Chalice Yao

Herroh!

I've decided to use this post to compile a big list of viewers which are currently available, along with links and a short description, including LL clients.

Why?

Because quite frankly, I've noticed that
1. There are several new viewers in progress
2. There are alot out there
3. There are alot out there not on the TPVD
4. There are alot out there that people don't even know about

So without further ado, the list, which I will edit whenever big changes happen: (List split into seperate post due to length limitations)

If you know of any active viewers I missed, yell. I will add them.
If you know of anything that should be specificially mentioned in a viewer's description, also yell!
if you like yelling, you can just yell for yelling's sake, too!

__________________
"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" - George Carlin

Chalice Yao

===================
Linden Lab Viewers:
===================

1.23 (Discontinued)
-----

It still exists! Ye olde, ye default, plain 1.23 LL client. Altho it's a safe bet that the amount of plain 1.23 logins is falling rapidly, it's still the default 1.* viewer on the LL download page.

<Not available anymore>



Snowglobe (Discontinued)
------------

Snowglobe was Linden Lab's first attempt to include more of the community in the viewer development process, and they actually had some success. There is a steady group of Snowglobe developers (Altho many probably have switched to Snowstorm by now).

It comes in two flavors, Snowglobe 1.* based on ye olde viewer, and Snowglobe 2.*, which actually is kind of deprecated in favor of Snowstorm.
Most 1.* third party viewers are actually based on Snowglobe 1.*

Recently a Mail was sent out that LL plans to discontinue Snowglobe and any efforts put into it.
It has been removed from the download area, and the code repository will be taken down in 3 months.
TPV creators, snatch the latest 1.5 trunk and treasure it.

<Not available anymore>




Old Viewer 2.0 GPL (Discontinued)
----------------------

Hate it, love it, it's where LL went. Mostly containing actually good changes on the inside, alot of people dislike the UI for it's lack of workflow, removal of options and just in general, dreaded CHANGE!

The old GPL'd viewer and development model have been discontinued in favor of Project Snowstorm

<Not available anymore>




New Viewer 2.0/3.0 LGPL (MESH)
------------------------

LL decided to vastly overhaul their development model. Combining the experience of Snowglobe with a licence change from GPL to LGPL for the viewer sources, opening up of their internal code repository, a switch from SVN to the Mercurial versioning system and removal of their internal JIRA, Project Snowstorm was born. It is LL's second iteration of their efforts to make a viewer with the help of the SL community. The client Project Snowstorm is working on is based on Viewer 2.0, and actually is now the -main- development model for the official Second Life Viewer. There is no sepereate community viewer anymore. This is where all the work happens now.
To clarify, Snowstorm is not the name of the viewer, but the project and team working on it. Not that this will stop habit of calling it Snowstorm ;P

Website: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Snowstorm_Project
(Downloads are in the 'Second Life Development Viewer' box)
Windows: http://secondlife.com/support/downloads
Linux: http://secondlife.com/support/downloads
Mac: http://secondlife.com/support/downloads
Source: lindenlab / viewer-development / overview &mdash; bitbucket.org

Chalice Yao

================================================== ====
Active Third Party 1.* Based Viewers (In no particular order)
================================================== ====

Cool VL Viewer (MESH) (Not in TPVD)
------------------

Created by Henri Beauchamp, Cool Viewer is one of the oldest and earlierst TPVs out there. Executables are offered on the . All the viewer's changes are also available at single patches for coders.
The viewer is mostly in the style of the old Nicholaz viewer, a plain LL client heavily supplemented mostly with usability patches and fixes, altho lately many from-scratch features have found theier way in.

Website: Cool VL Viewer
Windows: http://sldev.free.fr/cool_vl_viewer.html#DOWNLOAD
Linux: http://sldev.free.fr/cool_vl_viewer.html#DOWNLOAD
Mac: http://hyangreflections.blogspot.com/
Source: Index of /patches and http://sldev.free.fr/cool_vl_viewer.html#DOWNLOAD




Dolphin Viewer
-----------------

Dolphin Viewer (Once known as FrozenGlobe ) is a combination of the Snowglobe code base, and The Cool VL Viewer patches, along with self-made features.
The author explicitely expresses that none of the borrowed features are his own work, and that the goal instead is to combine snowglobe with present patches.
Dolphin Viewer 1.5 now comes with its own installer, not requiring an installation over an already installed Snowglobe 1.5 anymore.

