Does anyone else use Shadow's VM to play Second Life?

[Kannakopi]

Shadow is sort of a new company that specializes in virtual machines fit for high end gaming. I have a lower end graphics card and though it is not integrated it isn't really up for even semi-demanding games. Which is normally fine for me. I prefer old school RPGs 90% of the time. But I've always wanted to come back to SL so I looked into Shadow's services and decided to do a trial even though the reviews for the service ranged from PERFECTION to DOESN'T WORK WELL FOR ME. I've been using it for about a day and a half now for this and Fortnite and I think I'm in the former category thus far. I think the outcome you get really does depend on if you are close to one of their servers and how speedy your net connection is. 

So I decided to make this post to A) See how many others use Shadow and if so what are their results and B) Spread the word of Shadow for those who are dealing with dismal Desktops and crummy Chromebooks. I think for those struggling to play SL or want to play it at the highest settings but don't have the hardware to back it up, then maybe Shadow's 10 day $10 dollar trial is worth a shot. 

Apparently, it also works for iOS and Android too but I haven't tried those yet. 

 

 

[animats]

It's expensive. $49.95 per month, or $419.40 per year. It's not too clear from the site, but it seems you could be in SL 24/7 for that. Bright Canopy charges $17 per month, but you only get 10 hours.

It would be interesting to try SL from a streaming server located very close to, or in, the SL data center in Phoenix, AZ. That would reduce the ping time to a very low value.

There's a school of thought that streaming gaming is the future. That's what Google's Stadia is all about. It takes more bandwidth to get SL's content to the viewer than a video stream requires.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

$49 for a month could pay for a decent graphics card for the dismal desktop. For $419 you could put together a pretty decent SL desktop rig.

[Bree Giffen]

Animats, I think you are looking at something else. I see $25 a month for annual plan and $35 a month for monthly. $300 or $420. I think one can build/buy a nice computer for 3 years of this service and a nice computer works well for non-gaming offline applications. It might be right for some people though. People with fast internet.

[Coffee Pancake]

At typical credit card APR, you could spend $350 on a RTX2060 and pay it off over 18 months at $24 a month. $250 paid off over 12 months at $24 will buy you a 1060 .. $150 over 6 .. RX 570

I'm not advocating using a CC, just sayin .. even at it's cheapest, it's a worse deal than the worse deal on a gfx card.