Viewers

General Viewer Information

Firestorm Beta 2.5.2 (16922) Release Review

by

A new Firestorm version is out. Apple, Linux, and Windows versions are available. This is the big step up in Third Party Viewers for builders. The development team has added the build tools. I think it was the lack of this feature most holding Firestorm back. Following is my experience with the new Firestorm.

Firestorm Viewer Beta 2

Download

Tuesday and Wednesday the download process was very slow. I am guessing lots of people are finally making the change over to a V2 type viewer. I certainly see patience with anti-V2 people running out in the support groups. Not Firestorm’s support people. They are great. But, the Firestorm users that chime into help other Firestorm users are getting an edge. After they made the change and survived.

May be I’ll make a T-shirt that says I survived the change… ummm… maybe I could word that better.

Read more

The Phoenix-Firestorm Survey

by

The Phoenix hour is a bi-weekly show facilitated by Phaylen Fairchild (the nosey heifer – hilarious inside joke – see 52:00±). In the video Jessica Lyon is speaking for the Firestorm/Phoenix team. This week’s meeting is mostly about the recent survey on five features in the viewer, which the Firestorm team ran. The following is a summary of the meeting. The times are HH:MM:SS or just MM:SS and they are approximate. The words here are my paraphrasing of the video not a transcript. So, my take may be different than yours was or would be or than what Jessica intended. Simply it is what I took from what they were saying.

The Phoenix Hour

If you watch the video be warned that while the video starts at 00:00:00 the sound failed until about time mark 07:00±. So, you can skip into the video without missing anything. Also, the video is mostly just talking heads. So, if you listen without watching, you won’t miss anything. The only URL presented I give as a link below.

Read more

KirstenLee S21(8) RC3 Released

by

RC2 was out 6/9. RC3 fixes some of the problems with RC2. One change is this version of S21 is very stable. No crashes after hours of use. There is no typical announcement on KirstenLee’s blog. But, the new download link for the RC is on the home page.

Camera

There are some ‘camera’ issues that show up when one is trying to select objects for editing or for camera zooms. I’ve seen problems for some time in most series 2 viewers. But, this is far worse. A click to select something often selects the object behind it. Other times selecting an object launches the camera to some odd new position. Research is on going to see whasup with that.

Speed

I’m seeing some odd results on FPS (Frames per Second) rates. In my cottage or places with few avatars I get good FPS. In places with lots of avatars I drag down to 9 to 12 FPS. Even in a shopping mall with lots of textures but few avatars, I see good FPS, typically 15 to 25 FPS.

Some are seeing good FPS even when there are large numbers of avatars around. I may need to mess with my settings.

Read more

Imprudence 1.4.0 Beta 1 Release

by

Imprudence has released the first beta of Imprudence 1.4.0. This has been the Experimental version most of us have been using for some time. So, it doesn’t look any different than previous versions. However, this release represents a massive amount of effort.

If you are still using Imprudence 1.3, it is time to upgrade. If you are on Apple/Mac, there is still an image upload issue. Otherwise, there  are about a gazillion bug fixes and new features.

Mesh

This viewer has no mesh support nor does it render mesh objects.

Outfits

The series 2 viewer outfits are not supported. I simply never change clothes while using Imprudence. Changing clothes while in Imprudence seems to create problems for me. That may be an Imprudence/OpenSim thing.

Read more