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Firestorm vs the LL Viewer


cykarushb
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I gave Alchemy viewer a try

2048mb

https://ibb.co/hk9aXA

here it says quote

An experimental Second Life™ viewer striving to be at the forefront of stability, performance, and technological advancement in the open-source metaverse viewer field.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory

I wouldn't say so. no different then the rest tried one tried them all at best a slight ui user interface change and that is all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface

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6 hours ago, ChibiDragon007 said:

Wow. This thread has gotten busy! 

Only thing I'm still curious about is why Firestorm hogs up so much memory on a computer. I still think it's rediculous that it can take up almost all of my laptop's memory resources when my settings are at the lowest it can go.  The official LL viewer barely takes up much memory even when I go to a more complex sim or what not. I feel like there's a memory leak issue somewhere because at this point I've ruled out my laptop being an issue. 

Always the same nonsense about memory leaks. I mentioned it before already it might use more memory as the LL viewer.

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6 hours ago, ChibiDragon007 said:

Wow. This thread has gotten busy! 

Only thing I'm still curious about is why Firestorm hogs up so much memory on a computer. I still think it's rediculous that it can take up almost all of my laptop's memory resources when my settings are at the lowest it can go.  The official LL viewer barely takes up much memory even when I go to a more complex sim or what not. I feel like there's a memory leak issue somewhere because at this point I've ruled out my laptop being an issue. 

What do you have your viewer texture memory buffer set to?
Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware Settings.

Ansariel already explained above that the texture pipeline keeps copies of about twice the images in VRAM in the actual system memory.

The LL viewer is limited to 512MB of texture memory.

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12 hours ago, ChibiDragon007 said:

Only thing I'm still curious about is why Firestorm hogs up so much memory on a computer.

How much memory are you talking about?  I was logged in via Firestorm all day yesterday (about 15 hours total), bopping all over the grid to hit tons of stores for the sales, and my memory usage was showing roughly 2 GB when I shut things down last night.

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19 hours ago, ChibiDragon007 said:

I was showing almost 6 of my 8gb total memory being used on my MacBook Pro. It also makes my MacBook heat up like crazy and it’s rediculous. No program should be sucking up that much resources on any computer. 

I'm going to need to get my MacBook out later and check this out.  I mainly use a windows desktop now for SL because it has a graphics card, and I haven't seen that high of memory use with any of the viewers I tried, including Firestorm.  Between LL viewer, FS and CoolVL (I think - anyway, one of the other 3rd party viewers) I didn't see significant differences in memory use.  

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2 hours ago, ChibiDragon007 said:

I'll have to check it again now that I got a replacement Macbook Pro tonight (my one I was using finally decided to crap out on me - and not just because of SL lmao) and see if there's any difference with the slight upgrade this 2018 model as opposed to the 2016 model I was using.

spoiler, its gonna be just as bad

i dont know why people bother with apple products when they have a history of having bad experiences with apple products

the tl;dr version is: anemic tiny cooler + next to no airflow + extremely poorly constructed mainboard = constant thermal problems and eventual solder failure
its been going on since like 2006, i dont know how they keep getting away with it, every single apple product that has ever been made since the mid 2000's has had some kind of serious problem that occurs with it, whether its the old macbooks that had the gpu die because it unsoldered itself due to heat, or the new airs that literally came out of the factory thermal throttling, or the pros that did the same

or the trash can mac pro thats been on sale since 2013 and still manages to thermal throttle even though the entire thing is basically one giant fan
or the mac mini that just came out that has soldered storage and once again an anemic cooler and no airflow
or the 2016 macbooks and the jtag corrosion issue

 

off topic but damn, why does XYZ program suck on a mac? its a mac, buy a real computer, or if you insist on apple, buy a powerbook G4 and dont bother with anything newer

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  • 5 months later...
8 hours ago, Tkemine Rossini said:

I use both for different reasons. I slightly prefer Firestorm for some features and especially the look of the dashboard, but it doesn't prevent me from using LL.

I reply because new information since the previous post to yours: Try Catznip viewer - newest version in February 2019 has a performance boost that runs circles around the LL and Firestorm viewers. I've no intention of changing minds about viewer-use, though you may want to hit up Catznip instead of firing up the LL. And if performance is your priority, you may end up doing as I do: Catznip full time and Firestorm only when wanting a particular feature. (http://catznip.com) - But only for windows, fingers and toes crossed hard on all hands and feet for a macOS version eventually.

Edited by Alyona Su
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On 1/28/2018 at 9:52 PM, cykarushb said:

Just wondering, what are your preferences for the LL viewer vs Firestorm? Is there any performance benefit for you and your hardware configuration?

The main reason I prefer Firestorm over the Vanilla SL Viewer is the ability to use it in "Phoenix Mode" i.e. V1 style UI.

