How Many Still Use Viewer 1.23 / Snowglobe?

[Steph Catseye]

The reason why I ask is because the only stats available are from Red Zone, but those are all time stats and they started recording before 3rd party viewers became dominant and stopped recording when RZ got banned :-)

I heard rumors from a source that SHOULD know that some essential V1 features will be disabled, phoenix was confirming that info on theri website the same day I heard about it!

The reason why I ask and i don't mean any disrespect for people who don't care about the recent developments such as alpha layers and tattoo layer or avatar physics!

For me as a designer it is a pain in the butt to deal with stone age viewers, I am selling outfits and shoes and each of my outfits has shoes or boots as well which means I have to make 2 versions of boots and deliver invisible prims for ankle shoes or sandals / poems! While i don't really mind doing the extra work, many customers, even experienced ones have massive understanding problems! They try to resize a shoe via script but cannot touch the shoe coz it is blocked by the invisble prim, i estimate that around 60% don't know they don't have to wear them! This of course is a problem!

Again no disrespect to people with old viewers but in my opinion Second Life needs the development to get more interesting and it is not helping when we are developing for things that has been created in 2009 while we are halfway through with 2011 and how much should a designer care to make 2 versions of their products just to satisfy people that haven't updated in 2 years? Mesh is coming in about 6 weeks, any designer will have to offer Mesh Clothes or they will have a hard time to survive. There is no way I would make a sculpted version of a Jacket with 80 prims instead of a Mesh product with 3 prims!

IMO it is time people give it a try and test the alternatives, i don't see a reason why Phoenx, SIngularity or Imprudence wouldn't be an improvement!

I am looking forward to some constructive replies in that matter!

[Monti Messmer]

Hi, i have no numbers on that but

- some simply cannot afford new hardware every year so they are stuck with the old software

- mesh clothes, we will see how that works because for alot things there is no need to mesh them and again not everyone has the time and or money to buy/learn external software because SL is still a hobby no job

Anyway no need to go further into because soon, maybe with the release of mesh?, all V1 viewers won´t be able to login SL anymore so this problem will become obsolete.

Btw. i don´t see any improvement on V2 viewer, all the shiny little things could have been implemented in the V1 code too. It´s just this ugly new interface to deal with.

Monti

[Smoothie Perl]

A great number of inWorld bussines owners (including me) are still login in with all older versions of viewers (Phoenix - Imprudence - Hippo and of course V. 1.23) for testing of their cretions and for it fuctionality. If there is a support from the server side it will be remain in my computer. Also I use those viewers to access my private grid server and that it will be stay for V.1 versions (for all kind of viewers). I think the functionality of the old "Emerald" viewer it's uncomparable.

Simple, we doing things with 100% efficiency "period" 

[Cerise Sorbet]

There was some talk like that but 1.x did get a recent bit of life support. Originally the "All" and "Groups" search tabs were going to be discontinued for 1.x, but instead LL added a compatibility mode. So, the old features will keep working for longer, even if the new ones are not all available.

[Sarah91 Tremor]

Heya Steph

There are no reliable *official* stats on viewer-uses I think

Yeah, I think some functionality of the 1.x Viewers might be turned off later this year or in 2012, like the "old" (recent) search and maybe even the "old" profiles, which could quite obviously be a great move to catch up with html-online profiles like e.g. facebook (although I have to admit I am very much with the old profiles). I do not think, that the ability to log in with v1.23 will be affected though (would be a shot to the head for all SL-companies using a bot). From my personal point of view for 2011 the viewer-series 1.x and 2.x should be on focus for each designer.

Mesh might be the future of SL-clothing, for myself I am developing extremely hard on mesh-clothes. For some clothes-parts I am very sure it will be the future (like shoes, heels, boots, maybe jewelry and other needful attachments) in SL (replacing sculpts with mesh, yeah).  Other clothes-parts will have a huge advantage by using mesh, like e.g. coats, jackets, skirts beacuse of the flex-structure. By saying that, we will have to wait and see how good the mesh-system works. Some people working with mesh said, there will be a need for alpha-masks, others said there will be no alpha-masks needed because it depends on quality rigging. Others said, that they will provide their customers with a set of different versions for their meshed clothes to fit a wide range of avatars. Other-clothes-parts (lingerie, tops & pants) might see a short mesh-aera but to be honest it is quite not necessary and there are not too many benefits about that.

