There are lots of viewers and more seem to be coming out. The Second Life Viewer named Gemini by Skills Hak is designed more for Role Players. Earlier I reviewed the Greenlife Emerald Viewer. The Gemini Viewer is very similar but with some differences.

One difference is the viewer skin. It is designed to work better with physically dark regions. After all it is made by one of the INSILICO people. If you have not visited the Insilico region, it is worth a trip. (Insilico Web Site) I am totally fascinated by the robotic spider they have at the primary LM landing point.

All of the dialogs are set to very transparent. This makes it easy to have several windows open and still see what is happening.

All of the things in the EMERALD menu item of Emerald are in the EXTRAS menu item in Gemini, i.e., Phantom, Ground Sit, Double-Click TP, Rainbow Beam, SL Particle Chat, etc.

The AV List is the same list you get via ‘Radar’ in Emerald. So, most things are pretty much the same.

However the bottom row of buttons is gone. This gives one a bit more screen. Once you learn to press Ctrl-M for Map and Ctrl-A for the Radar/AV List etc. etc. one does not miss it.

Shift-Enter in chat does a whisper. Alt-Enter does ((OOC chat style)). But be careful, Ctrl-Alt-Enter changes the screen resolution. The first time you mess that up you will likely think you crashed.

The Gemini Viewer also shows you who is using Emerald or Gemini.

The viewer seems at bit faster and gives a tiny bit better FPS results. But, that could just be SL at the particular times I have been looking.

I’ve had Emerald crash several times. So far, after hours of use I have yet to have Gemini crash. Try it out and visit Insilico.

Update 06/22

I used the viewer over the weekend. It is nice. For straight forward RP it is very nice. For combat RP it has some problems. One is that it puts you in Fly mode when crossing a sim boundary. Press the HOME key to get back on the ground. This avoids the tendancy to fall through sims. But, can get one in trouble with game masters in no fly RPG’s. Even in a no fly sim one flys.

It seems very robust too. Today is the forst time I crashed using Gemini. Even the high lag parts of Land of NoR did not crash me. Plus I am getting better frame rates and using less bandwidth. Over all it seems faster.

Update 6/24

I about a week of use now with lots of hours per logon over the weekend I found this is a very stable viewer. So, far only 2 crashes. One of those was an Internet problem because I could not even browse the web.

There is a flaw in this viewer for some users. There are none of the check boxes needed for the new adult content.

Update 6/28

See: Update Gemini Viewer Review for RPG’s