New World Survey: What Second Life Viewer Do You Most Use Now? (I'll Install and Blog the Most Popular!)

With the all-but-certain banning of the extremely popular Emerald viewer, it's now time to survey the best alternatives. (Or if you prefer, the least worst option.) What Second Life viewer among this list do you use, drawn from Linden Lab's official viewer listings and third-party directories?

Online Surveys & Market Research

For clarity's sake, I didn't include Second Life Project Viewers, or third party viewers without full 3D graphics. Please share your preference, and get your friends to do the same. Not only will I install and use the most popular viewer, I'll give it a full write-up here. Vote by Thursday Monday morning of next week!

Comments

[Alberik Rotaru]

I'll continue using Emerald until it is banned. I'll then change to Imprudence. And have a think about continuing to support a company that is so patently incompetent that it imposes impossible conditions on the most popular alternative to its own bungled mishmash of a viewer. I do not minimise the idiocy of what some Emerald devs have done. Nor can I ignore the idiocy of sinking vast resources into a total clunker like Viewer 2.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

Let's be frank here, Viewer 2 has its strong points. and it IS a vanilla original option for new residents now that Emerald is as good as gone. I think I would consider it a good thing that outside of SLV2, the most popular SL Viewer remains Imprudence - it's got some similarities to Emerald, but I personally believe the dev team is more focused and responsible, having done some insane things like backporting the best parts of Viewer 2 to v1.23

[Raven Haalan]

I'll replace Emerald with Imprudence, but I also use and old Snowglobe and Kirsten's for various purposes. I simply can't get the motivation up to accommodate the new Viewer 2 UI, but I suppose the day will have to come, sooner or later, lol.

[Melanie]

I'm mainly using official Viewer 2.

It's far from perfect, but the biggest draws for me is that shadows look incredible in it, inventory loads faster than ever before, and I love the ability to wear up to five items on every clothing layer.

The layout in Viewer 2 took a while to get used to, but I'm now at a point where I'm very comfortable with it. I actually find myself forgetting where things were in 1.23 based viewers.

Despite all of that, I will still switch to Cool Viewer when it's time to create things, due to very specific reasons: in viewer 2, the shape/clothing editors feel cluttered; running scripts in selected items is an exercise in frustrations; Cool Viewer allows me to preview animations on my avatar instead of on a Ruth dummy.

I used to use Emerald and I'd liked it very, very much. As much as I loved it's features, however, I didn't feel it was wise to continue using it when there were more and more people questioning whether some of the devs behind it could be trusted.

[Sphynx Soleil]

I'm using Imprudence, and have been ever since the iframes news hit the blogosphere.

I was pleased to find many Emerald features already IN Imprudence, so it was less of a culture shock as an ex-emerald user.

Viewer 2 is not an option - even on my large screen the interface is clunky and takes up too much real estate.

[Viorel Daviau]

I'm sticking with Imprudence & will follow with beta in 1.5

Still, I think you should really reconsider your intent here. All the viewers listed have their own pros & cons. Sticking with just 'the favorite'...well, Emerald should have given you a clue about following a status-quo.

Do a fair assessment of each,then pick the one YOU like most...the very same advice I give to friends.

[Trinity Dejavu]

Little less Journo, little more journalism.

[Saffia Widdershins]

I use a variety.

My main in SL 1.23. I see no point in upgrading to 2.whatever-it-will-be until I have to - I have heard too many gloomy things about it from people I trust.

I use Hippo as my main back-up - I find it unfussy and reliable, especially good for Open Sims, where it is less liable to crash or cause problems. It's not on the TPV list, but I have never heard bad reports about it.

I have Imprudence, and like it. I may start using it more, especially if 1.23 is unsupported and starts getting flaky.

I was switched on to TPVs but Nicholaz, at a point when - due to a flaw - the main SL viewer was gobbling up memory like a tankful of piranhas and causing frequently hard crashes to my machine. I'm not interested so much in bells and whistles as having a viewer that is stable. Although I'll enjoy bells and whistles on top of stability.

I'd like to see Hippo certified; I think it might be a good one for those who could previously only connect to the grid using Emerald - although they might find it somewhat Spartan in comparison.

[pefton]

I know most of the other viewers but am still using emerald, like ~120 thousand other people. If LL forced me to use another viewer, i would quit SL.

[Tinsel Silvera]

I was using Snowglobe 1.x up until the SLCC10. I downloaded the Viewer 2 so that I could see the streaming inworld. Since then I have just kept using it. I am slowly adjusting to the new layout. It would be nice if LL would reskin the UI so that it was not so dark and depressing.

[Little Lost Linden]

The Second Life viewer that I use the most would have to be my monitor.

