Snowglobe Second Life Viewer Review

I just tried out that Second Life Snowglobe Viewer. I’ve reviewed a few other viewers, Gemini, Emerald, MeerKat, RealXtrend… see the blog for those reviews. Snowglobe is a Linden promoted open source branch of the standard SL viewer. It may be known by other names like: SLDev Viewer. The real point of this project is to get 3rd party changes and improvements into the main viewer faster. I’m not seeing it… but I didn’t dive into the details either.

Snowglobe has the new PG/Mature/Adult settings. It also seems to have the group chat errors, but it is hard to tell if it is a viewer or SL thing causing those errors. (Update: It is the current SL server version 1.26 that is the problem in group chat. Linden Lab plans to roll out the new 1.27 version between 6/7 and 6/13)  Inventory is unchanged. Everything seems to be pretty much as it is in the standard viewer with the exception of how the maps works. Both the Mini-map and map have greater zoom range… Oh yay… (underwhelmed)

The frame rate is mixed… In some places I was getting better frame rates. In some I was getting slower frame rates. Places where Gemini was getting 20 to 30 I was getting 10-15. But, after a few minutes the rate would jump up to 30-35. Stand still and it climbs even higher 35-45. In general it seems better than the standard viewer and in a few places better than Gemini. In the standard viewer I was getting about half the FPS for a longer time. But then it jumps up. This is not a scientific measurement. I just walk into places I know and check the frame rate. I stand around for 5 minutes or so and watch the frame rate change, I have no life. I run on High and windowed at about 1,500x930px. I found Gemini more impressive on FPS.

Bandwidth usage seems to have improved.

Combat players will be bummed that there is no Radar/AV List. RP players will be bummed there is no whisper. No double click to wear and no ‘Worn’ tab. Drop down dialogs are bright blue which is really distracting after using the Gemini viewer with its charcoal grey dialogs. Amazing what difference that makes.

Hopefully we will see more out of the Snowglobe viewer in the future.

Update: 7/3

I am writing and playing more with Snowglobe and plan to post more after the 4th.

5 thoughts on “Snowglobe Second Life Viewer Review

  1. I tried the snowglobe viewer lastnight. It was like I had just invested in a brand new computer (laptop). I could actually type for once without my words getting cut up which creates awful typos.
    I could walk without drifting away or getting a huge lag spike. My frame rate is perfect (visibly, I havn’t checked the fps), as if there is no lag at all.
    This viewer is amazing.
    Beforehand I was using the regular viewer and the Emerald viewer before this (mostly Emerald) and experiencing awful lag – which I thought was down to my internet connection – but according to snowglobe, apparantly not!
    This viewer IS amazing and I hope it keeps it’s performance up because i’m going to be using this. Hopefully it won’t slow down.
    I complain about lag all the time and when I get on a viewer that makes less lag I am usually pretty satisfied – but no lag at all? Not one little loss of a frame or two? THIS IS ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. I really can’t believe it.

    (oh, i forgot, my inventory didn’t fully load until I relogged though!)

  2. Pingback: Imprudence Viewer 1.1.0 Review « Nalates’ Things & Stuff Blog

  3. I don’t think snow globe never have any errors on it caused it gaves me a headache caused when i started downloaded this, it gave me an errors of using slurls when i tried regular sl viewer imprudence or emerald viewer with slurl the snow globe seems to appeared the icon on the taskbar then disappeared and the icon is identical to frostwire instead of appearing and activate the slurl on my viewer to appear the map of destination of address of were i’m going this snow globe always interrupting and when i uninstall this viewer it still interrupting i already even deleted some other files that is connected to snow globe slurl never work, now i don’t know how to work the slurl normal on any viewer.
    opera explorer can even detect that snow globe causing the errors.

    • There is an article ‘Emerald vs SLURL’. It explains how to fix SLURL/Viewer mismatches.
      My Snowglobe versions work ok. I do make sure every viewer has its own cache.

  4. never worked, i even reinstalled the secondlife viewer 1.23 but it just proceed me to ask to download the 2.1 viewer which is not as better quality as the previous 1.23 version plus i lost most of objects from my inventories only most folder are still there but no more files inside, but although i use emerald but when i tried one of slurls with IE explorer mozilla or opera, it happened as the same as snowglobe not like no snowglobe yet all viewer worked with slurls.

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