Phoenix Viewer So Popular - Problem?

[Linda Brynner]

I don't really am interested to know who is using what exactly. That game would feel like kindergarten. Most important however is to see that viewer2 is being hardly used. It seems to be a clear signal that devs of LL are so far off.
That itself is a major worry.

But i don't know if Pheonix is such a heaven. I have tried it a few times and it was terribly annoyingly slow, as i hear that confirmed by many users i speak... with ultimate message they hardly login anymore because SL is so slow. For that i have already lost so many friends. When i refer to 1.23.5 they don't believe it is very fast and smooth, but it really is for the most i speak in SL still using it (at least 10 people that i know of).

About mesh... When sculpties came to SL it took about 2 years to see them being used full scale at most places. The actual use had taken a long time, also due to lack of tools and tutorials. It has taken another 2 years to actually see high detailed sculpties used on most places in SL. And still there are so many places being very conservative with sculpties.

Perhaps the average user isn't well familiar with 3D designing and to actually learn it requires massive time far beyond basic interest for SL which i wonder who has that.

As for viewer1 based... They are stll the most loved SLbrowsers. Where 2 based are very very hated by far the most users. The choice is also for LL... take that into consideration or see the retour trend of actual users and user hours continued since 2008. 

But personally i don't see the mesh coming very fast in SL at all, so it all will bore down to time,

Perhaps viewer3 will appeal to the majority... or it will have a black login screen with the message that your computer is below basic requirements to run it.... Please buy a new one at the LL store... every other month hahaahh.

[Tristizia Demonista]

First, you DO NOT speak for most ppl.

Second, it seems ppl like you, just scream the loudest and that don't necessarily make you a majority!!!

So, if this old viewer works for you, fine, but stop trying to impose your opinion on others.

[Cincia Singh]

Actually, everyone uses a Linden Labs viewer because all of the TPV's are just skins and mods of the LL viewer. If the TPV's were forced to build a viewer from the ground up we would likely have no TPV's at all. That said, people tend to use the viewer their friends use, and hang around places where their friends go. That concentrates individual viewers to specific groups and locations and gives people a skewed impression about which viewer is used most overall.

As for mesh, I plan to use mesh immediately when it is enabled on the region where I live/work as well as the 64 sq m prims the mesh project will enable. Maybe some people prefer texture hair, no flexi, no sculptie, no shadows, no mesh, 10m sq prims and an SL that looks like a kids game from the 1990's, but I want my SL to evolve into the future, grow, improve and become as beautiful and exciting as it can be.

Change is difficult and a little scary both RL and SL, but it's much better than the alternative.

[Innula Zenovka]

I don't think many people -- and certainly not Linda -- are screaming about anything.   Some people are very vociferous in their dislike of V2, but, to my mind, most people I talk to who still use older viewers are so doing because it's a nuisance to have to learn the new UI (which it is -- for the first day or so, a lot of stuff's not where you expect it to be) and they don't see the point of going to that trouble.

Certainly it took me a little while to get used to V2, and there's still things about 1.23 I miss, or functions from older TPVs that no one's yet put into V2 viewers that I'd like to have, but, all in all, I find the things I like about V2-based viewers far outweigh any disadvantages, particularly if you use the Starlight skins, which seem to mitigate most of things about V2 people usually dislike.

The problem, I suppose, is that the disadvantages of V2 -- having to become familiar with the new UI and tweak it to your taste -- are far more immediately apparent than are the advantages of (e.g.) multiple clothing layers, faster inventory loading and enhanced graphics, which you don't really come to appreciate until you've used it for a bit.    

The big question, I guess, is whether the ability to see mesh is going to be the killer app that persuades people to switch to V2 (people who're interested in building with mesh won't need persuading, I'm sure).  

Personally, I don't think it will be, or at least not immediately.   I just don't see people saying to themselves "Gosh, it looks to me like she's wearing a box, so I'd better switch to a mesh-capable viewer so I can see what her outfit's supposed to look like" as opposed to "Doesn't she look odd wearing that box?".    

