......and you perfer using a third-party viewers becauce?

[ConnorBrady]

I started using Emerald viewer (on my old avatar) back before Emerald was "cool". I was only a couple months old and I remember wondering the same things when a friend introduced me to it. She wanted everyone in our family on it for some of the viewer features. Back when we started using Emerald, you could travel around and you would only run into another Emerald user once a week or so. It was a novelty to run into another Emerald user.

At first it was a little overwhelming trying to figure out where everything was and what all was available to me. But after awhile you get VERY used to having these features at your disposal and feel very constrained when you don't have them. All of a sudden word must have been getting out about Emerald because about a year after I started using Emerald, all of a sudden everywhere you went people were using it and the grid was a sea of green.

After Emerald imploded I switched to Imprudence for a couple weeks. I was very much frustrated and felt like I had a limb amputated because Imprudence did not have all the features I was used to. I tried V2.. And my computer almost died that day. It just wasn't for me. Then Phoenix came out and, while it was a little different, it felt like putting on an old comfortable pair of shoes. It filled the void for me that Emerald left. I'm now in the process of trying to learn Firestorm because I know that eventually the V1 code will be very obsolete and anyone using it will be much like those still using the original LL 1.23. It's use is going to become more and more limited so I wanted to be familiar with Firestorm before I had to be. I know there are a number of popular V2 based viewers out there but since Firestorm is built by the same people that make Phoenix, the assumption is it will have all the features I've come to depend on.

So, after all that, the short answer is for me, it's all about the features. Other people have a different short list of things that are important to them. And it drives me nuts when people make the argument that their viewer is best and everyone should use it. My advice is find one that fits you best and ignore your critics. Use what you like.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I don't use TPV's and haven't since about a week or so before Emerald got banned.  I forced myself to learn the UI for V-2 even though at first it was miserable.....I got used to it and once I found where everything was it became quite easy for me which led to me gaining comfort with it.  It always ran well for me, I could do anything I could do before on Emerald (just a different look and location for the features I use).  I have a radar so I actually never used the built in radar for Emerald.  I just recently installed V-3 and like any different UI it took a bit to learn my way around (that's common with almost any software....new upgrades mean things get moved around a little).  I'll stick with the LL provided viewers.....my days of "falling in love" with a viewer (including LL's) are over.  It's a browser for SL....if it does that then I'll learn the way to make it do it the way I want (or live with what it can do).

 

Oh, the reason I'm off TPV's?  Simple.  The viewers are developed by developers that I don't know.  Annonymous people just like the avatars I meet and interact with in SL.  I can like and respect them, friend them, help them and generally have a great time with them.  But never would I accept a file into my computer from them..........if a TPV is not a verifiable company that is licensed by a state or government to do business that I can check public records on, they won't get me to download and install any program to my computer.  Linden Lab is the only developer that meets that standard I've decided to place for viewers I would install on my computer.  The developers at Emerald taught me that even smart grown adults can be children..........and many of those Emerald devs are the same devs building and distibuting the Phoenix and Firestorm viewers.  Thanks, but no thanks.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I use TPV because of the additional features they have.  Right now I'm using Firestorm. 

I'm a full time builder and the building tools are much better on FS than V3.  More control, more options, and additional features.  For instance, you can set the prim settings in the edit window to five decimal places instead of only three, as in the LL viewer, making for much greater accuracy and a tighter build.

There are also many other features that are very useful in FS that have to do with building as well as general features.

I've heard good things about SLV3 but until the build tools catch up with the TPV in terms of control and features I won't use it.

[Heart Brimmer]

I use Phoenix because I lag less, the interface is much better and I love the extra features it gives me, I also use firestorm but it lags me more. I won't go back to the official viewer because it just doesn't impress me at all. Bucking the system? Naw! I just don't like to conform to what everyone thinks you should conform to. LOL.

