LL partnering with Speedlight & PremPlus gets Speedlight benefits

[Blaise Glendevon]

5 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

No, I don't. This was from discussions with Oz when he ran the Open Development User Group. I have some of the chat logs from those meetings still but I am not going to post them here to satisfy you as the information is available elsewhere too.

[Citation Needed]

[NevaehHeartstrings]

Censored

Edited October 19, 2022 by NevaehHeartstrings
Removed due to Forum Bullies

[Blaise Glendevon]

They are capable of loading the world, sure.

They are not as enjoyable to use for long periods of time. Squinting at a display while you try and click on a discrete box at a shopping event to get the one item you want in a sea of clickies on a touch screen sounds exhausting. And just forget postage stamp size screenshots. Mobile may be a convenience for some people, but it's never going to be the full meal of Second Life use.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

9 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Speedlight is completely free to use with limitations.  One of those being 1 hour at a time.  But, when your hour is up, you can simply restart endlessly.

Isn't it 6 hours before you get logged out and can immediately log back in?

[belindacarson]

9 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Isn't it 6 hours before you get logged out and can immediately log back in?

It certainly is wulfie.

 

I made an alt to test it. 

 

Nice to see somebody else checks facts before posting too 😃

[Coffee Pancake]

Oh no ... 

Dump trucks have wheels. 

F1 cars have wheels.

 

Just because your phone can render a highly tailored workload at a decent framerate does not automatically mean it can render SL content. This is literally comparing F1 cars and dump trucks and pointing at the wheels as proof.

Game content, mobile game content especially, are a highly optimized dance between the assets being rendered, the engine rendering them and the hardware doing the work. These are F1 cars, running on special tires, special fuel, special track, with special engines and massive teams of highly skilled multi discipline engineers.

How content is packaged and processed before its rendered has a huge impact on how fast it can be rendered.

Games don't do the processing. SL does a LOT of processing .. which means it isn't spending that time rendering.

 

SL is not going to run on a gamers smart phone. Not compared to a PC pulling hundreds of watts from the wall and heating your house in the winter.

but but muh lumiya .. Was bad at rendering, very slow,  and routinely crashed when it ran out of memory, or over heats and the poor potato phone kills it to save itself from letting the smoke out. It was a novelty. 

[Rowan Amore]

55 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Isn't it 6 hours before you get logged out and can immediately log back in?

I was going from a post from the Speedlight creator that I'd read...

Free avatars can perform all the usual functions: chat, teleport, send and receive money. They miss some "gold" features like the Mass IM tool, and their online time is limited to 1 hour session (you can login back immediately tho).

On 2/7/2020 at 5:20 PM, Glaznah Gassner said:

Hello everyone,

This is an official thread for SpeedLight web viewer (consider it a continuation of this question thread). I am Glaznah Gassner, the creator and the CEO.

About SpeedLight

SpeedLight is the web viewer. It works both on desktop PCs and mobile devices (we also have a mobile app, but only for Patreon patrons for now). This means that there's nothing to download; you can login to SL at any time, from any device and on the go. SpeedLight is an approved SL Third Party Viewer.

SpeedLight already provides the most important features (and we add more every week):

• Local chat and IMs
• Groups and group chats
• Inventory and L$ balance management
• ...and other features listed here (with some unique features like L$ transactions history and IM offline access)

We are currently missing the very important feature: the world 3D view. It will become available later (we have it working but without avatars rendered yet).

Tech side

SpeedLight viewer works in your browser with some heavy processes running on our servers. This approach has both advantages (you can switch the devices seamlessly, leave avatar online while browser is closed) and disadvantages (servers cost us money).

Our servers never receive your Second Life passwords: your browser sends them directly to SL login servers. SpeedLight server only gets the one-time login token (which can be used only once and stays actual while avatar is online).

Our team consists of 3 developers, an UI/UX designer, technical writer, server admins and support crew.

Safety side

I understand that there are a lot of concerns: both against a new tool and regarding an unusual web viewer.

