Switching to Firestorm

[Rockin Beck]

I am thinking of switching to Firestorm from the SL viewer. Are their any tips? Can settings be transferred or will i need to set everything up again? Such as settings, outfits etc?

[LittleMe Jewell]

47 minutes ago, Rockin Beck said:

I am thinking of switching to Firestorm from the SL viewer. Are their any tips? Can settings be transferred or will i need to set everything up again? Such as settings, outfits etc?

You outfits will be the same (though Firestorm might present them a little different) -- all inventory is a server side thing and thus is retained regardless of the viewer used.

Other settings -- things in that Preferences window and some other misc things -- are not carried from one viewer to the next.

Edited October 27, 2021 by LittleMe Jewell

[Rolig Loon]

You have to do everything from scratch.  Firestorm is derived from the standard LL viewer's kernel, but it has a flock of extra functions that you need to mess with if you want anything other than their default settings.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Rolig Loon

[Chic Aeon]

Also --- and this is important. Once you get all your settings the way you want them then SAVE A BACKUP (there is a tab in Firestorm for this) and you won't need to do it again for updated viewer releases. There is a LOT (oh so much) in FS that isn't in the SL viewer but they have classes if you get too confused. 

 

There IS a reason why Firestorm is the most popular viewer :D.   

[Rockin Beck]

Thank you all for your advice!

[sandi Mexicola]

Check what kind of performance you get in FS before investing too much time into it.  Some people do not get good performance. 

[Anita61 Anatine]

Firestorm hosts a bunch of classes about the viewer, it can be helpful and even teach you a few tricks: https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/firestorm_classes for the schedule

[Rockin Beck]

Thank you all again!. I did think of another question. I am new to the forums but I have been around SL for a long time and have chat records that go back years. Am I able to transfer the SL saved chat logs into the area where Firestorm saves the chats so they can continue on? Or does Firestorm save them in a different manner?

[Rolig Loon]

36 minutes ago, Rockin Beck said:

Am I able to transfer the SL saved chat logs into the area where Firestorm saves the chats so they can continue on? Or does Firestorm save them in a different manner?

They are just saved in a folder on your own computer.  You ought to be able to edit the contents of that folder as much as you like.

[panterapolnocy]

This article may be useful for you: https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/fs_chat_transcripts

[Lindal Kidd]

2 hours ago, Rockin Beck said:

Thank you all again!. I did think of another question. I am new to the forums but I have been around SL for a long time and have chat records that go back years. Am I able to transfer the SL saved chat logs into the area where Firestorm saves the chats so they can continue on? Or does Firestorm save them in a different manner?

Different viewers save their inventory cache, sound cache, texture cache, and character chat and IM logs in different file folders. Except for chat and IM, you should not try and point different viewers to the same locations for saving things; it can lead to Big Problems.

But chat and IM are pretty easy. These are all stored in a folder called ...\(avatar name), where "..." represents the directory tree. By default, that's c:\users\(windows user name)\appdata\roaming\SecondLife\(avatar_name)\(various .txt files).  The (various .txt files) are IMs, where each file bears the name of an individual or a group you communicated with, plus another one called chat.txt that is all of your Nearby Chat.

Each .txt file gets added to every time you communicate with that person or group. The chat.txt file can grow very large. I try to remember to look at it once every three months or so, trim off the older material and save that to a new file name, like "chat Jan1_Mar31_2021.txt"

You can change the location where the chat and IM files are stored in your viewer's Preference settings. I keep the logs of each of my different viewers separate, but it's possible to combine them, too.

It's just a personal quirk, but I dislike having large amounts of data stored in my users\username\appdata folder. For programs that allow it, like Second Life viewers, I point them to a separate drive, where I have established a set of cache directories for all of my software that likes to cache things.