Website: http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/
Windows: http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/download-and-install/
Linux: http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/download-and-install/
Mac: http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/download-and-install/
Source: See bottom of http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/download-and-install/




Imprudence
--------------

The Imprudence viewer was created due to the author's views that LL's development process is too slow, too buerocratic and too unflexible, both in deployment and features.
Imprudence aims to be a viewer with the simple mission statement of "to greatly improve the usability of the Viewer". One of Imprudence's main focii has been OpenSim support, which makes it the best choice currently for anyone wanting to have a viewer with lots of features, with a focus on OpenSim compatibility

Website: The Imprudence Blog
Windows: http://imprudenceviewer.org/wiki/Downloads
Linux: http://imprudenceviewer.org/wiki/Downloads
Mac: http://imprudenceviewer.org/wiki/Downloads
Source: http://imprudenceviewer.org/download...-1.3.0-RC2.zip




Phoenix (MESH)
----------

Phoenix is a fork of Emerald, handled by many disgrunted ex-developers of Emerald, as well as new coders. It virtually carries over all of the previous Emerald features, however the 1.* based version of Phoenix will mostly only contain bugfixes and tweaks as the main focus will be on a 2.* version of the viewer.

Website: Phoenix Viewer
Windows: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=downloads
Linux: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=downloads
Mac: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=downloads
Source: Mercurial repositories index




Singularity Viewer (MESH)
-----------------------

Developed by Siana Gearz, the Singularity viewer is a crossbreed of the Ascent 1.* base with several functions of other clients, as well as performance optimizations by Siana herself and Shyotl Kuhr. The client is aimed at being a replacement derivative of Ascent, as well as a client that will surpass, one day, the stability of all others out there.
Much requested Ascent features features like RLVa have been added, as well as a slew of Phoenix, Imprudence, CoolViewer, Dolphin- and v2 features.

NOTE THAT SINGULARITY BINARIES ONLY SUPPORT SSE2-CAPABLE CPUs. This should, -theoretically-, include pretty much any processor starting with the Pentium 4, and any 64bit AMD CPU.

Website: http://www.singularityviewer.org
Windows: http://www.singularityviewer.org/downloads
Linux: http://www.singularityviewer.org/downloads
Mac: http://www.singularityviewer.org/downloads
Source: https://github.com/siana/SingularityViewer

Rainbow Viewer (Not in TPVD)
--------------------

Back from a long hiatus, Boy Lane is again progressing with the Rainbow Viewer. Originally based on Cool Viewer, Rainbow Viewer aims to be a convenient and feature-filled V1 Viewer especially supportive of low-end hardware, by being based on the 1.22 SL Viewer.

Website: http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/
Windows SSE2: http://code.google.com/p/coolviewer/...Setup_SSE2.exe
Windows SSE: http://code.google.com/p/coolviewer/..._Setup_SSE.exe
Mac: N/A
Linux: N/A
Source: http://github.com/boy

Chalice Yao

================================================== ====
Active Third Party 2/3.* Based Viewers (In no particular order)
================================================== ====

Restrained Love Viewer 2.*f (MESH)
--------------------------------

Restrained Love Viewer (Formerly Restrained Life Viewer) is the original implementation of Marine Kelley's BDSM-Oriented RLV viewer additions. It acts as her testbed for new featuresets and the reference implementation for RLV.
The 2/3.* version comes with a full installer.

Website: Restrained Life Viewer
Windows: Restrained Life Viewer
Mac: N/A
Linux: N/A
Source: http://www.erestraint.com/realrestraint/RL_Sources.zip




Phoenix Firestorm (MESH)
---------------------

Firestorm is a community development project headed by The Phoenix Viewer Project as an alternative viewer for Second Life. Our primary goal is to improve the user experience with new features while extending usability, functionality and flexibility of the Viewer 2/3 code base. Our secondary goal is to lessen the learning curve for users migrating from older V1 viewers, while still being easily accessible to users of Linden Lab's latest viewer offerings. We package contributions from various community developers along with code from Linden Lab and of course ourselves to bring you a quality, feature-rich viewer experience backed up by a large volunteer support team available 24/7 in various languages. More information on support can be found from our website.

Website: Phoenix Viewer
Windows: Downloads
Mac: Downloads
Linux: Downloads
Source: Mercurial repository



Catznip (MESH)
---------

Catznip is the viewer of Kitty Barnett, the author of the LGPL'd RPV alternative RLVa. The viewer, analogous to the Restrained Love Viewer, acts as her testbed for the latest RLVa additions and features. Additionally, Kitty is adding lots of fixes tothe Viewer 2 codebase.

Website: http://catznip.com/blog/
Windows: http://catznip.com/blog/download/
Linux: http://catznip.com/blog/download/
Source: http://hg.catznip.com/




Dolphin Viewer (MESH)
-----------------

Dolphin Viewer 2.0/3.0 is a combination of the Snowstorm code base, and Cool VL Viewer features, along with self-made ones.
The author explicitely expresses that none of the borrowed features are his own work.