Through my computer monitor, I am able to view Second Life in superb color, high definition graphics. Without my monitor, I would have no possible means to view Second Life.

Now that the Emerald viewer is destroyed, I will still continue to use my monitor to view Second Life.

http://thebotzone.net/2010/09/02/emerald-viewer-destroyed/

[RvA Hax]

Imprudence!

[nimil]

i've been with imprudence since lord greg greg's blog about the encrypted stuff. i think its hilarious that people are blaming LL for this. i don't recall them putting iframes in our login screens to DDOS someone's website. and i don't recall them making the poor choice to cling to members of their team who may possibly do more harm to the grid than good.

emerald killed themselves with their poor choices and immature staff members. point the finger at them. sure LL is not all that great all the time but blaming them for this is just ridiculous.

i used emerald for over a year and i loved it, parting with it was hard, but in the end, my security and privacy are more important than a few fancy radar options.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

I am mainly using Viewer 2 (usually latest dev version but often the official version) and Kirstens (which has some neat features now). I have got used to both of them now and also need to test that the StarLight skin is kept up-to-date on both versions.

Sometimes I switch to Rainbow - still my favourite 1.** based viewer - mainly because unlike Viewer 2 it can cope with multiple popups being fired at the same time - a problem if you need to click yes on a popup that has vanished.

[Kaluura Boa]

Imprudence! Imprudence!

I had a friendly mole doing the closed beta test of V2 and I knew beforehand what was coming. 1.23 was already mothballed, SnowGlobe 1.x obsolescence was also programmed so I searched for a TPV... And the only thing I found worthwhile was Imprudence. Very close from 1.23 with a few improvements and some more speed, but without LL's sentence of death or a shady past. I'm a happy resident now.

[Sinead McMillan]

emergence viewer by lgg is even a better substitute - culturally spoken - then imprudence. as emergence is a clone of emerald beta 2587, without edku. the shitty slv2 won't touch my hd again, never again. slv2 turmoils my invent and the ui wasn't designed but "engineered" for bling bling fb-folks.

[Ghosty Kips]

LGG's Emergence. It runs better than the original Emerald ever did, anyway.

[Jupiter]

I have switched to SL Viewer 2. I had initially rejected it when it was released, but I'm doing well with it now. It's fast and adding Starlight to it is a big improvement.

[TheShadow99]

LL will have to pry emerald from my cold dead hands before I'll stop using it...

[Salvatore Otoro]

I'm still using Emerald. I've used viewer 2 and found it hard to navigate on many points. I use Snowglobe on my laptop but it lacks too many features I've come to love from Emerald. That being said, my next choice for viewers will be emergence and imprudence. Emergence is built off of Emerald so it should be as similar as what I have now. The problem I see for the near future is that it too will probably be banned at some point by LL. In that case, I'll move to Imprudence. So far I've heard some good things about it so I'll give it a shot and see what comes of it. I will have to load up both of these so I can start running them and getting used to them when the bans come.

[px]

emergence

[X11]

Neillife/Superlife/Incognito/Inertia thats what i use pah

[X11]

Neillife/Superlife/Incognito/Inertia thats what i use pah

[Onyx Plutonian]

I voted for Imprudence because it is the one I use most. However, I also use v2.1 and it's not as odious as many have said. If I had a higher end graphics card or a need to take high rez photos I'd probably use Kirstens. IMO including RLV is pretty much a non choice as most many of the other TPV's on your list incorporate the API.

[Alvi Halderman]

I prefer Viewer 2, I do all kinds of content creations you can do in SL and I am okay with it, The UI was a hard swich when it came out, but I'm used to it and I really like it, It might be buggy, but the single way to fix it is using it, not running away from it

Not to mention that LL Won't really help you out with issues on other viewers, so yeah, i think it's a good pack, i don't really miss any TPV features

[Adeon Writer]

Voted Other: Emergence. It's not listed, but LGG is working on getting it so.

[Viorel Daviau]

"LL will have to pry emerald from my cold dead hands before I'll stop using it..."

As if you have a right to use it. -eyeroll-

[Lainy]

I'm also on Emergence, it has all the features I liked on Emerald such as temp uploads, tat/alphas, radar, worn items, inbuilt ao, etc.

Can't get on with 2.0 as it takes up too much of the screen and I feel disconnected in a way that I don't in other viewers.

[Steam Bunjie]

@pefton Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[Saxoni Fenstalker]

I've been using Emergence viewer followed by Imprudence and then Kirstens Viewer.

[Ajax Manatiso]

Emergence! It's Emerald's good twin (as in Emerald was the evil twin) Imprudence just constantly crashes for me, and I have a quad core, 4GB system with 5MBS connection. Kristens is for masochists -- its Viewer 2.0 -- for those who don't want to see what they are doing, or build, or script, or much of anything.

