Firestorm 4.3.0 has arrived slightly earlier than expected, in the form of an initial beta release made as a result of the implementation of new Group Services code across the main grid.

While this is only a beta, and the associated Firestorm blog post gives fair notice that it may yet be somewhat wobbly while final work on getting it QA’d and ready for a formal release is ongoing, there is more than enough in the release to make it something people are liable to be hungry for. So here’s a preliminary review of the release as it stands today, with the caveat that things may change between now and the full release, which is currently scheduled for December.

Download and Installation

The download .EXE is big – 40MB, which is unsurprising given that Firestorm packs so much into it. I’ve been running pre-releases of this version for a while now, and the size has been consistent between them and while much bigger than other TPVs and the official viewer, it hasn’t grown overly much since the last release.

The installer is actually the place where the updates to the viewer begin for Windows users, as it now incorporates:

• A pop-up requesting whether or not the user wishes to have a Windows Start menu entry created for Firestorm during installation
• Addition of the version string and estimated installed size to the installer
• Addition of new OS detection code to warn if Windows Service Packs are not up-to-date and to prevent Firestorm being installed on Windows XP with
• Publisher data, Phoenix URLs and Firestorm icon for the Firestorm entry in the Windows uninstall list
• Automatic deletion of all previously installed skins to reduce issues arising from an unclean install
• Addition of a DETAILS button in the installer pop-up window to allow the installation to be reviewed.

Lab Updates

Version 4.3.0 of Firestorm sees the viewer merged-up the official Linden 3.4.1 code base and the inclusion of later updates which are just filtering through to the official viewer 3.4.2 code pipe. Together these mean that this release incorporates and number of LL updates, including:

• Recent updates and improvements to the viewer-side pathfinding code
• Memory leak and memory crash fixes
• Translation updates (together with further updates from members of the Firestorm team)
• Incorporation of the official LL spelling checker (contributed to LL by Kitty Barnett to LL) and the official Auto-replace function (contributed to LL by Kitty Barnett, Jonathan Yapp, Tankmaster Finesmith and LordGregGreg Back)
• Rendering fixes and optimisations
• Group Services (group management) update (from the LL 3.4.2 code branch) allowing groups with more than 10K members to be edited and updated
• Objects by multiple creators show creator details when viewed in inventory (Properties), rather than “unknown”

This release also incorporates the new LL maturity rating function which:

• Notifies a user when trying to enter a region without having set the required maturity level in the viewer and presents the option to change their maturity setting (subject to age verification)
• If applicable, sends a message to the person offering a teleport that the recipient is unable to access the region due to their maturity level.

Havok Sub-licence

Firestorm 4.3.0 sees the implementation of the Havok sub-licence agreement between the Firestorm team and Linden Lab. This means that this is the first version of Firestorm to be released without any support for OpenSim access. Both –loginURI capabilities and the Grid Manager functionality have been removed.

However, as Jessica Lyon has previously noted, development of the viewer will be forking, and OpenSim support will continue in the future via a version of Firestorm which excludes the code required to access the LL Havok libraries. How tailored the OpenSim version will be for use on those grids is not clear, and those who use Firestorm to access both SL and OpenSim grids should read Jessica’s comments on support in the future.

The Havok sub-licence agreement does mean that this release of Firestorm can access the new LL-supplied Havok libraries which in the first instance, enable TPV viewers to visualise and model the pathfinding navmesh.

Group Services

The Group Services update was the main reason for pushing out a beta release of Firestorm  4.3.0.

This code allows for improved loading of membership lists of very large groups, together with improved reliability in editing such groups (i.e. assigning roles, removing people, etc.), by the group moderators. The server-side element of this code has been available on the RC channels for the last couple of weeks, and was deployed to the main release channel on Tuesday November 13th, making it available right across the main grid.

However, in order to be used, it requires additional viewer-side code. Without this additional code, the viewer will be unable to display membership lists for groups with more than 10K members (although any groups with fewer than 10K of members can still be edited using any viewer). Thus, the decision was taken by the Firestorm team to release 4.3.0 in a beta version so that users responsible for managing groups with very large members lists can continue to edit them.

