New World Notes Readers Choose Imprudence as Preferred Second Life Viewer; UPDATE: Now That Emerald's Officially Banned, Here's the Alternatives NWN Readers Prefer

UPDATE, 11:15am: To no one's surprise, the Lindens have just announced that Emerald will be officially blocked from Second Life as of 10am SLT, September 8 (i.e. tomorrow), saying "Residents who have been using any version of the Emerald Viewer will need to use a different Viewer to access Second Life." So if you're using Emerald, read on for the alternates most preferred by New World Notes readers.

Still wondering what Second Life viewer use, now that the popular Emerald third party viewer has imploded? Here's the results of last week's New World Notes survey, asking just that question: Of the 780 who registered an opinion (a very large sample, for an NWN survey), 31% chose Imprudence, the third party viewer lead developed by Jacek Antonelli and McCabe Maxsted. Here's the site for all your Imprudence needs, with downloadable clients here. The latest version of the viewer comes with nifty features, such as the ability to trade WindLight presets in-world (created by coding wunderkind Katherine Berry.) As promised, I'll be installing Imprudence myself in the very near future, and giving a blow-by-blow review here.

Significantly, Imprudence was the reader preference over any of Linden Lab's official viewers, and in aggregate, just 43% of readers opted for one of those (Viewer 2, Version 1.23, or Snowglobe.) So even with Emerald out of the picture, Linden's viewers are not the majority's choice (at least among NWN readers who registered an opinion.) Also significant: Nearly 20% registered support for a third party viewer not in Linden Lab's official TPV registry, with many in the Comment thread naming Emergence, an offshoot of the Emerald codebase. Interestingly, Emergence and Phoenix, another Emerald offshoot, were added to Linden's official TPV directory in the last few days, so I'll run this survey again in the next few months. For now, however, the plurality of New World Notes readers prefer Imprudence, and so do I.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

Way to go Imprudence! I haven't tried it yet, I have a feeling I might soon. I'm currently forcing myself to like the 2.0 GUI due to Kirsten's nice shadows and undockable sidebar. :)

[SecondLie]

However, based on logins, the overwhelming majority of SL uses Viewer 2.

Of course, crashing so often, they may get counted twice... three times... twenty times...

[SecondLie]

However, based on logins, the overwhelming majority of SL uses Viewer 2.

Of course, crashing so often, they may get counted twice... three times... twenty times...

[Nine Warrhol]

I have decided to make Phoenix my main viewer now. As of today it is on the TPV, with flying colors. Imprudence is nice too, I still use it.

AND Emerald is getting banned, finally. Yay LL.

http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/09/07/emerald-viewer-to-be-blocked-from-second-life

[Nine Warrhol]

Also, as a side note, Phoenix didn't exist when this poll was done. :p And whaaa no hat tip? ;)

[nyoko salome]

:0 i've been using imprudence for the past week (though i have had little time to log in)... it does work quite well, although i have had it crash/lockup twice (i did not clean out my previous caches, so that probably contributed). it works well!! :) if you want to enable its 'bouncier' features, it's a lil obtuse right now to set up; you need to use the debug settings and find the 'emerald' settings within... but works just the same.

[Fogwoman Gray]

I did try Kirstens and love the fact that it runs faster and looks better on my computer. But am not willing to give up the screen real estate that it takes up with that side window that cannot be minimized. Ah well.
Imprudence for me, then.
And I fear that I am once bitten, twice shy of anything coming from any offshoots of the Emerald team. I lack the knowledge to judge who on the dev team should have/could have known about the crap that was going on with that viewer. I will default to a lower drama viewer.

[Nine Warrhol]

The sidebar in Kirstens can be taken off the screen. There's a button in the bottom bar with an x to remove it from the screen. :p

[Zipper]

The Viewer 2.1 results are quite respectable considering how many alternatives there are - and that this is a self-selected group of more engaged and informed users (who would tend to be longer-term users of SL and therefor more likely to use alternate viewers)

Also the claim that Imprudence trounces LL is a little hollow considering LL made 2 of the viewers - whose total would trounce Imprudence.

Also, Imprudence's numbers are going to plummet now that Phoenix is up and running. I know - I had tried Imp, but I'm about to delete it.

[Effie Emmons]

Yes, I noticed that Phoenix was not one of the choices, too. I've been using Phoenix and love it!

