In May of last year, I reported on the initial steps that would see the eventual loss of Viewer 1.23.x as we know it.
That the depreciation had started – and would take a goodly while to complete, admittedly – caused one Third Party Viewer creator to get a little out of his tree, threatening to AR me to Linden Lab for “spreading lies”, and also to submit a “defamation” report against me with WordPress!
Anyway…it now appears that the first major step to ending Viewer 1.23 from effectively working on the Main Grid will be taken some time in Quarter 2 of 2011 (although this has yet to be precisely confirmed by Linden Lab).
The news came to light in a Phoenix Viewer office hour on the 11th January (the transcript from which I missed at the time). To whit:
Linden Labs has announced that they will be blocking search, server-side, for the Viewer 1.x viewer, effectively making all Viewer 1.x useless for search, and effectively forcing users to move over to the Viewer 2x viewer (allowing Linden Labs to move forward with features that are not compatible with the 1.x viewers). That gives the Phoenix team 3 or 4 months to get Firestorm ready for delivery…
[Addendum: To be clear… We were notified of the intention to turn off viewer 1.x search capability during a meeting between LL and approved Third Party Viewers. This information was provided to us as a means to help us prepare for what the future holds for existing 1.x viewers. Linden Lab has not officially announced this yet, and you can be sure that they WILL announce it well ahead of time and give everyone ample notice. We are told that the Lab will stop support for their 1.23 viewer before search in 1.x viewers is turned off….]
This announcement has been reported on at SLU, where it has been met with a mixed response. Elsewhere, the news has also meet with opposition – and one has to say that the concerns and critiques are somewhat justified.
However, is this really a bad thing? While it is true that Search in Viewer 2 is far from perfect, and still needs considerable work (not least shown by the fact that each new release of Viewer 2 seems to operate slightly differently with regards to search, and people have been commenting on this and getting frustrated about it in the official forums for a while) – the fact remains that Linden Lab cannot maintain two code bases indefinitely, and Viewer 2 already embeds a lot of functionality that Viewer 1.23 cannot support without more work than Linden Lab can afford to give, even were they so minded.
Ergo, things have to change, and as such, the end of Viewer 1.23 and its derivatives was and is only a matter of time. And let’s be fair: Viewer 2, while it still has warts, has come a considerable way in the last 12 months. While one could argue that in doing so, it could have benefited if, for part of that time it had remained in a more rigorous closed Beta testing environment in which perhaps more user feedback which was then acted upon, the Viewer would be now be enjoying a far greater degree of popularity among users than is currently the case; the point is now moot. Viewer 2.5 and the 2.5 Beta are a long way removed from the original, and time and effort has been invested by a lot of people both within and without Linden Lab – and they deserve thanks.
Again, the demise of 1.23 later this year shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. The likes of the Phoenix and Imprudence teams have been beavering away with their own Viewer 2 based products, Firestorm and Kokua since around November of last year because of this very fact.
Of course, one could argue that “breaking” search in 1.23 is a lot different to “depreciating” the Viewer – but is it? The end result is the same.
While “breaking” – or more correctly – blocking search for 1.23 is perhaps a little unsubtle in some respects (rightly or wrongly, the perception (note the emphasis!) is that search is “working” in 1.23, and “not working in Viewer 2.x), it shouldn’t be seen as a negative. As some on the SLU thread point out, it clears the way for LL to focus down more thoroughly on Viewer 2 and its good and bad points.
Yes, Search in Viewer 2 still need work – but again, as many have pointed out to those raising a hoo-haw over this move: Search in Viewer 2 does work; just not in all cases. LL is fighting hard against people gaming the system – and in the areas where people complaining about it “not working”, it tends to be the most gaming goes on (such as with land and the like). In other areas, things are a lot better, and merchants and users alike are encountering fewer problems.
However, given that Search on Viewer 2 is still being worked upon, and may people do rely on Search in many ways, one hopes that the “turn off” date for Viewer 1.23’s access to search is not something that will be viewed as “stopping the train” if it is delayed. If we reach the date and it is widely acknowledged by the users who have to make use of it that Search in Viewer 2 still needs important work – LL will delay the switch-off.
Unless, of course, Firestorm and Kokua (and whoever else is going down this route) have rolled out and wooed all those still “anti” Viewer 2 on the grounds of its awkward UI – which is likely to be the case. Providing they do, I have a sneaking suspicion that many won’t even notice any Search issues. They’ll have a Viewer with a UI they like (aka one without a sidebar and with a better approach to chat windows / chicklets / toasties – whatever cute name you give them) – and so on, and won’t be worried about Search.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
Inara, I do not know of an issue in SL that has produced a more polarised result than this Viewer 1.xx vs 2.xx debate.
The fact is that like it or loathe it (and bluntly I loathe it), there are some people who simply cannot (for some reason, maybe old graphics cards, I’m not sure) run SLV 2.xx in any other its forms. And despite her efforts , which I praise, Marine Kelley’s RLV2 is just as clunky.
This compulsion from Linden Lab is offensive and divisive and I simply must make my strenuous objection to being forced into an action by Linden Lab known. I might add I have written and made my views known to LL elsewhere.
I can only hope that the Phoenix-Firestorm and Kokua developers can make some sort of purse for us out of the sow’s ear that is Viewer 2
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That Viewer 2 has split the community so wide is hardly the fault of Linden Lab, in fairness. Rather, I’d say it is testament to the fact that Viewer 2 is, despite all the protests against it – a usable piece of software. It would be unfair to characterise all those who use it as being “LL fanboys”, because I’ve found many people among trusted friend who have successfully transitioned to Viewer 2 and now will not contemplate a return to the Viewer 1.x stable – even though the majority of 1.x TPVs run the most popular Viewer 2 enhancements (i.e. multi-attach).
