Assuming CSI:NY had not aired their program featuring Second Life on Wednesday this week, projected signups for Wednesday and Thursday were expected to total 47,434. Actual signups for Wednesday and Thursday this week exceeded that projection by 74,412 signups, with 122,846 new registrations taking place in that 48 hour period.

The incident was marred, however, by the failure of the webservers for the CSI event, preventing many from registering via the CSI registration portal or downloading the OnRez viewer, both provided by the Electric Sheep Company.

Well, I lucked out a bit and peeked in on the state of the OnRez viewer about a minute after it went live. It takes about as long to download as the regular viewer (about a minute and a half) being similarly sized (not like LoTRO's 900MB update today).

First impressions? Nothing is where my fingers expect it to be, and my visible view of the world is a bit reduced. Second impressions? I rather like it. The location bar (and embedded browser) can be hidden or revealed at the touch of a button (though the much larger new Linden Dollar balance display remains onscreen at all times).

In a few days we're going to have people using the new OnRez Second Life viewer. Maybe a lot of people. Maybe a whole lot of people. The OnRez viewer differs from Linden Lab's version most obviously in that the user-interface has been completely reworked to make it easier and less overwhelming on new users.

That's got to be a good thing, right? Well, not necessarily. It brings some challenges of its own.

We already knew that, if you live in the USA or Canada, or surf the internet desperately, 24th October (a fortnight today) will see SL feature in CSI:NY.

What has just come to light is that ESC will be launching a new, commercially licensed, viewer for SL at the same time. Details are currently rather sketchy, but there will be an option to sign up from the CSI:NY site, and it will be available to residents. The interface will, according to the press release, more closely resemble a browser than the current client (one has to ask which browser, Sidebars? Customisable folders on a book marks bar? Widgets?) which is probably a good thing, because the current viewer is not the most elegant piece of UI design. To quote: It also combines Second Life features, such as teleporting, with sophisticated OnRez services for virtual shopping and searching. Perhaps less desirable in the general run of things to most residents?

Update: The viewer will apparently be available from here.