The CSI New York episode tonight is expected to send 500,000+ intrigued viewers into Second Life. This coincides with the launch of the new On Rez viewer.
Electric Sheep Company prez commented at the recent Virtual World’s Conference advocated for the “AOL-ization” of Second Life. Well, that’s what the new sim and viewer feel like. For a ‘newbie’ the viewer felt a bit more intuitive, cleaner, and had a nice “Web” feel to it. For someone used to a viewer focused on building and creating (the new viewer HIDES the build and create buttons!) I won’t be switching anytime soon!
One feature I did like was the “forward/back” buttons that allow you to teleport to previous locations. I mistakenly TPd off the CSI sims to home, and a simple click of the back button brought me to where I came from. Nice feature!
The shop button was a bit of a disappointment….all it really did was launch a Web browser within the viewer – not sure I see the benefit of this compared to simply ‘alt-tabbing’ to an actualy browser?
With regards the sim itself – I didn’t have time yet to get past the orientation island. And talk about AOL-ification! Oh, and I thought this was the CSI New York sim not the Cisco sim? Ah the joys of advertising and placement.
Looking forward however to digging deeper past the orientation areas and into the “real” New York – hopefully a few grittier textures?
Another cool feature: the small map in the upper right has a globe icon in the lower right corner. Clicking on the globe icon pops up the full map/tp. I think that’s a brilliant update to the viewer – I hate always having to return to the bottom bar – it’s like always having to go back to the hallway in your house to get to any other room.
Sure….I tend to agree, that really is a hot little feature. But I’m still on the side of ignoring the viewer until they fix the search function, which still strikes me as a deliberate attempt to confuse newbies and force them to shop through onRez.
Think Linden will swap the “best of”?