When Second Life came out with its Viewer 2, I thought I was going to be leaving the virtual world. It was the worst user experience I have ever had with anything. The font color was in the same tonal family as the background and overlays. Despite it being a different color, it was extremely difficult to read. The silly sidebar took up way to much real estate and their compromise to squish the world was not the best help either. Meh!
Imprudence has been keeping me in my comfort zone during this ride. It is fast, rarely do I have issues and I am content. All is right in the world. Following the viewer news, everyone is on a race to build Viewer 2 based clients for various reasons. Sigh!
So I decided to try a few. Kirstens is great but will kill a computer if you do not know what you are doing. That is a viewer for graphic artists, in world photographers and pros. Nice, but not for the average person. Viewer 2 itself is still icky and makes me want to toss up all sorts of badness from my insides.
Then I discover Firestorm, which is still in beta, but I love it. It is the best of both worlds. I find it well executed. I can change various aspects of my UI and it has that pre 2 feel, yet I get to have the Viewer 2 features. Party! However, there are two features I absolutely adore! The first is the fact that I can be anywhere and snap a picture that will upload to flickr. I can loose me as the middle man for basic shots. Joy joy! The second is the fact that I can have shadows without funny lines in the pictures or without crashing after a few moments.
It is my viewer of choice right now. Below is me living up on these two features!
N'Vhe 