Optimizing Second Life Snapshots: Alchemy Viewer & Reshade Guide

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I don’t write often these days. A couple of things have inspired me. One is ValKalAstra posting an interesting image. You can see it here on the Second Life Forum or on Flickr. For me this was a ‘how did she do that?’

The Second Life viewers, the Lab’s and third-party viewers, have filters for the Snapshots. Those are easy to use. To change the active render one has to get into tweaking a huge set of settings. Not so easy. And the sort of wireframe look in Val’s image was something I know I could not do in Firestorm or Black Dragon.

For whatever reason I though this was done in the Alchemy Viewer. I didn’t know about Reshade. Reshade is an add-on app for video games. It used to add image filters to a game that does not have them. So, the wireframe looks of the image intrigued me. I though Alchemy had some new twist on wireframe mode. So… I got the viewer.

ReShade Image from Alchemy
Playing with ReShade in Alchemy Viewer

Alchemy Viewer for Second Life

Alchemy is a third-party viewer. You’ll find it listed in the SL Wiki’s list of Third-Party Viewers. See the Details.

I downloaded and am running Alchemy Beta 7.1.9.2492 (64bit).

Alchemy supports RLVa and uses version RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.5.0.2492.

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Firestorm Viewer 7.1.9 Problems

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The latest release is causing many people lots of problems. For others no problems. I find this version of Firestorm Viewer to be the most problematic viewer from Firestorm that I’ve used in a long time. But I remember the OLD DAYS when viewers were seriously buggy.

So, what problems are people seeing with the Firestorm Viewer?

Slow render/rez – I see a bit of that. While I think Firestorm is generally faster at rezzing scenes often something just doesn’t rez. And it never rezzes or I don’t have enough patience, which sucks. But there are two quick fixes… or may be that is two steps to a fix… Press Ctrl-Shift-R twice to pop in and out of Wire Frame mode. This will usually cause everything to render correctly, scene and avatar.

Once in a while changing to Wire Frame won’t cause the avatar to render fully. Some times everything but the avatar rezzed fully. In these cases or just to restore the avatar Rebake the Avatar: top menu Avatar->Avatar Health->Force Appearance Update (Rebake) or Ctrl-Alt-R.

One or both of these steps should get you easily rendered and avoid restarting the viewer.

Viewer Crashes/Freezes – These are difficult to pin down. Before you start trying to troubleshoot the problem make sure your computer is in good shape and working well.

First, run the System File Checker built into Windows, 10 and 11. Do that by opening a command window and running the SFC command as an administrator. See the images on this page. Also, you can search for Windows 10 System File Checker for more detailed information and step by steps.

Open Command Window

Enter the command: SFC /SCANNOW. This will take 5 or 10 minutes to run. It will find any problems with the Windows System Files that may be causing problems. It will end and tell you; all was OK, it fixed things, or is could not fix the problems. If the problems are such it cannot fix them, then you need to search for: fixing Windows [10/11] DISM. This is a bit more complicated but it is still only a couple of commands and Windows does the work. The result is almost as good as a reinstall of Windows without the annoying need to reinstall apps.

Make sure your Windows install has all the updates installed. Type: Windows Update.

Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date. You can search for: how to update Win[10/11] graphics driver [your card’s brand name].

Click below for more…

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Firestorm Viewer 7.1.9.74745 PBR

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Released on June 20, 2024 – Thursday. We now have a new major update to the viewer. The Firestorm Viewer’s Project website has a long article on the viewer. Inara’s blog has more ‘explanatory’ article here. Between the two you should get all the tech info you could want. So… I’m not going to repeat it.

My take after a couple days…

Performance

The SL forum is popping with love and hate… The Luddites that long ago lost touch with reality and sing their perpetual poor me songs with choruses about how bad, stupid, and tyrannical the Lab is and how awful it is they are being forced to update their computer. And there are, as usual, a number of people rolling their eyes.

I like to check performance. I do care about appearance. But performance often decides how much appearance I’ll give up or upgrade. I want to be able to fly and sail. I’m not much of a driver. I run off the road… a lot.

