What is better viewer!

[Karaluszka]

Hello. Im curious about viewer. I did use orginal  second life viewer but did so much lag. And i got firestorm. And last time i found on YouTube black dragon. What viewer you use? What is better? And black dragon don't lag like second life viewer? Tell me please about it more what viewer you use and how work. Thank you. I'm sorry if i a little weird write but my English is not perfect 

[NiranV Dean]

4 hours ago, Karaluszka said:

Hello. Im curious about viewer. I did use orginal  second life viewer but did so much lag. And i got firestorm. And last time i found on YouTube black dragon. What viewer you use? What is better? And black dragon don't lag like second life viewer? Tell me please about it more what viewer you use and how work. Thank you. I'm sorry if i a little weird write but my English is not perfect 

The best Viewer is whatever serves you best. You'll have to try them and see what suits you.

[KjartanEno]

I have used at various points in time: the Official viewer, Alchemy, Black Dragon, Cool VL Viewer, Firestorm, Kokua, Restrained Love, and Singularity. Since I no longer have a Windows operating system installed on any computer, I no longer use the first three viewers on that list. Of the rest I would say... it depends on what I want to do. I probably use Restrained Love the least and Firestorm the most. I like Cool VL Viewer for mesh uploads, stability, and frequent updates. I like Singularity for being, well, Singularity, but it has some minor issues and doesn't get updated often. Restrained Love looks just like the official viewer, but has Marine Kelley's RLV code added to it. Kokua takes the Restrained Love viewer and augments it with some additional features that I find useful. I don't think I can name a 'better' viewer since they all have features that I like.

[Nalates Urriah]

I doubt you can find a BEST viewer. There will be a viewer you like best.

The default/original Linden is the cutting edge for tech and the simplest to learn. But, it has fewer features than most third party viewers.

Firestorm is the most popular viewer. It is also the most feature rich viewer. There is WAY more to learn when using this viewer, but the learning is optional. The Firestorm (FS) team provides in-world classes about the viewer. I think it is a toss up as to whether the Linden or Firestorm viewer is the most stable, crashes least. This is the in-world builder's viewer of choice. It was and for many still is the photographer's viewer of choice.

Black Dragon has a non-standard user interface and it awkward to learn compared to other third-party viewers. But it has the best image render. This now the viewer of choice for many of SL's photographers. I think in a large part because it has a wonderful Poser (lets you move the important bones in your avatar). It is also customized for making machinima. I don't know that it is the machinima-ist's viewer of choice but I suspect so.

Cool VL Viewer is made for low-end computers but it is awesome on high end machines. It uses the old-old V1 user interface which makes it hard for those new to SL to learn. This is probably the most crash free viewer out there.

Singularity is very similar to Cool VL Viewer. I find it confusing to try and figure out which version one should be running. It is a philosophy thing among the developers that makes it confusing. This the way popular viewer among those that have low-end computers. There is an active user-to-user in-world support group.

Restrained Love Viewer (RLV) is a viewer that can be controlled by in-world scripts. While the reputation is this is a viewer for the BDSM crowd that is an over simplification. The Linden viewer primarily uses Experiences to gain somewhat similar capability. RLV offers more features and abilities than SL's Experiences.

Alchemy and Kokua viewers are out of date and not well supported, if at all.

[MoiraKathleen]

2 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Kokua viewers are out of date and not well supported, if at all.

Kokua viewer is not out-of-date.  It is at parity with LL viewer version 6.4.11 and is a compromise between LL viewer and FS viewer in terms of layout and functionality.   I have been using it for over a year now, and there are periodic releases to keep up do date with changes from LL viewer and/or Marine's RLV viewer.  They offer a no RLV version, a version with a choice to use RLV or not (like FS does) and a fulltime RLV version, for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

What might be out-of-date are links to Kokua's site from the 3rd party directory, but the viewer can be found through  https://kokua.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KKA/overview?homepageId=15237253

 

[arabellajones]

It's worth having two different viewers on your system as a sanity check.

[oOJoselinOo]

you can install as much viewers as you want on your system.

but when you use SL links from the browser, remeber that only the last installed viewer will automatically open those links.
you need to copy the links to other viewers then

[Ansariel Hiller]

33 minutes ago, oOJoselinOo said:

but when you use SL links from the browser, remeber that only the last installed viewer will automatically open those links.
you need to copy the links to other viewers then

That is partially incorrect: Opening an SLURL will result in starting the viewer registered with SLURL (which is usually the last one installed), but if there is already a viewer running, handling of the SLURL will be handed over to the running instance (under the premise that nobody changed the window of the viewer class, which might have done one AFAIR).

[Lillith Hapmouche]

3 hours ago, Ansariel Hiller said:

but if there is already a viewer running, handling of the SLURL will be handed over to the running instance

No idea what the bit in the brackets means, but: the handing over never happened to me.

But fortunately, there's "SLURL Proxy.exe".

[oOJoselinOo]

for me it also tries to open that viewer, that i installed last, even when i have an viewer running.

but it's okay for me to just copy and paste the link 😃

[Lillith Hapmouche]

OK, less subtle: https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/slurl

[Love Zhaoying]

Is What viewer similar to Where or Which viewers? I think Which is better?

[KjartanEno]

Kokua is the viewer I like to use when sailing in my Trudeau yachts. It still enables invisiprims even in advanced lighting, so my boats don't have Linden water showing below the waterline for the most part. I can also go into mouselook while seated and not have attachments above the neck line interfering with the view while sailing (or driving or flying) even though my body is visible when I look down.

[Nalates Urriah]

11 hours ago, MoiraKathleen said:

Kokua viewer is not out-of-date.  It is at parity with LL viewer version 6.4.11 and is a compromise between LL viewer and FS viewer in terms of layout and functionality.   I have been using it for over a year now, and there are periodic releases to keep up do date with changes from LL viewer and/or Marine's RLV viewer.  They offer a no RLV version, a version with a choice to use RLV or not (like FS does) and a fulltime RLV version, for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

What might be out-of-date are links to Kokua's site from the 3rd party directory, but the viewer can be found through  https://kokua.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KKA/overview?homepageId=15237253

 

Thanks for the correction.

8 hours ago, arabellajones said:

It's worth having two different viewers on your system as a sanity check.

To get help from the Lab's tech support you MUST use the Linden made viewer.

Edited January 7, 2021 by Nalates Urriah

[Coffee Pancake]

The best kept secret viewer is obviously Catznip

All features (aside from Linden ones) in Catznip were written from scratch for Catznip. All other viewers (including Linden) have code written by us.

In all seriousness, it really doesn't matter what viewer you use, try them all, pick the one that fits the best. Just stick to those listed in the official TPV directory http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory

The important part is that people log into SL have have fun. Maybe invite a friend.

[Coffee Pancake]

8 hours ago, arabellajones said:

It's worth having two different viewers on your system as a sanity check.

So long as one of those is the official client from LL.

[NiranV Dean]

24 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The best kept secret viewer is obviously Catznip

All features (aside from Linden ones) in Catznip were written from scratch for Catznip. All other viewers (including Linden) have code written by us.

Waaaait that's not real! The Linden Viewer has code from BD too (although highly outdated...*caugh* Oz... snapshot panel rework when?) and i write almost all features from scratch too (except the Exodus Post Processing stack and pie menu... which i'd rather get rid of even after dumping so much time and effort into it)