Prim Perfect’s Proposed Guide to Third Party Viewers

The Prim Perfect blog will be running a major new series over the coming weeks, looking at the different viewers that are available for Second Life and Open Sim virtual worlds. We’ll be looking at the structure of each, their strength and weaknesses – and we are inviting you to add your comments to help us build up as full a perspective as we can.

• Which viewer is good for building?
• Which viewer is best for photography or machinima?
• Which viewer is most stable?
• Which can you use for Open Sims?

With you help, over the next few weeks, we hope to have the answers!

Firstly … some explanation. This is a 101 of the background of virtual world viewers – and some of the events that have led to the current confusions.

About Third Party Viewers: Some Background
Some people who read this blog may not be aware of something that has been pre-occupying dedicated users of Second Life and other virtual worlds – the fact that you don’t have to use the viewer provided by Linden Labs in order to use the Second Life software. Since areas of the code were open sourced, a number of people have worked on alternative viewers (usually called Third Party Viewers or TPVs). Some of these viewers offer features considered desirable by viewers that, for some reason or other, Linden Lab have been unable or unwilling to provide. The features ranged from increased stability to making the breasts of female avatars appear to bounce – in other words from the really useful to the downright silly.

I first became interested in using an alternative TPV when the iteration of the Second Life browser I was using repeatedly caused a huge memory leak that sucked in all my processing power and eventually caused my computer to crash. Linden Lab seemed unable to help, simply demanding ever more arcane information about my computer and my usage and refusing to help unless I could supply it. A quick read of the forums suggested that this problem was not so shockingly rare as Support was painting it; fellow sufferers suggested that the Nicholaz TPV might help. Although I was a little wary of open source software, I downloaded it, fired it up … and my memory leak problem was solved.

Nicholaz was known as ‘the Mad Patcher’. He began by spotting loopholes in Second Life code and devising patches to fix them. Eventually, exasperated by the time it was taking Linden Lab to implement these, he developed his own viewer which became quite popular for the higher end users (such as people who had to upload magazine pages and produce TV shows, let alone builders). Eventually, Nicholaz stepped back; this was, I think, a project that simply ate too much of his time, and he was frustrated by the glacial speed with which, he felt, the Lab moved to implement his patches. (He finally left, cancelling his accounts and ending the downloads, when the Lindens declared the TPV policy – but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

Nicholaz was not the only one developing a viewer by this time. Other people were working on Mac viewers (always under-supported by the Lab) or just on viewers that offered bells and whistles the Lab didn’t have the time or inclination to support. Others saw the importance of Open Sim grids developing and created viewers of sufficient robustness to carry users through all the problems that might entail. Users began to drift away from the Second Life viewer and choose other viewers instead that better met their needs. The one that most users found best suited their needs for useful features and for extra bells and whistles was Emerald.

Version 2.0 and the Growth of Emerald
Emerald was already extremely popular, but it was the launch of Viewer 2.0 that gave it dominance. Viewer 2.0 was meant to make things easier. It was meant to lure new people in to Second Life, and to keep them there once they arrived. The older, established users were not catered to – building in the early iteration was nearly impossible, even once one mastered the steep learning curve (and if it was steep for the hardened users, heaven only knows what it was like for newcomers). The result was that more and more viewers turned to the TPV viewers that were providing them with the tools they needed – and leading the charge was Emerald.

Even at this stage, there were some users who raised concerns about Emerald. Some of the developers were very young, and they had been associated with griefers in the past. There were even accusations that some of the developers had previously been griefers. Some people asked … what sort of code is under the bonnet at Emerald? Is it something that might compromise my privacy? Is it something that might be dangerous? Other poo-pooed this. All TPVs compromise privacy to some extent – indeed, most things that you do on the internet compromise your privacy. And people were willing to take the risk (which they saw as minimal) in return for the goodies.

But there were other viewers out there which were obviously less benign. These were devised with the key aim of stealing other people’s intellectual property and of being able to indulge in griefing attacks with impunity. Content creators, already struggling to counter copybots, were sent reeling under these attacks. A new product, which might have taken weeks to develop, could be ripped off in minutes if not seconds. Their protests grew more vociferous – and eventually, faced with a seething group of significant users, the Lab took action.

But the landscape had changed. No longer were there a few hundred hard-core users of TPVs. Now there were hundreds of thousands and enough of them were vociferous to make closing all TPVs a prospect from which even a more popular entity than Linden Lab would shrink. For many users, Linden Lab had failed to deliver what they wanted and was deaf to their needs. If they heard stories about the potential problems of Emerald, they weren’t interested. Add to that a further user base who were using other viewers for practical reasons, and it was clear that simply ending all TPVs was a path that the Lab was reluctant to follow.

But above all, Emerald that had become so powerful that its unilateral withdrawal could represent a serious blow to Second Life. At a point where content creators were screaming for action against the rogue viewers, they were also holding fast to Emerald – the best viewer to build in, the best viewer to take photographs in, the best viewer for maintaining land security … and a project that came to be associated with Emerald was the Gemini CDS security system that warned estate owners of people who had been using the most dangerous ‘theft’ viewers so that the owners could choose to warn or ban those people. Most chose to ban, to be on the safe side … and ignore those people who proclaimed it was a mistake, it wasn’t them, it was a shared computer …

And the Emerald developers proved themselves helpful. They were willing to work with Linden lab developers. Word leaked of joint projects with the Lab … but word also leaked of information improperly held – of links being made in maintained databases between user names/passwords/IP addresses – information that should not have been held – that was, in fact, illegally held under the laws of some countries.