Yes there are still issues with it; I’ve stated myself I still loathe the Sidebar (and still hope that LL will do what Kristenlee Cinquetti has done to make it a bloody sight less intrusive). We all have bits of it we don’t like; just like in the past we’ve all seen changes to Viewer 1.x we’ve universally loathed but – and here’s the crucial difference – we’ve had no choice but to live with – at least until TPVs started significantly branching and re-implementing options that LL opted to drop.
This is not to say, on the broader front, that LL don’t have something to answer for. At the end of the day, there was much about the development and release of Viewer 2 that did much to further the feeling among users that Linden Lab simply does not care about them. As I’ve said, simply listening to feedback and keeping the Viewer in an open beta rather than pushing it “live” would have been preferable – but that is past history; Viewer 2 is here, and it is not going to go away.
I still stand by the view that, while there is much I personally don’t enjoy with Viewer 2, much of the backlash against it stems as much from people’s unwillingness to change as it does from any “technical” issues. Proof of this is the frequent and myriad comments from people stating, “I tried Viewer 2 for ten minutes and gave up”, given as evidence that it is “unusable”. I rather suspect that if people reacted the same way to, say Office 2007, then Microsoft would be facing a global backlash…
As to the performance issues, well, you are partly right. But there is a flipside to that argument as well. If Second Life is to stay attractive, then whether we like it or not, it needs to try and remain attractive enough to attract new users. This means bringing levels of greater realism and enhancement to the world as we see it. This inevitably means the software *is* going to become more and more demanding on the hardware to handle rendering, etc.
In this respect, it doesn’t matter what Viewer is offered by Linden Lab – as a glance back through the history of the platform will demonstrate: the technical requirements have always moved with the times throughout the lifecycle of Viewer 1.x. As such, *if* Viewer 1.x had been continued, I have little doubt that it would have been calling on higher-end specs just as Viewer 2 is, in order for it to handle all the new features coming down the line.
If you take a look at the Second Life specs and compare them to those of World of Warcraft and Eve Online (among others), you’ll find they are pretty much the same. So why does Linden Lab come in for so much flak in this? Why are they expected to support what amount to legacy graphics systems long after the rest of the world has moved on?
At the end of the day, Linden Lab are sitting in a cleft stick. On the one hand we’re all clamouring for a better, more realistic in-world environment; users have been clamouring for Mesh and other capabilities for years . In order to deliver these wants and demands, LL have to move with the times: the Viewer needs to be overhauled, the software needs to have a hardware base that can actually handle it and so on. Yet, at the same time, we’re all seemingly demanding these new wonders and Shiny without anything inconveniencing us – and frankly, we can’t have it both ways.
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Fair point, Inara, though the cost of purchasing a new PC for some is not trivial, and it is still true that there are still glitches in SL’s compatibility with 64-bit Win7…this I know from other non-SL sources.
I tried SLV 2.3 briefly, with an Alt I created briefly solely as a test, and I’m afraid I found it awful to use. And Yes, I did try to get used to it.
I might add that I had to uninstal SLV 2.3 because it caused issue with my GPU, that I had NOT expected. I have since deleted the alt.
I simply do not agree that older systems like mine are “legacy” hardware..in this day and age to throw away such equipment is highly wasteful, and there is no upward stretch left in my motherboard.
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I’m still failing to see where Viewer 2 *itself* is demanding “high-end” computers in order to be usable.
Let’s look at the minimum specs required to run Second Life *regardless* of Viewer: CPU: 800Mhz Pentium 3 – a processor at least 9 years old; Graphics: nVidia 6600 GPU family – six years old; OR ATI Radeon 8500 – eight years old; OR Intel 945 – which I believe is around 5 or 6 years old.
This is hardly cutting-edge.
Granted, to get all the bells and whistles out of SL, higher specification computers are required. But even with “older” machines, we can still run SL; it’s just a case of accepting we can do so without all the Shiny bits. This has always been the case, regardless of Viewer, be it Viewer 2.x, 1.2x, 1.18, 1.16 or whatever; thus to place the blame for this solely on Viewer 2.x is a little unfair.
Personally, I’ve run SL on three computers, two of which are hardly new by computer standards (one being some four years old, the other five years old). With each of them I’ve had to adapt how *I* use SL.
On my main Desktop PC, for example (Q6600 CPU, nvidia 8600 GPU), I’m fortunate at present to be able to run SL in ULTRA mode. At the other end of the scale, however, I’ve had to accept the fact that my old single-core mobile Pentium-based Vaio with the 495GMA chipset was *never* going to manage SL at anything beyond LOW mode – and frankly, it would have been unreasonable of me to accept otherwise, as that machine simply didn’t have the processing power.
But it didn’t stop me using SL on it.
I’m certainly not advocating people *must* upgrade, but it is the nature of the beast that as LL work to maintain SL’s relevance to users and seek to deliver the capabilities the users themselves are requesting, then the specifications are, unfortunately increase. This leaves us, as users, with a choice: we either upgrade if we want all the Shiny, or we accept that we’re going to have to go without and use SL as befits our current computers.
In this regard, SL is a little like High Definition television – if someone wants to receive it, that have to go out and by a HD TV set; it’s completely unreasonable for them to expect the BBC et al to deliver HD services directly to their existing television…
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Meanwhile V1.23.5 can be downloaded here:
http://www.sensic.nl/PrivateMedia/Second_Life_1-23-5-136262_Setup.exe
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