"Best" viewer

Hi

I've been using the Snowglobe viewer for the last few months and be quite happy with it, but lately it has become extremely unstable, and I crash sometimes 3 times in an hour (and then again not at all for 6).

So I went back to the original SL viewer, which seems to fix the crashing issues, but it feels notabely slower especially when rezzing new stuff.

I know there are other viewers around, I know about RLV - never tested it myself though, and read something about an Emerald Viewer but know even less about that.

So what different viewers are there and what is their "main advantage" so to say?

RLV is basically a plug in that expands the functionality of the standard viewer.

Emerald is my current choice. Some will say that its "main advantage" is bouncing boobies. The Worn Items tab in inventory is what grabbed me. It is a simple little thing but then the viewer is loaded with these small conveniences. Like the little collapsible tab at the bottom right where you can change draw distance, max particles and the like for easy adjusting in traffic heavy areas. Then there are the big improvements like double attachment points, built-in radar, built-in AO, RLV compatibility ... and breast physics

I vote Emerald as well. I find it actually crashes a lot less than Snowglobe, while rezzing just as fast. Plus, all the built in goodies that LL for some reason refuses to give us.

And the biggest boost for content creators? Temporary textures! You "upload" the texture (for free) and see how they look. No more swapping to the beta grid. Also the ability to store your alts and their passwords, with a pull down to select when one you want.

Animations are like this too. You see the preview play on your avatar in world.

I personally choose Boy Lane's Cool Viewer. It lacks all the bling, toys, and paranoia features that come with Emerald. But, what it does offer is a more convenient (pre-voice) user interface, slightly higher FPS in general, RLV built in, and just the right bug fixes and features to maximize my SL enjoyment. (^_^)y

Frankly, a lot of the features in Emerald; [Everyone's online status], [Sim-crossing radar], [De-friending notification]... and such... Are ALL just drama fodder. I'd like to be able to drop a "friend" without them IMing me a split second later spewing abuse. (>_<

The "best" viewer for anyone is the one works best for your particular needs, desires, or requirements. I use both the official LL viewer (1.23.xxx) and Emerald. I, actually, don't see much of a performance hit/increase from one to the other. I do a little building and clothing making along with photography which, to me, Emerald has a slight advantage over the official viewer. For regular fiddling around in SL the regular viewer is often the one I'll launch........no particular reason except maybe I'm a little more familar with the UI.

A few of the "advantages" of Emerald over the official are the "worn" items tab.....knowing where I might attach a clothing item that I've made that is currently not used without having to type "worn" in search. The ability to TP a friend without having to pull up their profile first. A boatload of sky presets in the environmental editor including a "builders preset".......a neutral light setting that is so much easier on the eyes when trying to alaign prims or match colors. That's something you can do yourself but if you ever have to reinstall the viewer you have to do it all over again........small thing but something that is important to me. It's got some great ready made skins that make my UI much easier to see without being overly distractive. I haven't completely figured out the radar but I know I can "see" avatars quite a distance from me and even pull up their profile......no particular reason that's important but it's fun to play around wiith. I have breast physics enabled but it's not all that impressive to me (unless you adjust the sliders way out of anything realistic you can barely see the "bounce"........but I do have a vision of someone who has Emerald with settings to make my boobs flop like water balloons. But, there's nothing I can do about that since they would see that even if I was using the official viewer ).

One minor irritant is that I'm occassionally loosing my chat bar. I think that happens if I accidently hit enter without any text. It's easy to get back but it's something I never noticed with the official viewer.

This. I use several, suiting my needs (I love shadows but don't always use them).


Make sure that "close when I hit enter" isn't ticked in Prefs.

I use the LL 1.23.5 viewer most of the time.

Boy Lane's Rainbow viewer with the SSE2 patch is a must have for PCs with ATI graphics adapters.

Kirsten's SD2-R7 is still the best shadow viewer available.

Kirsten's S18-1 (209) and later have an interesting postprocessing function in Environmental settings that is useful for snapshot effects. Unfortunately it seems to include whatever part of the Snowglobe code that causes frequent freezes on all the computers I try it on.

I have a friend who is temporarily accessing SL with rather limited laptop - what's the best stripped down version? She's already rejected various text-only clients - says if she just wants to chat she'll go to Yahoo.

Nicholaz' non-Windlight viewers are a must for a crappy lappy. Old School doesn't have voice, Bleeding Edge does.
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/

The best advice you can get.



I use Snowglobe for my everyday hanging out and playing games because it loads textures (rezs) faster for me than any other viewer I've tried. Snowglobe is also extremely stable for me so I'm sticking with it for now. I tried out Emerald a few months ago and might do so again because I never gave the "Bells and Whistles" a proper go.

