| On December 23rd, 2024, I was able to sit down with Linden Lab co-owner and Executive Chair, Brad Oberwager and the company’s founder and now CTO, Philip Rosedale, to talk about a project the Lab are working on, and what it may mean for many users either already engaged in SL or who are joining the platform. |
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The gist of it is, starting at the very beginning of January, we’re going to start making Second Life available through a browser. We’ve had a team on it for a couple of months now, and we’re going to make the first demonstrative use of it at the start of January.In fact, we’re taking advantage of a mix of different changes in the market and technology; we’re going to tie a bunch of different components together, but at the core of the offering that we’re going to start testing at the beginning of January is a streaming version of Second Life which is pixel-perfect, 1080p, you can’t tell you’re not using a desktop client, there’s no way you can perceive that you’re using it … and so it’s just like logging-in to Second Life [on a desktop viewer].
– Philip Rosedale, in conversation with me, December 23rd, 2024
This ability to stream Second Life through a browser is now available for testing – and if you wish to do so, you can do so free of charge for the next few days – simply hop down to the notes on how to do so at the end of this article.
However, the streaming test is one part of a broader strategy the Lab is taking in an attempt to make Second Life more accessible to both existing and incoming new users, and I want to focus here on that, and what we are likely to be seeing during 2025.
Of course, this is not the first time an attempt has been made to stream SL to users; there have been two commercial attempts to do so in the past with both SL Go, provided by OnLive between March 2014 and April 20151, and then via Bright Canopy, provided through the Frame application delivery service (now Dizzion) between 2015 and 20202. However, those services were at a time when streaming complex content was still relatively in its infancy, and their providers were subject to business and marketplace forces which ultimately led to their respective demise.
For the Lab, the move towards browser-based accessibility to Second Life is based on addressing a number of long-term pain points in using the platform:
- The fact that it continues to require fairly high-end computer hardware to experience it at its very best – and roughly 50% of the existing user base do not have such hardware at their disposal.
- The fact that it requires a dedicated viewer to be downloaded and installed by new users as a part of the sign-up process.
- The fact that the viewer has a sprawling and complex UI which can be both hard to master by new users.
Offering a browser-based / streaming solution can overcome these issues – and that is the point of what is being called Project Zero: to allow those on low-spec systems experience SL as if they were using a gaming rig with a high-end GPU, whilst offering incoming new users direct access to coming in-world via a URL within the sign-up workflow.
We’re [also] going to start A/B testing by letting a good chunk of the people that come in new to Second Life go through this new streaming system, as opposed to downloading the desktop. So we’ll be able to start to test that and quickly see how they compare. Our expectation is, barring any unforeseen problems, it’s going to be the case that a lot more people are going to be able to get into Second Life because they don’t need a high-end GPU or have to go and install some software.
– Philip Rosedale in conversation with me, December 23rd, 2024
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Project Zero: Evolutionary and Revolutionary
The initial offering of the viewer through a browser is just that: a baseline service which allows someone to go to a URL and launch an instance of the viewer and access Second Life. As such, it has limitations (which I note below for reference). However, Linden Lab intend to start iterating on the capability pretty rapidly, utilising the experience they’ve gained through other projects, to build on the browser experience and improve it – particularly in regards to the UI.
We’re going to re-do the interface completely, in the same way that we did with the Mobile client. We’re going to start by streaming the existing interface, but then very quickly – probably sometime in January – you’ll see us turning off the UI layers that are in the [browser] client and switch them out into a modern HTML / React style web UI on top of the viewer which should look and feel a little bit like what we’ve done with Mobile, where we’ve only been implementing the features we absolutely need, and then implementing them cleaner than they were before and in a way anybody coming into Second Life today, no matter what their age so just look at it and go, “oh yeah, that looks like a sensible UI.”
– Philip Rosedale, in conversation with me, December 23rd, 2024
Once these core elements of using SL are working within an overlay-style of presentation, the plan is to move on to the more challenging aspects of the UI and using SL – such as avatar customisation. And here things start to get revolutionary, as the Lab will be looking for input and assistance from content creators.
We’ll move upstream in terms of difficulty level towards the kinds of things that people need to do to get acclimated inside Second Life. We view the dressing problem to get the avatar to look the way you want to be the penultimate challenge here; that is the thing we need to get both greatly improved in its usability, and then moved on to an entirely new UI approach.
We’re going to do that UI design in partnership with others; we’re going to do things like put different default avatars in there which we’re going to build in partnership with content creators; we’re going to sit down with content creators who have complex things like HUDs and say, “OK, if we started from scratch, how would we make your experience perfect accessible to a new user?”, and do that co-design with them and rapidly push that into the pipeline of the actual code-base of this new viewer
– Philip Rosedale, in conversation with me, December 23rd, 2024
Does This Mean The Viewer is Going Away?
No. The intent with streaming Second Life / Project Zero might be summed up as being about:
- Trying to try to ensure a new user first experiences Second Life to in as friction-free and as friendly a way as possible before eventually graduating to more advanced Viewer options.
- To give those on lower-specifications a cost-effective means of experiencing Second Life at its fullest, should the wish to do so.
The familiar viewer – official and TPVs – is not going away, and the Lab emphasises that is is not in any way downshifting any development of, or support for, its own and third party viewers. In fact, LL are open to talking to TPVs and adding them to the streaming capability as it is developed and enhanced.