[Effie Emmons]

Hmmm... I discovered some interesting things about Imprudence. The Imprudence group has only 460 people. And, the owner of the group states in their profile that they no longer visit SL except for testing Imprudence. They are on other grids now.

The Phoenix Viewer group has 2,969 members in just a few short days and actively supports residents in their group.

I have a feeling the pendulum is swinging.

[L. Knoller]

I'm not exactly sure how a survey in which a person can cast more than one vote is worth anything.

(create a desktop shortcut to voting page, vote, close all instances of your browser, re-open browser, vote again , repeat till you feel dizzy...this may also explain the "very large sample, for an NWN survey")

Game On!

[Aliasi Stonebender]

I have to admit, I'm not real wild about using a viewer (Imprudence) where the developers have no real interest in Second Life. OpenSim is fun and all, but it's still a way underdone product compared to SL, for all of SL's flaws.

Phoenix, on the other hand, seems to be "Emerald with all the dodgy stuff cut out" and while it's not QUITE ready (I had a crash with it today) you never realize how much you leaned on the Emerald features until you have to do without them!

[Leondra]

Yes, Phoenix is the comfort zone at this point.

[Adeon Writer]

With Emerald gone now I've chosen Emergence... which will basically become Phoenix when Phoenix updates. (Emergence will recommend the "upgrade" to it on log-in.)

[Adeon Writer]

Also just an extra note, Emergence and Phoenix were added to the TPVD List now. Might want to run another pool before you say this is final! :)

[Little Lost Linden]

Whichever TPV you end up using, just don't tell Arabella. She is one hot mama and she is pissed!

http://thebotzone.net/2010/09/07/arabella-speaketh-dear-linden-lab/

She'll tell you all the TPV's are written with malice in mind.

Holy Moly.

[Henri Beauchamp]

Hamlet, being listed in Linden Lab's TPV directory is in no way a requirement for a viewer to be considered TPVP-compliant (according to paragraph 6 of the TPVP itself), so please, do not austracise TPVP-compliant viewers that are not listed in the directory for reasons such as privacy protection (of their developer) or other...

The soon 3 years old Cool VL Viewer is such a viewer, and the 'mother' of a few other TPV viewers around (which reuse all or part of the code I produced for the Cool VL Viewer).

http::/sldev.free.fr/

[Ron Overdrive]

Effie & Aliasi: Imprudence changed focus when the original TPVP was introduced because the legaleze it was written in would toss 110% of the liability onto the developers even for inherited bugs/security holes from LL's code base. In order to continue developing Imprudence they switched focus onto OpenSIM grids till Joe Linden managed to get the Policy amended to something TPV's could agree to. With the updated TPVP, the devs felt safe enough to continue development with SL and applied to get on the TPVD.

They are, however, continuing with their original pledge to focus on compatibility with OpenSIM and its increasing feature base in order to evolve beyond being just another third party Second Life viewer. In a few ways their goals are set higher then most other TPV's by doing so as it provides a greater experience on the metaverse as a whole vs just a better SL experience.

As for the group numbers it comes as no surprise as there are many die hard Emerald users who will switch to Phoenix just because its Emerald with a different name.

[Effie Emmons]

Ron,

I agree. There many die hard Emerald users. From a marketing standpoint one would think that other viewers would realize that and figure out what they can do to include the features that people love and even make it better. :-)

[Ron Overdrive]

Effie,

Its not so much about features as Imprudence has 95% of Emerald/Phoenix's feature base, its about what people are comfortable with. Phoenix -IS- Emerald, just re-branded so Phoenix's success till now was expected by everyone for that reason alone. There are many more people out there who don't know what happened with Emerald then who do and will blissfully switch because as far as they know Emerald just changed its name or are quick to blame LL for Emerald's demise so they'll switch to show their support in defiance of "the man" (LL). If Phoenix never came out people would have gotten comfortable with other viewers and like Imprudence the other viewers would adapt to meet the needs of its new user base.

[Bear Silvershade]

Umm, your math is off - sort of goes to show the truth of the old saw about lies, dam lies and statistics. According to your own responses, the overwhelming majority of respondents chose a SL Viewer. Putting aside 1.2.3, it was still a majority choosing a Viewer 2 based viewer, and even leaving out kirstens, Viewer 2 and Snowglobe still were neck and neck with imprudence.

Personally, I am using Phoenix now, though Ascent looks promising..