Website: http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/
Windows: http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/download-and-install/
Linux: http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/download-and-install/
Mac: http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/download-and-install/
Source: See bottom of http://dolphinviewer.eregion.de/download-and-install/




Exodus (MESH) (Not in TPVD)
---------

Exodus is a client made by associates of the ARK SL army group. The client is based on V3, and features a few enhanced rendering features like HDR and FXAA (Antialiasing that promises much higher performance than normal antialiasing, especially with shadows enabled), as well as combat enhancements and more common TPV goodies. Client AO included, but no RLV. There are plans in the making to give Exodus a feature called the 'EApi', a RLV-like API that's made for enhancing the interfacing between combat items and the client, and the hopes are that this api will become a sort of Standard that gets integrated into other clients as well. Exodus spawned out of the ARK-only Genesis V1 client.

Homepage: http://exodusviewer.com/

Windows: http://exodusviewer.com/downloads.html
Linux: http://exodusviewer.com/downloads.html
Mac: http://exodusviewer.com/downloads.html
Source: http://hg.exodusviewer.com/viewer/




NaCl (MESH) (Not in TPVD)
------

NaCl is a V3 based viewer that mostly is intended as a viewer for personal use by Zwagoth Klaar and Chalice Yao, however the sources are public and regularly updated, and the viewer tends to be bleeding edge code-wise. Binaries get made semi-regularly. The viewer features a mostly unchanged V3 UI aside of a completely transparent bottom bar. Features include crash/spam protections, phantom, enhanced doubleclick teleports, area search, LSL Preprocessor, client AO and other common goodies. Does not contain RLV(a) yet. The viewer configuration was changed to keep its logfiles, settings and cache seperate of other viewers.

Homepage/Sources: http://www.bitbucket.org/Chalice/nacl

Windows: http://www.bitbucket.org/Chalice/nacl/downloads




Niran's Viewer (MESH) (Not in TPVD)
------------------

Nirans Viewer is a attempt at bringing back usability in V3 (previously V2) by adding simple changes based on Community ideas and a selection of Features that are really helpfull in daily usage without breaking the partly very nicely done core of the Viewer and UI and bloating the Viewer with stuff we dont need. The second main focus is also to support Machinima and Photography by making all necessenarly options quickly available and easily customisable , change the default settings which were way too long default to a nicer overall look and more realism. Its render pipeline is based of Dave P.´s Shining fixes and claims to be much faster in many situations , especially High End photography with Shadows and Depth of Field enabled.

Homepage: http://niranv-sl.blogspot.com

Windows: http://sourceforge.net/projects/niransviewer/files/
Linux: N/A
Mac: N/A
Source: http://sourceforge.net/p/niransviewe...anch=ref%2Ftip

Chalice Yao

========================
Mobile Device/Non-graphical Viewers
========================

Radegast
-----------

Radegast is a quite feature-complete, mobile/lightweight client. It supports In-world communication, movement, radar, teleportation, inventory management, and by now even handles the playback of in-world sounds, among other features. The Radegast Development Team is proud to announce the immediate availability of Radegast version 2.0.
This release brings the 3D Scene Viewer that allows users to see the 3d worlds around them. Most of the object rendering features are implemented and functional, including the support for showing regular prims, sculpies and meshes, but one should keep in mind that this is still very experimental and might cause crashes.

Website: http://radegastclient.org/wp/
Windows: http://radegastclient.org/wiki/Radegast_Download
Linux: http://radegastclient.org/wiki/Radegast_Download
Mac: N/A
Source: http://radegastclient.org/wiki/Radegast_Download




Metabolt
----------

Metabolt, like Radegast, aims to be a fully-featured non-3D client for SL/Opensim. Like Radegast, it tries to include all the needed functionality for interaction with the 3D SL world through a mostly menu and text based interface. The creators of Metabolt put the prime reason for use of the client in low hardware, the workplace and management of alts.
Only runs on Windows.

Website: http://www.metabolt.net/
Windows 32bit: http://www.metabolt.net/download.aspx
Windows 64bit: http://www.metabolt.net/download.aspx
Linux: N/A
Mac: N/A
Source: http://www.metabolt.net/download.aspx




Mobile Grid Client
--------------------

The Mobile Grid Client is a client made for Android-based Smartphones. It is mostly made with communication in mind, featuring chat, IMs, teleports, a map/radar view and some inventory management.
Downside is a monthly payment model for two different versions of the client. Standard costs 250L a month, Pro costs 450 a month or 4000L a year. See http://www.mobilegridclient.com/licensing/

Website: http://www.mobilegridclient.com/
Android market link: market://search?q=pname:com.schlager.mgc




Sparkle IM
-------------

Sparkle IM is a client made for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Like Mobile Grid Client, it's mostly tuned for communication functions of SL/OpenSim, along with teleports, payment and friendship offers.

