This is a Second Life photographer’s dream viewer. I don’t use it for everyday use. But it is fast and has great visual features. As KirstenLee is changing things faster than most other viewer makers so this may be the least stable of the alternate Second Life® viewers. Others claim it is the most stable and needs the least CPU power. That just has not been my experience. Still, if you want that great shot of an area or model looking so sexy, this is your viewer.
Gwyneth Llewelyn wrote about viewers in June and felt the S-17 (198) viewer was simply great. See Pushing the Limits.
I did try it in a combat sim. Server lag, automatic weapons fire and all… it did pretty good. No locks ups and the FPS stayed over 10, which is great for a combat sim.
A new Beta version 1.2 is of the Imprudence viewer is out. New World Notes has a good review of Beta version.
Original Imprudence Review
I have been hearing about this viewer. I decided to try it out in my ongoing quest for the best Second Life viewer. While looking for information I came across Gwyneth Llewelyn’s review of Imprudence (11m/25d/09y). It is an interesting read and covers much of the philosophy of the Imprudence developers, of which the sort summary is, they are developing a viewer for Second Life Power Users. Ok… sounds cool.
The Imprudence Viewer release notes tell one what is new and what is still a ‘known’ problem. I’ll give you the short version here.
Viewers are changing rapidly and there is lots of new information and mis-information. For Combat RPG’s some of the information is critical. (Continued from GreenLife Emerald Viewer Review)
Update 12/3/09: This viewer updates rapidly. I have made several posts here about the different features being added to Greenlife Emerald viewer and provided reviews. There is a trail of links you can read through to read them in order. Or you can click on the Archive page and select the Emerald Viewer Reviews to see all the posts that relate.
Most of the new viewers have a thing some call Radar and in Emerald it is labeled Avatar List (Ctrl-Shift-a or via menu Emerald -> Avatar List). In some other places in Emerald it is referred to as radar. In Emerald it is a handy floater listing all the nearby avatars and some handy information. See the image.
Once upon a time the mini-map was called radar, until Linen Lab renamed it for a better new player experience. But that is not the radar usually meant in comabt SIM’s.
Radar in Second Life previously was a script in a prim or HUD that used a SCAN feature in Second Life’s LSL scripting language. SCAN’s are notorious for creating lag. It’s just the way it works in SL. Good programmers avoid it as much as possible. Combat SIM operators simply ban prim/hud based radars or any high lag producers within their games. There are several reasons for the radar ban with lag being the biggest one. Since prim/HUD based radars were the only ones in existence, SIM operators never bothered to specify which types radars were banned or why, they just simply said radar is banned.
Update 10/5/09 Today Massively is reporting that a number of those using the Neil Life Viewer for IP theft have been banned. See; Linden Lab rounds up and ejects a bunch of copyright infringers Original Post New World Notes posted a warning about the Neil Life Viewer. The viewer is said to have been made by Gwyneth Llewelyn, it … Read more
Massively has posted an update on Snowglobe. They have a Snowglobe Review with a list of changes, fixes and additions.
Update 7/30
Something is happening with the new server updates… I am seeing ‘This Region is running a different version…’ notices. I’ll check that out once I have time. But the effect is I’m seeing Snowglobe lockups in just a few minutes. However, the Emerald lockups have stopped…
Update: The final half of the grids are in update (server 1.27.1) and rolling restarts as of this morning. Yesterday the first half were done between 7 and 10:45 AM SLT (PST).
A even more recent version is Snowglobe 1.1.0.2558, July 23, 2009. Use it at your own risk. This is the newest, most advanced and the most unpredictable version. It too is available at the link above.
It is always nice to know how many residents are using new beta software. It gives one a sense of how well people like something, assuming they continue using it is a sign of preference and satisfaction. For Snowglobe they have published some of that information. Snowglobe Meterics show about 3,500 Second Life residents using the viewer as of 6m/29d/09.
Torley has a video showing the new map zoom features. In the same blog post as the video they talk about under the hood changes. Snowglobe Features There are new texture download methods in this viewer. They say one won’t likely see much performance improvement for those changes just yet as they are only used in the maps. However, the maps do update much faster so there is promise.