Give it a few months, and particularly if Firestorm produce a mesh-capable version and then make it very clear that they're not maintaining Phoenix any more (to howls of rage, I am certain), and things may well be different.    But I just can't see mesh taking off as quickly as some people hope.

[Tristizia Demonista]

Ever tried to switch viewers the other way around ? I did, and i couldn't get used to the other Ui either!

Anyway, as you allready pointed out, it is NOT only mesh that makes V2, there are a LOT of other things that, in MY opinion, make V2 the better choice for ME! 

I actually don't care what Viewer anyone uses, because everyone of us has their own reasons for that and that's fine, but i absolutly do not like this "I use this, the other Viewer is crap, so you have to use my choice!!" attitude that was displayed in the post i replied to!

[Void Singer]

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Cincia Singh wrote:

Actually, everyone uses a Linden Labs viewer because all of the TPV's are just skins and mods of the LL viewer. If the TPV's were forced to build a viewer from the ground up we would likely have no TPV's at all. [...]

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this is not strictly true either... TPV (and other) developers have long been providing patches to fix what's been broken in LL's viewer and LL has used those patches to build and extend it's own. before there was a TPV policy or public code repository, there were multiple projects that not only decoded the protocols and abilities of the LL viewer, but extended them... a great many of those extensions are still around and in use, and a few even adopted by LL. In one well known case, TPV's had near universal support for LL's own feature roughly two years before LL did (textbox support) in their own viewer.

do most popular TPV's use LL's code base? of course they do, LL sets the standard because it's their system. But that same code base includes code and innovations from more than just LL's developers, it's cooperative. avatar physics, live translation, extended attachment points, and external app script editing were all developed first outside of LL, and while LL did improve on some of those, they did so because they have access to parts of the system external devs can't touch, namely SL's server architecture. Even shadow rendering was heavily developed externally before a usable version was included in LL's codebase.. that's just to name a few items, and doesn't even begin to cover all the fixes and patches provided.

There's a great deal more there than just a new paint job and custom rims.

[Bitt Zane]

IMHO, Phoenix devs are making a mistake with this "mesh too difficult to port to v1" thing. I've been using v1 viewers since my first avi in SL, in 2007. I do it because, like many others, i think that LL did a fine job at messing up little things that had a great impact on usability and general confort in-world, when they released v2. Phoenix is one of (-if not-) the most used TPV v1, and frankly, when I won't be able to go very far without running into something mesh, I will switch to some other v1 viewer that has mesh capabilities. Fortunately, this moment is not somewhere in the visible future. Again IMO, there's plenty of time for the devs to work on porting mesh, just like other viewers' dev teams already have...

[Dante Tucker]

You are right, it was a big mistake on their part saying that, and kind of made them look foolish. Since by the time they put out the Firestorm mesh beta other 3rd party viewers had already ported mesh back to 1.x!

It proves they easily could have continued phoenix and never bothered with firestorm at all.

I do kinda like Firestorm, but my point still stands they should not have said they couldn't do it.

[Void Singer]

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Dante Tucker wrote:

[...] It proves they easily could have continued phoenix and never bothered with firestorm at all.[...]

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assuming mesh portability was the only consideration... but it wasn't... it's a lot more work to backport new features than it is to simply tweak them for a new interface... as I remember that was major in the decision to move on

[Dante Tucker]

It's all good. I am happy with Firestorm. My concern is more that they have a habit of speaking for everyone on their blog, or speaking like they are all knowing.

The Phoenix blog is one of the biggest sources of rumors anywhere. "LL is going to block all older viewers lol" and all. They need to reread what they write before they post it.

[Void Singer]

fair enough, it has been much less than concise at times (although in their defense two very active bloggers and posters to these forums also led the "V1 is gonna die" charge, at least one of whom should know better)