The most important thing creating "whatever" in SL is the user experience. We both and others too have seen that so often: Hundreds of 1,000 days and older people who do not really know how to "edit" things or who wear 3 tops at the same time or even 2 shoe-version (although you drop notecards in the vendor and rename the products to VIEWER1.x ONLY and VIEWER 2.x ONLY) at the same time. 

 So hugs & have a nice day... 

Sarah 

[Steph Catseye]

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- some simply cannot afford new hardware every year so they are stuck with the old software

- mesh clothes, we will see how that works because for alot things there is no need to mesh them and again not everyone has the time and or money to buy/learn external software because SL is still a hobby no job

---

 

 

Thank you Monti for you input!

I don't think it requires new hardwrare to upgrade to phoenix, Singularity, Improdunce etc... which all support the newest features that came out in Second Life!

Mesh: It is a Job to me and thousands of others and I didn't even call it a hobby when I wasn't able to live from my SL earnings. But you are making an excellent point with the external software, the good programs are really expensive and someone who sees him/herself as a hobby designer will not make the investement! However, and don't get fooled by ma avatar age, I am 6 years old and have seen it all before ... Mesh will replace sculpties like sculpties have replaced boxes!

There is no question about it but as long one does it as a hobby there is no harm done except hat at some point the this person will find another hobby since it doesn't finance istelf anymore! Shoes are a great example, within 1 year everyone had to switch from texture shoes to sculpted shoes. Some tried to make boots with regular prims and while there are many great talents out there, scultpies have completely taken over the market! Same goes for furniture, jewelry, etc..

[Steph Catseye]

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Smoothie Perl wrote:

A great number of inWorld bussines owners (including me) are still login in with all older versions of viewers (Phoenix - Imprudence - Hippo and of course V. 1.23) for testing of their cretions and for it fuctionality. If there is a support from the server side it will be remain in my computer. Also I use those viewers to access my private grid server and that it will be stay for V.1 versions (for all kind of viewers). I think the functionality of the old "Emerald" viewer it's uncomparable.

Simple, we doing things with 100% efficiency "period" 

---

I agree on Emeral, that was a great viewer though!

When i was referring to old viewers i didn't mean to include Phoenix - Imprudence - etc... those viewers have all the newest features, at least the ones you need in order to survive I use Phoenix for my Second Life, Designing and Building, I have all others for test reasons! What I am really interested in is who is actually using V1.23 and Snowglobe as their main viewer!

[Linda Brynner]

I am still on 1.23.5. 2.7.2 when i really really need it.

My experience with viewer 2 sofar is that every new version it has some show stopper bug making it a continuous pain in the but. 2.7.2 is the only version 2.x that i actually can use. But then they borked 2.7.3 and 2.7.4 hard again. They mixed up program code with buttons in the preferences graphics tab bringing fps down hard on many computers that are spot on at recommended specifications. 2.x Is getting utter rediculous now.

From all the avies i meet inworld today i understand hardly anyone uses 2.x, except for the noobs. 

Last year Linden Lab published that nearly 30% was using the official SL viewer which was 2.0 at the time. I don't have an update.

The problem layes in the programming and beta testing policies since the new CEO.

With the new CEO Linden Lab has adepted common practice of IT business which is getting new version out as soon as possible with even less testing, actually under Beta norms.

Consequently, the overall quality of Linden Lab´s Second Life viewer has gotten to a state of continous show stopper bugs like Alpha stage software.

This was already announced more or less. When an IT CEO announces faster updates (the new CEO did in his opening statement) you know what time it is.... even lower quality of existing software which was already badly accepted.

I would really forget 2 now.

What a mess LL is making of that piece of utter crap software which already had been very hard accepted since the start, good grief.

 

 

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Deej Kasshiki]

I still use Snowglobe because I can't stand the interface of v2, all the bugs, the poor performance and the silly way that text chat is done. I'm trying Firestorm because I know that one day server support for the 1.x series will be discontinued (when that is only LL knows and they haven't said officially) but, until the day LL shuts off all the services needed to support it, I'm sticking with Snowglobe.

