Friends-Grid.com News
Made at Nov 09 2026 7:37AM
Edited Nov 09 2026 7:37AM
Viewer Review - Aurora
I decided to try a new viewer this week and I want to share the results. I have said for a very long time Firestorm is the problem in Opensim, but never had proof. Now I have proof! This viewer is called Aurora and it can be found here Aurora viewer. Aurora is not like Firestorm, Maze or Wolf. It is built using Vulkan rendering instead of OpenGL. OpenGL is what firestorm has always used and it is very crash prone. Wolf is now switching to Vulkan after seeing these results. Lets talk about the good, the bad and the ugly.
The last 3 days I spent over 24 hours online and made over 200 teleports, both in grid and hypergrid. I was replacing tp boards and that job normally involves at least 10 crashes. I have not had a single crash! I can zoom in on world map...no crashing......this is amazing! A note regarding teleporting: in region is instant....outside of region can be slow.....5 seconds...but it has yet to crash on me. The slow teleports were frustrating, but much better than crashes.
The format is totally different than Firestorm...and I have said my share of bad words trying to find things. If you use this viewer you will have a learning curve. an example is I was trying to move something inside a building and I couldnt. It took a few AI searches but here is what I learned: Aurora has a feature that makes a moving object sit flush against nearby objects and prevents it from passing through them. Purple guides appear where their faces meet.I found it in Aurora’s current source code—the control is labelled “Snap,” with choices “Off / Grid / Objects.” My earlier wording wasn’t precise enough.
1. Right-click your prim → Edit.
2. Click the gear icon in the build/edit window. Its tooltip is Construction settings.
3. Find Snap and select Off. If Snap already appears directly in your editor, change it there.
This was extremely frustrating, but getting used to it now.
Performance - Aurora claims speeds of up to 300 fps! Might be possible on a new $10k gaming machine, but not average. My speeds ranged from 30-120fps....so it was still better than firestorm. Aurora also has a built in stats page so you can see how your system is doing.
Photography - Aurora is far Superior on the tests I have done
This is going to be my daily viewer because of the lack of crashes and the awesome World map. For others, you may prefer not having to learn a new interface and you simply put up with those. Feel free to reach out if you have questions