lights...I hope so!
It's absolutely worth trying out for $1 an hour, or even get a month subscription if you think you might use it longer. I don't know if I'll renew after this month is up because My ol' iMac runs SL okay enough, and my husband's PC runs SL every bit as fast as SL Go. If I had a tablet....I would absolutely renew. It's pretty cool.

[TracyRedAngel]

I also think more people would sign up if they got a special rate with an SL Premium membership...and maybe if you could pay for a subscription with lindens.

[EhrmanDigfoot]

I signed up the other day and though I had some trouble actually finding SL in the Onlive Mac Desktop app (even after you purchase a subscription, SL is hidden under three submenus) I've been impressed with it so far. My only complaint is that being limited to the 720p resolution you really are making a tradeoff. My older mac can now handle shadows and AO pretty nicely even though it's stuck using OpenGL 2.0, but with Onlive I can extend the draw distance to 512 and still have a high framerate without putting any strain on my hardware. Even if they cannot fully open the debug settings for use, it would also be nice if they increased the RenderVolumeLOD factor for the viewer.