Website: http://sparkle.genkii.com/ and http://itunes.apple.com/app/sparkle-im/id306483735?mt=8




Pocket Metaverse
---------------------

Pocket Metaverse is another client for the iPhone. It supports communication, teleports, paynment, snapshot viewing, profile reading, notecard reading and parcel media.

Website: http://www.pocketmetaverse.com/

Lance Corrimal

uhm...
...where did you find THAT?

I'm the person behind frozenglobe, and it did not start out as an "emerald fork" of any kind.

It started out as my own pet project, just trying if I could adapt henris patches to snowglobe 1.4, then I started to create features of my own.
Anyways, right now I'm kinda in limbo between rebranding my 1.5-based viewer to something that linden lab legal can live with, or scrapping that and publishing my not so feature-complete SL2-based viewer under the same naming rules.

Not quite correct. What I say is that most of the patches are not my work, but adapted directly from henri's cool viewer. The remaining 10 or so are my own.

Chalice Yao

Then I misremembered and shall correct it :3
I was sure that Frozenglobe was the continuation of the Frequency Edition. My Mistake!

if you publish the 2.* viewer, yell, I'll add it. I plan on keeping this list alive for a long while.

EDIT: And done! Now to check what happened to Frequency

Makoto

Hippo viewer is still out there i believe, (its still the reccomended viewer for Opengrid.

Lance Corrimal

Happens to anyone! Last time I misread something, my wife and me ended up having pizza from the delivery service in the end, guess what i misread...

I guess I'll switch to 2.0 code eventually, now that Oz declared SG as dead...
I just don't know if I'll publish frozenglobe 1.5 under a new name first, or directly go 2.0... Right now it looks like 1.5 first.

Pretty cool idea anyways, this list.

Chalice Yao

I completely forgot about Hippo Heh. It just isn't being mentioned much in general, but I guess that comes from it being made pretty much 'exclusively' for OpenSim.
Should I add it to the list?

Belaya

Mabb Dilweg

__________________

The Roar of the Lions' Coming Together will echo around the World.
The Glory of Their Union will Light up the Firmament;
And as the Faithful rejoice, those who did not Believe shall be stricken, and burn in the Fires of Envy.
The Book of Awesome, Revelations 7:18

Charbl

Just a small correction, the 'Ascent is based on Inertia + Nano' bit is slightly incorrect and getting repeated a lot so I'm trying to snip it in the bud. We took equally from Nano, Imprudence and Emerald. The base of the viewer is Snowglobe/Inertia

Chalice Yao

Ninjaedited!

Kate M.

Chalice are you only covering "nice" viewers?

Hitomi Tiponi

Very useful list Chalice.

There is also Katherine Berry's Viewer 2-based Kitty Viewer - see Katharine's kittyviewer at master - GitHub

Beezle Warburton

Probably best to not make a public list of bad ones.

They're already easy enough to find as it is.

__________________

Cincia Singh

SnowStorm builds can be downloaded at: Project Snowstorm - Second Life Wiki

This is a nice project and the builds have been very stable for me.

__________________
*My concern can be measured in micro give-a-shits, and I'm working on nanotechnology!*

Chalice Yao

Yeah, pretty much. In light of the Emerald desaster, I just noticed that people are lacking a good list of stuff to switch to (or a list of non-dangerous viewers in general). I ought to poke Hazim about his Yeti project.

Added!

And edited. Thanks for the link :3

Beezle Warburton

If you have 1.23.5 and Snowglobe 1.x on the list, you should include Hippo.

AFAIK, Hippo is still active. It's a nice no-fluff option.

Cindy Claveau

Thank you so much, Chalice. This is going to be a really handy reference.

I appreciate you not including Emergence on the list, since LGG has moved over to the Phoenix team.

I downloaded the Phoenix viewer yesterday and it feels extremely comfortable to me - even more so than Imprudence did. If Emergence won't be getting any more support I'll just leave it alone.

__________________
"As long as there’s one person on earth who remembers you, it isn’t over." - Oscar Hammerstein

Chalice Yao

Good point, actually Added!

Whazoo Jigsaw

Why are the commits to phoenix firestorm mostly from lindens or is this a rouge?

Chalice Yao

Phoenix uses hg as their code repository system, and so does LL, so basically all the Linden-named changes you see are those that were done to Snowstorm before it was copied into the Phoenix repo.

Innocent

Many thanks for this thread Chalice.
I notice you link to actual files to download. If you do that you will have constant work updating your posts with newer versions. Maybe it would be better to link to the viewer's website or its general Downloads page.