Ana Lutetia

blogging Second Life® since 2006

the other (viewers)

Posted on October 24, 2009 by Ana Lutetia | 6 Comments

SL™ viewers

Before I became aware that there were other viewers to log in Second Life® besides the official one, I used to always use the Release Candidate viewer. Somehow, the RC always had a better performance than the official viewer which is weird – I know. Usually, in the RC it’s expected to crash a lot more and have a poor performance but, for me, it was always the other way around. So, one day I decided to try the alternate viewers and got used to have 3 or 4 SL™ viewers in my desktop.
Lately, my preference goes to the Emerald viewer and it’s quite easy to understand why. The team behind the Emerald build is one that listens to what SLers want in a viewer. We, residents, give suggestions and see them implemented with each release. Or the releases completely blows us away with the new features implemented. C’mom – how many viewers have a built in radar and AO and also extra attachment options?

Residents who use third party viewers with the functionality described above to violate our Terms of Service or Community Standards, will be warned and then suspended from the service.

Reading something like this make me thing if I am doing something wrong by using an alternate viewer, like Emerald, Imprudence or Kristen’s viewer?


Further reading:
Third-Party Viewers – Second Life® wiki
Second Life® blogs : Third Party Viewer Policy
3rd Party Viewer Brown Bag: Session 1 29Oct09

[Emerald] Regarding ‘Third Party Viewer Policy Changes’
Snowglobe:Frequency: LL’s Third Party Viewer Policies — and where we stand

Second Thoughts | Open Source=Closed Brownbag: Burnt Life, and Why You Can Register Hammers
Virtuality Hacks | The Open Sourcerous Apprentices
A Crimson World | 3rd Party Viewers… wants the Lab to take the control back?
Metaversally Speaking | Will Linden Lab GOM a Viewer?

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Comments

6 Responses to “the other (viewers)”

  1. Gabby Panacek
    October 24th, 2009 @ 18:13

    I read that to mean that using any of the “copybot”-like viewers would be reprimanded/suspended. It seems to me that LL intends to work with “legitimate” alt-viewer developers (ie. Imprudence, Emerald, Kirstens) to develop a set of standards so that we can trust these viewers to NOT violate TOS and Community Standards.

    From what I have read, this is a good thing and using a “legitimate” third-party viewer does not jeopardize your Second Life.

  2. Suella Ember
    October 24th, 2009 @ 20:20

    You most certainly are NOT doing anything wrong by using an alt viewer such as Emerald :)
    As Gabby says, what LL are trying to do is make it harder for the the bad viewers that allow people to break the TOS. They are well aware of the good alt viewers out there though, and have no intention of banning those. (something which i applaud them for)
    LL have said as much in the blog discussion on third party viewers. Some of the extremists who want to see ALL third-party viewers banned would try to convince you otherwise. But they are wrong :)
    What LL are rightly doing is trying to clamp down on all that is bad about SOME third-party viewers, while recognising and embracing all that is good about them :)

  3. Anya Yalin
    October 25th, 2009 @ 02:36

    Like Gabby said, I think this is mostly directed at copybot viewers. Emerald and other alternative viewers don’t allow you to violate TOS as far as I know, so you should be ok.

    It’s a step in the right direction as I see it. Some people might argue that just because a certain viewer allows you to break the rules doesn’t mean you’re going to, but I tend to disagree. If you’re using that particular viewer, that’s exactly what you’re trying to do. Banning based on viewer use is more than fair in my opinion. Maybe Linden Lab will find a more effective way of doing it (not holding out hope though), because creators have very little means of protecting themselves at the moment.

    I personally don’t use alternate viewers, except when I run into problems with the official client. I also had a look at shadows once in one of Kirsten’s viewers, but that’s pretty much it. When I’m creating I need to know that what I’m seeing is exactly what the end user will be seeing as well.

  4. Gwyneth Llewelyn
    October 27th, 2009 @ 11:47

    This is tricky. Those viewers you’ve listed actually have pseudo-copybot functions in it (in the sense that you can backup your content, give the backup file to someone else, or upload it to OpenSim, and the other person will have full perms on it), and it really all depends on LL’s interpretation. Of course, LL is flexible enough in their own interpretation of the ToS…

    My biggest concern at this stage is about how legitimate the teams behind any of those viewers are. I only know personally some people behind Imprudence (which is incidentally one of the few viewers that does not violate any of LL’s copyrights and/or third party copyrights; the major problem is distributing something with the name “Second Life” in it, like almost all other viewers do, as well as the super-fast proprietary code for decoding textures, which Imprudence doesn’t use [thus, it's slower than the others]) but none from the others. I love Kirsten’s viewer because of the high quality of the images and the superfast performance. Emerald is by far the one with most extra functions, but… why does it consume 10x as much bandwidth as any other viewer? And why is the list of the Emerald core team members always being updated, as some of the members get banned by Linden Lab and pop up with newbie accounts? This makes it a bit suspect, but it’s also by far the most popular viewer.

    So I’m torn between this issue and haven’t made up my mind yet. Although I do have perhaps 8 or 9 viewers downloaded on my Mac and tend to switch among them… :)

  5. Ana Lutetia
    October 27th, 2009 @ 14:56

    *shrugs*

  6. Ran Garrigus
    October 31st, 2009 @ 17:56

    Gwyneth,

    I’d love to see evidence of that 10x bandwidth claim. It doesn’t fit my own experience with the client.

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