[Help Us Test the SL Web Viewer Beta]

Hi again all,

Sorry, just a quick follow up to my posting a few moments ago about my disappointment at not being able to trial the beta Web viewer. I have found something that may be enlightening about who can test and who can't.

The new viewer looks like it's based on the Gaikai video gaming engine which is specially designed to run 3D virtual environments in a standard web browser mode. You can go to http://www.gaikai.com to read about it. They also have a demo sign-up page so you can see how their viewer works, but when you go to sign up for beta testing they first do a test on your broadband connection and computer setup. If you don't meet their criterion (mainly broadband download / upload speed it would seem), they send you a message that says "We're Sorry! Your network response times are unusually high. Please try again later. If you continue to receive this message, it may be because you are too far from Gaikai's servers.". I am based in Australia and although I am supposedly on one of the fastest broadband connections available in Australia (50.26mb/s download, 1.66mb/s upload, ping 8ms), it would appear that it's still not fast enough.

Hope that helps make things a little clearer.

Cheers,

Kaylee (Xilin Yifu)

[Help Us Test the SL Web Viewer Beta]

Hi Linden Labers and fellow SLers,

I have to say I am a little disappointed. With a sense of great excitement I came to this page to try out the new Web Viewer as a result of a message on the SLED forum. I have tried out a lot of other VWs over time and was an early adopter of Viewer 2, so I was really looking forward to seeing what great things LL has done with this new viewer. While I am probably not considered to be a really 'old' resident, I have been active in SL since mid-2007, and since that time have brought hundreds of students into SL as part of my teaching. I understand that education is less of a focus for LL now and that my hundreds of students (over 700) does not necessarily translate into ongoing users of SL, but I had kind of expected that I might be one of the residents that would be able to try out the new viewer. This is important for me as an educator (as well as just a normal resident - with a premium account) in that it could make the whole process of using SL in our classes much easier for students (and easier for our IT people as well). Unlike a number of other educators I have not jumped ship to Open Sim and have been a strong advocate for SL both in my non-academic life and through academic papers I have published on our teaching and learning experiences in SL.

I understand LL will have it's reasons for not including me (and some of my academic colleagues, one of whom owns a whole region in her own right) at this stage, and I am not arguing against their reasons. I guess I just wanted to express my disappointment and the hope that I and my other academic colleagues will get the chance soon to try out the new (Beta) viewer.

Cheers,

Kaylee (Xilin Yifu)