All the new shinies you like designing make for a nice dessert but, I like having a nutritious main course first and foremost. For me Snowglobe is the main course.

Oh and just as an FYI other Snowglobe-based viewers like Phoenix, Imprudence, etc do utilize many v2 updates like alpha layers and even avatar physics. It's mesh that won't be compatible and honestly based on all the agita and crying coming from the mesh forum about how LL is limiting mesh I don't think it will be nearly the game-changer that people have been selling it as.

(And ditto for what Qwal said. Saying in one sentence you're not trying to be disrespectful and then name-calling in the next seems a bit disingenuous)

[Void Singer]

there are still a rare few on the vanilla v1.23 and v1.5 codebases, but they are not common at all.

phoenix and other TPV's wouldn't count towards those numbers because they are heavily modified to include current v2 features.

 

as a business person, if both phoenix and V2 support it (the two largest market shares), then I wouldn't have any problem putting it out, and feel no need to mention that feature specifically.

officially, if it's supported in V2 then anyone using an alternate viewer is responsible for knowing what features from V2 aren't supported.

unofficially, if it's a pretty new V2 feature (under 2mos), or the product is aimed at creators, I'd mention it in the product description, especially if it doesn't have wide TPV support.

 

I would NEVER let that stop me from developing a product though, and in fact haven't, since I made an open source web server that works with shared media and runs inside of SL only (though I did build in some backwards compatibility via the browser)

[Yoki Enoch]

This is a non sequitur, but after over a year of Viewer "improvements," the concurrency levels remain flat. Once LL realizes that bells and whistles doesn't bring them in, or make them stay, maybe LL will clue in what SL is all about.

[Steph Catseye]

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Qwalyphi Korpov wrote:

Um.... if you really wanted ppls to feel non-disrespected you might want to avoid things like refering to their viewers as 'stone age'.. stuff like that makes ppl feel disrespected.

But I think you knew that.

---

The viewers we are talking about are from the Second Life "Stone Age" era , nothing disrespectful about stating a fact nor did I insult or attack a person!

Since when is calling a Linden Lab Product by a nickname offensive?

[Steph Catseye]

I see a massive misunderstanding in several responses!

When I was asking about SL Viewer 1.23 or Snowglobe I wasn't for any evolved viewer based on Snowglobe since it is clearly not the same! I wanted to know who is actually using these old viewers without any alpha layers!

In the meantime i got some more official information and my question is basically answered already!

 

[Void Singer]

referring to a product people use as "stone age" (especially in light of the fact that two years ago it was the de facto standard and top of line) has plenty of implications for the people using it. (luddite, cave man, and any other euphemism for stupid and unable to grasp current technology you want to use)

 

to answer your assumption that those people should just upgrade, allow me to point out that there are two general reasons for people using the vanilla versions of those that are perfectly valid and not at all insulting. 1) not everyones equipment can handle the newer more advanced viewers (though most should be able to handle singularity or cool), 2) lack of trust in TPV developers who are at best, only accountable after the fact.

both reasons are usually seen in combination for users of the vanilla V1 versions from LL. Minus both of those reasons, the people who can upgrade already have.

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

 

[Steph Catseye]

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Qwalyphi Korpov wrote:

Prior to 2nd quarter 2010 would be stating a fact.    It's 3rd quarter 2011 now.   If you'd said Viewer 2 is the Bronze Age you could have convinced me.   Although it's not that far advanced to be called the Bronze Age if Viewer 1 is the Stone Age IMO.   Maybe the Dark Bronze Age.

 

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You are trying to dsicuss semantics about a point you don't have, you just wanted to point out I was insulting which i neither intended nor did! I don't know if you are longer in Second Life as your avatar, if you have been around like I am you would know that there was literally no develoment in SL or the viewers, Viewer 1.23 and Viewer 1.1 are not at all different, the only thing that was new is windlight and the new Havok 4 engine and Mono which was all around mid 2007 and early 2008!