People always forget Henri Beauchamp's Cool Viewer. The Cool Viewer was originally his (Linux only) personal brew of the standard viewer, which he made publicly available. Boy Lane collaborated with him to produce a Windows release until they had a falling out over a number of issues.

Henri now maintains both the Linux and Windows versions of the Cool Viewer (1.23.5) at http://sldev.free.fr/ along with equivalent versions based on 1.19.0.5 (the last pre-Windlight viewer) for older machines. That's got the same patches and features as the latest one, except for the different graphics. He also keeps a version of 1.22, but it's not updated.

I recently found the 1.19.0.5 version a Godsend when my main machine was in for repairs and I was using an old back-up one. Might be worth trying that on a laptop.

The Mac versions are done by Hyang Zhao, over at http://hyangreflections.blogspot.com/

The Cool Viewer adopts some, but not all, the Emerald features.

I also use the Cool Viewer 1.19.5. It is great on older or less powerful machines.

For crappy laptops, depending on how crappy:
-- one of the old Nicholaz versions, Old School or Bleeding Edge
-- the Cool Viewer, 1.19.0.5 version
-- possibly Boy Lane's new Rainbow Viewer

I second this. I recently switched back to CoolSL because of its easier-to-navigate UI and its higher FPS compared to Emerald.

How much higher is the FPS? I TP'd into my living room using Emerald and wait for everything to rez, then monitor my FPS for a few minutes after it's stabilized, and see that it averages 14FPS. I log off, then log back on using CoolSL Viewer, and observe my average framerate is 22FPS!

This is an extreme example and I'm not sure why there's such a disparity in my living room; on average when moving about the grid, CoolSL only leads Emerald by 5-10%.

I have often said that if someone could combine Emerald's functionality with CoolSL's improved UI and performance, I would grab it and never look back!

As one can see who else is using Emerald, from a rough survey of stores, parties, the Morris Welcome Area and everywhere else I have been to in the last few weeks, I would say that over 50% of the people I have seen have been using Emerald as their client.

And everyone I know who is 'geeky', hehe (yeah, you guys know who you are, so stop saying 'I wonder who she means')

I like Emerald, but it bugs out on me sometimes. It seems to have a memory leak. Boy Lane's Cool Viewer runs rock solid all day and all of the night, and also has the "worn items" tab.

Kirstens S18-1 (211) is fun if you have the hardware to run it. Not for everyday use though.

In three odd years of messing about in SL, I have only ever used the LL standard viewer and upgraded when necessary. Touch wood, it's never been a problem. Crashes and freezes occasionally yes, but then I read the other viewers occasionally do too. That's mostly related to internet connection issues as far as I am concerned. Like one of the ladies said earlier, use the one that gives you the least hassle. Personally, like somebody also mentioned, I think a lot also depends on your computers actual capabilities/graphics rather then the viewer you use.

I use Snowglobe as my primary viewer as it tends to work the best for my specs but I may switch around sometimes depending on what I'm doing. You can take a look at this page to see a listing of different alternate viewers although I'm not sure how up to date it is: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Downloads#Third-party_Viewers

... and now I just noticed this Snowglobe Frequency Edition. /me runs off to try it.

i use snowglobe most of the time, because it rezzes stuff around 10 times faster than the LL viewer and the emerald.

in addition the Snowglobe 1.2.3 (2995) (release candiate with a load of bug fixes) gives me a nice little fps boost about all other viewers including older snowglobe versions.

emerald i only like if i need to upload and tweak textures or sculpts, because it has free temporary textures. it has neat features but is way too slow for everyday use...

just my opinion

edit: snowglobe NEVER crashed on my computer unless i MADE it crash with some tricks that work in all viewers that can display shadows

Double attachment points isn't really an improvement since only Emerald users can see it; normal client users would see floating attachments in really odd places, for example, hair stuck on the avatar's stomach. Emerald's picks are bugged in that it's risky to add/delete picks, sometimes random picks get deleted when attempting to do that. Emerald also crashes more often than the normal client.
Aside from those, Emerald is better than the normal client in every other way, it has lots of potential.

Yes ... for now.
Also, not all attachments need to be seen. Clover's collar scripts are loaded into a small linkset and attached to chest slot 2. All the functionality is there. The visable collars attach as normal. This also keeps things like time worn from resetting because she puts on the rope collar when we are doing shibari for example. The same can work for poofers, shields, walk sounds, mystitool relay or dance chims among other things.

FWIW,
For me, the Emerald client crashes more then the standard viewer and the RC but less than snowglobe. Snowglobe does not like me for some reason.

I've used Hippo, Emerald, Snowglobe, and the standard. Right now, I use Emerald as my main browser for its built-in AO and a few other "bells-and-whistles" that I like.