Which Viewer Do You Use?

The GUI that you log into SL with.

The screen with all the buttons like "build" etc.

Ok, I don't know what a GUI is lol, I guess I don't need one then .

Graphical
User
Interface.


Erm... OK, got it! That thing that pops up when you push the icon to start SL. Called a viewer because you need it to "view Second Life". Looks kinda like this:

I'm using the Old School viewer comfortably on my laptop as its graphics capabilities are really basic. Follow the download guidelines on the attached website and you can get the required SL viewer to mod.

http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/

Ohhh that thing, thanks macphisto, I didn't know there were different versions of it.

Yes, it was. Here are the screenshots, you can see why I changed viewers. I believe it has something to do with lossless/lossy image uploading but this was so long ago I can't be 100% certain.

And to whomever asked, no, there is no Nicholaz viewer past 1.19 at this time (sniffle).

I'm inclined to upgrade to the Cool Viewer... I don't want to miss out on the oblong sculpts. Although I have to ask, what is the difference with Kirsten's viewers?

That was a joke related to something completely different

Kirsten works pretty much for OLG now besides the recent S16 SL viewer. She removed a lot of LL "features" such as the logging of your machine details unnecessary for OLG (thats why her latest viewers do not work with SL). Before she did some nice builds including latest features like shadows that were more or less Linden internal. It's also a lot of modifications in the UI, eyecandy, nicer fonts. But basically keeps the LL UI design. According to her website the S16 should improve performance considerably. I can't talk about internal changes, not sure if there's somewhere a list of what is different.

CV you could see as a further development of the Nicholaz viewers including all his stability patches, keeping the clean userfriendly old UI (of course depends on your taste). Besides that there are tons of improvements under the hood including patches from many contributors making it a pretty stable almost crash free client (thats what people say ). CV also has built-in RLV support (off per default). For a detailed list of changes you can check Henri's website sldev.free.fr or the releasenotes in the CV package.

One big advantage, CV you can also get in version 1.19.0.5 without windlight (for older machines) but including all the latest patches incl. backported security fixes and Mono. AFAIK it's the only non-windlight viewer that is up to date and actively developed.

/shameless promotion off

There is no universal answer what viewer to use, it really depends on your personal experience. Best is to try them all and decide which works best. For the Cool Viewer, Nicholaz or RLV you could simply make a copy of your existing SL viewer and extract the 3rd party archive over it. Both can be used or tested in parallel without disturbing each other, but make sure to define separate settings for each (the included Cool Viewer.lnk shortcut takes care of that). Kirstens S16 installs itself in a complete different structure and should also not interfere with an existing SL installation.

Happy testing
Boy

This viewer is a Rock. Thank You.

ya i kind of liked it before windlight so i may try tht one out then =)