In response to my last update on the SL 2.1 Viewer Opensource Obscure pointed out another third party viewer (TPV), Icesphere. For a verity of reasons I’m interested in viewers and how they work. Research leaves me wondering whether and where this software is going. Calling it a viewer is a loose use of the label viewer.
Viewers
General Viewer Information
Second Life Viewer 3rd Beta Release
On July 7 Linden Lab released another Beta version of their new viewer. (Second Life 2.1.0.206543 Beta Viewer) They say this version is more stable than the current standard 2.0 viewer and they think it is good idea for everyone to update… They could use lots of bug reports, so if you are into helping out… go for it.
This seems to be the only viewer update available this week. Kirsten, Emerald, Imprudence and Hippo don’t appear to have new releases out, this week.
Emerald Stats
New World Notes’ Wagner picked up on the high number of SL residents using the Emerald Viewer. See the article there: Shock Stat: Nearly 1 in 3 Second Life Users Reportedly Use the Emerald Third Party Viewer!
I suppose it would be a “kind of” surprise to anyone not using Emerald or the newer SL 2 Viewer. In older viewers one cannot see the viewer names in Avatar Name tags. Those people not using a newer viewer would be surprised that ‘so many’ people are using the Emerald Viewer. However, I am surprised the number is ‘so low’ …well less than I expected. I usually use the Emerald Viewer and if not Emerald then I’m using Kirsten’s Viewer. In both of those I can see the viewer name in avatar names.
Naali Viewer Review
This viewer is not for Second Life, but it can be used with SL. I’m not sure why one would… The Naali Viewer is for RealXtend. I decided to look at it to see how RealXtend is handling their freeform meshes, you know like the ones coming to SL.
The viewer is large, 72.5 mb of download and 179 mb of disk space. There are currently only Windows versions available, XP, Vista, and Win 7.
Viewer Updates
Most of this weekend I was working on RL pay me money projects. This afternoon I’m playing and finding the viewer updates. There are more updates out there than I can get to. I did play with Kirsten’s for a bit.
Emerald Viewer
They have 1.4.0.2270 out. More of the SL 2.0.1 updated have been added in. Looks like mostly bug fixes.
Imprudence Viewer
A new weekly is out. This does not replace the recent Beta release. The weeklies are for those that want to be on the bleeding edge and help with development.
The interesting feature is the addition of menu entries for taking off Alpha and Tattoo layers. That is nice.
Several bug fixes are in this release. One was an incompatibility with Emerald and the chatlog file names. I keep my viewers and their caches separate. So, may be that is why I haven’t seen the problem. There is a fix for viewer crash caused by trying to load empty textures. Memory leaks and few other things that have probably caused me problems.
WINDOWS version 1.4.0.2270 not likely to be available this week… unless someone wants to do the Windows compile…
Second Life Popular Viewer? Review?
I’m into viewers and new viewer features. I’m interested in photography, a little machinima, building, and the ability to important and export things I build between OSGrid and Second Life. Most of you know I’m impressed with the Kirsten and the Emerald viewer people. I also like Hippo and Imprudence viewers. All while being underwhelmed by Linden Lab’s SL 2.0 Viewer.
When I started getting comments about the Emerald viewer being crap and I should get a real viewer called ‘Second Life Popular Viewer’ I expected they were another ego-centric narcissistic web persona with little if any social skills. But, that doesn’t make the viewer bad and I was still curious about it.