[Opensim-users] singularity vs firestorm

[Fleep Tuque]

Hi all,

Regarding a "recommended" viewer for the OpenSimulator Community
Conference, we are certainly not saying that other viewers aren't great to
use - many of them are!  And we will have a panel of viewer developers in
the Developers & Opensource track as part of the conference program,
including Firestorm and Kokua, so we'd encourage you to attend that session
to learn more about the various options available.

However, we have many newbies and people who don't have much experience
with OpenSimulator or third party viewers in general planning to attend the
event, so we needed to pick one viewer to document instructions and
settings in order to make the event as accessible as possible to people who
aren't "power users".  We also wanted to make sure our (tirelessly
hardworking) volunteer team could focus on supporting one known viewer
rather than trying to learn all the ins and outs of many viewers.

Singularity was chosen because it supports Mesh and MOAP, and because the
viewer interface is relatively uncluttered.  It may be a judgement call,
but the conference planning team reviewed all of the viewers that support
Mesh and MOAP, tested them for performance, and we made a choice based on
what we felt would offer the best, least confusing option to the least
experienced user.
I'm sure you can appreciate that it just simply wouldn't be feasible for us
to try to support every viewer out there.

We know that many experienced OpenSimulator users have their own preferred
viewer - and that's fine!  We're providing basic instructions and
connection details for other viewers as well, so anyone who feels
comfortable using a different viewer can do so, but we expect those folks
to need a lot less hand holding in general.  So long as the viewer supports
Mesh and MOAP, it should work great for the conference, and we encourage
experienced users to use whatever viewer they are most comfortable with -
it's just that we can only offer support for the one viewer we've tested,
documented, and that our volunteer team has trained on.

I think it's a strength of the OpenSimulator ecosystem that we have so many
viewers to choose from, and though we've chosen one viewer to recommend for
the conference, that is not meant to imply in any way that other viewers
aren't also good.  It's simply the logistics of trying to support hundreds
of users with varying degrees of experience.

I hope that clarifies things a bit!

Thanks,

- Chris/Fleep


Chris M. Collins (Avatar: Fleep Tuque)
Vice President, AvaCon, Inc.
275 Winthrop Street
PO Box 618
Rehoboth, MA 02769-1819
(774) 654-0010
info at avacon.org
http://avacon.org


On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 3:23 PM, Mike Chase <
mike.chase at alternatemetaverse.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 2013-08-24 at 20:03 -0400, Dr Ramesh Ramloll wrote:
> > Hello there,
> > I am wondering why singularity is a better viewer than firestorm. I
> > suppose it is because I see the opensimcc is recommending to use it.
> > Ive never used singularity. Please share your thoughts. Is the fps for
> > e.g. significantly better, shadow rendering etc... etc.. I am always
> > willing to learn more.
> > Thank you.
> > Ramesh
> >
>
> They're not better, or worse, just different.  Firestorm has some
> advantages as does Singularity.  It's really a matter of preference.
> Sort of a shame a specific viewer was "recommended" for the conference
> if it was.  I don't see a good reason for it (other than singularity
> added the conference grid but its a small matter of doing that).
>
> For the record Melanie is a commit-er on the Singularity project so she
> might be a tad biased.  Just saying.
>
> Mike
>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Opensim-users mailing list
> > Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-users mailing list
> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>
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