"Viewer of choice"!

On 26 May we had another discussion in the Lounge. This week, coinciding with Linden Lab's release of the new Search test beta, our topic was “Viewer of choice”. As I expected, most people were quite dedicated to one viewer or another, and the general consensus was a preference for 1.23-based viewers and Phoenix in particular, which has a lot of extra features not present in other viewers.

We discussed and compared in depth several specific features of both TPVs and the official viewer; multiple attachments and clothing layers, tattoo layers, radar, avatar physics and shadows. For many people, a particular feature (such as a good radar) is an essential component of a viewer and without it, any other viewer would be useless to them. It seems that the only feature in which the official Viewer 2 is ahead of the others is with the multiple items on tattoo layers. A rumour that those on TPVs cannot see multiple layers if someone is wearing them in V2 was soundly myth-busted, at least by those present who were all quite capable of seeing my multiple clothing & tattoo layers.

It's clear though, that at some point in the not-too-distant future, the 1.23-based viewers will be deprecated and unuseable, which will be a sad day for those who are not able or willing to convert.

All in all this was a much more “practical” discussion than some of the others we've had at the Lounge, and I found it all very interesting and helpful. In fact as a direct result of comments made during the discussion, the following day I installed Firestorm, and I've been using it as my viewer of preference ever since.

Next week on 2nd June: “Alts Frenzy!” We'll be discussing the use of alts, both legitimate and more shady, as well as some suspect tools available which purport to be able to detect them. We'll talk about the many reasons people use alts, their advantages and disadvantages. I encourage anyone who would like to do so, to attend as an alt, either anonymous or not. I shall be doing so but I'm sure you'll recognise me; there will be one very distinctive clue.

Hope to see you there (whether we recognise each other or not).

== Lewis (moderator)