I spent the last couple of days using the CtrlAltStudio viewer.
It felt the most comfortable, because it is based on the Firestorm viewer.
So most of the things I use on a daily basis were easily located and used.
The last update came out on 3/18/2015, so the viewer seems to be fairly current.
It was a pretty quick and easy download – I was up and running in no time.
The first difference I noted was the color scheme.
I must say, I like the purple. 🙂
I know you can change skins in Firestorm, I just never have.
In reading through the information on their website, CtrlAltStudio seems to have a lot of possibilities.
It has Oculus Rift DK2 support, if you’re interested in that.
It also has stereoscopic 3D options and the ability to use your Xbox 360 controller and/or Kinect to move around.
(A lot of that information was way too technical for me to follow, so if you want to know more, just visit their website.)
I will say, based on a few experiments, that it does seem to handle graphics better than Firestorm.
A few days ago I went to The Black Fair – my FPS went from 50+ to less than 3. -.-
Not good when you are trying to walk around and shop.
Normally when I take pictures with Firestorm, I will turn on anisotropic filtering and then bump my anti-aliasing up to 16x.
However, there is always a few sec delay while the hi-res pic refreshes.
With CtrlAltStudio, I didn’t get the same delay with the refresh.
So I tried going back to The Black Fair to see what kind of FPS I would get with CtrlAltStudio.
I averaged about 13 FPS (as opposed to 3), and I realized after returning home that I had left the anisotropic filtering on and the anti-aliasing bumped up.
Then I tried to open Photoshop while still running the viewer with everything bumped up.
With Firestorm, I will almost always crash if I open Photoshop with everything still turned up from taking photos.
CtrlAltStudio didn’t have any issues.
I was able to post-process a couple of photos with the viewer still running at max.
So CtrlAltStudio may become an either/or viewer for me.
It’s enough like Firestorm that I am very comfortable using it, but it seems to put less load on my system, which means I can get more work done more quickly.
Next up: Black Dragon
A Kat and A Mouse 