All Second Life users are aware of the official Second Life Viewer, available on the main Second Life Downloads page. However, many Second Life developers, outside of Linden Lab, offer custom Second Life viewers. While Linden Lab does not support third-party viewers, many users choose to use these alternative viewers.
Second Life Viewer official:
What's important to know is that Linden Lab provides a Third-Party Viewer Policy to promote a positive and predictable experience for all Second Life Residents.
Down below you will see a listing of Third-Party viewers created by developers who have certified that they comply with the Third-Party Viewer Policy.
Viewer - Alchemy
An experimental Second Life™ viewer striving to be at the forefront of stability, performance, and technological advancement in the open-source metaverse viewer field.
Viewer - Black Dragon
The primary goal of Black Dragon is to enhance and refine the visuals of Second Life as well as having unique design approaches and features.
Viewer - Firestorm
The next generation viewer from The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Firestorm is based on the LL V3 LGPL code and offers extensive interface customizability including V1 skin options, feature and option rich with 24/7 support.
Viewer - Kokua
Kokua is an open source viewer for Second Life and OpenSim-based virtual worlds. The goal of Kokua is to improve the user interface and usability of the viewer through community involvement, thoughtful design, modern development methods, and a pro-change atmosphere.
Viewer - Catznip
Catznip aims to refine and reinvent your window into Second Life. Our focus is stability, usability, privacy and plenty of new original home grown features. It's about taking a fresh look at things and attempting to do them better. Catznip is the development viewer for the alternative implementation of the RLV specification. RLVa goes from Catznip into many other TPVs including Firestorm and Phoenix. This is especially useful for script developers as Catznip represents the future of RLVa often months ahead of the mainstream.
Viewer - Restrained Love
The RLV enhances your experience when you use it in conjunction with RLV-compatible objects, which are very common on the SL grid now. It is primarily intended to be used by BDSM fans with BDSM oriented objects in-world, which can restrict the user from detaching items, receiving IMs, hearing chat, teleporting, etc. It can also be useful for totally PG purposes, such as forcing to teleport somewhere (facilitating transport networks), changing the Windlight settings through scripts (helping sim owners), preventing from teleporting out of a maze, etc.
Viewer - Singularity
Singularity strives to combine the beloved look and feel of Viewer 1.23 with the latest and greatest of available technology, and to stay compatible with future Second Life changes and features.
The user should be wary of third-party viewers who have declined to self-certify compliance with Linden Lab policies or have been turned down for non-compliance with policies.
Other viewers such as Exodus, Imprudence and UkanDo have not been updated recently enough to be considered fully compatible with current Second Life services. Depending on their use, they may or may not meet your needs.
All viewers described above are projects that are regularly updated to track new developments in the Linden Lab viewer and implement a complete graphical environment. So, if you want to take advantage of all aspects of full viewer functionality, choose one of the viewers listed above and enjoy!
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