Best Second Life Viewer

[JPG0809]

From my experience, I haven't seen any difference between lag for any of the TPVs I've experimented with. However, I found Firestorm to be the viewer with the most features and from what I hear, Singularity is an excellent solution for older computers for lag but I can't really say since I can't tell any difference of lag from the TPVs and the LL viewer. I personally just stick with the LL viewer but, I would suggest Firestorm since they have nice features, higher frame rates (from what I hear), and a helpful support group who helped me understand the viewer and to navigate using it.

[Coby Foden]

Firestorm

What I like especially is that the buttons can be arranged either on the left edge, right edge or the bottom edge, or one can arrange the buttons on all those edges. And one can select what buttons to keep there. Very cool.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Coby Foden wrote:

Firestorm

What I like especially is that the buttons can be arranged either on the left edge, right edge or the bottom edge, or one can arrange the buttons on all those edges. And one can select what buttons to keep there. Very cool.

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Nice photo

[KlistiesSeMio Ewinaga]

So it's set up how V3 is set up. that's what I like about V3, the cute little buttons you can pick and chose.

But I still don't like that giant v1 chat bar. I would always be walking (I'm a wsad walker) and suddenly I'd be typing wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww:matte-motes-mad:

The new V3 chat box, while strange and annoying at first, grew on me. As an RPer, I loved the little 'in range' thing they added right in the window. Makes it easy to snoop on other's rp and make it look like you aren't, haha. I also like how you can tell it "don't show me any messages on the sceen when the chat is closed, just blink at me I'll get to it eventually (or not at all)"

[Innula Zenovka]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

Nicholaz users unite!!!  I was really sad when Nicholaz bowed out of developing his viewer when *coughs* v2 *coughs* arrived but can't blame him.  Fortunately Phoenix was to appear on the horizon.

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 I never used the Nicholaz viewer, but I always thought that its natural successor was Henri Beauchamp's Cool VL Viewer, which I used for a very long time (I started when it was only available in Linux, indeed) and liked a great deal.   I still do, but I found that I needed, as a content creator who has to support her products, I needed to be familiar with the UI most of my customers would be using.    So, for me, Catznip is a good solution, since it has the extras I like but still looks sufficiently like the standard viewer for me to be able to help my customers.   It's also the RLVa development viewer, which is important to me.  

I'd also, by the way, recommend Marine Kelly's RLV viewer -- that's often more up-to-date in than most other viewers in terms of keeping up with LL's latest additions, like materials, and if I didn't like Catznip's way of handling outfits so much, that's the viewer I'd use.

[Coby Foden]

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KlistiesSeMio Ewinaga wrote:

But I still don't like that giant v1 chat bar. I would always be walking (I'm a wsad walker) and suddenly I'd be typing wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww:matte-motes-mad:

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In Firestorm there is a setting to prevent that.

Preferences, General --> Pressing letter keys: Affects movement (i.e. WASD)

The setting is located in the upper right corner. After selecting that setting, pressing the letter keys do not start typing even if the chat bar is open.

 

[Talem Basevi]

Although I am quite some time in SL (over 6years) and do know the old viewer ui I must say I absolutely love Firestorm.
It has so many features and is very customizable. I do many different things in SL: exploring, shopping, chat, build, script, making pics, etc. and Firestorm really has a lot of features and tools which are very useful for all of these.

I must admit though that I can't really compare all the features to other viewers as I haven't used any of them for years.

But some weeks ago I found a viewer which really sounded interesting and hasn't been mentioned here so far:
Exodus

The only reason why I didn't give it a try was that it doesn't support RLVa anymore.

Does anyone out there use Exodus and can share his experience?

[CosmicSystems]

I personally use Firestorm, and that seems to work very well for me! But as everyone has said, it all depends on your computer stability. For computers that can't handle as high graphics as SL Viewer 3 offers: Singularity, Firestorm and Dolphin viewers all work perfectly with low lag, and still enjoyable graphics.