Posted in Emerald, Imprudence, Second Life, Viewers

Emerald, Emergence, Phoenix – confused? You’re not alone!

I was talking to a friend in Second Life today who was really scratching her head over what viewer was what and what the hell was going on. So this is just a short post for her and anyone else who might benefit.

  • Emerald – well, I think everyone knows about Emerald. And those that are still running it are simply ignorant or don’t care.
  • Emergence – this is a sanitised Emerald (ie. Emerald with the bad stuff taken out) that was done by LordGregGreg. Don’t get too attached to it because he has said he is not going to develop it further. So there will be no updates. This is partly because he is now on the development team of…
  • Phoenix – this is another sanitised Emerald and is being actively developed by some of the ex-Emerald team. They are following good software practises as detailed in this post of mine, so I have very high hopes that this is going to be a goodie.
  • Imprudence – this has nothing to do with Emerald and is a completely different Viewer. It is also following good software practises. I wrote a short review on it here

There are other Viewers out there too – Cool Viewer and Kirsten’s Viewer, for example. However I don’t have enough experience of them to comment.