Linden Lab Bringing Back Second Life Cloud Streaming for the Web?

What would you do if you could run #SecondLife in a browser?

— AlexaLinden (@AlexaLindenLL) July 18, 2022

Alexa Linden, director of Product at Linden Lab, just posted this casual but tantalizing question to Twitter: "What would you do if you could run #SecondLife in a browser?"

Which is a great and highly specific question to ask!

Second Life has actually done at least two official trials running Second Life through cloud streaming -- first to the web in 2010, via Gaikai, and then (in a very ambitious rollout) in 2014, with OnLive. Look:

As I wrote back then:

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.

OnLive since went defunct, and was bought for scraps by Sony, but I was told that SL Go was seeing good traction. The head of the OnLive rollout since told me in 2022 that another streaming option could be feasible for Second Life:

"SL Go was reliant on a private network of over 5000 servers in datacenters around the globe," as Dennis puts  it. "That's why they went down.  OnLive was just WAY too expensive to justify the cost.

"Now, if you could promise 10,000 monthly users (or more!) it starts to look like you could break even.  Even so, just to setup the infrastructure would be at least a few million, if not more.

"The only hope for something like this would be to piggy back on other cloud-streaming solutions." As an example, he points to a startup called Frame; presumably Google Stadia could also qualify.

So it's feasible! In fact it becomes incrementally more feasible every year. If I had to guess, Linden Lab is still considering it as a possibility, but hasn't yet gone forward with a rollout; and that Alexa is checking the temperature with her tweet, to see how much interest there is.  Anyway, more when I know more!

Hat tip: Gogo!

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

Second life needs to run a browser but it needs to not be cloud rendered.

The (ironically named) Cloud Party did it. And it had way better graphic capabilities than Second Life ever could achieve (custom shaders etc) so it’s totally possible. It’s just a lot of work. More work than Linden is willing to do. They will just do a cloud rendered solution. But you can’t provide that for free. People will not pay for it. It needs to be free. You can’t do cloud computing for free. It’s not a solution.

[Mondy]

I used Cloud Party until it got cancelled. Better graphic capabilities? You're kidding right? https://modemworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/cp-26.jpg

[Wagner James Au]

In fairness, experienced creators could (and did) some really cool stuff on it:

https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/08/cloud-party-rustica.html

[Adeon Writer]

> I used Cloud Party until it got cancelled. Better graphic capabilities? You're kidding right?

Absolutely. Even in your blank screenshot, a careful eye can tell. Would you like me to post ugly empty Second Life images, too? Since that's what most of mainland looks like.

[Luther Weymann]

Suppose you could run Second Life in a browser. In that case, you could have the following: One person with a Premium Account wants to have a company meeting with nine people who have never registered or been in SL. With a Premium Account, one person pulls down an SL menu in their viewer or goes to the SL website and logs in. They fill out the meeting form for a date and time ten-person meeting at a conference table with voice and “meeting chat” (not group). All the meeting names and email addresses are filled in, and they click the Ok button. SL sends emails with the date and time and a Click Here To Attend link. The group invitees click the attend link and are logged directly into a meeting virtually created on SL’s “meeting land” area, sitting in a chair at a conference table. No registration, no additional anything, just direct login. They are assigned androgynous avatars. They cannot get up to walk around at the SL-created conference table, cannot rez, and are restricted to only sit, voice, and chat during this meeting. At the end of the session, when the meeting organizer clicks an SL viewer button to end the meeting, the attendees get a popup encouraging them to register for SL. That’s one way of using a web browser to promote company and group voice and chat meetings in SL.

[wheredle]

Absolutely. A careful eye can tell even in your blank screenshot. Do you want me to post awful empty Second Life photographs as well? Because it is how the majority of the mainland appears