In making this release, Firestorm joins Cool VL and Niran’s Viewer in being able to handle large groups alongside the official SL beta viewer. However, the remaining TPVs are likely to have updates to support the capability out in the near future (and the code will soon be available in the SL release viewer as well).

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Update: Phototools is fully integrated into Firestorm.

Not long after joining Second Life, William Weaver, known in-world as Paperwork Resident, became interested in both SL photography and machinima. While he quickly realised the viewer has a huge capability for making both, he found that even in a TPV like Firestorm, many of the controls remain spread across multiple floaters and tabs and buried within the debug settings, making it hard to use the viewer to its fullest potential for in-world picture production without a lot of frustrating shuffling of floaters and tabs.

His solution was to develop Phototools, a menu system for Firestorm that pulls together all the various settings and options within the viewer that a photographer or machinima maker is liable to need during a shoot. With Phototools, it is possible to quickly and relatively easily set-up the viewer to produce stunning visual images in a one-stop pass using a dedicated floater; allowing some stunning results to be had without the need for any post-processing through Photoshop or similar tools.

Phototools has been around now for a while, available from Williams, blog, Paperwork Shows, and has been gaining popularity among Firestorm users. However, William has been working on preparing it for full integration into the viewer, and as a part of this work, he has made a number of changes to it which have just been released as version 0.94.

Essentially, Phototools replaces several of Firestorm’s default floaters with updated versions. In the original release, these included a replacement camera floater, which presented a wealth of additional camera and mouse / joystick options. However, as it was also relatively large and cumbersome, William has reverted to using the original camera floater in the new release, with the additional controls incorporated into the main Phototools floater. For those who have been using the earlier version of Phototools, the new release includes an .XML file for the original Firestorm default camera floater.

The Phototools Floater

The main floater replaced by Phototools is the Firestorm Quick Preferences floater. For those who find this a very handy tool to have at your fingertips, it is not entirely lost: most of the options it contains are still available in its replacement, which I like to call the Phototools floater. This comprises six tabs: WL – for Windlight settings Light – for lighting and shadows; DoF/Glow – for depth of field and glow effects; Gen – for setting Draw Distance, terrain detail, avatar counts, etc; and Cam – for camera and mouse options.

Anyone familiar with Firestorm’s Preferences tabs will immediately recognise many of the options presented within the Phototools floater; others may not be so instantly recognisable, as they’ve been pulled from the debug settings. This is where the power of Phototools lay: not in providing new options or functions, but in making those already present in the viewer a lot easier to access and use from a single reference-point with the minimum of fuss and without taking up huge amounts of screen space (and having a heavy impact on frame rates).

The first tab in the floater is for Windlight settings and this includes options to open the Windlight water and sky presets floaters (which can also still be accessed via World-> Environment Editor ->Sky Presets / Water Presets). Both of these floaters have been extensively re-worked to make them much more compact and screen-friendly when compared to the default versions found in most viewers.

Taken together, the Phototools floater and revised sky and water presets floaters present all the options needed to manipulate the environment, as seen through your viewer, in three panels which are compact enough not to overwhelm the screen; a major benefit when trying to set-up lighting, etc., for a specific shoot or film sequence and you need to see the impact of changes on your world-view as you adjust lighting and other effects to achieve a specific result.

How it all Came About

I recently caught up with William with a view to finding out more about Phototools and the future holds for them. I started by asking him how he got started on the road of developing them.

“When I first started in SL I was using it to write,” he explained. “I would role-play and write chapters in a story from the events of the role-play. While doing this, I started taking some pictures and I noticed SL has a great deal of potential for very good image making.”

He also noticed that a lot of people relied on external post-processing to achieve their finished results, “While I appreciate people who are good with Photoshop and after effects, I enjoy working with the limits of the viewer.” This started him thinking about how the capabilities within the viewer could be presented in a more user-friendly and accessible manner. At the same time, and while also involved in the role-play, William got to make his first SL machinima, which brought him up against additional problems.