First of all, as mentioned above, we never have an access to your SL credentials. They are being sent from a local browser directly to SL login servers. We also try to care about other sensitive data: with current SpeedLight version you can end-to-end encrypt your IMs. They are stored encrypted in our database, and being decrypted on your side (protected by your own "IMs history password").

Do we send/steal your credentials elsewhere? No. And, actually, the web viewer's traffic can be examined easier than a desktop software. Any browser allows inspecting all the data being sent and received. This is a techy and time-consumptive work, but it can be performed at any moment.

Supporting SpeedLight

SpeedLight requires money to maintain servers and development. There are two types of avatars: free and paid.

Free avatars can perform all the usual functions: chat, teleport, send and receive money. They miss some "gold" features like the Mass IM tool, and their online time is limited to 1 hour session (you can login back immediately tho).

We earn money by providing the "Gold facility" features to paid avatars. Gold costs L$1990 per month (or USD $8 at Patreon).

---

I'm working in SL since 2007. With this post I would like to throw a light upon SpeedLight viewer and our work, and answer the questions. And, with the time passing, build a good reputation of a handy viewer everyone can trust.

Feel free to ask me the questions or express your doubts!

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

17 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I was going from a post from the Speedlight creator that I'd read...

Free avatars can perform all the usual functions: chat, teleport, send and receive money. They miss some "gold" features like the Mass IM tool, and their online time is limited to 1 hour session (you can login back immediately tho).

 

Yeah, that post is from 2020. They've increased that limit to 6 now.

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/489563-speedlight-light-mode/?do=findComment&comment=2487551

Edited October 18, 2022 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Rowan Amore]

13 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Yeah, that post is from 2020. They've increased that limit to 6 now.

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/489563-speedlight-light-mode/?do=findComment&comment=2487551

That's great then if people need more time.  Personally, the time I used it I only needed a few minutes to pay rent.  Can't even imagine 6 hour on this tiny screen.  ,😊

[Solar Legion]

No. Point blank, no phone today can handle what some here have claimed. None.

Modding? Nope - not gonna cut it nor count. Edit to add (for clarity): Modding is something that only a subset of users will do - a subset of a subset really. It's nice that you forced your device to do more, here's your award. Now kindly stop pretending it is the norm.

Streaming services? Nope - don't count.

Not getting into it, not "debating" it.

Do. Not. Bother.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Solar Legion

[Qie Niangao]

33 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Streaming services? Nope - don't count.

Umm. Why not? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm not clear why server-side rendering isn't at least a potentially viable approach here. The economics haven't really worked in the past, but I'm not sure that will continue to be the case, especially when it seems that other platforms are making it work.

Meanwhile, though, different device classes (like phones vs desktops) do follow different performance curves for rendering. My Pixel 6a, by no means a flagship, outperforms the dedicated video card I used when I started SL, but that was sixteen years ago, and I was perfectly satisfied with single-digit frame rates. The thermodynamics alone insures that a current desktop graphics card will always outperform a current phone's graphics, and graphics-intensive games will always expand to meet any available rendering capacity. 

But we all know that SL needs to have some kind of phone access. Either it needs something else to do that rendering or it needs to show a view of the world (if any) that is far behind state-of-the-art. It seems to me that the first cannot be free to use so won't grow the userbase much, whereas the second will serve only a specialized market that will not grow the userbase at all.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Umm. Why not? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm not clear why server-side rendering isn't at least a potentially viable approach here. The economics haven't really worked in the past, but I'm not sure that will continue to be the case, especially when it seems that other platforms are making it work.

Not to speak for someone else, BUT - I assume "doesn't count" in this context means, if rendering is "server-side", that does not mean that phones are capable of running a "Second Life Viewer".  

[Rowan Amore]

6 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Yeah, that post is from 2020. They've increased that limit to 6 now.

