I am an awful coward about new viewers.
Because I need to use Second Life for work, when I have a viewer that – basically – works for me, I tend to cling to it with a passion.
For a long time, this was Imprudence which was blessedly stable. I was never tempted by Emerald but, when it finally declined gracefully (although it has lately resurged), I moved over to Firestorm and quickly fell in love with its bells and whistles. Nevertheless, I tend to be a bit conservative about updating – I will wait till friends have tested it and reported that it’s safe.
But I have been seduced. I bought Kayle Matzerath’s Atelier, which I raved about in a previous post, and even a quickly dive into the official Second Life viewer to take pics told me that I was missing out. I knew it used materials, normal maps and specular maps … but oh my. Oh …my.
The difference is stunning.
So this morning I drew a deep breath and downloaded the beta version of Firestorm. Yes, I had been seduced so far. And you can see the results here. Both pictures were taken from the same angle, using the same windlight. The only different is the Advanced Lighting model (and thus materials).
And in case you are wondering – I was turned off the official Second life viewer by Version 2 (like so many) and after that have only used it as a back-up. Nowadays, I find the chat system cumbersome – I prefer the flexibility of Firestorm.
Anyway – let’s do a jigsaw (note that for jigsaws to work, I have to lighten the image before making the jigsaw – I do that using curves in Photoshop).
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Catch up with your Prim Perfect jigsaws (showing images of Second Life and other virtual worlds).
If you’d like to submit a photo of your own to feature as a jigsaw, send it to the Prim Perfect Flickr Group. It should be sized 800w x 600h, or else it will need to be re-sized.
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