New Beta viewer can use OLD Viewer 1 interface?

[Steve Atlanta]

I undertsand form friends that the new Beta Viewer  has the ability to reinstall the OLD  GUI of viewer 1  (yay!)  and still have the  video and advanced capabilties of  Viewer 2  as soon MESH.   Does anyone have more info on this?

[Parhelion Palou]

I believe they were referring to the Firestorm viewer, which is in beta. It's Viewer 2 done by the Phoenix people and is customizable to come close to the V1 interface. I've been using it awhile and find it to be quite stable. You can read about Firestorm at http://www.phoenixviewer.com/

I tried the latest LL beta viewer (2.8) and didn't see anything in it or the release notes about changing the GUI.

 

[Cerise Sorbet]

Hi, there really is not viewer quite like that.

The Firestorm viewer from the Phoenix people is in beta, it throws a few bones to V1 users like pie menus, but it is still very much a 2.x viewer.

Cool VL Viewer is still a V1 based on Snowglobe. It aspires to support mesh some time, but it is not there yet.

The Linden viewer does have a second "Basic" mode now, but that is nothing like V1 at all.

[Void Singer]

Singularity also aspires to keep v1 interface while supporting v2 functionality.

[Steve Atlanta]

Theres a friend I know who insists that its possible to go to  "skins"  and change  Viewer 2  to have the "Classic" interface.  He logged onto  Viewer 2  to write me a tutorial  and lost 1000 inventory items,  panicked and logged off....

[Hitomi Tiponi]

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Steve Atlanta wrote:

Theres a friend I know who insists that its possible to go to  "skins"  and change  Viewer 2  to have the "Classic" interface.  He logged onto  Viewer 2  to write me a tutorial  and lost 1000 inventory items,  panicked and logged off....

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This is not possible - and I produce add--on skins for Viewer 2.  Maybe he/she is referring to one of the TPVs mentioned earleir, or is using another third-party skin.  In either case the best you can get with a Viewer 2 based viewer is a bit of the old look and feel back, but it will still be clearly more Viewer 2 than Viewer 1.

[Steve Atlanta]

I contact this fellow nearly everyday in SL,  I'll ask him exactly what he meant.  Remember we are talking about the BETA  viewer here   http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Beta_Viewer/2.6.3

[Void Singer]

Starlight offers V2 skins, one of which returns some of the feel of V1, but as noted it's still clearly V2 interface with a different paint job.

[Ansariel Hiller]

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Steve Atlanta wrote:

I contact this fellow nearly everyday in SL,  I'll ask him exactly what he meant.  Remember we are talking about the BETA  viewer here  

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Beta_Viewer/2.6.3

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That beta viewer is really old already. And versions released after that beta definitely have no V1 interface - and most definitely will never get one from LL as they have build the whole viewer around the annoying sidebar - from a technical point of view.

[Tanya Wibault]

Is anyone working on a legacy UI for V2? Or at least one that gets rid of that horrible horrible side bar!!? What were they thinking covering a 3rd of your screen in a game where people pay a lot of money on visual looks? If this was a text game I could see wanting to make a big fancy chat interface, but it's not! My nice clean screen with my HuD items neatly placed around the outside is all screwed up with that clunky huge sidebar. If LL isn't going to give us a way to get rid of it I hope that someone out there will make a veiwer that does.

[Void Singer]

Firestorm, Singularity, and Cool. the first customizes the V2 interface, the latter two use a V1.5 codebase and add V2 features. AFAIK only FS offers shared media currently.

vanilla V2 offers the ability to tear off all the sidebar tabs, but using multiple viewers resets that (unless you hack on of the config files and a few file names); and even torn off, they are all maximized on logging in, so plenty annoying.

[Tanya Wibault]

From what I've heard, and this is all hearsay, soon LL will be stopping all viewers based off of V1 and only allow V2 based viewers to work on the grid. This worries me. We may be forced to use V2 or a clone of it with that nasty sidebar and all the other irritating new 'features'.

Most of the people I run into don't use V2 and I mean anywhere I go. Mass majority use Phoenix (you would think LL would catch on to the hint here, people don't like V2!) Seriously, go to any club or other Sim where there are a lot of avatars and look at your radar. You'll find that very very few use the V2.

 

Now, I understand the need for a new viewer, all the advances and new things in SL like alphas and physics, and the new mesh (something I don't quite understand yet) have just been patched into the old viewer. With V2 it's not a patch, it's built that way which means smoother operation and less bugs. I don't want LL to get rid of V2, I just want a choice. I want to be able to play how I want to with the UI I find appealing. If people like the new UI that's great, (just from looking around I don't think they do)but give those of us that have been playing for a long time the choice to keep our nice friendly UI.