[Henri Beauchamp]

I use the Cool VL Viewer (http://sldev.free.fr/), of course.

[Sinead McMillan]

echoing the usage of emergence: seems, as if fgg applied for tpv. absolutely fab! btw, loging-in with emergence isn't bogus, no violations of the tos. go and grab the latest release here:
http://code.google.com/p/emergence-viewer/downloads/list

[Sinead McMillan]

uups, not "f"gg, he's a "lord"

[Sinead McMillan]

uups, not "f"gg, he's a "lord"

[DD Ra]

For me, it will still be the Hippo viewer.
It's simple, handy... and will be a good start to begin the exodus toward opensims, were no display names and no Gready Linden awaits.
(And some say Pony Linden is still alive in a fabulous Opensim in the sky, too)

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Too bad the survey won't let you list multiples in order of use.

I use Kirstens most of the time because of a superior visual display. And the ctrl-~ snapshot is fixed giving high resolution snapshots again!

I use SLv2 a lot to make sure things are done correctly in respect to creating wearables like skins, eye, tattoos, and clothes. It is the main line viewer. If you want support then whatever the issue is must persist while using SLv2.

I use snowglobe 1.4 whenever i need to go into polygon infestations exceeding 1 million.

I have no interest in jiggling boobs. But I don't care if mine jiggle in other people's viewers. I might enjoy flexi sculpts though.

[Wizard Gynoid]

Emergence

[Raz]

Emergence... all the Emerald goodness and none of the badness

[Noirran]

Emergence.

[Samantha Poindexter]

I'm sticking with Cool Viewer.

[Fuzzball Ortega]

Since dropping Emerald, I've gone to using both Snowglobe and V2. Took me awhile to figure V2 out, like I think the way to change the media stream on a parcel is a bit bassackwards.

I did try the others, but I found that both Snowglobe and V2 were actually loading for me faster.

[Alberik Rotaru]

I wonder how many users will be lost to LL when they do ban Emerald? The vast majority of residents do not spend their time reading blogs like this one and being unable to log in suddenly is going to be very confusing for Emerald users. If LL play their cards right they could even get this decision up to the stunning user-loss efficacy of the OpenSpace controversy.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I switched to Emerald a couple weeks ago when Qarl came on board, because he's a very talented fellow.

I switched to Imprudence yesterday because I'm allergic to drama (well, at least other people's drama).

[Toxic Menges]

Emergence for everyday, Kitty Viewer for machinima because of the fab windlight stuff.

[Ron Overdrive]

For those telling everyone to use Emergance because its an Emerald clone don't forget this: LGG has officially stated its a band-aid viewer. He has no intentions to update it and for those on Mac/Linux its useless because he doesn't have the resources to build/support those binaries. Using Emergence will be the same as Emerald: its unfinished, unsupported, and has pretty much reached the end of its development. The only benefit you have with Emergance over Emerald is you know LGG removed all the questionable bits he could find.

[Lorelei Mission]

The day before LL sent out the mass email, I had already uninstalled Emerald, and decided to try Imprudence first. I discovered I like Imprudence better than Emerald!

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Imprudence likes to crash on me, but it's still my favorite. I just cannot trust it for our weekly meetings of teachers, so I use 1.23.

We still have naked folks showing up at our meetings who are using Viewer 2. These are regulars who know SL well, not noobs, and it's been happening ever since 2 came out. No sign of a fix, either.

Yeah, that bug is likely to win LL a lot of friends in education. Maybe we should all meet in Zindra?

[Doctor Haiku]

I for one cannot stand Viewer 2 in any shape or form. The layout is mediocre and hard to navigate, building is difficult, and it runs FAR too many processes on the user's computer. I tried to use it several times, and each time it brought my computer to a screeching halt, and I have a very good computer. Emerald on the other hand I have little trouble with. It has the familiar design of 1.23, and additional features which I use on a daily basis such as double click teleporting. That's not to say it didn't have its own problems. I could do without the crashing. But that happens with every viewer undo my experience. I say that if Linden Labs won't pay attention to the fact that their newer viewers require too much from their clients, then use Emerald as an example and make the needed repairs to their viewers. That or actually put some effort into helping people find a better viewer.

[David Miller]

I use both Imprudence and SL 2.0, but neither for Second Life. I use these for OpenSim.

[Ener Hax]

ditto - sl2.0 & imprudence for opensim

i don't know if this is the case inSL, but imprudence allows me to go to 0.99 hollow and smaller than any other viewer for building

[Nathan Adored]

It is interesting that there seem to be about 40 different clones of Emerald (well, 40 different sets of sources of them) at Google Code:

http://code.google.com/p/emeraldviewer/source/clones

I suspect one of those will become the dominant version, with all of the good and non-troublemaking members of the old devs rallying to it, and with all the "suspicious stuff" removed, but appearing under a new name... and the ones now left in charge at the current, official emerald website, who apparently are keeping the rights to the name... will be left holding an empty sack.