Heart

[Rin Tae]

I have used TPVs back since Nicklaz made the first improvements to the original LL viewer. Back then it was a horrid thing that used to crash a lot (and I mean a lot and people who state that viewers are unstable have not been around back in 2006/07 XP) .. I used LL viewers now and then too but then stuck on using Cool Viewer and later Emerald fr a while before switching to emergence and phoenix and finally firestorm since I liekd the UI form the first time I have seen it.

My reasons would be the improvements made by otehr developers to the viewer and the features they included. And also more ease in building and better access to all possible settings and controls. Especially back when Emerald and Imprudence have appeared the difference between this viewers and the LL one has been giant. It was like TPVs reached a whole new level while the LL viewer have not improved in any way since years. It is no wonder that many people switched and this started the great times of TPVs.

Adding the problem with v.2 to this and it was not only functionality that drove peopel to TPVs but actually pure hate for what LL has presented. Sadly way too many people consider all viewers form LL to be v.2 and no matter how often they re told that the viewer changed completly, wont listen. Just as many people who only use the LL viewer still think that TPVs don't have the features the LL viewer has, can't see mesh and are made by a shady script kiddie in some basement. In reality of course the v.3 now seem to be a very good viewer (I have not tested it yet) and TPVs have all the features (and a few more what rises their appeal for those that like to use the specific feature a TPV offers them) and defintevly don't hold back any development (right now the only non mesh capable viewer is imprudence and since they develop mainly for opensim I don't think it is very often used on SL curretnly).

So the final choice for why one person want to use this viewer and not another is mostly jsut personal choice and what works best on the given system. Or also because soemone lieks this UI and someone else another. I prefer firestorm right now. It gives me good performence and has all features I like to use. It is also running very stable and issue free (of course only as far as 'issue free' can be said in the context of SL ;P ).

 

And for those who want to try out different viewers .. when they share cache then it is bad news and asking for problems. So give each viewer a separate cache so they wont get mixed up and break each other.

[Innula Zenovka]

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

The only real features I've noticed in any TPV is the command to move to any height, and temp-uploads of textures.

Everything else just seemed a case of whether one likes the cheese on the plate or in the bowl...

 

---

You don't use RLV, do you?

[Claireschen Hesten]

i've been using TPV's since Emerald viewer there was a lot of buzz around it i decided to try it i didn't instantly get on with it but once i got used to extra buttons and menus i made it my full time viewer just before they bought breast physics to the grid in it's day it had many useful features that carried over to Phoenix viewer which i went on to use once Emerald got banned and also made their way in to the LL viewer though LL improved on them things such as Physics, Secondary Attachments, Radar
i now use Phoenix Firestorm  viewer and it still keeps the features i've come to rely on from Phoenix viewer such as Temp Uploads, Radar, Area Search, Teleport History, Avi Script Count, Double Click Teleport, Spell Checker, Private Camming, Chat Commands and more the viewer took a bit of time to get used to but with a guide to make it look as V1 as possible it was a massive UI improvement on the awful LL V2 viewer 

[Alazarin Mondrian]

I use V3.x I've tried a few TPV's and while I found them interesting I couldn't see much difference. I've been suffering from the Nvidia Open GL login timeout crash issue that has been affecting V3 users lately. TPV's didn't seem to have that problem fixed so I went back to using V3. The workaround is logging in with the shaders in V3 disabled and then enable after login.

Some people will always use TPV's. Especially *that* crowd who simply must have the 'Restrained Life Viewer' features, dahlink. That's a feature that I think LL will never incorporate into the official viewer because it would be a fly in the ointment of the 'Yes, Martha, we've cleaned up our act' image LL is trying to present these days.

[Innula Zenovka]

I think that now the Open GL log in issue has been fixed for all V3-based TPVs and for Firestorm (which is based on V2, still).   I can certainly now log in using any of them, with my nVidia GTX460 and the latest drivers, without difficulty.   Viewers, whether official or TPV, are now considerably faster since the fix has been implemented.

[Syo Emerald]

When ever it comes to the point were people speak about their viewers in local chat, the group using third-party viewers tend to look down at those using V3.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Penny Patton wrote:

There's a number of reasons people choose the the viewers they do, not everyones' experiences will be identical.

