Firestorm Viewer 3.2.2.24336 Review

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The production release of the Firestorm Viewer is here. It has taken 15 months from the preview to this production viewer. The team has essentially combined the features from the Phoenix Viewer with the new Linden Lab Viewer and technology while giving it a custom user interface.

Significant portions of the Lab’s technology have been changing while the team was working. The team had a changing foundation to deal with as they built. For now, the team feels they have caught up with the Lab. Check it out. The following is what I found.

Second Life
New Firestorm Splash Screen

In February of this year we saw the first previews of the Firestorm viewer in a video, see: Firestorm Viewer Preview, and a preview version of the viewer. Since then releases of the Firestorm Viewer have been few and far between. I think that phase of Firestorm’s development is over. I expect to see the release cycle speed up.

We are promised another release of Phoenix. I doubt we will see any more development in Phoenix once it gets mesh. Once that release is out we will see all of the team’s effort placed into Firestorm. There will probably be some bug fixes on Phoenix, but Firestorm is the replacement for Phoenix.

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Firestorm Viewer 3.2.2.24336 Released

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The Firestorm-Phoenix team has released a production version of the Firestorm Viewer.

Download Firestorm 3.2.2.24336

Linden Lab has been making a number of changes to viewer graphics. Many of them have made it into this release. But, the team decided to make another release (3.2.1.24179) without all the new fixes. So, if you have problems with FS 3.2.2 download and try FS 3.2.1.

Download Firestorm 3.2.1.24179

I’ll be trying the viewer Monday. Once I’ve had some time to play with it I’ll write a review.

 

 

 

 

Non-Repetitive Floor Tiles for #SL

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For those of us building large areas there is the problem of avoiding obviously repetitive patterns. While ceramic and vinyl tile often form patterns, stone courtyard tiles don’t. Nor do weathered or aged floors and walls. Maeve Balfour posted in the SL Forum, Creative/Mesh section about avoiding obvious repetition.

Check out the post: Creatively harnessing UVs and Materials – an experiment

The discussion in the thread covers how handling the vertices will affect Land Impact cost.

The post describes a handy idea that solved a problem I have with one of my models. I imagine it can be used in many ways to avoid having areas with repetitive looking textures.

Mesh Deformer Update Week 47

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A bunch of news has trickled out on the Mesh Deformer Project. Check out STORM-1716 – Mesh Deformer for tayloring [SIC] mesh clothing. The JIRA item was filed by Qarl Fizz. He explains the issue very well and goes into some detail about the direction the project is heading. Clothes makers will want to read the item to see what to expect.

Since it is in the JIRA we can expect the more advanced content creators to be involved in the discussion. Also, show some interest. Drop by and click WATCH.

Q&A Items

Qarl poses and answers questions. Probably the most important concept in STORM-1716 is the idea of basing all mesh clothes on the Ruth/Roth avatar rather than a custom avatar, as in one based on your shape or different size avatars… think small, medium, and large, I suppose.

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#SL Rigged Mesh Fix

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A number of people still use Blender 2.49 to make their rigged mesh exports for Second Life. This means many people use the new 2.5 and 2.6 Blender installs to make mesh and move to 2.49 for the Collada export. Now there is a work-around to eliminate the need for Blender 2.49. \o/

Multiple Versions of Blender

Having multiple version of Blender is common. Depending on what you are using Blender with, having various versions can be a necessity. One never knows when a future change will render a feature or plugin we depend on useless. So, keeping a working version and installing a new version for testing is a good practice.

Because Blender depends on Python, changing versions can become a real pain. Some features and plugins used in Blender require a specific version of Python. One soon learns how much of a problem this can be.

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#Second Life Spell Check

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From a post on SL Universe I got a lead to STORM-83 – As a user who cannot type of [SIC] spell to save their life, I want dynamic spell check for everything I type, so I a little bit more literate. 🙂 It has a total of 5 Watchers as I write this.

Several Third Party Viewers have spell check for local and group chat. But, not the SL Viewer. It seems that will soon change. Oz Linden posted in the JIRA to thank Kitty (Barnett? I’m guessing) for the coming spell check feature. I suppose Kitty has contributed the code to add spell check to the SL Viewer. If my guess is correct this Kitty is the Kitty that provides the RLV code used in several third party viewers.

Every so often I forget the SL Viewer does not have spell check and pop open Preferences to turn it on and soon have a Doh! moment. It will be nice to soon have spell check.