So… the previous version 6.6.17 was what I ran until Friday. You can see the stats from my practical but technically lame testing here (12/19/2023).

This year I live in SL in the same place. Also, I have not tweaked the viewers setting after installing 7.1.9. Except for Draw Distance.

My new measurements are:

LocationFPS v7 DeskFPS v7 LapFPS v6
Porch 512m5118.6
Porch 128m4610.340.5
Porch 128m w/snowSnow Melted37-48
Green Room @ 2200m DD=128m11923.4150
Nelsonia 14peps @ DD= 128m5370-74
Arapaima 20peps @ 128m 63*50-55
Exhale Club 57peps @ 128m4148-52
Performance Numbers

Performance is mixed. Some areas seems better and some worse, as in slower. The oddity in in Arapaima’s Safe Hub is from the avatars being spread out all over the place. In Nelsonia the avatars were clumped together on the landing point. So the number within the field of view probably accounts for the difference.

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Firestorm Viewer 6.6.17.70368

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It has been some time since I checked the performance of my Firestorm Viewer. The last check was 9/2022. So, over a year.

This year I had some trouble running the tests. My house in Bellisseria was not rezzing. I mean floors and walls were missing. After a couple of three logins, I got the floors and walls but had to wait for the textures to fully render.

My House 2023 – Render Fail

I checked and found Windows again used 100% of my hard drive’s capacity when a region was being difficult. The viewer used little CPU, GPU, and network resources while it waited on the hard drive.

Ever since the release of Windows 11, my Win-10 has been having this problem of 100% disk use for 5 to 15 minutes. Occassionally more. Very annoying.

Firestorm Hot Fix v6.6.17

Porch 512m18.6 fps
Porch 128m40.5
Porch 128m w/snow37-48
Green Room @ 2200m DD=128m150
Nelsonia 17peps @ DD= 128m70-74
Arapaima 37peps @ 128m 50-55
Exhale Club 28peps @ 128m48-52
Performance Tests

With this version, I am getting almost the same numbers as in 2022 with v6.6.4. You can use the link above if you want to compare.

Second Life Viewer

Porch 512m18.6 fps
Porch 128m40
Porch 128m w/snow52
Green Room @ 2200m DD=128m60
Nelsonia 16peps @ DD= 128m58
Arapaima 34peps @ 128m 60
Exhale Club 48peps @ 128m37
Performance Tests

The FS and SL viewers are similar. Except for my Green Room. This is the recent PBR-enabled SL viewer.

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Slink Leaves Second Life

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As of January 1, 2023, the Slink brand of bodies and clothes is closed. Short notice. Siddean Munro announced the closure January 1 effective immediately.

For many of us this is a big deal. I am a Slink fan girl. I love my Redux Original body. AKA the Physique body. It is my everyday body. And when I make clothes, I make them for Slink.

The reasons for Siddean deciding to close are given on her company’s blog: Slink is closing – 1-1-2023 (PDF version of the page).

Slink Closing

I appreciate Siddean and her contributions to the Second Life community. I believe her bodies have always been and are the technological leaders in the field. There is no technically better body.

I am saddened by the closing and to learn of the stresses in Siddean’s life. I wish her and her’s the best.

While I have not been paying a lot of attention to other bodies, I have from time to time looked at them and played with demos. The leader in the field is unquestionably Maitreya. I have Maitreya demos. I do not like the body because of how the shoulders are made and how the joints animate. Both are deal breakers for me.

So, now I will be looking at alternatives. While I had been thinking of a change to Cinn & Chai they are part of the Slink empire that is closing. That idea is out. But I am glad I purchased Cinn & Chai during the recent sale.

I suppose I may do reviews of the various bodies as I look at them. But there is no rush. The Slink bodies will continue to work for years to come. And there is a huge inventory of clothes for the Slink bodies. While few designers are designing for Slink these days, and the number is likely to decrease, there are numerous designers designing for Slink and lots of clothes for Slink. I know I bought over 150 new dresses and other clothes in 2022. So, no need for immediate change.

