Second Life on nVidia Geforce NOW or similar?

[FastTortillaJuice]

Since I'm a laptop user most of the time (except when I'm home and can use the gaming desktop), I find it sometimes very convenient to use nVidia Geforce NOW for playing some games. This is a sort of cloud-based virtual GPU, that is, the graphics run on a server with beefy GPUs somewhere and the client (which is very optimized) just serves the graphics to my laptop.

The thing is, only some games are supported, and Second Life, not being quite a game, is not among those. Is it possible to run Second Life Viewer (or some other viewer) on one of these cloud-based services, so that I can browse SL when on the go?

[Kathrine Jansma]

There are some generic virtual desktop services that offer similar things that would allow installing a SL Viewer.

Googling finds some of those, for example https://shadow.tech

There are probably a lot of alternatives around, that offer virtual desktop services.

[animats]

I'd like to see SL on NVidia's GeForce Now. It's a moderate-priced service ($9/month for 6 hours a day access) that should be able to run a viewer. There's even a free tier, although you have to wait to get in and get kicked off after an hour. But the end user can't load a new game; a developer has to set that up.

There are other services, such as Shadow ($30/month) that let you rent a computer in a data center, but you have to do some sysadmin work to upload a viewer and get it running. Other cloud gaming services have come and gone. Most of them were reselling Amazon Web Services, and the pricing was too high or they were running at a loss to get market share and went bust.

Google Stadia is no good; they insist on payments going through Google Pay. Stadia is probably going to shut down soon, anyway.

Not sure about Vortex, which is new.

 

[FastTortillaJuice]

Hadn't heard of Shadow, I'm going to have to give them a go!

There was Paperspace, but haven't had a great experience with them, too laggy. I've also tried AWS and similar a couple times in the past and recently, with Windows boxes, and have never found any at reasonable prices that offers a latency that gets anywhere near barely usable for simple tasks, let alone graphics intensive ones like a viewer. That's why I'm the more impressed with GeForce NOW, it's quite affordable and very very snappy. Even on the free tier I can enjoy a game or two once in a while on my laptop

My experience with remote Linux desktops isn't much better, but maybe worth another go? Though I suspect VNC isn't made for snappy high definition graphics...

Google Stadia... well, since I already own some Steam games I see no point in purchasing everything again just to play on it. Plus, it doesn't have SL available either that I know of.

So maybe we can hope that nVidia decides to add a SL viewer in their offer... in the meantime, if I get good results with Shadow, I'll post about them.

[FastTortillaJuice]

Quick update: Shadow is only available in the US, so no luck.

Edited February 23, 2022 by FastTortillaJuice

[Paul Hexem]

I've had decent results with Splashtop.

[FastTortillaJuice]

Incidentally, I just bought an nVidia GPU, and the combo GeForce Experience + Moonlight kind of works.

[animats]

On 2/22/2022 at 11:01 AM, animats said:

Not sure about Vortex, which is new.

Vortex is no longer taking new signups, and their blog is an ad for Google Stadia, so they have probably been eaten and are now being digested.

On 2/27/2022 at 1:57 AM, Paul Hexem said:

I've had decent results with Splashtop.

No mention of what GPU you get. That may OK for SL at low settings, but it's not gamer-level.

[Paul Hexem]

2 hours ago, animats said:

Vortex is no longer taking new signups, and their blog is an ad for Google Stadia, so they have probably been eaten and are now being digested.

No mention of what GPU you get. That may OK for SL at low settings, but it's not gamer-level.

RTX2070.

Visually it's fine. Don't try cam with your mouse or  play any games in mouselook though. Makes things go haywire. Something to do with mouse capture.

[Ardy Lay]

6 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Don't try cam with your mouse or  play any games in mouselook though. Makes things go haywire. Something to do with mouse capture.

Hmm, I wonder if debug setting DisableMouseWarp = TRUE would help with this?  I use the heck out of it.

[MaxCraxster]

On 3/9/2022 at 10:19 PM, Ardy Lay said:

Hmm, I wonder if debug setting DisableMouseWarp = TRUE would help with this?  I use the heck out of it.

Wow!  This actually works for me using Shadow PC and the Alchemy SL viewer while Alt Cam Viewing - Zooming. It seems to cure the haywire mouse zoom into avatar.  Thanks for the suggestion.

I had been struggling with this for a year now on Shadow PC. I thought I had previously tried it on my previous go to viewer (Firestorm on Shadow PC) when you suggested it here, and I thought it didn't seem to work but I don't recall if I tried it thoroughly enough at the time, but since it seems to work now on Shadow PC / Alchemy, I'll stick with it.

I'm tempted to run another issue past you about your thoughts on Crowded Sims Data Exchange causing low frame rates but I haven't posted that yet. In the 16 years I've been using SL I've always noticed crowded sims (night clubs with 50 to 100 people) often bring the frame rates down to 5 to 10 no matter what the client PC is running for latest hardware. I was hoping that eventually an alternative viewer could solve that with a patch of some kind to be able to filter out all the data going back and forth from all the servers / clients or use a DLSS3 style of ai generated frames to make a full sim at least feel like it's not getting locked at 5 to 10 FPS when not viewing any avatars at all (besides own avatar). Maybe I'll start that thread soon and post the link to it here or something. thanks again.

 

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by MaxCraxster

[Kavarek]

you could install firestorm on shadowtech to log in and run it, not real beefy as my desktops speaks are better, but higher then most laptops. Once you logout of shadowtech the game and desktop will go into sleep mode. 

[MaxCraxster]

Update:

I tried DisableMouseWarp on the latest version of Firestorm again and I can confirm that with my Shadow and Firestorm, the setting does NOT work.

But it does work with Shadow and Alchemy.  So for now I am sticking with Shadow and Alchemy.

 

Edited February 19, 2023 by MaxCraxster

[animats]

On 2/22/2022 at 11:01 AM, animats said:

Not sure about Vortex, which is new.

A year later...

• Vortex.gg shut down on Feb 28, 2022.
• Stadia shut down on January 23. 2023.

NVidia GeForce Now is still up and running, but the price has gone up. They're really the only gamer PC level cloud gaming company left that could run Second Life at a reasonable price point. Shadow PC is too expensive.