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/489563-speedlight-light-mode/?do=findComment&comment=2487551

Reading the rest of that post, he mentioned giving Gold free to forum members who might want it.  Maybe this whole partnership with LL is a result of the idea he had back then?  I'd actually take it as a good sign that LL hasn't abandoned all hope of their own mobile viewer and an opportunity they were presented with just a few months ago.  

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Reading the rest of that post, he mentioned giving Gold free to forum members who might want it. 

When I first tried it, unrelated to being a Forum member, I seem to recall at that time Gold was still "free".  Hard to describe since memories are not perfect. Anyway, at that time the options were confusing and annoying so I stopped using it. (Things like, "Must login daily"? Huh? Fuzzy memories.)

[Phil Deakins]

19 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

"YoU hAvE tO pAy To HaVe UnLiMiTeD tImE!"

A free account allows you 6 hours after you log in. You can turn your computer off and go to bed and the 6 hours still runs. After 6 hours it logs you out. That's 6 hours, not 6 hours a day or anything like that. To continue after 6 hours, you just log in again and the next 6 hours starts.

If a person wants to be logged in all the time, s/he can simply log out when the 6 hours are almost up and log in again for the next 6 hours, and so on. It only take a few seconds to do that. It's effectively unlimited time. And it's free.

In terms of time, the only benefit Premium+ has is that you don't have to relog every 6 hours or so.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Phil Deakins]

8 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Yeah, that post is from 2020. They've increased that limit to 6 now.

And I get the Mass IM tool.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

I watched vids of the Speedlight app on youtube. Nothing that interests me at all. Looks like a chat program for the most part. 

As someone mentioned... I hope little goodies like this won't just be considered for premium plus going forward. A regular premium account isn't cheap, and I hope it doesn't get relegated to basic premium status in the yes of LL, and they end up just letting it stagnate in terms of perks.  

[Arielle Popstar]

6 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

No. Point blank, no phone today can handle what some here have claimed. None.

Modding? Nope - not gonna cut it nor count.

Streaming services? Nope - don't count.

Not getting into it, not "debating" it.

Do. Not. Bother.

 

If your mid level phone cannot render a scene like this on it, then perhaps you need to look at your settings. Even my older one can and does and can run for 5-6 hours without any heating issues. 

Seriously, some people need to stop with the misinformation about the capabilities or lack of the potentials of Android viewers. That is not even taking into consideration what Apple is doing with their M1 processors which currently are the fastest yet.

[Solar Legion]

6 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Umm. Why not? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm not clear why server-side rendering isn't at least a potentially viable approach here. The economics haven't really worked in the past, but I'm not sure that will continue to be the case, especially when it seems that other platforms are making it work.

Meanwhile, though, different device classes (like phones vs desktops) do follow different performance curves for rendering. My Pixel 6a, by no means a flagship, outperforms the dedicated video card I used when I started SL, but that was sixteen years ago, and I was perfectly satisfied with single-digit frame rates. The thermodynamics alone insures that a current desktop graphics card will always outperform a current phone's graphics, and graphics-intensive games will always expand to meet any available rendering capacity. 

But we all know that SL needs to have some kind of phone access. Either it needs something else to do that rendering or it needs to show a view of the world (if any) that is far behind state-of-the-art. It seems to me that the first cannot be free to use so won't grow the userbase much, whereas the second will serve only a specialized market that will not grow the userbase at all.

Didn't say anything about their viability. They stream programs from a remote location to your device, they do not run them on your device directly.

This means that - for the purposes of trying to claim mobile phones (in particular) are powerful enough to run certain program types ... They do not count.

[Love Zhaoying]

30 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

A free account allows you 6 hours after you log in. You can turn your computer off and go to bed and the 6 hours still runs. After 6 hours it logs you out. That's 6 hours, not 6 hours a day or anything like that. To continue after 6 hours, you just log in again and the next 6 hours starts.

Not true in my experience (context of a Phone browser at least), there is an option "stay logged in"; if you do not choose that, merely closing the browser window logs you out.  When I first used Speedlight, this option caused me great annoyance. (Closing the browser logged you out.  I assume it still does in certain contexts.)

