Firestorm PBR Viewer Online

 

 Last week on Thursday June 20, Firestorm announced on their blog that their latest viewer version, the 6.6.17 viewer, was out, one that could view PBR (Physical Based Rendering) content. This includes some high detail content, and mirror surfaces. 

It is time! After nearly seven months of testing and seeking bug fixes and merging improvements and features, we are unleashing the Firestorm PBR viewer today. PBR was first released by Linden Lab back in November 2023. We have been working with them to help ensure that bugs and glitches in those early releases were addressed before we passed it on. Since then many improvements have been made, not just in the performance and stability but with new features such as realistic mirrors and better terrain. It is now time to pass all that on, and we felt that there was no better occasion to do this than just before the SL21B celebrations, where—I have been told by someone who got an early insight—”some of the best builds I have ever seen in Second Life” have been created.

 

They listed a "timeline of release notes and updates" to help keep track of what features were under development and when.

I downloaded the new viewer, and I went to a place where there was some PBR content: The Shop and Hop. The hallways separating the sims, I had noticed panels with wavy gray patterns before. With the new Firestorm viewer, they took shape as leafy plants. 

 

Someone (I forget the name) pointed out a place where I could see a PBR mirror. I went there, and I went to my Preferences and made sure "Mirrors" were active. And it worked. 

But, it wasn't perfect. Lag seemed to be slightly worse, and I couldn't get water surfaces to reflect. Firestorm admitted there would be problems for many, "This is a big step."

I don’t want to underplay the enormity of this change from the 6.6.17 viewer. The visual experience will be drastically different, and for some, it will take some getting used to. The hardware demands will be quite different, too, and you will have to make some (sometimes significant) changes to your “normal settings” to get the best out of your experience.

A lot of why we have held back is to try to get ahead of many of the bug fixes and issues that we knew would dominate the support teams time. While this release is certainly a lot more stable than early PBR viewers and I would say it is probably as stable as any previous viewer, the bugs and annoyances that you will experience will be different and new, and people naturally worry about this. Our support team will be working very hard to help you all through this transition ...

And bugs there were. The very first to comment wrote, "Being on an older computer it was horrific, more useless SL bells and whistles..." another went "I am going to be perfectly and brutally honest, its worst. From what I have seen the settings are changed into a way that the reflections became more unreal then before, the water is horrible" A marketing manager for a boat show wrote, "this is just AWFUL. What terrible timing. ALL the vendor’s semi-transparent sails are now ruined and need to be redone... the water is purple, and the foliage all has a blue-purple fringe at the transparent edges ... Worse yet, I had to clear my cache to get my slide-show textures to load and finally display properly. And, of course, the average attendee doesn’t have the skills to get into their settings to clear the cache or turn down settings to even make the boat show remotely viable."

Two friends of mine reported trouble. One told me she experienced bad lag at the SL21B, worse than last year, and when looking at another friend's PBR mirror she crashed. Former Newser writer Grease Coakes told me he had so much trouble crashing at the SL21B trying to play music, and had problems going back to May, he made the decision to leave SL with no plans on coming back.

So it seems we have a viewer update with much to offer. But it seems work to fix the bugs is needed. 

Readers with problems (and praises) are encouraged to make a comment below.

Bixyl Shuftan