The is my second attempt at summarizing what has happened in Second Life™ in the last month. Last month and this month I used A.I. to find websites that cover Second Life™ technology. I’ve culled several of the June A.I. picks for source information and added others.
Mobile App Updates: The Second Life Mobile app, still in Beta for Premium and Premium Plus users, continued to evolve with performance enhancements and bug fixes. No specific July 2025 updates were announced. June 2025 updates highlighted features like the Lobby for quick access to chats, friends, events, and blog posts. Also Linden Reward Streaks for earning free Linden Dollars daily. These updates likely saw minor refinements in July.
Over the years I have seen Second Life™ and the viewers we use change. Computers, screens, speakers, joysticks, and video cards have all advanced as well. But when things go wrong the types of problems and how to troubleshoot them has remained mostly the same. And when it comes to “which viewer” they are all the same for troubleshooting purposes.
We now have Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it is advancing. It is possible to use AI to help troubleshoot. But it can add some complication. But give it a try.
Troubleshooting with Firestorm Viewer
Here I’ll cover the basic and advanced steps needed to troubleshoot issues. Basic understanding of where a problem may exist can save you days of work… literally
Do you actually have a problem?
There are ‘problems’ and there are ‘glitches’. Problems are persistent. Glitches are transitory. They do not repeat, consistently.
Glitches are fixed by shutting down the viewer and relaunching. This is normally the first step in troubleshooting. Some glitches confuse Windows/Apple operating systems and the computer needs to be restarted, second step a issue persists. Network glitches are fixed by restarting your modem/router/gateway device, often the third step.
The point here is these steps are easy and quick.
If after the restarts the problem persists then you have a ‘problem’.
I thought I would try some AI scanning to gather SL news on a monthly basis. This is what I found for June.
SL Mobile: Grumpity and Philip point out that work continues on the rendering capability of mobile devices. There has been a 10x increase in people signing up and onboarding via mobile and Project Zero. Nice.
Homes: A new neighborhood, Ridgewood Enclave, is planned for Premium+ members. The availability of commercial regions tied to the new homes is mentioned. Also, some refurbishing of existing home themes is planned. Some PBR updates to existing themes is mentioned.
Gacha: OK, most of us know Gatcha is back. Some of use think that is a good thing. I have my doubts.
Still undecided on what to do with this blog. I use it for historical reference. Stuff like when the Lab introduced mesh and other historical references.
I play more in Second Life now. I put more photos into the Second Life(TM) Forum. I only pay a ‘little’ attention to what is happen technically in SL. There are big changes; mirrors, PBR, new scripting language… and more. Still it seems to be happening at a slower pace, at least in my perception. So, I’ve left the technical reporting to Inara.
SL22B
I used the Destination Guide to grab a Land Mark (SLURL) to get into SL22B. I saw the Observatory listedd and was fascinated by the image. I wanted to see that thing. So… I go looking.
When I TP’d in I was at that location and the ‘thing’ was right there. But it wasn’t twisting and rotating as in the promo image. So I didn’t immediately connect the location and ‘thing’. Duh!
2/4/2025 – Update. I finally took time to make a quick patch. There is more left to do. Basically PHP and Python updates make my thyme obsolete. I’ll have to decide if I keep the blog and update the thyme or move on. Decisions, decisions…
I don’t blog as much as I used to. So, I don’t keep the back side of this site updated as well as I should. Go Daddy hosting has an incentive to get customers to update. They charge more to let one run older versions.
So this is a quick update to avoid additional charges. I am not particularly happy with the look and most of my plugins no longer work. But the articles are readable. I can post new stuff… if I get round to it.
The problem is in the PHP version I was running. Also, I have some custom pages I built that need some code updates. Seems the new PHP (the software language that the site operates on) has some language differences to improve security. It has been long enough since I wrote my custom pages the less secure commands have progressed from ‘depreciated’ to ‘deleted’. Ouch!
I’ll be working on the site. Getting new versions of my plugins working and eliminating whichever one was crashing my site.
This will take some time.
You can find me in SL and on the SL Forum. I often post in Your Avatar. I think it would be fun to meet you there.
October 22, 2024 the Firestorm Team released a new version of their viewer: 7.1.11.
I am running 7.1.9, their initial PBR release. I’ve had a few minor problems and it is a little slow. But not so slow as to be frustrating. If I were still playing in SL’s combat games, I would probably be complaining. The FPS numbers and comparison to a previous version is here: Firestorm Viewer 7.1.9.74745 PBR.
I skipped the version 7.1.10. I wasn’t excited about it and… I have been playing with Alchemy Viewer.
The Firestorm blog is Announcing Firestorm 7.1.11. You can read more details there. And Inara has her review of the viewer up: Firestorm 7.1.11: DeltaFPS. So, I am only providing some empirical performance numbers.
Location
FPS v.11 Desk
FPS v.9
Porch 512m
30*
51
Porch 128m
45*
46
Green Room @ 2200m DD=128m
112
119
Nelsonia 4peps @ DD= 128m
64
Arapaima 9peps @ 128m
55
Exhale Club 68peps @ 128m
30
*Weird. Making measurements this time I noticed a difference. FPS numbers start low and S L O W L Y build to a max. Getting to the max value took several minutes more than a couple of times. Also, when I switch away to another app the viewer gives up CPU cycles to the other app. A good thing… but coming back to the viewer I experience another slow build to the max FPS.
Also, one time I would get one set of numbers and another time a much different set of numbers. So, I got horrible numbers, OK numbers, good numbers, and better numbers. Also, switching away from the viewer app to another app had its oddities. Mostly the FPS would start recovering from the CPU conserving mode and return to something better. But on occasion I could not get the numbers to recover.
I was scratching my head on this oddity. I tried restarting the computer and running only the viewer. While I have a load of Windows background apps running that has always been the case. So, I think the change is in the viewer. Or… PBR sucks up all the performance… but that doesn’t explain the oddities I am seeing.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be experimenting as I play in SL. If I learn what is going on, I plan to update this article. And… there is an interesting new feature coming in FS. Scroll to the end. Look for the page 2 link…
