The recent photoshoot with Berry, Becky, Van and me made me very aware that I need to get a V3 code base viewer. Since I’ve tried Firestorm twice before, I decided to go with it again. I uninstalled my Phoenix 1.6.1 Viewer and installed a clean Firestorm 4.2.2.29837.

Past Criticism

Those who follow this blog know that I’ve had serious problems with sim crossings using the Firestorm viewer, but I’ve been hearing good things about FS. Regardless of anyone’s assertions that everything is just fine and dandy, I know when a viewer works for me or it doesn’t. So I’m a harsh critic.

I have one test that is make or break for any viewer I try, will it work on the open seas? In the past, FS has crashed after a few sim crossings. I’ve been using FS for two days now and tonight is the night I chose to test the viewer in a little speedboat run from SL New England out to the Blake Sea’s islands.

I had made it all the way from Billingsgate down
to the channel leading to the Blake Sea.
This was already a big accomplishment but
I wanted to see just how fast I could go,
speeding into the Sunset.

I’d sped across over 15 sims to get to this little port.
Here I turned up my Graphics setting for full reflection.
Also turned snapshots to use PNG files.

Viewer Blackscreens

Prior to switching to Firestorm, I began experiencing blackscreen crashes when I used Windlight settings with Phoenix. I was hoping that maybe these would go away with FS, but in the two days I’ve been working storm I’ve found I can reproduce blackscreen crashes with several standard Windlight settings. I’ll try to get some kind of bug report submitted in the next couple days.

I’ve been very happy with Firestorm. I am using the Phoenix interface and I’ve fiddled with the preferences to the point I have a pretty good idea how this viewer works. I’m still frustrated with all the pointless menu changes from V1, but in time I’ll adapt. That is, I’ll adapt if I can use FS for boating.

Firestorm Shakedown Cruise

Last night I took FS for a shakedown cruise. It was just me in the Street Dancer 35′ and had very low expectations based on past experience. I sped down from SL New England and headed toward the Blake Sea. There were several minor rubberbanding blips, but using the tricks I’ve learned since I’ve been boating across sim crossings I wasn’t forced to stop for any reason. I did several maneuvers and pushed my Graphics Setting up a bit.

Bravo Firestorm!

Firestorm did not crash. Firestorm didn’t hurl me into the sim crossing netherworld. Firestorm gave me a smooth ride across at least 30 sims. When the test was done I went home, docked and left with a smile. So,  for the developers of Firestorm, Viewer 3 and the servers that run Second Life, here’s a big Bravo!