Jump to content

Firestorm Viewer - Full, General Release

Arrehn Oberlander
 Share
You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 4490 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Recommended Posts

Arrehn Oberlander

Arrehn Oberlander

Posted
Posted

Since there haven't been any official posts, I thought I'd throw one in as Firestorm's development lead. For those who were not aware, the Phoenix/Firestorm Team released the Firestorm viewer a few days ago. Right from the login screen, it can be configured to run in a V3 mode with Starlight skins, a V1 mode similar to Phoenix Viewer, and a hybrid mode that contains a blend of both. The viewer is highly customizable and configurable, with 3x the options of the standard viewer. It has a number of tools for builders that are not in the standard viewer. It supports both pie and rectangle context menus, and both solid and high-transparency looks. It contains a number of user contributed skins and color schemes. It contains a wide array of additional windlight presets, as well as system to automatically set your windlight presets on particular parcels. It checks your spelling. It lets you place notifications and popups in various parts of the screen. It has a much richer radar than the standard client. It has a radar that is accurate far beyond your draw distance, even very high in the air. It lets you double-click teleport within regions correctly, even in places where the standard viewer can have problems. It contains optional remote scripting support for scripters or RLV users. It has recent LL features such as mesh rendering, mesh upload, multiple clothing layers, depth of field, and has a very high framerate. It has inventory loading performance improvements not found anywhere else. It contains an amazing built in AO and flight assist. It has sophisticated chat alerts, radar alerts, and a macro/autocomplete system. It puts a number of handy rendering controls quickly at your disposal. It has built in anti-spam and anti-lag features. It can remember more than one user/password combination at a time. I'm just scratching the surface. In general, it's absolutely packed with community developed features.


We believe we've delivered on the goal of providing a viewer that has the vast aray of community features developed over the last few years, blended with the latest LL viewer technology. We hope you give it a look, and if/when you have questions, you'll check out the comprehensive online documentation and user support group, the largest (and we believe finest) viewer support team in-world.


Firestorm's general release comes in two flavors, a 3.2.2 version with cutting edge rendering code, and a 3.2.1 version with older but more compatible in some cases rendering code. We recommend you try 3.2.2 first, and download 3.2.1 if you have graphical trouble on your system. For more information, check out my signature.

 

Give it a try and see if it improves your enjoyment of SL. If you have questions, the very best place to get answer is the in world group "Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Support" or the online wiki documentation.

Thanks!

- Arrehn

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Marcus Hancroft

Marcus Hancroft

Posted
Posted

Howdy, Arrehn!

I have tried to use the FirestormRC and MOST of the time when I'm logging in, the viewer goes into the "Loading World..." part and then...just closes down.  Off it goes like I clicked Avatar - Exit Firestorm.  No error messages, no nothing.  I tried the suggestions on the wiki including:  Running the viewer in Windows XP compatibility mode, deleting the offline messages in the Firestorm system folder and nothing seems to help.

I was successful the other day using the viewer after I cleared all caches and logged into a quiet sim and waited for my inventory to load.  The next day, however, off it went again as it was going through the Loading World process.  So, I go back to the good old stable Phoenix Viewer.  Of course, I don't get to see meshes that way or wear the two pieces of mesh clothing I've purchased so far, but I get to be inworld. 

If there are any other suggestions you could give me, I would certainly appreciate it!

Thank you for all your hard work on Firestorm!  I'm sure once I get this kink worked out I won't ever use another viewer but Firestorm!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ROB34466IIIa

ROB34466IIIa

Posted
Posted

The ONLY reason I stopped using this latest viewer of your team was the lack of Gstreamer / 64 bit support for Linux distributions. I found that kinda essential to fully enjoy SL. So I switched to Imprudence.

I did try yours and as stated before, there was only that 1 issue I had with your viewer. I'd recommend it to anyone anyway.

Perhaps a 64-bit compilation will be availiable in the near future ? I sure hope your team will consider it.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Rhys Goode

Rhys Goode

Posted
Posted

I love the new FS release version!  

It has worked fine for me, out of the box.  On my old laptop, it has better frame rates than either the FS mesh beta, or the latest LL 3,2 viewer.  Not quite as good as Phoenix, but good enough for me.

Great ability to configure the interface, a nice set of extra features, lots of thoughtful and useful littile touches. And the best in-world support I have ever seen.

