LL partnering with Speedlight & PremPlus gets Speedlight benefits

[Jaylinbridges]

I spent an hour on Speedlight early today, using my mid range desktop gaming computer and 100Mbps fiber connection on a 24" LG FHS/IPS LED monitor.

It is still basically a text client.  The 3D mode was not usable for anything I might do.  Horrible lag, like 15 secs to respond to a walk command, 1/2 my build never rezzed, well designed mesh benches rezzing to 4 triangles while standing on it, etc.  Poses don't work with the stick figures, they just stand there.  I also was logged in with another alt on Firestorm.  Wanted to take a snapshot with both viewers, with two avatars standing together, as in the fake LL marketing photo, with Firestorm and Speedlight.  I could never get both avatars to rezz at the same time with Speedlight.  I'll play with it more and try to show what 3D looks like.  Imagine SL on a 56K dialup modem.   I think the Speedlight servers were overloaded and short on memory and bandwidth.  Maybe SL should pay to move Speedlight to the cloud. Otherwise disable the 3D mode.

Of course your avatar looks perfect to someone with a direct connected Viewer like FS, so if you need a club full of alts, this is an expensive way to do it.  

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Jaylinbridges

[Love Zhaoying]

18 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I think the Speedlight servers were overloaded and short on memory and bandwidth.

That would explain why Speedlight worked so much worse than I remembered, they didn't scale it and had more users trying today during the announcement. Dumb!

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, TimKoul said:

For $250/yr, they better add better than this.

Naaaaah.. they will just bump regular P to $130 per year, that literally fixes everything (no really, it fixes the lack luster PP value proposition, mainland teir pricing and LH losing money .. if I can math this out from the outside looking in, you can bet someone inside has it on a flipchart).

[TimKoul]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Naaaaah.. they will just bump regular P to $130 per year, that literally fixes everything (no really, it fixes the lack luster PP value proposition, mainland teir pricing and LH losing money .. if I can math this out from the outside looking in, you can bet someone inside has it on a flipchart).

It's going to happen at some point. And when that time comes, say hello to a mass exodus. Probably why it hasn't happened already.

[Blaise Glendevon]

Y'all are cracking me up here. If you got nothing else, the land and being able to squeeze in crowded sims before basic users would be well-worth the $12 a month I pay. The stipend is also nice. Love having more groups. Premium is a great deal. And it would be fine at $13. I pay $15 for my MMO subscription, and I paid for the game up front. 

[Istelathis]

40 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

And it would be fine at $13. I pay $15 for my MMO subscription

For myself, I only play some MMOs for a few months out of the year.  Like right now I have paid close to $30 for ESO, and plan to cancel my subscription as it is starting to get dull.  I would do the same thing with SL, but losing my subscription also means that I lose all of the property I have purchased, so I feel more compelled to pay for the full year.  

At $130 a year, I would drop the account.  Even though it averages less than $13 a month, I am incredibly frugal with my money, the principle of it alone would not be worth it.  The same can be said for MMOs I think it is something a little less than $156 a year for WoW which is also close to $13 a month, but I would not want a full year subscription as I barely am in it, I might play for two months out of the year.  It makes more sense to just pay for a couple of months, than for a full year.

I don't think SL is worth a monthly payment of nearly $20 a month (if I were to do monthly and the rates were hiked), not for as little as I use the benefits one gets from premium.  I have a few months out of the year where I feel really passionate and the rest of the time I usually just log in and hang around in my house while browsing the forums or exploring other people's creations, or building.  More than likely, I would just pay for some lindens when I feel passionate about it and rent out a cheap parcel.  LL would be losing money from me in that event, as I can spend less than $10 renting a 1/4 sim with 640 LI  for a month and have a few linden left after.  

When they raised the price from $74 (IIRC) to $99USD I was tempted to drop premium entirely, but hung on to it for the extra linden, as well as having a home I could always return to.  $130 for a year, and I would be out - I would not see a benefit for paying the monthly rates for when I do feel like owning my own home.

I can't speak for everyone, perhaps some people would find a yearly payment of $130 to be perfectly fine, and good for them - they get a lot out of SL.  For me, it just doesn't work.  