When LL first introduced "Viewer 2", the UI was a mess.This soured a lot of people on LL's attempts to improve the UI. A lot of people won't give it a chance even now,

despite the fact that all the major problems of the initial release are history

and it brings along a lot of much needed improvements.

---

Not all of them. A big problem with the V2 for many people (I know from posts), including me, was the huge non-translucent camera controls. Many people like to have those controls permanently on-screen and you couldn't do that with the V2 because they were so big and not even translucent. The V3's camera controls are smaller but nowhere near small enough to be permantly on-screen. It's a pity because they really don't need to be so big. So that major problem was never sorted out.

Apart from that, the V3 is excellent, imo. I even started a thread to praise it when I first tried it. I would use it if it wasn't for the two small extras in the Phoenix viewer that I use quite a lot. (That's apart from my latest update crashing me out very soon after I log in each time, of course).

What's really good about the V3 is the buttons system. It could with some improvement though. I don't like the way the invisible button bars sometimes get in the way when opeing a box, such as the Edit box; i.e. some boxes won't stay docked at the side of the screen, even when the chosen side doesn't have any buttons. If we could choose to turn each of the button bars on and off, it would be a good improvement.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Peggy Paperdoll wrote:

The developers at Emerald taught me that even smart grown adults can be children..........and many of those Emerald devs are the same devs building and distibuting the Phoenix and Firestorm viewers.  Thanks, but no thanks.

---

To be fair, it was only a small number of the Emerald people who were bad - the ones who developed the Copybot system. I never used Emerald because I considered those people to be untrustworthy, and, as it turned out, I was right. I even posted against Emerald for that reason.

The Emerald developer, who blew the whistle on the malpractise when he discovered it, released a 'clean' emerald-based viewer (Emergence). which I trusted - because he'd blown the whistle on the scum. Later, he rejoined the clean Emerald people, who were then producing the Phoenix viewer. For that reason, I have trust in their viewers, and I use Phoenix.

It may be that there are still copybot people in the Phoenix/Firestorm crew and, if I learn that there are, I'll ditch Phoenix. I'd rather ditch it in advance than rely on a straight person keeping his eyes open, which is what it took for Emerald to become banned.

[Sassy Romano]

...because the standard client does not have support for RLV.

[Qie Niangao]

---

I'm a full time builder and the building tools are much better on FS than V3.  More control, more options, and additional features.  For instance, you can set the prim settings in the edit window to five decimal places instead of only three, as in the LL viewer, making for much greater accuracy and a tighter build.

---

If you build a lot, you no doubt realize all this, but to others: This can lead one to the conclusion that "prim drift" is happening when, in fact, it's not.  The problem is that floating point numbers can store only so much precision -- and floating point "precision" does not correspond to digits after the decimal point.  So, for example, you may get 4 or even 5 digits decimal precision representing dimensions near (0, 0, 0), but nothing like that precision at (255, 255, 4096).  The real issue is that viewers may show the prims positioned much more precisely than the sim can store their location, so the next time you login, the sim-supplied positions make it appear that the prims have "drifted."

(For me, the real frustration with precise building is with prim attributes (e.g., skew) that are stored with even less than 16 bits resolution.  For those, even the Linden viewer lets us enter precision that can't be represented on the sim, and then it 'flips" back to the actual represented value.)

[Innula Zenovka]

---

Syo Emerald wrote:

When ever it comes to the point were people speak about their viewers in local chat, the group using third-party viewers tend to look down at those using V3.

---

Depends who the people are, I guess, but the only people I run into who ever seem particularly bothered about which viewer others are using are die-hard Phoenix users (and, to a lesser extent, Firestorm users).   

 

[Maryanne Solo]

That is a superb description of actual events Qie. Even moderately experienced builders may have noticed this, but not been able to interperit or describe it accurately. Thank you.

[Templus Carrasco]

      Since the introduction of mesh viewers...be it the current LL Viewer or the Firestorm Release Viewer...my frame rates drop off the chart.

