Advanced in-world build tools now available in Firestorm

[Arrehn Oberlander]

If you are a fan of the wide array of in-world content creation tools provided by community SL viewers such as Phoenix, you can now use them on the Firestorm viewer. Firestorm is the first V2-based viewer to offer the full complement of community build tools. These tools are bundled with the free "Firestorm Public Beta 2" community viewer, released Jul 5th.

 

Enjoy!

[Void Singer]

did they include the align tool? that may be enough for me to jump on a beta again.

[Arrehn Oberlander]

Yes, there's an align tool.

 

Although we're labelled it "Beta", it's competitive with the stability of LL and other third party viewers. We're giving it the "Beta" tag because there's some Phoenix features it does not have. However, compared to the official V2 client, it's already at release quality.

[Void Singer]

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Arrehn Oberlander wrote:

[...] compared to the official V2 client, it's already at release quality.

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damned by faint praise

[Rolig Loon]

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Void Singer wrote:

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Arrehn Oberlander wrote:

[...] compared to the official V2 client, it's already at release quality.

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damned by faint praise

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Hehehe ... My thoughts exactly. 

I have been testing the Firestorm Beta2 building tools for the past couple of days.  They've included almost all of what is in the current Phoenix release, and it appears stable.  I'm finding a few annoying things with this release --- you cannot open the script error window except by actually making an error, for example, and the Notes page in personal profiles is inaccessible --- but it is a beta, after all.   And, as Arrehn says, this beta is already better than the native LL model. I have been slow to jump on the V2 codebase bandwagon.  This is what I've been waiting for.

[Arrehn Oberlander]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

 and the Notes page in personal profiles is inaccessible 

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From my own testing the notes page in profiles works fine for other people's profiles, at least on the Metaharper and Firestorm skins. The one that is not available is notes on your own profile page.

[Chelsea Malibu]

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They've included almost all of what is in the current Phoenix release, and it appears stable.  I'm finding a few annoying things with this release --- you cannot open the script error window except by actually making an error, for example, and the Notes page in personal profiles is inaccessible --- but it

is

a beta, after all.  

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if it's "almost" all of what the current Phoenix offers, then why make the move?  I have no reason to switch from what I am seeing here, though I have no allegiance to Phoenix, just show me a reason I should switch please.

It's really more a point of marketing.  It would be like Ford saying they are "Almost as good as GM"

[Rolig Loon]

That's a very good question, Chelsea.   The practical answer is that sooner or later -- bets are pretty good that "sooner" means "by the end of the summer" --- LL is going to release mesh objects to the main grid and accelerate the demise of the V1 codebase.  In a rather short time, not being able to see mesh objects will make SL look like ..... well, imagine what SL would look like if you couldn't see sculpties now.  The Phoenix team has put their efforts into building a V2 codebase viewer that appeals to current users of Phoenix, Imprudence, 1.23 and the other V1 viewers -- and outperforms LL's own V2.  The current beta release of Firestorm has already achieved most of that.  I have held off moving to a V2 viewer until now, but I can't see a good reason to wait any longer.  It's a personal choice. 

[Arrehn Oberlander]

There are reasons to jump on Firestorm right now if you're coming from phoenix. Some of the hightlights are:

 

- Vastly improved viewer AO

- Favourite landmarks bar

- Ability to wear multiples of the same clothing layer (ie, two tattoos, two shirts, etc)

- Better shadows

- KDU texture decoding (more accurate sculpties, faster texture rezzing)

- More media options, including native flash

- Signed code (So you can prove it's from us vs. a spoofed source), less antivirus trouble.

- Ability for notices to save across logins

- Easy access to the new beta search

- More crash protections

- Script management landowner UI

- More reliable inventory loading

 

There's a few other minor things as well. One of the other reasons to try Firestorm is: "Viewer1 protocols are already starting to break, why not try something built for the future?".

[Void Singer]

simply put, because it also has some features that phoenix doesn't have, or doesn't completely support.... such as shared media, and multiple tattoo layers.

I'm hoping they won't completely neglect patching the recent crashers in phoenix while firestorm is still lacking features they intend to port from phoenix, it'd leave a bad taste of LL in my mouth.