Available Viewers

[Muchachacha]

I am very new here -- have heard a lot of people talking about their 'viewer' -- I have the viewer 2 I believe ... what else is available, how do I access it, and are there advantages to these?  Thank you all.

[LoveAngeL Lyre]

Hello Muchachacha. Except of the official viewer which you can download here, there are available also the Third-Party Viewers: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory If you haven't problems so far using the official viewers, i don't see any reason to download another one. We can't say about advantages and disadvantages between viewers. The answer is that eveyone uses the viewer which is better for his system. For example i prefer the official viewer. Other residents prefer Phoenix or Firestorm. Depends also what you like, user's interface, features, options etc.

[Rolig Loon]

There are several alternate viewers offered by Linden Lab, but the ones that most people mean when they mention alternatives to the current V3 viewer are all Third Party Viewers.  Because the code for SL's viewer is open source, several independent development teams have created excellent alternatives to LL's own viewer.  Each has its own special set of features and is popular with a different set of residents in SL.  You'll hear some good partisan debate about which viewer is "best", but I'd recommend trying viewers that are at one of the two links I provided in this response, to make up your own mind.  Once you decide, it's probably not a good idea to switch back and forth among them often, because that increases the possibility of scrambling some of your settings. 

[Innula Zenovka]

If you have started recently, you are almost certainly using Viewer 3.2.something, which is considerably different from Viewer 2.  

You can find a pretty complete run-down of available viewers over at the SLU forum, where we also recently had a discussion about which viewer we'd recommend to someone just starting in SL, which you might find interesting (my vote, in common with that of many people,  was for the Official Viewer, at least until you're used to it, at which point you might want to explore the extra options and tweaks other viewers provide).

Both Inara Pey and Nalates Urriah frequently review viewers in their blogs. 

[Ansariel Hiller]

Check the links guiding you to the Third Party Directory already mentioned. If you also want drama and dig through hundreds of pages of derailed threads, also visit the SLU.

[Innula Zenovka]

I provided specific links to the two SLU threads so the OP wouldn't have to search through hundreds of pages. The reason I suggested looking at Chalice's list of viewers is that it includes several excellent viewers (one of which Torley Linden seems to use quite frequently) that aren't in the Third Party Directory.

[jwenting]

Don't let people belittle you for using a different viewer. For many (maybe most) people, the standard is enough.

Other viewers add functionality, but a lot of it is specific to types or roleplay you may not be interested in (or even allowed to access).

[Africa Auer]

CURRENTLY THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH FIRESTORM BUT WILL BE FIXED SOON , THERE IS SINGULARITY,CATZNIP THERE MAY BE MORE STYA TUNED. i HOPE THIS HELPED