Continue reading “William Weaver’s Phototools: create glorious shots with Firestorm” →

Monday 27th saw Firestorm 4.2.1.29803 released. Unfortunately, this included a visual bug being inadvertently introduced into the release which made moving items such as doors and wheels appear to be “broken”. While this was only a visual impact rather than a code breakage, the decision was taken to withdraw 4.2.1 and replace it with 4.2.2 once the problem had been fixed.

As a result, and in case the release of version 4.2.2 included additional updates necessary as a result of fixing the issue, I opted to hold-off on my review of 4.2.1, and wait until I’d been able to look at 4.2.2 before Pressing a review.

So here it is, a look at Firestorm 4.2.2, featuring some of the key changes and updates which include an initial implementation of pathfinding. Alongside this, the release sees includes Katharine Berry’s snapshots-to-Flickr option, temporary uploads from the snapshot floater, new toolbar buttons and more.

A Note on OpenSim

This release does not include any fork between Second Life and OpenSim. That will be coming in a future release, which, as Jessica reports in her blog post on this release, might be a while in coming as the team have a lot of work on their collective plate.

Installation

The windows installer is some 33.7Mb in size – so par for the course with Firestorm. If you’ve previously installed version 4.2.1.29803 then a clean install is not required. However, if you’re upgrading from 4.1.1.28744 or earlier, a clean install is required / recommended.

Pathfinding Tools

As mentioned above, and with the exception of navmesh visualisation, all the main pathfinding tools are present in this release, complete with the expected Firestorm finesse when it comes to Rebake Region.

The Linksets and Characters floaters can be accessed using both the context and the pie menu when right-clicking on an object or character. The Build and Object Profile panels also have their pathfinding information panels added.

The Firestorm team have implemented the Rebake Region functionality somewhat differently to Linden Lab. Rather than incorporating a button displayed at the bottom of the viewer window when a rebake is required, the team have combined the rebake function with the pathfinding icon displayed in the Menu Bar / Navigation Bar (if displayed). Thus, when the icon is displayed (either with or without the initial warning pop-up, as shown in the image below), clicking on the icon will display a dialogue allowing a rebake to be initiated.

Combined with disabling the initial pop-up (by checking Do not show this again),  this option makes the need for rebakes less intrusive when using Firestorm.

New Buttons

There are three new toolbar buttons in the 4.2.0 release: Asset Blacklist and Sound Explorer, both of which toggle open / close the Asset Blacklist floater or the Sound Explorer floater respectively (each otherwise accessible via the World menu), and Ground Sit – which is pretty self-explanatory.

Snapshots: Flickr, Temp Upload and More

Flickr is a popular medium for SL photographers, so having an option to save pictures directly to it is likely to be a benefit to many. With this release, Firestorm obtains Katharine Berry’s code to enable snapshots to be uploaded directly from the viewer to a Flickr account.

In order to work, this functionality requires Firestorm is authorised to access a Flickr account. Therefore, the first time the Flickr tab on the snapshot floater is clicked, a pop-up is displayed, both explaining the need for authentication and what will happen. Clicking on NO on the pop-up will stop the process, and you can use another option on your snapshot floater for saving the image.

Clicking on YES will take you to the Flickr authorisation page, which will outline the possible risks of connecting Firestorm to Flickr (a standard alert page, common when using inter-application authorisation). Read the warning carefully, and if happy, confirm you wish to proceed (refusing cancels the link and denies Firestorm the ability to upload to Flickr).

Confirming that you’re happy to proceed will display a code number on the Flickr web-page. Type this into the authorisation pop-up displayed in Firestorm to complete the authorisation process. Once done, you’ll be able to upload pictures to your Flickr account without further hindrance.

This release of the snapshot floater also includes an option to temporarily upload a snapshot to your inventory. Temporary snapshots are saved to your Photo Album, where they will be available for personal use (e.g. non-transferrable, etc) until your next re-log. Finally for the snapshot floater, all settings changes are saved between sessions.

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