Transitions

Life is marked by transitions. Moving from one comfortable and familiar point in time to an unexplored arena. The advent of Mesh, or at least its hint of permanence in our future lives has moved us into one of those spaces.

I installed the recent release of Firestorm 3 yesterday. Hence the morning was filled with preference changes, trying out viewer skins, seeing what improvements were included in the "not ready for release" viewer. The Firestorm release is most likely better than the official viewer, but reviews range from "can't even open" to "works better than any viewer in remembered history". So deciding if you want to give it a try will be up to your patience level.

I installed Firestorm 3 along side of Firestorm 2, changing the cache of the new version before logging in. Happily a friendly gal in the help group gave me instructions. You can reach the Preferences tab BEFORE logging into the viewer -- just choose "Viewer" on the top menu. My only real issue is continuous freezing if I try to turn on Depth of Field. There are many improvements -- to my mind at least. The only worrisome change for me is the very different Windlight interface. That I will have to look at more carefully, but at first glance it seemed to be missing sliders. Perhaps they have only moved. Here's hoping.

Other big news on the viewer scene is the sudden closing of Kirstens viewer. Sadly, it will be no more -- at least in the foreseeable future. That viewer has gone on hiatus before so hopefully it will return, being one of the most cutting edge options around, it will be missed.

So, MESH, a change of viewers because of mesh, and a lessening of viewer choices in the near future. Transition.

I expected designers to be returning more noticeably now that Fall has begun. Perhaps they are merely getting ready for fashion week, or they could be working on their mesh skills *wink*.  I of course opened all my saved mesh articles when I was testing the viewer yesterday. Sadly most of them didn't come close to fitting me. As I suspected, this is going to be THE problem for mesh -- at least as clothes go. If I was still making clothes I might be wondering how long old-style goods would be sought after. As a consumer, I am thinking quite awhile.

While some of the mesh items are very impressive, there is still room for beautifully rendered textures. I will say that  PixelDolls released some really lovely mesh earrings, so if you are in the market, best check those out even before I get around to putting together a mesh outfit.

NEW stuff I am wearing:

~Sassy!~ Succubus - Twisted Unseelie Hunt Gift (comes with horns, tail and stockings not shown)
Ramya*TRACY* BROWN KISSED skin (fanciful eye-makeup is not part of the skin). This is only one part of a whole avatar set which includes an outfit (mesh), some beautifully textured VERY high-heeled bootlets (mesh), and my favorite -- a steampunk blindfold (mesh). All free as a NEW group gift.  See this post for the SLURL to the gift vendor. A group joiner is right next to the gift. Again, this is a NEW gift and the skin is also different from the one earlier in the week.


Poses by: LAP from the new So and So set (made for guys, works great for me)