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WARNING: This is not as scary as it looks. When you go through it, it will make sense and can be very helpful to you.

Firestorm Quick Preferences

Quick Preferences provides easy access to Windlight settings and other helpful controls. That way, you can quickly change to Midnight and turn off Name Tags for an routine.

Firestorm has great tutorials for this feature:

Don’t have the Quick Preferences button?

  1. Right-click your Toolbar, select Toolbar buttons, and a window will appear.
  2. Drag Quick Preferences to your toolbar and close the window.

Now you can use it!

How to add settings

I really hate having to dig deep into Firestorm menus to find a control that I want. And I can’t remember all of the shortcut keys in the viewer. So, I incorporate some of them into my Quick Preferences menu.

Let me demonstrate…

  1. Click the wrench button in the lower-right corner of the menu. You’re now in edit mode.
  2. Click the plus button. A NewControl control will appear.
  3. Change the name of the control in the edit field to a meaningful label. Let’s call this one Group Tags.
  4. From the drop-down menu that says === Choose ===, select the desired debug setting to control. Let’s choose NameTagShowGroupTitles.
  5. The appropriate Type setting should appear. In this case, radio buttons will appear to handle the On/Off nature of group titles (aka a Boolean value). Sliders will appear for number values, a text box will appear for a word value, etc.
  6. To save your change, close the Quick Preferences tab, then reopen it.

What can you add?

You can find a list of the debug settings at Firestorm’s website: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_debug_global and there is one at Linden Lab too http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Debug_Settings Or you can scroll through them in the Debug Settings menu under Menu Bar >> Advanced >> Show Debug Settings (shortcut is Control-Alt-Shift-S).

Yes, that list looks scary, and some of those settings will break your Firestorm viewer. But I’ve listed a few relatively safe ones above that you can play with.

  • RenderVolumeLODFactor: Control Level of Detail (LOD) on your viewer. Normally goes from 1 to 4. But sometimes 4 isn’t enough, you can change Max to 6 or 8 and then use that for shows.
  • ShadowRenderShadowDetail: Quick control of shadows. You’ll need to make this an Integer slider, Minimum of 0, Max of 2.
  • AvatarNameTagMode: Quickly turn on and off names over avatar heads.
  • NameTagShowUsernames: Quickly turn on and off usernames over avatar heads. This is useful for people who use Kanji or other glyph-heavy Display Names.
  • NameTagShowGroupTitles: Quickly turn on and off group titles over avatar heads.
  • AnimationDebug: Shows active animation over head. Great for diagnosing SpotOn.
  • AFKTimeout: Quickly set the time before you automatically go Away. Set it to 0 for never. Easier to do that opening Preferences.
  • AudioLevelMaster: Audio volume setting, in case you don’t feel like using the slider in the upper right corner.
  • AudioLevelUI: Great for turning off interface noises when you’re filming.
  • EnableVoiceChat: So I can quickly turn on and turn off voice. Yes, there’s buttons for this elsewhere, but they’re hard to click sometimes.
  • ChatConsoleFontSize & ChatFontSize: I use a 4K monitor at home, so the chat can be hard to read. Makes it easy to adjust.
  • ChatOnlineNotifications: Toggle whether “NAME is Online” appear for your friends list. When you turn this off, it will just show notifications for your Contact Lists. I use this for shows so I will only see notices for crashwatch.
  • ConsoleBackgroundOpacity: To quickly adjust the text background for Nearby Chat based on the scenery.
  • HighResSnapshot: This toggles the High-Res Snapshot option, which doubles the width and height of the frame before capturing a photo. And quickly crashing.
  • AutoLeveling: I use a Spacenavigator for my photos, and sometimes I want a weird angle for a photo. But I also want to go back to simple leveling during performances. (I’ve macroed the right button to do Control ~ for quick snapshots, but that’s for another post.)
  • PlayTypingAnim: Toggle the typing animations so you can use them socially, but stop them on stage.
  • RenderDepthOfField: So much easier than digging into preferences and finding the right tab when I want Depth of Field. The following additional settings may be useful too: CameraDoFResScale, CameraFNumber, CameraFieldOfView, CameraFocalLength, CameraMaxCoF

Other things you can do…

If you want to change the name of a control, click the wrench icon, click the control and then change the name in the edit field. (For example, you can change Draw Distance to just Draw.)

If you want to get rid of a control, click the trash can icon next to it.

If you want to reorder your controls, click a control and then click an up or down arrow in the lower-left part of the Quick Preferences menu.

And if you want to go back to your original controls, click the wrench button and then click the Reset button.

Singularity

I was asked if this can be used with Singularity… I don’t see a customization menu for Singularity’s Quick Preferences, but you can file a maintenance case over at Singularity’s site.

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