Other than that, there are just a million options on Firestorm that are absent on Vanilla, and yes, some of those do improve performance, such as the ability to lock textures at 512x512 max resolution on the 64 bit viewer, or lower the shadow factor below 1 for example.

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/29/2018 at 6:43 AM, Chic Aeon said:

The large majority of Second Life folks use Firestorm. For me and likely for most of the others from comments made on these forums --  it is not about performance, it is about FEATURES. There are dozens of FS feature that I use everyday and do NOT want to be without. When I had to use the Linden viewer briefly to upload complex mesh (apparently that isn't something we have to do from now on --- happily) it was oh so

PAINFUL.

 

 

What do you mean by the features

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I'm in a bit of a minority in that, while I quite like Firestorm,  it doesn't really do much for me and I don't really understand people's enthusiasm for it.     It seems to me to have three or four non-LL features I find indispensable and a whole of stuff I never use.    I think the same is true for most people, but it's a different three or four features for everyone.

I have to use the Official Viewer and Firestorm both when I'm making stuff, since I think any conscientious content creator needs to check and thoroughly test things using both the Official Viewer and the most widely-used one.    I also use the experimental viewers quite a lot because I want to become familiar with major new features before they become part  of the Official Viewer and, eventually, Firestorm (EEP is going to make a big difference, and anyone who does much building or texturing, or scripting that involves controlling visual effects, needs to become familiar with it sooner rather than later) but for everyday use I usually use Catznip or Marine's  RLV,  both which have same look and feel as the Official Viewer, only with RLV/RLVa and the three or four TPV features I find I can't do without, but none of the extras I never need.

That's just me, of course, but I would encourage people to remember there are TPVs other than Firestorm.    And I don't think the Official Viewer is anywhere near so bad as people make out.    Things have really changed in the last 10 or so years, since TPVs first became a thing.     

Nowadays, as a scripter and content creator, I see the Official Viewer as the one with all the cool new features for the early adaptor (in the past, Experience Tools and  Animesh,, for example, and now EEP ...) and Catznip and Marine's viewers as the ones with the new RLV stuff (and some other useful features), while Firestorm is the conventional one that's holding me up as I wait for the viewer used by most of my customers to adopt all the latest things.

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

For me, all the viewers have a problem with not picking up on the OS defaults I set, such as font and mouse pointer size. I also struggle with some colour schemes, which Firestorm handles well, the SL viewer doesn't. Yes, there is an add-on for the SL viewer, but I've had it broken by a viewer upgrade. The basic colour scheme is pretty poor.

I struggle with the JIRA systems that Linden Lab and the Firestorm team use. I am not convinced it is a viable bug-reporting tool, however good it might be as a tool for planning the work being done. I end up feeling that I need an exorcist more than I need a programmer.

 

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On 4/30/2019 at 1:26 AM, Tkemine Rossini said:

I use both for different reasons. I slightly prefer Firestorm for some features and especially the look of the dashboard, but it doesn't prevent me from using LL.

 

On 4/30/2019 at 10:03 AM, Alyona Su said:

I reply because new information since the previous post to yours: Try Catznip viewer - newest version in February 2019 has a performance boost that runs circles around the LL and Firestorm viewers. I've no intention of changing minds about viewer-use, though you may want to hit up Catznip instead of firing up the LL. And if performance is your priority, you may end up doing as I do: Catznip full time and Firestorm only when wanting a particular feature. (http://catznip.com) - But only for windows, fingers and toes crossed hard on all hands and feet for a macOS version eventually.

 

On 4/30/2019 at 12:07 PM, Dean Haystack said:

The main reason I prefer Firestorm over the Vanilla SL Viewer is the ability to use it in "Phoenix Mode" i.e. V1 style UI.

Other than that, there are just a million options on Firestorm that are absent on Vanilla, and yes, some of those do improve performance, such as the ability to lock textures at 512x512 max resolution on the 64 bit viewer, or lower the shadow factor below 1 for example.

 

On 6/8/2019 at 11:04 PM, tissjoseph said:

What do you mean by the features

necro.png.2a44d8e3b21a875e7041069983310dec.png

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  • 5 years later...

 

On 1/29/2018 at 9:38 AM, ChinRey said:

I use them both regularly. Contrary to what many people seem to believe, the rendering part of the viewer software is exactly the same for both. Any differences there are because of different default settings for various preferences.

The main difference between the two is that Firestorm has a lot of extra bells and whistles for the user to play with. They add a little bit to the overall laod of course but usually not enough to make a sigificant difference. More important perhaps, is that all those extra functions add to the confusion of an already seriously messed up user interface.

My best advice is that if you actually need and use many of those extra functions often, go for Firestorm. If not, stick to the official viewer and perhaps switch to Fs occasionally if/when you need one of the extras.

And of course, every now and then one of the developer teams releases a version with some serious bugs. It doesn't happen often anymore but when it does, switch to the other one until it's been sorted out.

As a new Second Life player, this is really helpful to me. Thank you.

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