This past week has seen the arrival of the second new Firestorm viewer in a few weeks. Yes OK the last one was at the beginning of December last but it seemed a shorter period than it really was (Covid isolation does funny things to your sense of time). Firestorm 6.4.13 brought the biggest change to RLVa for years, Kitty Barnett’s “setsphere” code. This is not Vision Spheres and as Kitty has long insisted, it is much more than simply a vision blocker. On her Catznip Blog, Kitty sets out the function for all to see and for creators to work into their items.
https://wiki.catznip.com/index.php?title=RLVa_RFC_setsphere shows just what can be achieved by this function and Marine Kelley quickly adopted the code for her RR Blindfolds which now dispense with HUD objects for vision blocking.
It should be noted that setsphere is NOT Vision spheres and unless the items are specifically scripted to recognise the setsphere code in Firestorm’s RLVa API, you will not see anything. So far I have acquired a fully updated Deluxe Blindfold (thankyou Marine Kelley for this) all RR Blindfolds can be updated to this format now and if you wish to experience the new RLVa you WILL need to update your restraints. I can report that the new code works flawlessly but as much due to the new EEP code as anything else, you DO need a reasonably powerful GPU, since the render code used is fairly demanding.
On that point I must make it clear; EEP is here to stay and much like the change to Windlight render code back in 2008, it will make some GPUs especially integrated ones struggle. This was obvious when Firestorm adopted EEP rendering with their Public Beta 6.4.5, which was NOT well received. Firestorm 6.4.12, the “full release” version was better, but not by much. The current version, 6.4.13, is a considerable improvement, incorporating revised code from LL and some fixes from the FS developers, but it still puts much more load on the rendering engine and hence the GPU capability of a user’s computer. That will improve in time, EEP is not yet a finished function, even after 3 years of development, 2 of which have seen it in general use!
My overall verdict is that for many this is a superb viewer, but Firestorm is by no menas the all conquering operation that it once was: other viewers do many of the things that Firestorm does at least as well, but I do not think that there is a better “all round” viewer. Being a long-time Firestormer, maybe I am biassed but I find this viewer does everything I want it to do really well and the addition of this new RLVa code has filled the one niche that I felt was lacking. It is an abiding pity that there is now such apathy within the Firestorm project for the RLVa aspect (it is NOT all about BDSM for heaven’s sake!), but withall that, this is a great advance for those prepared to upgrade.
There is and will be for some time a great wailing and gnashing of teeth about the merits and demerits of EEP vs Windlight (I for one think it is utterly unneccessary) but it is here to stay and we had better get used to it. I think I have already.