The only major change in the Viewer was the majurity ratings which was 2009 if I recall that correctly but there has been no new useable features added since 2007 which is clearly stone age since this is the year where all the people came (and left)!

 

 

[Steph Catseye]

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Void Singer wrote:

referring to a product people use as "stone age" (especially in light of the fact that two years ago it was the de facto standard and top of line) has plenty of implications for the people using it. (luddite, cave man, and any other euphemism for stupid and unable to grasp current technology you want to use)

 

to answer your assumption that those people should just upgrade, allow me to point out that there are two general reasons for people using the vanilla versions of those that are perfectly valid and not at all insulting. 1) not everyones equipment can handle the newer more advanced viewers (though most should be able to handle singularity or cool), 2) lack of trust in TPV developers who are at best, only accountable after the fact.

both reasons are usually seen in combination for users of the vanilla V1 versions from LL. Minus both of those reasons, the people who can upgrade already have.

---

Good points though I won't disagree with most of it, however i doubt that systems that can handle Snowglobe or V1.23 couldn't handle Phoenix! With the proper use of preferences it should work even better (in theory). The trust thing.. yeah i heard that before, that is the whole Emerald Security Leak issue which was a bazillion times misinterpeted and misunderstood! What they did was using your bandwidth during the login screen to launch a DDOS Attack Mr. Gavov who critiqued their viewer one time too often! They didn't send you BW to his site, it was loading hidden images on the emrald site! Sure that's not nice also it is not a security leak nor risky for the users! 

You mentioned that people imply the word cave men! First of all that is what you want to read into it and you know it. Those people using old viewers by choice and probably the same people that were yelling at LL to create more layers and more attachment points. Alpha layers been suggested 2005 in the Jira.

All these little battles aside, I was asking in a very valid context as a designer how things should be created to achieve maximum satisfaction! From all the answers I read here, people that moved on a while ago to more elaborate viewers won't post in this thread and those who are still using it catching for the last straw by trying to read negativity into it, or simply don't read the questions i asked in their intended context!

This is not a minor issue that is why I wanted to gather some informations first,

Users with Viewer 2 or Firestorm, Phoenix often don't know what layers to wear and what prims to attach, I do support on a daily basis because of people being unable to adjust their shoes because they are blocked by an invisble prim which they don't even know they are wearing! These prims are for people with the older viewers and while taking care of the satisfaction of this minority results in a lot more work for me it confuses other residents at the same time! For that matter it is important to know how many people are still using it! Like I said before, in the meantime I know how many people use SL Viewer 1 and Snoglobe and they figures are lower as i expected and i know what I have to do to now!

[Void Singer]

actually, I'm givien to believe that phoenix does not run on PPC macs (singularity and cool should though).

and while I agree that the Emerald incident was overblown, the fact remains that a single coder inserted that in there, without any disguise, and it passed review long before it was noticed. that means the potential exists to do something similar or even more nefarious, and by the time anyone noticed it, the damage would already be done.

 

as for reading anything into it, no I didn't, but the connotation exists for plenty of people, I just noted it. It's better just to acknowledge it as not coming across as intended. a better comparison of V1 vs V2 is an older model car that they don't make parts for and a newer one that still has after market kits being developed for it.

 

my thoughts were in the first post of mine in this thread... there is no onus for you to support old tech, if a user chooses or is forced to use old tech then they need to be aware of the limitations.... that's been pretty much true in every industry since the dawn of time. if that segment is large enough it may pay to cater to them, but there's no requirement to.

 

[Deej Kasshiki]

Like Void said if you don't feel the critical mass of customers are there to make it worth your time to support older viewers, don't. Just be aware that the market is saturated with creators all chasing after a decreasing number of customers. If you don't want to cater to those of us who, out of choice or neccessity, prefer not to use one of the upgraded 1.x or v2 viewers, someone else will.

As I said before I use Snowglobe, version 1.42 to be precise. I can't see display names, tattoo layers, bouncing avatar bits, etc. I don't care. None of those things means squat to me, tbh. To me it's far more important to have a reliable, stable experience even though my 6 month old computer can certainly handle one of the newer viewers. After reading all the posts on people having issues with logging in, avatars refusing to rez for days, poor performance, major new bugs introduced with each successive v2 release and more, I'm perfectly happy to ride the Snowglobe train to the end of the line.

