Third Party Viewer Changes

Update: I missed this post before I published which helps to further clarify the issue.

Earlier today Linden Labs announced some changes to the policies that govern the use of TPVs (Third Party Viewers) in Second Life. As with any change, this is sure to bring forth many opinions, especially where something as popular as TPVs are concerned. I personally look at the changes, and am not feeling as though they will change a lot of things.

I will say that any changes like these will cause troubles for developers, especially developers that are working for free in most cases. I hope that Linden Labs recognizes this and gives the developers to talk through the changes and adjust the code to meet these new requirements. There was some talk on the Phoenix/Firestorm blog about some of these changes going into effect next week. That simple is not a realistic time frame for developers to make changes.

Linden Labs is making four changes to the policy:

1. 2.a.iii : You must not provide any feature that circumvents any privacy protection option made available through a Linden Lab viewer or any Second Life service.
2. 2.i : You must not display any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of any other Second Life user.
3. 2.j : You must not include any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of the user in any messages sent to other viewers, except when explicitly elected by the user of your viewer.
4. 2.k : You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.

Let me discuss my thoughts on each of these.

1. There isn't a lot of detail on exactly what features might do this, but I think that restricting peoples ability to spy, record, track or otherwise invade the privacy of another user is a good thing. In all of the discussions I have read online no one seems to take offense at this change.
2. This is clearly a privacy issue. Protecting the private information of individual users in Second Life. The implication here is the viewer tags displayed in world by many (most) TPVs. These tags float above the heads of other users and tell you which viewer they are using. I personally turn this off most of the time as it is just one more piece of information cluttering up the viewer. I can see where this could be useful information for support in world I am not sure that it is the end of the world to not be able to display this information.
3. This carries on from number 2 and basically says that TPVs cannot send information about me to other viewers. These two play hand in hand. I think one important point with both 2 & 3 is that this does not prevent a TPV from showing information about the user in his/her own viewer. The viewer, OS and other information could be show to me in my viewer in such a way that I could easily copy and paste it in a support instance for example. The important part is that it is not being sent without my knowledge.
4. Now we get to the big one, the vague one, and the one that really has given people cause for some concern. No one really knows which features and functions of TPVs this will affect. In a minute I will discuss some features and my thoughts on whether or not changes will need to be made. For now, let me comment on this change in general. Providing a consistent user experience is and should be important to Linden Labs. If people on one viewer are able to do something that others cannot see that is a problem. If the experience for one set of users is degraded from the rest of the community, that is also a problem. I think that on the surface this sort of requirement is good to have, but that they left it so general is a bit worrying. Linden Labs has promised to work with developers of TPVs to integrate some of these features into the official viewer, but obviously that causes delays.

Ok, so what is affected by the changes introduced in 2.k? I have been thinking about this quite a bit since I heard about the news, here is what I have come up with.

• Parcel Windlight: This was suggested by my friend in world and I think she is right. This to me seems like the big feature on the chopping block. It certainly is a shared experience, and region environment settings have been introduced as the "official" way to do this. As an Exodus user I am happy to see this go if it means that more sim owners use the built in environment settings. The number 1 issue this fixes is that the windlight is kept on the server in these cases, I don't need to have them on my viewer.
• Client Side AO: I had to really think about this one. It is one of my key features in a viewer, and likely the main reason I use a TPV. However, the more I think about it the more I think that this would not be covered. This is really not doing anything different than a HUD worn in world would do. It still plays and sends animations to other viewers in the same way. I don't see this being affected.
• RLV: I would have said this was a candidate for removal. It seems to play directly into interactions between avatars. However, it really doesn't change the shared experience for those around people using it. So now I am thinking it is good. This was somewhat confirmed by someone in this thread on the forums which says the topic of RLV was discussed in a meeting and was said to be safe.
• Mesh Deformer: This one is again hard. Does the mesh deformer change the shared in world experience? We can hope that work will continue on this project and it will be included in the official viewer regardless, but this is what I am going to use to draw my personal distinction on this section of the changes. I think that the Mesh Deformer is not affected by this.

These are some of the common features I have seen listed by people. I really can only say that one is for sure to fall victim, parcel windlight. I see the distinction as this. A viewer can enhance the world view for the person using that viewer, by using the Mesh Deformer for example, but cannot introduce new things in world that others cannot see, like parcel specific windlight. I hope I am right with my distinction and that TPVs can continue to modify and enhance how I see the world as long as they don't allow for features that can only be seen using that viewer. If my distinction is the case, then I think very few features of modern viewers will be impacted. What is your opinion? How will this change impact your favorite TPV features?

The complete TPV policy can be found here.