      So I wanted to go with a Viewer 2 style viewer that did not have mesh support and have been quite pleased with the Singularity Viewer.   Actual frame rates I get in my no lag high altitude sky box home are as follows:

      Viewer 3 (LL current release..now called simply "Second Life Viewer")  35fps

      Firestorm Release Viewer  50fps

     Singularity (non mesh but Viewer 2 code based) Viewer  95fps

     So near double the fps with Singularity and this really makes a big difference in a crowded venue.

[Innula Zenovka]

Singularity is a V1-style viewer, based on the Snowglobe codebase, like Cool VL and Phoenix.   And, since October, it's been able to see mesh.

[Rin Tae]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

---

Peggy Paperdoll wrote:

The developers at Emerald taught me that even smart grown adults can be children..........and many of those Emerald devs are the same devs building and distibuting the Phoenix and Firestorm viewers.  Thanks, but no thanks.

---

To be fair, it was only a small number of the Emerald people who were bad - the ones who developed the Copybot system. I never used Emerald because I considered those people to be untrustworthy, and, as it turned out, I was right. I even posted against Emerald for that reason.

The Emerald developer, who blew the whistle on the malpractise when he discovered it, released a 'clean' emerald-based viewer (Emergence). which I trusted - because he'd blown the whistle on the scum. Later, he rejoined the clean Emerald people, who were then producing the Phoenix viewer. For that reason, I have trust in their viewers, and I use Phoenix.

It may be that there are still copybot people in the Phoenix/Firestorm crew and, if I learn that there are, I'll ditch Phoenix. I'd rather ditch it in advance than rely on a straight person keeping his eyes open, which is what it took for Emerald to become banned.

---

As bad as the emerald people have been .. irresponsible script kidies .. (I started to look at other viewers after I expereinced them in a emerald office hour not long before it all blew up .. really .. that was bad) they did not made copybot (and that Emerald included copybot code has been a rumour and I have not heard anything that would be able to confirm it) as this system has been around long before LL even open sourced the viewer code (rumour says that it actually came out of a LL code that was made to look into posibilites of backing up inventory in the first days of SL .. and got out and found people who abused it and developed it further).

LordGregGregs actions have been great and I did the same as you with chosing Emergence and later Phoenix (however the choice for Phoenix has been taken after a test with Imprudence with Phoenix working better for me). Most of the developers followed LordGregGreg away from Emerald and those few who stayed have been those who approved of the actions or thought they have more pull then LL .. and they got the kick as they deserved.

I am happy with Firestorm now

But as always it is a personal choice if the information about the viewer any viewer creators publish are enough to take the decission of using it. After all .. we don't know what the lab is puting into the viewer too and have to trust the TPV devs to look into the code and say what is what   ;P

[SinfulPrince]

When I was a newbie I thought v2 controls and interface was AWESOME. I thought anyone wanting to fool with the pie menu setup on phoenix was out of their minds; I hate the pie menu. HOWEVER with the sl viewer came the tendency to be ruthed .  Bar none I despise finding out 48minutes in that my avatar is ruthed. After trying out phoenix and seeing some of the very customizable settings , I got over the pie crap much easier than I ever would have the v2 issue.   Now we have v3  but I'll still take the safe route and go with a third party

[Peggy Paperdoll]

"...

But as always it is a personal choice if the information about the viewer any viewer creators publish are enough to take the decission of using it. After all .. we don't know what the lab is puting into the viewer too and have to trust the TPV devs to look into the code and say what is what   ;P"

--------------------------------------------------------------------

 

No, I don't have to trust the TPV devs to watch out for us.  I have the name of the company, the name of the parent company, the name of the CEO, the URL of a website, an email address, a phone number, and a street address......all of which would be quite useful should I find Linden Lab has put some identity threatening code in a viewer.  Not to mention I know which FBI office to contact should it be necessary. 

That makes for a big level of comfort..........something I just don't have with any TPV.  So, my personal choice to stick with something that is comfortable for me.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Templus Carrasco wrote:

      Since the introduction of mesh viewers...be it the current LL Viewer or the Firestorm Release Viewer...my frame rates drop off the chart.

