Why firestorm viewer?

[ChinRey]

A little bit off topic but not completely.

Two little known Firestorm functions I use a lot are ztake and zdrop. I use ztake so often I've even made keyboard shortcuts for it and I can't imagine how I'd cope without them.

Ztake allows you to select several objects in-world and take them into inventory separately rather than as a bundle. Zdrop lets you box up a large number of objects without that pesky error message you always get if you drag and drop.

[Drakeo]

Quote

Why Use Firestorm Viewer

The FS team  are some of the finest caring people I have ever watched develop on the wonderful base code LL viewer.

 They have given so much to the opensource community.  They  are an example of what is right in the virtual worlds.

They put out a world class viewer that is well loved. Is it faster? or better? that is up to you. 

 I prefer the LL viewer UI over FS.  I prefer the LL chat over FS.  I prefer FS camara floater over LL.

The FS team has spawned so many wonderful things that are now in LL viewer. The search function for preferences.

I believe tools are  better in FS for Machinima.  such as turning the voice texture to transparent with a click.

And for years the animation distance .  The distance you see an avatar animate was much farther.

I see this has changed.

If running on windows 10 with 8 gigs of system ram you will have  many crashes.  It is best to have 16 gigs.

I believe everyone should give it a try.  First thing I do is disable the pie menu.

 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Drakeo

[Innula Zenovka]

This thread inspired me to  go back and take a look at the first TPV I ever tried, back in 2007 or 8, well before Emerald was ever thought of, let alone Firestorm: Henri Beauchamp's Cool VL Viewer. I'm delighted to see it's still going strong and fully updated, and maintains its resolutely Viewer 1 look and feel, despite having all the latest code after Henri's worked his magic on the viewer and added his battery of cool features.

It's not in the TPV list because Henri refuses to submit his personal data to LL (a requirement for being listed) but it's completely ToS compliant and safe to use, AFAIK.    

Anyway, worth a look, if only for interest.   I now prefer the Official Viewer look and feel, and Henri uses Marine's RLV rather than RLVa, so it's never going to be my go-to viewer again, but it's certainly up there with Catznip  on my list of preferred viewers.

It's written for Linux and then ported over to Windows.   I used to run it on Linux on a pretty mediocre machine even by 2007 standards, and it beat the official Linux and Windows viewers hands down for performance.     That's no longer an issue for me, but for others it might be a consideration.

[Ayeleeon]

On 7/16/2021 at 1:58 PM, Innula Zenovka said:

In the Official Viewer, Build>Region Objects finds everything I need, but it works only where I own the land or (I think) can return things.     It wosrks where I need it to, anyway.

My number one use for area search is to edit the pose ball I am sitting on, or find it if I am not sitting on it but it is in the floor or something where it cannot be seen. This typically is not on land I have anything more than rez rights.

[Psyche Starling]

Area search, and more tools for building. I don't know what I used to do before "restore to last position." Well, I do know. I used to tear my hair out a lot. 😆

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, BookishMelinoe said:

I don't know what I used to do before "restore to last position." 

That was a Linden feature added around the time of the great Zindra migration, it's hacky (and wasn't really fit for the original intended purpose) and eventually LL removed it because it turned out to be a great way to permanently lose objects (either by region destruction or it being rezzed where a user couldn't find it).

It's also been used to great effect as griefing tool, a notable example being that time someone setup a whole collection of objects on one region, and then restored them on the meeroo home region, covering all the vendors in prims that stole everyone's money right at the height of the meeroo craze.

Firestorm fought tooth and nail to keep it, butting heads with Oz, and ended up bullying LL into washing their hands of the whole mess. Firestorm have been been tending its zombie corpse ever since, and it's a great example of where a combative approach to working with LL has left us collectively in a worse situation.

The better option would have been to let LL remove it, have them catch the brunt of user frustration caused by the loss of this really quite useful functionality, and then come up with a proper well engineered solution that met the very valid uses cases everyone had.

Maybe now's a good time to come back to this quality of life feature with fresh eyes.

Hint hint @Grumpity Linden

[LittleMe Jewell]

4 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

This thread inspired me to  go back and take a look at the first TPV I ever tried, back in 2007 or 8, well before Emerald was ever thought of, let alone Firestorm: Henri Beauchamp's Cool VL Viewer. I'm delighted to see it's still going strong and fully updated, and maintains its resolutely Viewer 1 look and feel, despite having all the latest code after Henri's worked his magic on the viewer and added his battery of cool features.

