Firestorm Particle Issue

[Caete]

I've used Firestorm for years. For a few years I've used the rain/snow from DoDO with no problems. Rez it out, move it around to not have snow in my house. Works wonderfully. Until this year when I rezzed it last week and moved it around and the snow would fall for about 20 seconds and then freeze, hovering in the air. No script errors. Fresh copies, same issue. So I packed it up and sent a question about this new behavior to the creator. Today, checking out a FLF snow fall, I noticed it also had stopped falling as I was browsing the shop. Different sim, merchant and account, same behavior. So I got an idea, loaded the official viewer and logged in. I fire up the snow, works as advertised. Ten minutes later, still working fine. I log in on Firestorm and after a few seconds, particles freeze again.

So obviously this is a Firestorm settings issue but I don't tinker with them so anyone have any ideas what I need to change/reset in Firestorm to fix this issue?

 

[Cristiano]

This is on the latest release of Firestorm that just came out?

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Weird, there nothing in the particle implementation that would allow them to "freeze" in place as far as I know.

Some effects have an "emitter shutdown" timer, (1-60sec, or 0 for never), and it might be that a change to the implementation is having the entire effect halt when that expires, rather than letting the remaining bursts proceed to expire normally. Or some variation of that.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Firestorm on Linux, working just fine for me:

nov_28_2025_005 by cronocloudcreeggan, on Flickr

My Graphics settings:

My system:

Spoiler

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700F (800 MHz)
Memory: 64039 MB (Used: 10044 MB)
Concurrency: 28
OS Version: Linux 6.17.8-200.fc42.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Nov 14 04:52:44 UTC 2025 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 8151 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Detected): 8151 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Budget): Unlimited
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 580.105.08

 

[Caete]

This is on the latest release of Firestorm that just came out?

7.2.2.79439 using Win 11. Drivers are all up to date. Meanwhile Second Life Release 7.2.2.18475198968 (64bit) works fine, I just hate how it differs in appearance and lack the patience nowdays to fix it. so to speak.

My rig:
CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13980HX (2419.2 MHz)
Memory: 65225 MB (Used: 447 MB)
Concurrency: 32
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 26100.4946)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 16376 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Detected): 16376 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Budget): Unlimited

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 32.0.15.8180
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 581.80

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1w zlib/1.3.1.zlib-ng nghttp2/1.62.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v8.6
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.03.07
Dullahan: 1.14.0.202408091639
CEF: 118.4.1+g3dd6078+chromium-118.0.5993.54
Chromium: 118.0.5993.54
LibVLC Version: 3.0.21
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer Skin: Firestorm (Grey)
Window size: 1920x1171 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 152 m
Bandwidth: 3000 kbit/s
LOD factor: 4
Render quality: High (5/7)
Disk cache: Max size 8832.0 MB (6.7% used)
Built with MSVC version 1944
November 29 2025 09:23:28 SLT

 

[Caete]

Also, just to prove to myself I'm not crazy lol. Here is what I see upon logging in with the SL viewer:
All is acting as it should be.
Now to Firestorm:
All is not well, snow not falling at log in, randomly stops, restarts as well yet overall is a hard no snowfalling.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

That clears things up a bit... those aren't actually particles at all. They're Animated Textures.

Both are rendered client side. (meaning SL sends a set of rules to your viewer, and the entire particle effect/animated texture is updated/animated entirely within your own computer. It could look different to every person present, based on when they started looking at the effect).

This thread seems to be talking about the same issue you're seeing, sorry I don't have anything more helpful. =}

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/528957-firestorm-nearby-animated-textures-stop-after-a-very-brief-time/

 

[Caete]

That clears things up a bit... those aren't actually particles at all. They're Animated Textures.

Both are rendered client side. (meaning SL sends a set of rules to your viewer, and the entire particle effect/animated texture is updated/animated entirely within your own computer. It could look different to every person present, based on when they started looking at the effect).

This thread seems to be talking about the same issue you're seeing, sorry I don't have anything more helpful. =}

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/528957-firestorm-nearby-animated-textures-stop-after-a-very-brief-time/

Ah thanks for clarifying it up. I've actually tested 7.1.13.78266 on a Win 10 laptop and it works. I just downgraded my current laptop on Win 11 to Firestorm 7.1.13.78266 and the textures are working. Seems to be a viewer issue/bug/feature with the most recent one. I added my findings to that thread. Thanks again!

 

[Cristiano]

The latest beta of Firestorm that just came out yesterday has this in the notes:

FIRESTORM BETA 2025.07 beta 1

- Animated textures
• Fix for animated textures occasionally stopping even when the texture size remained valid. Off-screen textures will still pause, but should resume smoothly with less visible stutter when coming back into view.