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Istelathis

[Ceka Cianci]

31 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

Y'all are cracking me up here. If you got nothing else, the land and being able to squeeze in crowded sims before basic users would be well-worth the $12 a month I pay. The stipend is also nice. Love having more groups. Premium is a great deal. And it would be fine at $13. I pay $15 for my MMO subscription, and I paid for the game up front. 

I'm trying to think of the last time the sim entry worked on the first day of an event? it's usually like the next day when everyone else and their sister can get in too. Oo

Land? I have a 1/4 sim that I pay for.. It was ,get the stipend or get the land. I took the stipend because I always bought my own land.

Stipend.. Lindens cost more than twice as much as before. So that's pretty much degraded over time while the price of membership went up.. so those 400 lindens are worth at the very most,half what they used to be. That's being kind.

We got 10 more groups and the sim entry. then after getting those got a 37% increase in membership..

Is that 15 a month subscription sitting on a 20 year old grid that you have to trouble shoot everything you do?

For you it might be worth it, for me it's losing value more and more.

 

 

 

[MelodyMoonflower]

Not impressed by Speedlight, I still have Lumiya, it works fine but I rarely use it. I'm not interested in PP so Speedlight would not entice me at all. I think PP is overpriced. Premium isn't too bad, but still more than I care to pay. As an average SL user I can rent a place pretty cheap, I don't need tons of groups, and I don't need to be the 1st person to get into events for the new shinies. SL is fun but it gets pretty expensive, even without a Premium or PP membership. It's just entertainment, so the basic membership works for me.

[Qie Niangao]

10 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

When I first saw the Blog post, I was thinking of whatever that service was that really was running SL in a Browser -- full blown SL viewer client in a browser.

Yeah, I tend to get Speedlight confused with vague memories of "SL Go" which was a server-side rendering streamer from On Live, back when that was a thing. Maybe it was my search terms—I couldn't remember the "SL Go" name—but it took a while to dredge up even one reference, from Jo Yardley.

[Modulated]

If memory serves, one of the Catznip devs had a browser based login built on Ajax many years back, it was pretty spiffy.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Maybe it was my search terms

Searching got trickier on the Forum after the last update, I almost always have to search twice, change to "Topics", change to "all words", before it will find anything at all.

[Sid Nagy]

When I saw the picture above the blog post, my first thought was: Hey at last a decent mobile viewer.
That would probably make PP worth to shell out the extra Shekels for me.
But reading the reactions here, that is not the case.  Ah well... people need dreams right?

Edited October 6, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Love Zhaoying]

10 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

But reading the reactions here, that is not the case.

Yeah, I need to consider reporting my experience to the Speedlight folks, since I "paid" (L$) to be sure I got all the features, and since with all this promotion - they probably want to know.

[Istelathis]

Ya know, after trying speedlight with an alt account on my computer it really is not that bad.  The main issue is speed, I think it is a streaming service rather than a viewer.  I thought I saw a message with Firestorm on it, but was so caught up in fiddling around with Speedlight that I closed out of it quickly rather than taking a screenshot.  If it is a streaming service, I understand why they charge for the service.

It appears to render things correctly, but it just takes so long (at least right now)  I think perhaps because so many people are using it, now that it is free for them, and others are experimenting with it such as myself. I noticed I could zoom around with my mouse, much like a viewer, walking was done with the arrow keys and was for a time responsive, at this point not so much so.  It is hard to see just how well it renders everything, because the service is bogged down and it is taking forever for objects to load, what does load though looks fine.

Still not enough for me to subscribe to p+, but I am sure for a lot of others it is what they have been looking for.  For those who are dishing out the p+ subscription, it is a nice bonus feature for sure, especially if it is streaming to their phone, and more so if the speed of the service improves over time - as I said it might just be that the servers are currently overburdened with all of the new people using it.

I can understand why it is only given to p+ because of the expenses involved with game streaming, anyway kudos to those of you who have access to it now, and I hope things improve with it shortly.

 

Edit:
The firestorm message I received was local chat, from the lsl bridge I must have logged out while wearing - I don't know if this is streaming from firestorm or not, if it even is a streaming service, or if it is a web based viewer entirely.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Istelathis

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

It appears to render things correctly, but it just takes so long (at least right now)  I think perhaps because so many people are using it, now that it is free for them, and others are experimenting with it such as myself. I noticed I could zoom around with my mouse, much like a viewer, walking was done with the arrow keys and was for a time responsive, at this point not so much so.  It is hard to see just how well it renders everything, because the service is bogged down and it is taking forever for objects to load, what does load though looks fine.

