I went more than ten years using the Linden Labs Second Life viewer pretty much exclusively. Not that I haven’t tried other viewers, or used Radegast in a pinch, but I haven’t really been inclined to go to the bother of switching.
So what changed? Why Firestorm? Is Firestorm better than the Linden Labs viewer? Honestly, I don’t know what changed, exactly. It’s just that I keep hearing people talk about the Firestorm viewer and that they prefer it, and I kept dabbling until I was sucked in, I suppose.
Now that I’m properly converted, though, I can find a lot of features that I like in this viewer!
- There’s no outfit pictures page getting in the way of my outfits listing
- I don’t have to redo my Windlight selection every time I restart (though maybe there was a way to lock this in with the Linden viewer that I didn’t know about?)
- Firestorm has RLV capabilities, like automatic teleporting (and so on)
- It seems to run more smoothly (for me, anyway)
- You can copy/paste object settings, I’m told, which should make building easier if I do much more of at any point
- There are handy buttons with an array of options in the chat window, so I don’t have to right click and navigate menus to get to some of things I would want to do while in chat
- There’s a built-in multi-AO! It reduces lag and prevents me having to add a specific AO to every outfit. This is a great feature! Instructions are here: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/animation_overrider
So far, there’s really only one thing I can think of that I don’t like about Firestorm, and that’s the loss of the ESDF buttons to jump and fly. I do a lot of flying, and having to rely on one hand to do it all, with the PgUp and PgDown and arrow keys, isn’t as comfortable or intuitive for me. Then again, maybe I’ll like how much easier it is to type directly to chat, so it’s possible even that will turn into a positive. Or someone might tell me how I can enable ESDF, using some arcane setting deep in darkest corners of the options menus.
^^^\ Kate /^^^
The Winged Girl Blog 
You can set the wind light settings to not change during logins via advanced menu debug settings (can not remember the name but it is there).
Personally I never used firestorm, has i prefer other tpv’s less confusing in number of option that we don’t really need. and its level of graphics quality is really undesirable, yes you can fiddle and make all work on ultra, as LL viewer, but it lacks life.
Besides, in my experience, for those that had to travel via crossing sims (be by sailing, flying or driving vehicles), a viewer the closest to the basics is the best, performance wise, on windows 7 pro at least.
So i keep using a bit dated, but still with all the needs to enjoy Sl properly, LL viewer modded by O’connor, called Ukando.
Compared to LL viewer official viewer, it lacks the last batch of updates (inventory changes and Arc) but it gains on stability and performance while doing activities that require crossing sims a lot, with the exact some graphics quality.
So wish you all the luck with firestorm, but i will not follow your advise regarding its use:)
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Oh, definitely don’t take my experience as advice. I don’t use all of the features of either the Linden viewer or Firestorm, don’t completely understand all of the features I use, and haven’t even tried some of the other options. It’s one person’s experience, though, and I thought it might be useful for people who happen to want similar things from their viewers. 🙂
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You know, there are wonderful, more stable options for viewing than the bloatware known as Firestorm, aka the unofficial SL viewer in which more than half the developers are Lindens. Alchemy is a wonderful viewer I discovered from a Mac friend last year (also available for Windows and Linux) which sort of looks like he SL Viewer, but under the hood is really a Ferrari. https://alchemyviewer.org
I crash less than once a month, where my friends on Firestorm and top of the line systems crash daily.
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Thanks for posting, ZZ and Igor! Igor, I haven’t had any trouble with Firestorm crashing yet that I recall, and only occasional crashes from the Linden viewer, but then, I’m probably not in-world as much as many people are. For me, features and interface are very important…I’m not as concerned with performance as long as it isn’t an obvious problem.
Igor, it sounds like stability and performance are the things you like the most about Alchemy?
It does look like Alchemy has that viewer-side AO I like so much in Firestorm. That’s certainly a plus. I’ll be interested to hear more perspectives about viewer choices!
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