Firestorm Viewer 4.7.9-50527 Released

Earlier today I was thinking Firestorm would release soon and it was later in the day, Monday. The announcement is here: Firestorm Release 4.7.9-50527. Inara has her coverage here: Firestorm 4.7.9.50527: “I see jelly people!”

A Peek Under the Hood

A Peek Under the Hood

Mac and Linux users lose the Havok add-on features for Pathfinding and mesh uploading. Inara has more details on that subject.

This brings Firestorm on par with the Lab’s version 4.0.6, the current main viewer. But, we may see a new Linden version promoted this or next week. Firestorm is scheduled for its next release in 3 months.

Speed

This version looks to have a faster render. Where I was getting 22FPS I am getting 41FPS. I’ll have to use it for a bit before I can tell how it is doing with memory use and crashing.

Avatar Complexity

The Linden viewer added Avatar Complexity Information (ACI) a couple of versions back. Now Firestorm adds the feature. I expect Firestorm’s to be better. But, I won’t know for some time. I did learn that the Firestorm version of ACI normal, full, and don’t render an avatar persists across logins. Not something that is in the Linden viewer. One has to select those avatars each session.

The idea is to provide users information about how difficult their avatar is to render, meaning how much it slows your and others viewers. We have seen for some time that moving into an area with lots of avatars slows the viewer. Often to speeds making the viewer unusable.

When trying on demos we get a note flashed on screen about how much an item increases our avatar’s complexity. We also get a notice about how many other people are refusing to render our avatar. Since we can control how complex an avatar we want to render, others can too. The viewer gives us feedback on how many people have a setting we exceed.

Human nature being what it is, I expect and the Lindens think this will cause people to reduce their complexity. The whole purpose is to get designers to build more efficient items for SL. We have seen Land Impact values do that for things. Now we have an incentive for clothes and other attachments.

You can set your viewer to show an individual’s ACI in floating text that appears over the avatars head. I use it to see my ACI as I put together outfits. I write the value into the outfit name.

To see that info you need the Advanced menu item showing (Ctrl-Alt-D) then Performance->Show avatar complexity information. This will display 3 values; complexity, rank, and square meters. The value is not a sticky value. If you want to see it, you have to turn it on each session.

Firestorm adds some handy features not in the Linden viewer. You’ll find the controls for them in Preferences->General. One feature is to show your complexity in your name tag. I think only you can see the value this setting causes to display. But, you can also turn on complexity for other avatars, meaning they choose to see yours also. These all appear in the name tags.

An interesting choice is to show just the complexity values that exceed the complexity limit you have set. I like this one because I want to know how complex the avatar is that has gone all JellyDoll. If it is often just little bit then I might tweak my setting up a bit. Unfortunately those that go over my 150k limit are significantly over the limit.

Doing a clean install I did find my limit was set to unlimited. With a GTX560 I wasn’t expecting that. So, I recommend checking this value after you update.

Graphics Presets

This is also an add-on from the Linden viewer. Inara has images on how to create and use Presets.

Bug Fixes and Other Stuff

There are a load of Linden and Firestorm fixes. A number of User Interface changes and fixes. Read the release notes and Inara’s write up for details.

RLVa Updates

The RLV section has been updated. There are new commands for programs and fixes to #RLV folder controls.

2 thoughts on “Firestorm Viewer 4.7.9-50527 Released

  1. I did the update. And now notice it lags a lot. With the previous version my PC was running smoothly and I didn’t have this issue.

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