Thanks so much to the whole Firestone team!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Orca Flotta

Orca Flotta

Posted
Posted

Arrehn wrote:

a very high framerate

I had a very good fps with the beta and the release as well. Actually the release's fps was the best I'd ever seen in any viewer. 70-90 fps, I could even pull up the DD to 256 from my usual 128 and still had magnificent fps. Only problem was my avie was a foggy red cloud. Once I had fixed my avie and she was appearing in all her beautyfullyness ... oh noes, the framerate dropped. Dropped so low SL became unplayable. So I played with graphics settings again, got rid of some eyecandy and dropped the DD again.

Alas, it didn't help. FPS never went faster than 7-9 frames. :smileysad:

Must I go back to the beta viewer again?

Or make my life easy and stick with Phoenix? It's still the best viewer for my way to work and who needs that mesh crap anyway?

 


Link to comment
Share on other sites
Perrie Juran

Perrie Juran

Posted
Posted

Orca Flotta wrote:

Arrehn wrote:

a very high framerate

I had a very good fps with the beta and the release as well. Actually the release's fps was the best I'd ever seen in any viewer. 70-90 fps, I could even pull up the DD to 256 from my usual 128 and still had magnificent fps. Only problem was my avie was a foggy red cloud. Once I had fixed my avie and she was appearing in all her beautyfullyness ... oh noes, the framerate dropped. Dropped so low SL became unplayable. So I played with graphics settings again, got rid of some eyecandy and dropped the DD again.

Alas, it didn't help. FPS never went faster than 7-9 frames. :smileysad:

Must I go back to the beta viewer again?

Or make my life easy and stick with Phoenix? It's still the best viewer for my way to work and who needs that mesh crap anyway?

 

There are some of us that V3 has introduced graphics problems / frame rate drops that the official Firestorm release has also inherited because it is based on the v3 code base.

Please see these JIRA's for additional info and add comments if it helps.  At the moment it appears that the problem is related to alpha texture rendering but still don't know for sure.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2694?

http://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-4146?focusedCommentId=60899#comment-60899

 

Thanks much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Canoro Philipp

Canoro Philipp

Posted
Posted

congratulations in completing the first step that brings you back to deliver us with the latest viewer. many will benefit from the blending of both technologies, they are gonna be up to date without missing the features they love, im glad you decided to work with the latest LL technology again.

the official viewer is evolving in faster steps than before, im confident that you will get on track once all Phoenix features are implemented and you will deliver us the latest of both worlds, like Kirsten used to do.

im looking forward to test a beta with the viewer 3 flexible user interface, the feature has been proven itself to be useful for many, and it will add more appeal to the variety of Second Life users.

congratulations Firestorm team.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ian Undercroft

Ian Undercroft

Posted
Posted

Having been using, and very pleased with the performance of, FS Mesh Beta, I downloaded 3.2.2. However, I was disappointed to see that linden water is a much darker shade of blue than should be the case and way too transparent and that light does not reflect on the water surface. Further, the sky is featureless.

I tried 3.2.1, and whilst that resolves the sky and water issues, objects do not rez and the lag is terrible.

For the time being, I'm back to using the Mesh Beta and hoping that the next release of FS will cure my sky and water issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Shawnna Chrome

Shawnna Chrome

Posted
Posted

I only have the firestorm mesh beta and regular phoenix and so far have found phoenix to be a bit better though it crashes sometimes, why do these viewers crash so often?? and how do I get it out of debugging mode? every time I launch phoenix it loads up a dos window and I am sure that's going to make it lag somewhat any way to  change this?? thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Coby Foden

Coby Foden

Posted
Posted

Ian Undercroft wrote:

For the time being, I'm back to using the Mesh Beta and hoping that the next release of FS will cure my sky and water issues.

It seems that Firestorm is hardware dependent. In some systems it runs great, in some not. In my system I cannot see any difference between Firestorm and Linden Lab latest beta viewer. Both run great with Ultra graphics settings. Shadows work also well in both. Frame rates are good in both and graphics quality is good. Water, sky and clouds look good and very similar in both.

