I’ve recently returned to using the official Second Life client. Well first of all, let me recap, there was a stage when the official client was the only client I really liked using, I was wary of those third party clients, despite all their bells and whistles.
I’d tried them, I didn’t get on with them and then one day I tried Firestorm, and quite frankly I never looked back when it came to taking photographs in Second Life. The photo tools, the sheer amount of windlight settings, I was as happy as Larry playing around with these and ramping up my graphics for the right shot, moving the time of day slider to cast shadows. Awesome sauce.
Then one day I noticed my AMD graphic drivers were a tad out of date and updated them, and Firestorm made a very sad face at me. However I saw some light on the horizon, a new version of AMD graphics drivers were released and I updated again. Alas, this was a terrible mistake as Inara Pey pointed out. However the investigative Inara Pey also points out that there may be hope on the horizon.
The thing is that may my main issue with Firestorm was not regarding rigged Mesh, well it is now, but the issue I had with Firestorm after updating my graphics drivers was that if I set my settings to Ultra, my scene looked like something rendered on the Sinclair Spectrum.
So I returned to official Second Life client and that’s where my head scratching started.
The first problem I ran into was “Where the bloody hell are all the Windlight settings?” Fortunately help was at hand because Faithless Babii over at SLUniverse was asking about windlight settings.
The answer is to copy the xml files from your Firestorm install folder into the windlight folder of the official Second Life folder. Now I had my Windlight settings, my favourite is Vintage Village but there are heaps in Firestorm compared to the official client.
However then I ran into my next issue, where the bloody hell is the time of day slider? On Firestorm it’s right in your face, you just slide the slider to cast shadows. Eventually I discovered that to do this in the official Second Life client I have to edit the sky preset and then go to the lighting page where I have options on time of day, angle of the sun, gamma etc. Then I have to save those settings. Now if you’re trying this at home, my advice is to save the settings to a new windlight setting, rather than overwriting an exisiting one.
I happily overwrite my customised one, but I refrain from overwriting the original settings.
Firestorm is a much easier client to use for photography, however I do wonder why Linden Lab haven’t incorporated better Photo tools into their client. I really wish they would.
I agree. Windlight management in Firestorm is much, much easier than in the official viewer, and the Phototools floater, despite the criticism members of the Firestorm team have levelled at the way it’s been coded, is extremely convenient and makes SL photography so much easier. Things will improve a lot when Firestorm integrates the unified snapshot floater.
Indeed, I hadn’t realised how far the official viewer was behind Firestorm until I turned to it. However in fairness to the official viewer, I am getting better performance on ultra settings, it’s a shame it’s such a pain to use.
Well, coincidence, i installed for the 1st time LL official this weekend.
I never tried any viewer without rlv(a) and was trying to use kokua, but the amount of crash rating was to high.
So 1st thing, with the use of shortcuts instead of having any buttons but the flirck one on the screen, the graphics and the overall look of Ll official viewer is pretty good.
The lack of a draw distance slider is the worst of the viewer.
(to change the draw distance the only way is to open the preferences graphics advanced and change it there).
Also i wonder how much would be for LL to implement a quick tools button, where you could not only change the draw distance but also cycle the windlight settings?
But for the rest, even if i do miss some of tpv’s features (being able to access menus when on mouse lock, checking boxes to not show where im looking at and rlv or rlv(A), LL stability and graphics quality (even if i cant go up then 512 m draw distance against 1024 of tpv’s and has to force AA for 16 via nvidia control panel, while tpv’s alreay offer that, LL only allows to enable antialsing, not set it up to 16x) is more then worth.
In fact i did a LCC cruise yesterday, epic one, of over 2 hours sailing with more then 50 boats at same time and managed to not crash once.
Let me be clear, i dont ever tried firestorm for the last year on sl, so i can only compare LL performance to the 2 viewers i used before.
Ukando is still pretty stable and has all the features i do think LL could easy have.
But its code not updated for over a month and there is a obvious improvement on rezzing times since then with new code.
Kokua, that is using the 5th december code, crashes a lot more, has almost all features i enjoy using (just misses a quick tool to change windlights and adds a inbuild ao, some i refuse to use on sl but is very helpful on open sim) but rezzes a bit more faster.
Still found out that i was having textures problems that never had before and when i noticed that LL official viewer released a new version prior to 5th of December and i did give it a try.
And ill stay with it, for not at least, until Kokua or uknaod gets an update.
Yes in terms of stability the official viewer does have a lot going for it, they are clearly doing something right there.
In conclusion, lol, LL viewer can lack a lot of features that will make the life of a snapshooter, photographer or artist a lot more easy but for a traveler/sailor/explorer or just some that wishes to use ultra settings at all times and don’t crash or take a eternity to see all rezzed, is by far the best.
Also several sailors that had severe issues on last weeks and tried all and i mean all, tpv’s available, turned to it.
So if LL reason for its success in crashing rates is the low level of features added i do urge LL to reconsider and only add the ones that truly are missing right now:
A quick tools button a la firestorm (not to confuse with the photo tools one)..
or at least the draw distance slider.
Ability to push the buttons to the right or left of the bottom screen.
All the rest we can leave without, if it means better performance and same graphics quality then any tpv.
finnaly the set i made using the 3 viewers.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zzbottom/sets/72157649446540448/
and the one made using latest ll official viewer.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zzbottom/sets/72157649856581342/
Windlight setting of my own, graphics in ultra with shadows on and nvidia control panel to force graphics to clamp, aa and af to 16xhq2 via hardware, on all 3 viewers exec used. Kokua, Ukando and LL 5th dec on the 1st set.
LL as per 21th dec on the 2nd.