We don’t know how many users Emerald had at its peak. Emerald’s claims, I think it is fair to say, were exaggerated (up to 50% of user hours was claimed). But it was certainly a serious proportion of the number who logged in on a daily basis. And they loved their Emerald passionately.

It was, in short, a tiger – and it was a tiger that Linden Lab had no choice but to ride. As a result, they drew up the Policy on Third Party Viewers (with a directory of approved viewers). Essentially, this was to eliminate the really dangerous viewers, the ‘theft’ viewers. It also eliminated some of the really good viewers, who felt the demands of the Lab were unreasonable. Nicholaz finally left at this point, and so did Rainbow, both excellent viewers with solid reputations. But their heyday was past. Most people were watching to see what would happen with Emerald.

What happened, eventually, was a compromise. Linden Lab added Emerald to their approved TPV list, declaring that they were satisfied Emerald had complied with their requirements. To some people, this seemed to be something of a stretch. But to the vast majority, Emerald was safe. It had been approved. Everything was wonderful.

In fact. the trouble had only just started.

The End of Emerald
I think it’s safe to say that Emerald shot itself in the foot. It then took out both knees and started working up from there.

The developers behind Emerald were a varied group – or so it appeared to outsiders. Some were clearly young – and sometimes appeared intoxicated with their achievements. They became involved in scraps and quarrels with other groups around the grid – the people behind the Woodbury University sims, for example, who had long been regarded as a source of griefing. When Woodbury were finally expelled from Second Life as an institution, Emerald developers were happy to hint that they had played a part. And, on one level, barely perceived by most of the grid, there were a number of these spats going on. Various people who had criticised Emerald were targeted and some of the Emerald developers and friends engaged in childish bullying and attacks that reflected poorly on its standing as a professional company.

Essentially, more and more highly damaging information started leaking out. The final crisis was precipitated when one of the leading developers walked. Extra code had been introduced, he declared, which he had been unable to inspect. He was concerned about this and was therefore withdrawing from the project. A hasty damage limitation public relations exercise came into play from Modular Systems, the company behind Emerald, and the exit was spun … the developer was marginal, embittered, not to be listened to. And look – a shiny new person had joined the Emerald team – one of the recently un-employed Lindens and a crack developer. Users who might have been made uneasy relaxed again. If the ex (and popular) Linden was joining the team, things must be all right.

Then came the Denial of Service attack.

Denial of Service attacks mean flooding a computer of network with so much detail that the bandwidth is overloaded and the computer/s can no longer access the internet.They have been used against commercial firms, and even against government agencies. They can be extremely dangerous (you could take down a hospital, a city’s traffic systems, an air traffic control system) and they are also highly illegal. In order to mount the attack, the perpetrator needs thousands of machines working together to deliver the flood of data. Capturing these machines, usually through software insecurities that allow rogue programs to be planted on innocent machines, is called creating a botnet.

The lead developer of Emerald used the Emerald viewer as a botnet to launch a Denial of Service attack against an individual.

This meant that every time someone logged in to Second Life using Emerald, their computer was used to send 32 pieces of data to the individual’s computer in an attempt to flood his bandwidth and knock him off the net.

This was, obviously, a step too far for everyone. For the first time, significant numbers of users started to desert Emerald. Some people were still declaring passionately that they would NEVER give up Emerald. Others were starting to ask what was the best alternative. And Linden Lab withdrew Emerald from their list of approved TPVs.

The Emerald team was, by this point, spinning like a child’s top. First they declared that they had asked to be removed from the list while they sorted their problems. Next it was that Linden Lab had removed them from the list, but it was a mere technicality and they would be restored quite rapidly once they had cleared up a few problems.

Then Linden Lab set out their conditions … and the Emerald team fell apart. The Emerald viewer was definitively banned by the Lab for failing to comply. Some involved, against whom the gravest charges had been levelled, had their accounts terminated. Others were seemingly caught up in this maelstrorm. Other former Emerald developers took what they claimed was the ‘clean code’ and moved to create a new viewer – Phoenix.

It seemed as though things would now calm down about TPVs. But perhaps Linden Lab has learned a lesson: that they should beware of letting a piece of client software outside their control become so very important to so many users. Emerald destroyed itself; the Lab simply slammed down the lid. But another time? If another independent viewer became so popular?

It seems unlikely. For one thing, the Lab has now informed the Open Source viewer developers that they may no longer utilise a piece of proprietary software (i.e. licenced and paid for by the Lab) in their browsers. Some seem to be refusing to do this. Others are complying, but are arguing that this will act as a hobble on their viewer. Presumably those who refuse to comply will also be banned, and those who do comply will find it harder to compete on equal terms with the Linden Lab viewers. Will this make a significant difference? We will have to wait and see!

In the mean-time, which of the remaining viewers is best for your individual needs? It’s a question that many people have been asking themselves – quite often the people who robustly declared that the Emerald Viewer would need to be prised from their cold, dead hands. Well, Emerald is gone, and those people still seem full of life and vigour – and are looking for a new viewer. But which one?

Watch this space and find out!