Second Life Viewers

Catznip Beta 12.1.1 vs Firestorm 5.1.7

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I just noticed a post from a couple of months back on the difference between Catznip Viewer and Firestorm Viewer. Alyona Su provides a good comparison based on her experience. She switched and is now using Catznip as her primary viewer. Not my experience.

Catznip vs Firestorm September 2018 – FS on timer: 00:01:23 @ DD 256m

Those switching to Catznip experience it being faster and less crashy than Firestorm. Remember. Viewers are very sensitive to the computer they run on. What is crashy on one machine may not be on another. Viewer speed in FPS and render time is also sensitive to your hardware and connection. So, Catznip may crash more and be slower on your hardware. But, try it and know. Hopefully the chance is you’ll have good results. If not, well no one will make you use it.

The release of Catznip I last used was Catznip R12 – Dec 31 2017 12:50:12 (64bit) (Catznip Release). Visiting the Catznip website you’ll find R12.0 is still the main release, Catznip R12 – Dec 31 2017 12:50:12 (64bit) (Catznip Release). OR version 12.0.6.180160035. No update since then.

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Imprudence Viewer Update

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Second Life Viewers
Imprudence Logo

A new Imprudence viewer is out, version 1.2.2. The Imprudence blog in a post by Jacek Antonelli states the only real change is the removal of the ability to download textures from Second Life using export. It seems it does not matter whether you created the texture or not. However, this only affects you while connected to Second Life.

So, if you are only using the viewer on grids other than SL’s, you DO NOT NEED this download. Only if you use the Imprudence Viewer in SL will you want this download. They are looking to enable permissions compliant texture download in the future.

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KirstenLee's Viewer

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For those that want the new features of Second Life Viewer 2.0 without the drastic user interface changes, consider Kirsten’s viewer. Those making machinima certainly want to check out the version S20 build 15 and newer ones. The current build is 16. — As of 4/12 version S20 (17) –– As of April 15 version s20 (18) – As of April 24 version s20 (19) – As of April 26 version s20 (20)…

Kirsten is making changes faster than I can keep up. Work projects have me working more than playing just now. Kirsten’s viewer is progressing quickly.

Kirsten has made a new site. You can check it out here: http://www.kirstensviewer.com/ Update your bookmarks.

New Viewers – New Second Life

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This morning Linden Lab released Viewer 2.0 and opened the new resident Help Island. New World Notes gives you a glimpse of the new user experience. We old residents can’t visit there. It is supposed to be better and should help retain more new users. We’ll see.

The new Second Life viewer  is very much like the Beta 2.0 viewer. The Lindens say lots has been fixed and changed. Other than the side panel not messing up my HUD’s I didn’t see much in about 30 minutes of use.

In announcing the new Second Life 2.0 T. Linden tells us what Linden Lab has learned from their research and what they are focusing on. See: Unveiling An Improved New Resident Experience

KirstenLee S20 Logo
KirstenLee S20 (12) Viewer

KirstenLee has released another update on her S20 viewer now version (12). It has the new MOAP (Media On A Prim) feature. Her user interface makes more sense for existing residents. I still get those slow motion freezes where the Frames per Second (FPS) drop to 1 or 2 and  ping goes to 50,000ms… If I get the region IP address I can ping it from out side the viwer and get a good ping, 80ms to 200ms. So, I doubt it is my connection. The previous version of Emerald and Snowglobe were doing the same thing.

She has fixed the chat and IM’s so they are more usable. In general it’s a nice viewer… and of course it does shadows.