Hope that answers your question. Good luck with your business whatever direction you decide to take.

[Steph Catseye]

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Void Singer wrote:

 

as for reading anything into it, no I didn't, but the connotation exists for plenty of people, I just noted it. It's better just to acknowledge it as not coming across as intended. a better comparison of V1 vs V2 is an older model car that they don't make parts for and a newer one that still has after market kits being developed for it.

 

my thoughts were in the first post of mine in this thread... there is no onus for you to support old tech, if a user chooses or is forced to use old tech then

they

need to be aware of the limitations.... that's been pretty much true in every industry since the dawn of time. if that segment is large enough it may pay to cater to them, but there's no requirement to.

 

---

I find that an amazing answer to be perfectly honest with you! Not only because it sounds like the easy way out for me but it is a very reasonable assumption that if development continues they will more and more often find products failing on them!

I loved the idea with the car parts and actually took the idea literally! I'll keep producing the parts because I don't mind doing them but I don't deliver them with the purchase anymore, I have created a support hud with it's dedicated button for older viewers, people on old viewers can request the parts and based on how the support system works they will have it almost instantly (live support covers 18 hours/day)! This way I have a custom solution for the customers but it also is a message that it is time now to update while they can make their own decissions if they like to stay incompatible! Most important is that it will instantly stop confusion about which parts to wear!

[Steph Catseye]

DeeJ

I comepletely agree with your last post, if you don't need any of those features there should be no reason to move on from your stable solution. The only realy improvment that allows products to look better has been the alpha layers, they allow a designer to work more precise and you don't have to cover your prims with invisble prims which makes things simply look better and body parts won't suddenly turn invisble when they blend into one of those prims! Not sure if you are wearing shoe as a furry, if you do you would love them too.

I terms of stability, I find that Phoenix and Singularity and Imprudence have good features to optimze that as an alternative to Snowglobe! However they are alternatives and anyone should find the viewer that benefits them most. If you build a lot and once learned about the building tools in Phoenix & Co you cannot live without them after using them just once, if you have to upload a ton of textures in order to find/ create the perfect one you will love the opportunity to upload the, temporarily for free or even use local textures like in phoenix! If you are bothered by group chat, you can turn it off..... if all that doesn't matter you stay where you are and that is fine!

I don't really know who invented all these nifty little tools among the 3rd party viewers but one thing was very clear to me after using phoenix the first day, "this is the work of people that actually been residents in SL for a while" It makes creating simply easier, it makes chatting easier, autoresponses are an amazing tool since people dont read profiles, turning off group jabber is like a weekend at the spa, with almost 200 outlet stores I appreciate that the viewer can find the corresponding land group and i don't have to activate the tag everytime etc... it got all these tools while Viewer 2 is completely ignorant to all of that! I never had an issue with the menus in Viewer 2 but they made something worse as it was before, they did these idiotic web profile as a launch to a social networking attempt that whill backfire in a way they cannot imagine! They just launched stage 2 with friends suggestion like in Facebook, i decline any random friends request and so do the most! Web profiles make it harder to share stuff and that's just silly, they load slower, they are more complicated while old profiles load in a jiffy and everyone was happy!

Linden Labs clearly don't know their own product, the new strategy of social networking will fail because most people doing that in Real Life while they won't do it for their vritual character which is often fictional. They want to push it into a direction and spend all their time on things how people can connect with each other and have failed to see that they made it more difficult to actually connect and share things with your friends! Firestorm is a good alternative to viewer 2 but as long the old features are still accessable I will continue using phoenix and singularity!

[Void Singer]

Glad it gave you a good idea for a way to offer added value for legacy user, and I'm sure they'll appreciate it

[Aztral Aeon]

1.23.5 here. V2 would make it much easier to create/scripts things, however as content creator you have to go with the least common demoninator-that's 1.23.

 

I do wish LL would publish the numbers though.

[Elisaisabel Munro]

i don't have money to enhace my pc.

I download Ascent because it's the most stable.  Lag wasn't a nightmare, just a pain in the ass.

SL viewers sucks.

I hate LAG!