For all of you Second Life players who got scared off Firestorm with the PBR viewer release and haven’t gone back since, it might be time to try. If you thought you owned a pretty decent laptop but couldn’t turn around with the first PBR viewer release, I understand. I, too, switched viewers temporarily, but since the graphics were incredible in the PBR viewer (short for water, *sigh*) I kept trying with the Firestorm.
You might have missed the fact they’ve done a few quick updates on the viewer, and this last one is actually pretty damned cool. There was about a week’s time when all I got was problems, and then, all of a sudden, the skies cleared, and the walls started to shimmer… And for about a month now, everything’s been running smoothly and without much lag.
Forget about the FPS value.
Also, I’d like to point out that the FPS value doesn’t have to be sky-high all the time. Personally, when I notice something being off, the FPS has dropped below 10. It’s always been like that. I don’t even notice anything being weird until the FPS drops below 10.
With the new Firestorm, yes, sometimes I’m going near that, but my view distance is set to 216, and I have “everything” enabled. (Why 216? I’m a Mainland girl, and I like to see my neighbor’s cr…. It’s often even too much distance.) Then again, I’ve seen FPS numbers the like I didn’t know were possible, something like 130 or more. I can’t recall the actual record number. Who even needs that? :p
The point is that the FPS isn’t God’s word. It’s largely a vanity metric.
Second Life will always be Second Life, but…
We all know Second Life will always be a bit testy; you have to love it to put up with its BS at times, but as far as Firestorm goes, they’ve improved fast and by a lot. I understand that if your laptop wasn’t meant for gaming to begin with, or it’s getting old, then, yeah, you’re probably out of luck or out of pocket. Still, I figure everyone’s Bug Splats have done their job, and they’ve got enough information on what will go wrong, so at least on my part, I can say I’m in love with Firestorm again.
And PBR materials! Ah! Metal that looks like metal. <3 But I digress.
Try it. It might be well worth it. 🙂
