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New Viewer impacts: Firestorm beta from the Phoenix team!

Maxine Kohime

By Maxine Kohime,
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Jo Yardley

Jo Yardley

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Hurrah!!

I can't wait, trying it right away.

Actually downloaded the new official SL viewer just because it was the only way to get shadows to work on my macbook.

It still made SL go super duper slow but ooooh soooooo pretty!

So I only used the official viewer for making snapshots.

I hope I can finetune the phoenix viewer that it allows shadows without totally using up every bit of memory my computer has.

Either way, great to have the new phoenix already!

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Ansariel Hiller

Ansariel Hiller

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As the V1 search will most probably turned off in the foreseeable future by LL, it's not really wise to port the search back. But what you can actually do is use the new beta search from LL in Firestorm already - you will actually find things you're looking for with it instead all sorts of other stuff you're not interested in as with the default V2 search.

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Adam Spark

Adam Spark

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Cincia Singh wrote:

Don't expect "everything" that V2 offers, this public beta is built off version 2.5.1 of the development viewer and the development viwer is now at 2.7.3. Most noteably mesh support is absent.

Its a Beta. Mesh hasn't even reached beta stage.

It has everything V2 offers, unless, yes, you include development viewers. But why would you do that? Development viewers include unfinished features like Mesh and are only used by those willing to test.

Firestorm is only slightly behind the V2 that means anything, which is the official release.

Firestorm rocks. I like that you can choose between beta and official search. Was said earlier that its not wise to port back - I disagree, while the new search is in beta. Only when they turn it off should the old search be unavailable as an option. Of course I'm saying this partly because I loathe the new search. I might find things easier when I search, but I'm less likely to bother if I get sore eyes looking at the darn thing. Everything is way too crowded and the fonts are atrociously small. I would rather browse my way through 50 rather useless results in the old search than 5 in the new one. Seriously. Couldn't they just fix the results without revamping the entire layout?

The default setup slightly simplifies the transition to V2, and with just a few minutes of set up (which doesn't make it suck, btw), the transition is simplified BIG TIME. No sidebar. Tabs can be detached, moved, resized, and dont redock after logout. Text-labeled buttons along the bottom are replaced by icons similar to the sidebar tab buttons, but thats it.

It has the pie menu, by option. Thinking im gonna turn off this default setting, but I realize many folks like the pie menu, so I welcome the choice.

Two things really impressed me: I now have favorites on login. I don't know how they pulled off this feature working for me, because it never did in LL's V2, but a big thank you to the Phoenix/Firestorm team for that. Also, they managed to somewhat simplify the media streams without breaking support for shared media, regular media, AND music. You now have a music on/off button (music note) and the usual play button for other media. Nicely done.

Has the great V2 features, close to a V1 layout, and several of the niceities of Phoenix.. It rocks.

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Arrehn Oberlander

Arrehn Oberlander

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Don't forget to check out http://www.phoenixviewer.com/ for all kinds of information related to Firestorm such as documentation, classes, in world support, full list of features, etc. Firestorm is not the same as LL's 2.5.1 at all, don't confuse our version numbers with LL's! Firestorm is a highly advanced viewer, offering a number of features not found in any V2 to date, such as built in animation override control, instant-on voice microphone behavior, advanced avatar radar, area search, advanced inventory management, and a gazillion other conveniences that you soon wonder how you lived without. Firestorm also has LL's latest search built in, which far surpasses the standard viewer 2 search. Have fun and be sure to give your thanks to the volunteers in the "Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Support" in-world group who make it happen.

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Maxine Kohime

Maxine Kohime

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Im not entusiastic about a V2! V2 was clearly a big step back in usability and user friendlyness! But Im very glad that hard working people like the phoenix/firestorm team work thier buttocks of to give us a usable viewer, what LL denies us. They do the job LL should do, keeping thier users/customers happy.

But we all know, that LL has in that point just a hudge lack of^^

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Sion Pearl

Sion Pearl

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There's a few things in V2.6+ that I use a lot that aren't in Firestorm. Notably, I find that you can't arrange multiple layers so effectively on Firestorm. And when I clicked on something inworld, I went, crap! when I saw a pie menu. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get the context menus back (seriously, apart from nostalgia, I am honestly baffled as to why on earth anyone would want pie menus back. I was so glad to see the back of those).

I'm glad though that they've added the option to turn off the client tags, though.

I like that you can customise the sidebar, though. I like that there are multiple skins (so I can have my sidebar back in the Starlight skin, although there are some bugs with the way Firestorm views profiles). And there's the inbuilt AO, which is an ace idea (the one thing I liked about Emerald/Phoenix, actually).

It is marketed as a Beta release. The mesh support will come, and they'll no doubt get it up to speed with the official viewer, the better for the dissemination of all those features that people rave about.

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Sion Pearl

Sion Pearl

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Jo Yardley wrote:

In the end it is just a personal preference I reckon.

Honestly, yeah, I think it is.