      So I wanted to go with a Viewer 2 style viewer that did not have mesh support and have been quite pleased with the Singularity Viewer.   Actual frame rates I get in my no lag high altitude sky box home are as follows:

      Viewer 3 (LL current release..now called simply "Second Life Viewer")  35fps

      Firestorm Release Viewer  50fps

     Singularity (non mesh but Viewer 2 code based) Viewer  95fps

     So near double the fps with Singularity and this really makes a big difference in a crowded venue.

---

By all means go for the viewer that gives you the highest framerate if you like, but you can't see any difference in their visual performance because the human can't detect framerates above ~25. So the worst of your examples will be as smooth as silk to your eyes.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Rin Tae wrote:

As bad as the emerald people have been .. irresponsible script kidies .. (I started to look at other viewers after I expereinced them in a emerald office hour not long before it all blew up .. really .. that was bad) they did not made copybot (and that Emerald included copybot code has been a rumour and I have not heard anything that would be able to confirm it) as this system has been around long before LL even open sourced the viewer code (rumour says that it actually came out of a LL code that was made to look into posibilites of backing up inventory in the first days of SL .. and got out and found people who abused it and developed it further).

---

I don't think that any copybot stuff was included in any of the Emerald viewers. As you said, copybot came before LL released the viewer code, and was done by using libSL, which was created by some genuine people who reverse-engineered the sim server - a project that LL supported.

But the people who created copybot created Emerald. They were joined by other genuine people and they stayed with it until LGG blew the whistle when he discovered what those few people were actually doing with Emerald, which caused LL to ban the viewer. That's why I wouldn't use it. Rightly or wrongly, I feel confident about Phoenix/Firestorm with LGG involved.

[Nyx Karas]

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

---

Syo Emerald wrote:

When ever it comes to the point were people speak about their viewers in local chat, the group using third-party viewers tend to look down at those using V3.

---

Depends who the people are, I guess, but the only people I run into who ever seem particularly bothered about which viewer others are using are die-hard Phoenix users (and, to a lesser extent, Firestorm users).   

 

---

 

I've only seen this attitude from V2/3 users, personally. The whole 'Phoenix users are stupid people who can't adapt to change'-thing. It doesn't particularly make me feel more positive about the official viewers.

I will stick to Phoenix as long as I possibly can. It's partly the UI, as the V2 was absolutely horrible, and the Firestorm UI being quite horrible too. Haven't tried V3 yet, so can't say. But also, because Phoenix has features that I really want to keep. The radar I can't live without, and being able to move around, TP home, set draw distance with key shortcuts is incredibly useful, and temporary texture uploads save me a lot of headaches too

[Ceka Cianci]

---

Nyx Karas wrote:

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

---

Syo Emerald wrote:

When ever it comes to the point were people speak about their viewers in local chat, the group using third-party viewers tend to look down at those using V3.

---

Depends who the people are, I guess, but the only people I run into who ever seem particularly bothered about which viewer others are using are die-hard Phoenix users (and, to a lesser extent, Firestorm users).   

 

---

 

I've only seen this attitude from V2/3 users, personally. The whole 'Phoenix users are stupid people who can't adapt to change'-thing. It doesn't particularly make me feel more positive about the official viewers.

I will stick to Phoenix as long as I possibly can. It's partly the UI, as the V2 was absolutely horrible, and the Firestorm UI being quite horrible too. Haven't tried V3 yet, so can't say. But also, because Phoenix has features that I

really

want to keep. The radar I can't live without, and being able to move around, TP home, set draw distance with key shortcuts is incredibly useful, and temporary texture uploads save me a lot of headaches too

---

 

 

there may have been  v2 users saying that but i haven't seen any v3 users going that far as of yet..and as far as throwing insults..it's always been a two way street in the past..

you couldn't mention v2 without getting gangbanged by the tpv's or vice versa lol

each side had their own people ready at jump street to start stuff up in threads that were meant as casual threads that got derailed..no way was it just one sided abuse lol