Firestorm's New Alt. Cloud Maps Make SL Skies Awesome

So this is not a realist painting, but an untouched screenshot from Second Life -- yes it is, yes it is:

The artist known as Whiskey Monday sent it to me, because it's the original of this image she posted on her blog right here, which is much more dramatic, because she ran it through the Photoshop paces. But don't you agree, the original looks great too? This is because she's not using the standard Second Life viewer to take the screenshot. For as she tells me:

"Firestorm introduced Vincent Nacon’s alternative cloud maps in this last release. There are four cloud tga files to choose from, and they're far more realistic and robust than the normal viewer clouds. Ziki Questi did a great blog post with examples of each type of cloud.

She's using these clouds to create a new series which is on-view in-world soon:

"I've been working on a series of unconventional landscapes for a show I have opening this week at Kelly Yap Art Gallery." (Direct teleport at this link.) "The show is called E-scapes," she says, smiling. "Get it? I wanted to create landscapes that went against the normal design rules of landscape photography. I didn't want restful images, I wanted restless, evocative shots. But I wanted these shots to be different from my normal work." And thanks in part to Mr. Nacon, so they are.

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Comments

[Adeon Writer]

I don't want to sound like a bitter, cranky Wackadoodle who can't stand Firestorm getting attention, but.. Firestorm wadn't the first to swap out LL's... bad default cloud textures with better ones. Niran's viewer made better ones a while back with no news coverage. :(

[Rowan Derryth]

Really lovely image Whiskey!

In other news, how can we get Hamlet to stop calling these screen shots?

[Dawny Daviau]

That is in our viewers for years! And also in our current Kirstens S19.

[Kirstenlee]

Lovely feature heard about it from Torley and visited the originators content, added to kirstens viewer 10th of July, 2011. Nice to see Firestorm catching up :D

[Metacam Oh]

Imagine what people could do if they weren't limited to SL's closed walled garden closed source sealed up fort knox code base

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Umm, Metacan? By it's very nature the SL client IS open source...It's how they were able to do this in the first place. Perhaps instead of putting these things in their pet project third party viewer they should have submitted the patch to Snowstorm Development...then it would be in ALL the viewers (except V1 based ones), because all viwers are based on that grandfather code. Then it would benefit ALL SL users.

[zzpearlbottom]

Yes, funny how only when it reached Firestorm some that is being used already for so long worth a blog's notice!
Will love to see the next survey about viewers usage on SL, i bet Singularity will be the biggest suprise!

[zzpearlbottom]

Hoo and congrats, Kristin's viewer works flawless in Open sim!
And being a v1 interface and now with Rlv in, i bet is a good choice for the ones that still refuse to try V3 interface viewers!
Still, notice that Firestorm really did a great job on Open sim being latest version the most reliable that i found that can allws to see mesh (Imprudence is still the 1 that any needs to use when regarding open sim and xml imports exports!)

[Metacam Oh]

Open source the server Crono.

[Archangel Mortenwold]

Wait, there's a sky visible on Firestorm? From what I've read on the blog, many users are experiencing a black screen when they log onto Firestorm, and the claimed fix doesn't work consistently, if at all.

I'm still on Phoenix, and Singularity. Phoenix now gives me error messages when I use map-prim teleporting, try to sit on objects, and when I join or leave groups, but otherwise it still works. Singularity now has server side baking capability, and if they can manage to fix the type font issues and improve their building and scripting features, I'll move to that full time.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Metacam, as far as I know they can't open source the server otherwise that would lead to people trying to make hacked clients that would give them advantages knowning the proprietary stuff in the LL server code. Also as far as I know..none of the "little worlds" with their own currency open source their own server variants. They may use opensim as a base but they don't allow everyone to touch their code.

If you want to host your own region there's opensim...sure you can't connect it to SL, but SL is LL's sandbox. their sandbox their rules. You don't like their rules, go elsewhere.

But no one really goes because SL has something all those "little worlds" don't....people...lots and lots of people. As much as you (and sometimes I) complain about LL and SL...yourself, myself and others are still here. Oh you might have a presence on Kitely or some opensim place hosted in some nerds basement...but SL is where the action is...no matter what ZZ(whatever) says.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Gorgeous image!

@Archangel Mortenwold

Never fear - there is a brave saviour ready to step in and save your Phoenix!
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/alternative-sl-clients/82358-who-wants-phoenix-viewer-code.html ;)

[zzpearlbottom]

I never denied that Sl is where the action is!
But that there are other places where there is action as well!
The truth id that its communites that makes the Worlds and Sl community is still an amazing one.
Unfortunatly Sl community has to deal with LL, not a easy deal for sure!
And i for sure will not blame firestorm team for the lack or later implemtation on their viewer of many features!
If one has to be blamed is me, for trying to make clear that there is other Worlds and other viewers!

[Keiran]

We've been waiting for Nimble to be implemented since 2007. Why is LL so slow?