I tried again today, hoping your post meant it was working better and still see only this.

 

[Istelathis]

22 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I tried again today, hoping your post meant it was working better and still see only this.

 

I mostly get a few objects that will load, I was in London city earlier, and waited it out for a building to load for about 10 minutes, then I teleported to a yavascript station, noticed little things loading here and there but it was so slow.

I decided to go to memorial park, and it was the same thing.  Just a few objects loading and it slows to a crawl, I think it is just that their servers are so bogged down at the moment.

 

I have it all rendering in low poly, if I stay in the browser tab I will see things slowly, and I mean very slowly, start to rez into the viewer.

Here is another in Bellisseria, after waiting a few minutes for things to load.  

Every once in a while, something new will spawn and a few textures will improve, but at the moment it is just so slow.

Hopefully, in a few days it will start working better for everyone using it.

 

Edit:

For those who are interested in this, I think as well as hope this is just temporary and will improve with time.  I don't want to discredit the service when this could just be an issue due to a lot of users logging in at the same time.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Istelathis

[Rowan Amore]

28 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I tried again today, hoping your post meant it was working better and still see only this.

 

That's all they promise as far as avatar rendering is concerned.

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

That's all they promise as far as avatar rendering is concerned.

Understood - but I saw a lot more than that before, as apparently the person I quoted did. Buildings, etc. I'll try when my system is not busy again later. Just in case.  I am however sure, that it showed buildings and objects even on my phone previously. Not just a "blank holodeck" style grid.

*edit* I was not referring to the avatar in my screen shot, sorry - I meant that "nothing" else was rendering.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Jaylinbridges]

14 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

That's all they promise as far as avatar rendering is concerned.

 

 

I think Love said he paid for the Gold version...  

I was able to touch objects with the Free version, and sit on them but without any animations.  I can't see the Adult menu being very stimulating though with naked stick figures.  

Edited October 6, 2022 by Jaylinbridges

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I think Love said he paid for the Gold version...  

I was able to touch objects with the Free version, and sit on them but without any animations.  I can't see the Adult menu being very stimulating though with naked stick figures.  

Hmmm! I wonder if there is a maturity setting that is wrong, preventing it from wanting to show me anything? I can always try to go to Luna or someplace "general".

[Rowan Amore]

30 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Understood - but I saw a lot more than that before, as apparently the person I quoted did. Buildings, etc. I'll try when my system is not busy again later. Just in case.  I am however sure, that it showed buildings and objects even on my phone previously. Not just a "blank holodeck" style grid.

*edit* I was not referring to the avatar in my screen shot, sorry - I meant that "nothing" else was rendering.

Ok, I thought you meant the avatar which seems to render like that regardless of which version.  

[Istelathis]

Hotel Chelsea loaded a lot faster, still not perfect but it did not take long at all.  My previous attempts were in brave, I tried this in chrome - Bellisseria was still slow to load in Chrome, and the textures did not load correctly although I did not have the patience to sit around for several minutes to see if they would.

(Picture taken from chrome on Windows 10)

I then went to my raspberry PI 4, and logged into speedlight via chromium and it seemed to work the same as on my laptop.  I walked around a little bit, Bellisseria looked about the same as the pictures I previously posted, then I teleported to Hotel Chelsea again, it loaded relatively quickly, although zooming around the camera was a little more sluggish. 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Istelathis

[Love Zhaoying]

22 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Ok, I thought you meant the avatar which seems to render like that regardless of which version.  

Previously, I saw things like in @Istelathis' post.

[Coffee Pancake]

6 hours ago, Modulated said:

If memory serves, one of the Catznip devs had a browser based login built on Ajax many years back, it was pretty spiffy.

The Catznip devs have no idea what you're talking about.

[Arielle Popstar]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The Catznip devs have no idea what you're talking about.

He is probably talking about Katharine Berry. Former AjaxLife viewer developer who believe went on to work for the Lab. https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/01/katharine-berry-in-sl.html

Edited October 6, 2022 by Arielle Popstar