The best way to thing of streaming and the installable viewer is that they compliment one another – although it is possible that some of the refactor of the UI could be ported back to the installable viewer, if they are seen as particularly beneficial.
Of Costs and Philosophy
As noted, the ability to stream SL through your viewer is at this point in time, both a test and is being offered free of charge. However, the elephant in the room is that like it or not, streaming something as complex as Second Life does cost money. As such, the need to cover those costs has to be considered – and here again, the Lab is trying to be flexible.
What we’re trying to build long-term, is a browser-based interaction with Second Life. Right now, it has to be streamed. That’s the technology to do it NOW and do it FAST, and we’re going to learn a lot. Clearly, streaming is expensive; so we’re looking at this as an investment in a way to build down the road.
But, Second Life is big, and people spend a lot of time in-world, so if we get charged on an hourly basis, we can’t get into a situation where we’re spending $100,000 a day. So yes, we’re going to explore all different ways. Right now, it’s free; we’ll probably explore “what if we give it away to Premium Plus? What if we come up with a subscription fee? What if we do it per hour? Would you get a better deal if it is a completely new [Second Life] subscription?” We’ll test all of that to figure out what the residents want; but to be clear, we’re not looking to make money on it.
– Brad Oberwager in conversation with me, December 23rd, 2024
There is also something of a value proposition here for those using lower-specification systems which are more than adequate for everything else they want to do on a computer, but would like to experience a smooth, more immersive Second Life: is paying a fee / subscription for streaming SL more preferable that the up-front cost of buying a new high-end computer just to enjoy SL’s full graphic fidelity? This is something of an imponderable – but it is one the Lab is looking at.
We recognise that today, some of the most trivial pay-as-you-go set-ups are just too expensive to just let everybody in Second Life on; but hopefully, between Brad and myself and the overall technologies changes, we’ll be able to drive that price down. So it’s kind-of tricky, because we can’t put ourselves out of business in the short-term, but we also know that we’ll be able to get the price down quickly.
– Philip Rosedale in conversation with me, December 23rd, 2024
Exactly where that price-point lands remains to be seen. In the meantime, the streaming option is now available to test.
Trying SL in a Browser
To try out the streaming version of the viewer for yourself:
- Go to https://zero.secondlife.com/
- If you have not logged-in to Second Life via the web for some time (e.g. to your dashboard at secondlife.com), you will be asked to log-in via the updated web log-in page.
- Read the notes on the Second Life in a Browser splash screen
- Click the Play button.
- The viewer should then launch through your browser (I tested on Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge with Windows, and all worked for me, Brave, Vivaldi and Gener8 did not).
Things to Note When Trying the Option
- This is a free-to-try test, intended to offer LL a demonstration that they have the core capabilities working: the viewer is streamed smoothly, and overall performance (frame rates, etc.), is at least as good as seen when running Second Life on reasonably high specification computers.
- As it is a test, there are limits on the number of users who can concurrently access the service – LL are hoping to support several thousand per day, but depending on demand, you may find you have to wait to try.
- Individual sessions are limited to just one hour (as of January 9th, 2025), after which you will be disconnected.
- There is no warning of any impending disconnection; you are simply logged-out of SL and pushed to the official viewer download page in your browser.
- If you were testing something at the time of disconnect, you can start a new session. However, from my personal testing, I would recommend waiting a few minutes before doing so, rather than immediately trying to re-launch a viewer instance in your browser, as the log out process seems to lag behind redirecting you to the viewer download page.
- In addition, whilst it is hoped that people will not repeatedly log-in to the service (so as to give as many as possible the opportunity to try it) please note:
- The viewer is being streamed at a 1080p resolution. If your display does not support this, you may have to use you browser’s zoom and full screen options to display the viewer in its entirety, or use the browser scroll bars.
- As the viewer is being streamed, there are limits on what can be done: personal preferences and settings are not saved; you cannot upload textures, etc., if you use MFA you will have to provide a token with each session. Further, Voice chat is not currently available.
- However, all of the above will be changing as the service iterates.
- Please do not create ALT accounts use multiple accounts when trying the streaming service, just keep it to one existing account when trying it.
- Whilst it should be possible to access the streaming option on Tablet devices (subject to the notes above) it is not intended to be accessed via mobile devices like ‘phones, etc., with small screens: these remain the purview of SL Mobile.
If you do try the service out, please give feedback to help LL in the design process. For this first phase, we are most interested in finding any failure cases where you are unable to connect at all, and if so-minded, join the conversation in the designated forum post for this topic.
Personal Experience
I accessed Second Life via the browser option using a laptop with the following specifications: Intel Core i31.8 Ghz; Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics (up to 1.8 Gb shared memory); 8Gb DDR memory. Outside of the resolution issues referenced above (the screen was 1366×768 resolution). The experience was not too far off that of running a viewer on my primary PC (AMD 5800X 8-core processor with 16 Gb DDR4 and Nvidia RTX 3060 12Gb), and both PC and laptop using wired connections rather than wifi.
Footnotes
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- You can read more about the history of SL Go in this series of articles.
- Some of Bright Canopy’s development and history is covered in this series of articles.
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