EEP
The Enhanced Environment Project pushed the FS Team into revamping the PhotoTools, Environement, and some camera controls. If you are updating from the 6.3.2 version then you’ll notice the changes. Inara in her article explains them. The controls will be obviously understandable for most. They still do the same things.
Camera Presets
This is new to Firestorm. The feature was added to the Linden made SL Viewer in May 2020. I describe it here: Second Life: What Improved Camera Controls?
Summary
Firestorm development is running behind the Lab’s. I suppose that is to be expected. The FS Team has built a power users’ viewer by adding more features and abilities than the Linden’s viewer has. Therefore, the team has more ‘integration issues’ to deal with than the Lab. The FS Team is spending more time making their viewer stable (think crash free) with a larger collection of features.
I haven’t gotten to use the 6.4.12 viewer much. Once I have more time I’ll do some speed comparison and comment on performance.
I am also playing with the Linden’s Simple Cache viewer. I have seen lots of gray-world and scattered gray avatars lately. I am hoping the Cache viewer reduces the problem.
The lift of the SL system to the cloud is nearing completion. There is a lot of what may be considered “uplift” related work yet to do. I suspect there are months of work left. But, much of it is going to be tuning type adjustments and changes. What I think of as the uplift, getting everything running in the cloud, is very close to competition.
And it is looking like the Lindens will turn some of their attention to the render pipeline once the uplift is completed. That will be another huge project and it IS GOING to have IMPACT on users and present a number of unpopular issues. Consider. We have over a decade of quick workarounds added into the render process to resolve various problems. These result in a number of unique quirks in the SL system. Users have used these quirks in their products… in good ways. So, revision of the render pipeline is likely to break stuff. Using these legacy quirks are and were not supported by the Lab. Nor are they likely to try and carry them forward. So, stuff is going to break. Won’t be the first time.
No one knows how much stuff may break. I am not expecting a lot. In fact I suspect most won’t notice when the release version of the change rolls out… and that is far enough away you’ll have forgotten I wrote anything.
Merry Christmas