[Help Us Test the SL Web Viewer Beta]

From what I understand, the beta works by running all the graphics processing on a 'cloud' computer, which then pipes the output to you in the form of a video feed. Your computer only has to do the equivalent of rendering a dvd picture, hence the drastic (in some cases) performance increase.   It's great for the home user, as long as your internet connection is fast enough, but it pushes the cost of processing out to the 'cloud' where the owners of those machines are going to want to be paid for it.

[Help Us Test the SL Web Viewer Beta]

I'm in the UK and I couldn't get in.. until I used the workaround listed on New World Notes http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/11/tip-second-life-cloud-web-access.html

I suspect the reason for my initial failures is that my ping times to servers in California are too slow, even though my internet connection can go up to 20Mb. Once the Beta was up and running I watched my download speeds; I saw them regularly hitting 6-8Mb. The connection quality indicator at the top of the game screen gave me a value of between 105-110%.

Positives: sooooo fast! I have a 3 year old laptop that struggles to run SL at the best of times, so I have my graphics settings low. The beta gave me speed AND great graphics. Yes, what I could do in-world was very basic but I expected that.

Negatives: inability to turn off the awful LOUD music which drowned out all other sounds. I visited a pretty sim with lots of nice sound effects, birdies tweeting, etc. Couldn't hear them. I had to resort to the mute button which silenced everything. If I was a newbie trialling SL the music would be an instant turn-off. I like music, don't get me wrong, but *I* want to choose when I hear it and at what volume.

As a test for the technology, I'd call it a success. For implementation, I'd give it a C - good effort but a few things were just not thought through.

 

*edited for typos

[Help Us Test the SL Web Viewer Beta]

Hi Lillia. I don't know what else to suggest. The first time round it took me a LOT of tries but subsequent ones have been easier. Maybe I'm just anally persistent. ^.^  It often (for me anyway) crashes straight after I enter my email address and I have to start again from the initial page.

Once you get a blueish-green screen that has the Gaikai logo to the lower right, keep an eye out for messages at the top of the screen in small text saying 'click on the game to play'. When you see that, regardless of what appears below, click in the middle of the screen. Voilá, you should be in.