Cool VL Viewer was one the first TPV viewers that I used also, back in 2007.  I used it for quite a few years, but then someone got me to try Firestorm and I ended up getting dependent on some of the features in that viewer.  I still use Henri's when I want to go inworld on a somewhat older laptop that I have, because it is a pretty lightweight viewer.  I much prefer the V1 style of viewers and even have my Firestorm set to be mostly V1 style.

[Psyche Starling]

21 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

That was a Linden feature added around the time of the great Zindra migration, it's hacky (and wasn't really fit for the original intended purpose) and eventually LL removed it because it turned out to be a great way to permanently lose objects (either by region destruction or it being rezzed where a user couldn't find it).

It's also been used to great effect as griefing tool, a notable example being that time someone setup a whole collection of objects on one region, and then restored them on the meeroo home region, covering all the vendors in prims that stole everyone's money right at the height of the meeroo craze.

Oh wow, that backstory really puts things in a different light. Even as useful as it is for a klutz who frequently moves/deletes her own stuff by accident. 😄

[Prokofy Neva]

On 7/16/2021 at 8:36 AM, Blackjack Cioc said:

Many users show videos on youtube and many use firestorm viewer, why you use firestorm? If not use this because?

Long story.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, BookishMelinoe said:

Even as useful as it is for a klutz who frequently moves/deletes her own stuff by accident. 😄

I wont deny how useful it is, especially for region owners, but it has eaten more than a few things that I couldn't easily replace too.

[Harper Held]

FS has a better UI, and it has a lot of niceities you don't get (as far as I know) with the main viewer; gth rezplat dd and friends. 

I mean a LOT (just the radar alone is worth it).

 

 

[Quistess Alpha]

On 7/19/2021 at 12:05 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

it turned out to be a great way to permanently lose objects

I may or may not have lost an important object by having that feature available on my preferred viewer and not having 100% understood it.

[Innula Zenovka]

On 7/19/2021 at 5:05 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

That was a Linden feature added around the time of the great Zindra migration, it's hacky (and wasn't really fit for the original intended purpose) and eventually LL removed it because it turned out to be a great way to permanently lose objects (either by region destruction or it being rezzed where a user couldn't find it).

It's also been used to great effect as griefing tool, a notable example being that time someone setup a whole collection of objects on one region, and then restored them on the meeroo home region, covering all the vendors in prims that stole everyone's money right at the height of the meeroo craze.

Firestorm fought tooth and nail to keep it, butting heads with Oz, and ended up bullying LL into washing their hands of the whole mess. Firestorm have been been tending its zombie corpse ever since, and it's a great example of where a combative approach to working with LL has left us collectively in a worse situation.

The better option would have been to let LL remove it, have them catch the brunt of user frustration caused by the loss of this really quite useful functionality, and then come up with a proper well engineered solution that met the very valid uses cases everyone had.

Maybe now's a good time to come back to this quality of life feature with fresh eyes.

Hint hint @Grumpity Linden

If I correctly recall after all these years, when that feature was first released, I was a helper in Dari Caldwell's store back when she made her eponymous and iconic collar (greatly missed, at least by me).

Anyway, we soon discovered that "restore to last position" seemed to mean, at least at the time, "restore to the last grid position at which it was rezzed as an unattached object" rather than "reattach to last attachment point," which frequently meant, of course, people's collars started returning, like salmon to the river where first they spawned, to Dari's work platform where she'd packed her no-copy collars into vendors, at least if that was the first time the customer had rezzed their collar on the ground to update it.

 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Innula Zenovka

[Drakeo]

On 7/19/2021 at 11:05 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

restore to last position.

That is a total mess and is still very problematic. Caused me  huge troubles in the past.

[Lindal Kidd]

On 7/16/2021 at 11:26 AM, LittleMe Jewell said:

I've used Firestorm for so long now that whenever I start up the SL Viewer I can't figure out how to do anything.  I absolutely hate their chat & IM setup, as well as how they do Notifications.  The fact that I can do Area Search and permanent Derender is a major bonus in Firestorm.

I'm with Lil here. Firestorm is an evolution based on the old style LL viewer from back in 2007. I initially migrated to it for some of its features, but stuck with it because I did not like the direction LL took the official viewer. It's just a matter of what I was, and still am, familiar with.

[rasterscan]

On 7/16/2021 at 1:36 PM, Blackjack Cioc said:

Many users show videos on youtube and many use firestorm viewer, why you use firestorm? 

Editable toolbar buttons. Makes the game a cinch

[Innula Zenovka]

36 minutes ago, rasterscan said:

Editable toolbar buttons. Makes the game a cinch

You can move the toolbar buttons that open your inventory, camera floater, world map and so  on, in most viewers, I think.    Certainly I can add, remove and move them in the Official  Viewer.