Time marches on…

Firestorm 6.6.3 Update Continued

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The first part of this article is here.

UPDATE! 9/27/2022

It came to my attention that Firestorm 6.3.3 either changed my graphics setting for Enable Vsync or the viewer handles it differently. So I went back to check my settings and found it indeed was limiting the upper limit of FPS. So, I need to revise my measurements to keep them consistent with previous measurements.

This recent Firestorm Viewer update is said to help with performance. So, I measured some numbers and dug up the previous versions’ numbers. The numbers I get say this version is definitely faster. But the Green Room numbers in my skybox are down. Curious. They went down while all others went up.

I use presets for the 512- and 128-meter draw distance tests. So, the viewer settings are essentially the same for each test across all versions. These are impromptu tests. Basically, simple and easy rather than rigorous and precise. So, it will be no surprise if your numbers are different.

I have upgraded my network and Internet service. Previously I got about 50 to 80Mbps download. Now with a new gigabit gateway and switches download speed is over 200Mbps. So, regions rez really quickly. YAY!

Build Panel: Copy/Paste Materials

However, textures still take some time to completely rez. Everything near me when I rez in will fully rez almost immediately. Stuff farther away looks good until I zoom on it. Those can take a while to completely rez. Firestorm’s right-click Texture Refresh seems quicker now and helps. But my network upgrade did not solve all my render delays.

This network change doesn’t make much difference to the FPS. Once everything downloads, render speed is constant. For the previous tests, I waited a long time for a region to rez. A region I have not been in for a time now takes 5 to 15 seconds to rez all the textures. Previously it could take minutes. Returning to a region the same day gives me an almost instant render. But not always. Not sure why it works sometimes.

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Firestorm Viewer v6.3.3 – 9-2022

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Wow, we have a new release of the Firestorm Viewer. Just last July 26 I downloaded my then newly released update.

As the Firestorm Development Team explains, they have a new development cycle in place and expect to have new releases out every 6 to 8 weeks, so every other month. It has been 8 weeks since I grabbed the previous update. So, they are pretty much on schedule.

A New Firestorm Update

What is a bit unusual, is they released this update on a Friday. Typically, Friday releases are avoided. The reason the team gave long ago was that if there were a major glitch, there would be few Lindens at work to get them server-side information for diagnosing the problem.

As usual, Inara has done her review of the new release. You’ll find that here: Firestorm 6.6.3. I see no point in duplicating her work or you reading similar reviews. So, I’ll write about the things that interested me or I didn’t find in Inara’s coverage.

Warning

Another new update… there is a revised beta version of Firestorm that should be hitting the grid 9/19 or 9/20. A new griefing attack is being or was mounted and all viewers are suspectable to it. The Lab has released a fix and the fix is winding its way through implementation and QA testing.

You can turn off Media on a Prim and close that particular exploit. Turning it off causes problems with some body and head HUDs. Experiment to see if you are affected.

This is a scary LOOKING attack. There is little real danger. Don’t panic. If you see viewer panels opening and things happening, TP to another region.

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Blender Install 2022

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Years ago (2012) I wrote a tutorial on installing Blender and setting up for making clothes in Second Life ™. It is titled: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. It has all the gory details a person with OCD would need. A couple of years later I wrote: Fitted Mesh Base Avatar Files, about which mesh models to use for making clothes. The articles have good information but we have learned and advanced since then. So, we can simplify things.

This article will hopefully take some of the pain out of your entry into clothes making for Second Life.

Blender.org Download Page

Blender Install

There are two ways to install Blender™. You can install it as one does any Windows program using the provided install program. This is simple and quick. If you are just curious and in the process of exploring, this is your option.

However, if you are serious and committed to making clothes then there is a better option.

Blender is in what I consider rapid development and updates often. Some of the updates make changes in the core parts of Blender. These changes force third-party add-on makers to update their add-ons. If you are dependent on an add-on you’ll run into times when a Blender update will break your model and/or your add-ons and you are left waiting for a third-party update.

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