KirstenLee Cinquetti, Third Party Viewer developer extraordinaire, makes an appeal on her blog for people to switch over to viewer 2:
“Now comes an appeal. Things are getting to a point where I suspect mesh will very shortly arrive onto the grid along with lots of new features. I strongly believe some will appear in the next development cycle. There is one problem.. 1.23 based clients! The whole deal is being right royally hampered and delayed by the insistence in keeping this client alive.
I honestly do not care what your viewer preference may be.. But I really implore you to switch to V2 based solutions (even if this causes some pain). Firestorm, Kokua, daveP’s funk special, it does not matter, the sooner the better. See the world with my eyes!”
Viewer 2 has since its inception been given a frosty welcome, and this goes back to the closed beta period, as the leaked feedback that made its way to The Alphaville Herald revealed. The simple fact of the matter is that Viewer 2 has been unloved, will Mesh change that?
The answer is, who knows? Quite probably in my humble opinion, but I’m guessing, I thought shared media might make Viewer 2 compelling but so far, that has turned out to be a pretty damp squib and hasn’t been helped at all by the privacy concerns around shared media.
The problem with Viewer 2 is that the folk behind it, didn’t seem to want to believe the feedback, we were told our objections were partially due to people not liking change, as Erica Linden was quoted over at New World Notes. However, this really was missing the point, yes it’s true that people don’t like change, but that isn’t what held Viewer 2 back. Initially we had the absurd camera controls, where pan and orbit were on different tabs, we had the sidebar that according to many, took up too much screen space, things didn’t feel intuitive, even though in my opinion, some menus were moved to more sensible places.
I’ve been using Viewer 2 as my primary viewer ever since it went open beta, I have delved less and less back into viewer 1.23 as improvements have been made to Viewer 2, and improvements have been made, I’m not making this up! Viewer 2 has some funky features, such as being able to copy a SLURL into the address bar and teleport there, a similar practice to copying and pasting a website address into your web browser. When you start typing a few letters in the address bar in Viewer 2, previous places you have landmarks for show up in a dropdown, this is nice functionality, but it’s not compelling enough to make people switch.
Last night I was talking to a lady who told me I was Ruthed, although I wasn’t on my viewer, a Ruthed Drow makes me think of Rumplestiltskin for some reason, anyway I wasn’t Ruthed but she insisted I was and sent me pics to prove it, and then told me not to play with my boobs, then came the realisation: “You’re on Viewer 2 aren’t you?” … well I couldn’t lie! Outfits are different on Viewer 2, I don’t know if this causes issues for people with Viewer 1.23 clients when you login, I do know that Viewer 2 recently has taken to dressing me when I log back in and had for some reason not been fully dressed when I logged out, which is very nice in case I log back in and end up in a different location to the one I intended, but I don’t know why it dresses me … hmm .. anyway, that’s not a compelling reason for using Viewer 2 either!
Viewer 1.23 still has distinct advantages in the search stakes, it simply does, land sales search and your results not closing on Teleport are two biggies, as is the much larger set of results per page via search, these are basic functionality features and they remain much better in viewer 1.23. I still find inviting people to a group and looking at my group easier in Viewer 1.23, Viewer 2 involves more clicks here and there, not the end of the world but it all adds up and consumes time, I can see why people find it frustrating.
However Mesh, Mesh could be a turning point. Rumour has it that Mesh will appear as triangles to people with Viewer 1.23 clients, if this is true, then it’s going to change the way the world looks for many people as Mesh will be popular and this could tip people over the edge and into the arms of Viewer 2.
The disappointing thing is that people still won’t want to come over to Viewer 2, they’ll feel forced into it (of course they aren’t forced to do anything of the sort), they will feel they’ve had their arm twisted, Mesh in itself isn’t the compelling reason people will be coming across, it’s that their world view changed.
Viewer 2 failed to capture the imagination of Second Life users, it is much improved, I really do mean that, but no matter how much improved it is, to some, the frustrations of using it still make it a steaming pile of pants. However, I really do suggest that people take a look at Viewer 2, check out the TPV’s if you like, but it’s worth getting ready for the worse case scenario here, the end of the road for Viewer 1.23 does seem to be getting close, is resistance futile? We’ll have to wait and see.
The 3D metaverse world view IS changing – mesh in SL or OS may be part of it – or Google Earth and Street View, Kitely etc.
Once Upon a Time we looked to AltaVista to search the 2D internet – now we look to Bing etc.for hope.
Perhaps it’s not “twisting arms” just natural selection…
Well there’s going to be a bit of pain if people on old viewers can’t see the new builds properly, which in turn makes some estate owners ban the use of Mesh.
Things do change, it’s how change is managed that ultimately dictates its success.
last time I tried any version of viewer 2 I could not save a copy of an outfit I was wearing — not save an ‘outfit,’ save actual COPIES of the full perm clothes I was wearing. I use this function endlessly when creating clothes and boxing them for sale and have not been able to come up with a way to do it using V2. This is my biggest complaint with v2-type viewers, but the almost constant complaints I hear from other v2 users run the gamut from “I’m a cloud” “My friends say I’m naked but I’m not” to “I can’t build using v2” “Search doesn’t work in v2” “viewer 2 is slow”
Are jiggly bewbs and some new types of building structures really so great that these other things don’t matter?
Updating just for the sake up updating is ridiculous. Breaking things that were working before the update is beyond ridiculous. How can anyone defend the use of a viewer when something as basic as SEARCH doesn’t even work?
Search is no longer tied to the viewer and viewer 1.23 has long had components of viewer 2 style search in it, the default all search in viewer 1.23 is the same as the one in viewer 2. Viewer 1.23 still has the old style people and places search as well as the vastly superior land sales search, land sales search in viewer 2 is still a steaming pile of pants.
However, I think it was the Phoenix devs, who said that LL had told them those old style search systems were earmarked to be done away with this year anyway. They had been to an office hour with LL where the issue was raised.
Building is not so bad in viewer 2, for people who use keyboard shortcuts it has never been that bad, for me as someone who uses menus and the mouse, I found it painful and used to switch back to 1.23, but it is much improved and has a nice feature for aligning planar textures now.
I raised the issue in the post of someone telling me I was Ruthed and then asking me if I was using viewer 2 and I do find when I’m trying to take photographs at busier events that I see lots of grey people still.
I agree that viewer 2 simply hasn’t been compelling enough for people to switch over, this is why the complaints that people don’t like change, simly don’t hold up, viewer 2 just isn’t strong enough on its own merits but the Mesh issue may well be a game changer here, one way or another, for Mesh to thrive, people need to be on a viewer that supports Mesh and that’s going to be the cause of some bitter debate I’d imagine.
Some already orived is still possible to port and see meshes using v1.2.3 code.
So my guess, Sl v2 will still not be used even when meshes arrive.
Honestly the only hope I have is Firestorm Build 3, sooner release!