But it was funny the degree to which I scrabbled about like mad trying to kill those *@$%!! pie menus, only to find after ten minutes of arsing about, it was a radio button on the very first tab of the Preferences pane.

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Adam Spark

Adam Spark

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Sion Pearl wrote:

There's a few things in V2.6+ that I use a lot that aren't in Firestorm. Notably, I find that you can't arrange multiple layers so effectively on Firestorm. And when I clicked on something inworld, I went, crap! when I saw a pie menu. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get the context menus back (seriously, apart from nostalgia, I am honestly baffled as to why on earth anyone would want pie menus back. I was
so
glad to see the back of those).

I'm glad though that they've added the option to turn off the client tags, though.

I like that you can customise the sidebar, though. I like that there are multiple skins (so I can have my sidebar back in the Starlight skin, although there are some bugs with the way Firestorm views profiles). And there's the inbuilt AO, which is an ace idea (the one thing I liked about Emerald/Phoenix, actually).

It
is
marketed as a Beta release. The mesh support will come, and they'll no doubt get it up to speed with the official viewer, the better for the dissemination of all those features that people rave about.

Its still built off of 2.5, I believe. Future updates will catch up. I think development so far was about getting a usable V2 out there, and about stability (which Firestorm remarkably has been, even before beta stage).

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Sion Pearl

Sion Pearl

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Void Singer wrote:

I do love the pie... as long as the subs don't change position. they just navigate so much faster once learned compared to linear menus once learned... I think it's the large positional targets

I think it's the "once learned" part that was the problem with me. I guess I was so used to using context menus on everything else that the pie menus always seemed like a bit of a liberty.My RL bestie (and SL partner) had a similar experience when I got her to join.

I'll grant you the part about the large positional targets though. The context menus are a lot smaller (which is good, because they don't block half the screen, but bad because you need more precision).

 

BTW I did some searching and found, as I thought I might, posts on t'internet from a few years ago cursing pie menus. Plus ca change... :smileywink:

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Sion Pearl

Sion Pearl

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I should add that whatever my feelings about Phoenix/Emerald, I really think Firestorm is a Good Thing. Anything that keeps people who might otherwise leave if forced to use the official V2 viewer in the world and in the community has to be a Good Thing.

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Void Singer

Void Singer

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agreed, at the beginning it's very jarring to get used to the non linear layout to find options. i find that I rarely ever read them anymore, but simply click through based on vague muscle/positional memory, much the same way I dial telephone numbers that I'm familiar with. And although big they allow more transparency while maintaining readability... which is actually something that could be applied to the linear ones to make them faster to navigate.

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Canoro Philipp

Canoro Philipp

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what i meant as "a V2" is a Viewer 2 based viewer.

i guess the Phoenix team have worked very hard to bring us this viewer, from the design of the elements (great idea of Phoenix to have the landmarks on top!), they must have wrote the capabilities to display windlight, ambient occlusion, Depth of Field, body physics, outfits, multiwearables and multiattachments, must have been such a hard work.

the Lindens sure not did even half of the work that Firestorm team did, i guess more than 90% of the code in Firestorm must be of the Phoenix coders.

must be tremendous hard work to build over the work of somebody else!

i dont know what you mean by LL denying us a usable viewer, i switched from Emerald to the first Viewer 2 beta, and i have been using it without a problem.

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Sion Pearl

Sion Pearl

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Canoro Philipp wrote:

(great idea of Phoenix to have the landmarks on top!), they must have wrote the capabilities to display windlight, ambient occlusion, Depth of Field, body physics, outfits, multiwearables and multiattachments, must have been such a hard work.

the Lindens sure not did even half of the work that Firestorm team did, i guess more than 90% of the code in Firestorm must be of the Phoenix coders.

For a minute I was going to go, are you mad!? And then I looked again, and I realised what you did there. :robotvery-happy:

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Adam Spark

Adam Spark

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Canoro Philipp wrote:

what i meant as "a V2" is a Viewer 2 based viewer.

i guess the Phoenix team have worked very hard to bring us this viewer, from the design of the elements (great idea of Phoenix to have the landmarks on top!), they must have wrote the capabilities to display windlight, ambient occlusion, Depth of Field, body physics, outfits, multiwearables and multiattachments, must have been such a hard work.

the Lindens sure not did even half of the work that Firestorm team did, i guess more than 90% of the code in Firestorm must be of the Phoenix coders.

must be tremendous hard work to build over the work of somebody else!

i dont know what you mean by LL denying us a usable viewer, i switched from Emerald to the first Viewer 2 beta, and i have been using it without a problem.

To be fair, a number of things like LMs across the top, body physics, multiattachments, ect., are in V2, even if some of it was borrowed from earlier TPV's like Emerald/Phoenix. LM's on top in particular is a LL offering, launched in I think Viewer 2.5 (worth noting that it didn't work for some, like myself, however). Much of Firestorm is based on Viewer 2.5. Some things did come from Phoenix, and there are even a couple extra things, but it is largely a re-shuffling of V2's elements to make for a more useable UI.

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