I think it is safe to assume that for a PC, "turning your computer off" is the same as my experience with the phone, if you select "NO" for "stay logged in" - your session would end; you would be logged off.  I did not try that yet, as I don't have a reason to (I am paying for Gold and am ALSO Premium Plus).

[Istelathis]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Seriously, some people need to stop with the misinformation about the capabilities or lack of the potentials of Android viewers.

I think what speedlight can do is pretty amazing, but the limitations are pretty severe.  Bellisseria for example, just doesn't render at all properly, some areas in the world load decently but a lot of areas take forever, the textures don't look right, newer mesh items do not load at all.

Speedlight from chrome on Windows 10, I can walk around this area and most things will load.  It gets a bit finicky, I have to click on some objects for them to render otherwise they sit there as odd shapes.  On my phone it is comparable, although I can't get the beetles to load, and it is not rendering as many objects from a further draw distance - of course the stick figures would leave a lot of people distressed.

I think to have a functional viewer on your phone, which would be satisfactory to most, it would be necessary for a rewrite of the viewer, specifically designed to work with android's architecture which would probably cost a small fortune.  This would probably be a significant change, as it would be more than just porting SL to android, it would involve changing the way the viewer renders data.  We haven't even gotten that for the PC version as far as I know, so I don't think it will happen.  But if it did, it would need to take advantage of the hardware, and become less reliant upon the software to render the scenes.  As @Coffee Pancakehad mentioned regarding other games, SL would have to become a F1 and less of a dump truck.  

LL then would be working with two different viewers, so any change to the PC version would require changes to the android version, on top of that they may need a third viewer for iPhones.  It would be quite a lot invested for every update we could expect to see.  The benefit of speedlight is that it is web based, it will work on any device I have tried it on, I am tempted to load up the web browser on my firestick to see if it loads on my TV🙃

I do believe, the best option which would not require a significant rewrite of the viewer would simply be to stream to our phones, it would ease the development time required for the viewer, updates would be less of an issue, the downside would be the expenses involved with rendering SL to be streamed to us - which would probably require a monthly expense on our part.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Istelathis

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I think what speedlight can do is pretty amazing, but the limitations are pretty severe.

My understanding is - the application is still "in active development", and we can expect some improvements as time goes on.

[Solar Legion]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

 

If your mid level phone cannot render a scene like this on it, then perhaps you need to look at your settings. Even my older one can and does and can run for 5-6 hours without any heating issues. 

Seriously, some people need to stop with the misinformation about the capabilities or lack of the potentials of Android viewers. That is not even taking into consideration what Apple is doing with their M1 processors which currently are the fastest yet.

Dearie - do knock it off for once.

Lumiya is dead. It is gone. It is irrelevant at this stage outside of what was possible.

Until someone comes along with a Mobile Viewer that does what was possible at the minimum, you have no point outside of your own agenda/propaganda.

Enough is enough.

Apple does not need to be "taken into consideration".

So sure that you're in the right? Go and build one yourself, then come back with the results.

[Love Zhaoying]

23 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Lumiya is dead. It is gone. It is irrelevant at this stage outside of what was possible.

This reminds me of something when I was taught in Hospital care:  Be very clear when saying that someone has died.

For example, If you were to say, "We lost Jim", the reply could easily be, "How could you lose him? Where was the last place you saw him?"

ETA:  See Monty Python "Dead Parrot" sketch.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Istelathis]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

My understanding is - the application is still "in active development", and we can expect some improvements as time goes on.

Looking forward to seeing how it evolves, right now I think it is fun to tinker around with.  I did eventually load it on my firestick via the silk browser, which was pretty cool - the 3D World View is sitting at a blue screen, I did not expect very much from it considering this is a firestick.. although I have played GTA 3 on another FireTV in the past 🤣 Everything else looks as though it would work, besides the 3D view.  

So far though, the 3d World View has worked on my PC, my RPI 4, and my phone.