CPU: Intel® Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz (3411.13 MHz)

Memory: 8169 MB

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCI/SSE2

Driver version: 266.44

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Rolig Loon

Rolig Loon

Posted
Posted

Shawnna Chrome wrote:

I only have the firestorm mesh beta and regular phoenix and so far have found phoenix to be a bit better though it crashes sometimes, why do these viewers crash so often?? and how do I get it out of debugging mode? every time I launch phoenix it loads up a dos window and I am sure that's going to make it lag somewhat any way to  change this?? thanks

You activated one of the debug consoles, probably by accidentally typing one of the keyboard shortcuts.  To see which one and to fix it, look in your Development menu (CTRL + Alt + Q).  The console options are all at the top of that menu.  Look to see which one is checked, and then UNcheck it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Arrehn Oberlander

Arrehn Oberlander

Posted
  • Author
Posted

@ Comparisons with 3.0.1 / lag

Tthere's no real difference in rendering between FS 3.0.1 and FS 3.2.1, just let the cache fill up and inventory download and you'll be fine.The first times people run a new release viewer, there is usually crushing lag as your inventory has to fully download from scratch and your texture cache is completely empty. This situation usually resolves once the cache and inventory catches up.

So, try Firestorm 3.2.2 first, it works best for most systems. Try 3.2.1 if you experience rendering issues with water, or similar. There's no reason to stay on FS 3.0.1.

 

@JJ

 

You don't have to run Firestorm full screen, the window  resizes fine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 3 weeks later...
Helios Wolfhunter

Helios Wolfhunter

Posted
Posted

There is one BIG difference between the Phoenix,/Firestorm viewers and the SL V2.When you do a search in the V2,you lose the search list everytime you either drop the box,or tp anywhere.I got sooo t ired of redoing a search everytime,that I just wont use the V2.Also,I hate the interface where it is all on the side of the screen. You also dont get to use the camera control in the same way too.I put my swing controls up in the middle top of the screen,and you can swing in front of the avatar without going into edit,whereas in V2,you cant.I just really hate that viewer.I think tho,that I am gonig to stick with the beta version,cos it seems to work fine,and from what is said here,..it would only cause me problems.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Maryanne Solo

Maryanne Solo

Posted
Posted

Works perfectly for me.

The only problem I do have is that when searching in inventory and an information notice comes in, the inventory wil jump back up to the top of the open list, so you have to scroll back down to continue your manual search. I think V3 did this also and its very annoying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...
TKAELA

TKAELA

Posted
Posted

I upgraded to Firestorm latest version and had trouble with the graphics (water & terrain mainly).  So, I uninstalled and reinstalled the 3.1 version...which gave me the same results. I rolled back to the Mesh Beta version as Ian stated previously and now everything is back to normal "YAYYY".   

Hopefully, I will be able to upgrade to the lastest version with a solution to the graphics problems. :matte-motes-smile:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ceka Cianci

Ceka Cianci

Posted
Posted

TKAELA wrote:

I upgraded to Firestorm latest version and had trouble with the graphics (water & terrain mainly).  So, I uninstalled and reinstalled the 3.1 version...which gave me the same results. I rolled back to the Mesh Beta version as Ian stated previously and now everything is back to normal "YAYYY".   

Hopefully, I will be able to upgrade to the lastest version with a solution to the graphics problems. :matte-motes-smile:

 

i just heard a fix for this somewhere in the forums today..i'll see if i can't find it for you =)

ETA: ok i don't know if this will help or not but i found a thread that was going on about water..but it sounded like just a system problem..but maybe you could get some info from it..here is the link

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Water/td-p/1377029

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Rolig Loon

Rolig Loon

Posted
Posted

In order to play Flash format videos (eg YouTube videos), you must have the generic Adobe Flash plugin installed. If you use IE as your web browser and already have Flash, you will need to get the generic Flash plugin; see here. linux users need to have gstreamer installed, with the “bad” plugin set.

 

Check the SLPlugin file

  • Relog and open Search
  • Go to your computer processes and look for “slplugin.exe”
    • For Windows users, go to Task Manager → Processes Tab
    • For Mac users, go to Activity Monitor → My Processes (usually by default, but you can check top right drop down)
    • For Linux users, go to Command Terminal, and type “ps aux”
    • You may see four instances of the slplugin running (that is normal behavior)
    • If you do not see any instances of slplugin running, that is the cause of media failing
  • If slplugin is not running, disable all firewall and virus protection (including anti-virus software and windows or other operating system firewalls)
  • Relog and attempt video playback again
  • If it works, you will need to stop your firewall/virus protection from blocking the slplugin file by granting it appropriate permissions in your firewall/virus protection software
  • If all of the above does not resolve the issue, you can try downloading the latest SL Viewer 2 viewer and replacing your Firestorm slplugin file with the one from Viewer 2.

For more information and suggestions, see http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=fs_media

Link to comment
Share on other sites
You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 4490 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...