In any event, for the time being at least I'm continuing with the latest Emerald release until some independent offshoot of it comes along (not Emergence, since that's not being continued either and is from a slightly older version of the sources) or until LL blocks it, whichever comes first.

I've used Imprudence as well, though, and currently use it on other grids... and might wind up using that on SL if the current Emerald gets blocked.

I wonder what the results of the poll would be if it included an "I'm still using Emerald despite everything" option. I imagine the lack of an Emerald option on the poll is probably skewing the results.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I vote that in addition to the overall winner, Hammy install and review the Restrained Love viewer ;P

[Azul Draken]

I'm sticking w/Viewer 1.23 as Viewer 2s UI is too clunky and Impudence does not support my 3Dconnexion 3d mouse. Do any of the TPV support 3Dconnexion devices?

[Chenin Anabuki]

Hippo and Cool Viewer

[Adric Antfarm]

Ann touches on a good point. I think I have most everything installed really.

There are times when I need a ton of extra features from Emergence/Imprudence and give up the memory that requires.

Most of the time however Cool Viewer is just fine with it's small footprint and basic enhancements.

Viewer 2? No. I should try, but should so it. It just seems to want you to miss an IM or fight with the dumbest menu cluster foxtrot of all time.

[NewTo2ndLife]

I would use Viewer 2 but since recent update it doesn't work properly on my windows 7 64bit system so I am back on old 1.23.

[Cheyenne Palisades]

I'm using LordGregGreg's Energence. It's essentially Emerald without the malicious code. I like it very much.

[JR]

I'll be using Emergence viewer. The creator of Emerald, LordGreggreg Beck, grabbed the last version of the Emerald code that he personally trusted and compiled a Windows viewer out of it. You can find it on Google code.

Should that get blocked, I'll be using Kristen's S19, the last 1.23-based viewer she did. Under no circumstances will I use 2.0 or anything based of of that.

If S19 for whatever dumb reason gets blocked, I'd net used Snowglobe, with a 1.23 GUI.

Last resort is LL-official 1.23 GUI

Last-last resort is Imprudence, because it crashes on my Vista-32 box more than any of the above and I hate how the radar's glued to the minimap, rather than floating on its own like in Emerald/Emergence.

[Arishia Nishi]

I'm using the Emergence viewer and I love it.

[Jenny]

the Emergence viewer

[Whispr]

So far, I'm liking Emergence, and Cool VL as my second choice.

[Galatea Gynoid]

I primarily use Cool VL Viewer.
http://sldev.free.fr/

[Mellyn Llewellyn]

Emergence

[kizmut]

I will be using LGG's Emergence from now on. I didn't trust Emerald until LGG was on the dev team.

[Stress]

Emergence for the moment, will most likely be shifting to Phoenix as LGG is on the team there.

Also use a smattering of other viewers as required:--

Radergast (text only - it has its uses),

Imprudence - might have used it more if it had all the building doodads emerald-like viewers have

Cool VL oldschool (1.19 based viewer - ok, so I'm nostalgic for the pre windlight era occassionaly ... and it runs blisteringly fast)

I used to use Boy Lane's Cool Viewer until she decided to halt production, especialy the netbook friendly edition of Rainbow viewer.

I haven't used an official LL viewer ever since I discovered Onrez viewer and Nicholaz's one ... almost 2 years ago.

And after hearing many rumours of how builder unfriendly Viewer 2 is, I'm not interested in trying it.

Just a thought.... maybe if there was a builder/content creator friendly viewer and a seperate consumer viewer without all the bells and whistles...... I know, I'm dreaming.

[Ed Larsson]

Phoenix viewer for me (for Linux). Works great, has all the features I liked from Emerald.

[fd]

You forgot to include Phoenix: http://www.phoenixviewer.com/

[Tak Naglo]

Would it make sense to redo a survey since Phoenix is already out? Also, don't you think your demographic is too nerdy and blogish (no offense)

[Wrath Constantine]

Imprudence here. One of the many Emerald refugees. Imprudence seems to be the close3st match that doesn't involve any of the devs from the Emerald group. I was able to copy over all my water and sky presets from Emerald (found in "Emerald\app_settings\windlight\water" and "Emerald\app_settings\windlight\skies", respectively, and copied to the corresponding folders in the Imprudence directory). My only gripe so far is that the brightness bump texture treatment is blurry and clunky. But I'm hoping they fix that, as reported on the Imprudence blog.