The dude that sent me the snapshots for my last post asked if he could work with me on a comparison of the Phoenix & Firestorm viewers on his Mac. I thought this would be a good time to evaluate the two, so I agreed and he sent me 2 images that he took on his Mac. PC snapshots will have to wait until I find someone brave enough to try installing Firestorm.
This is the official Firestorm release. As you can see it is very close to Linden Lab Viewer 3. If you are used to the Viewer 1 interface, you are going to have a tough time locating menus that were previously easy to find. Instead of text labels that identify which buttons perform what function, you have icons. If you do not know what those icons are supposed to do, you have an annoying pop-up box appear and tell you.
This is the newest version of Phoenix Viewer, that now includes mesh capability. The buttons for various functions are all arranged at top and bottom of the screen, with easy to read text labels instead of ambiguous icons the function of which you have to guess at. The chat box at bottom has lots of space to see what you are typing, whereas on Firestorm you get this tiny little box that's relegated to the corner.
The graphics engine looks like it hasn't changed, so that is a plus. I always liked the Phoenix graphics engine over other TPV's. I was not told how stability factored into using each Viewer, so that will have to wait for another post.
