Second Life News Week 13

From the Second Life™ Third Party Developers User Group meeting we have some news this week. Mostly update stuff.

Viewer Managed Marketplace

Brooke Linen says testing is going well and performance is good. There is a persistent problem with viewer, sim, marketplace communication. They are working on that. Brooke is thinking a couple of weeks to solve the problem.

Escapdes Island Duck
Escapdes Island Duck by Ciaran Laval, on Flickr

Jessica Lyon is deciding whether to try an include VMM or release FS without it. Being pressed Brooke pointed out they need to get two server updates through testing and rolled to the grid. Then they will start pushing the viewer. So, the road to VVM could be a couple of months long. 

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Firestorm Viewer Update

The release date is getting pushed back… again… So, they are looking at a beta release then quickly (?) followed by a main release. So, we will probably see a beta viewer released in April. When will the main release appear? No one knows. I am guessing May…

Ever
Ever by Strawberry Singh, on Flickr

While the FS Viewer has caught up with the SL Viewer code-wise, they can’t release the viewer yet as they are still fighting problems. Some FS testers are finding many more problems with the internal FS QA release than with the SL Viewer. The basic complaints are slow rez, some objects never rez, and there are more attachments dropped on teleport problems.

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Second Life: Firestorm Viewer Delayed?

Jessica Lyons was planning on releasing a new version toward the end of March. But, some of the things the Lab is releasing, she wants to get in this coming viewer release. The only way to do that is to delay the release. So, expect the release to slide back 2 to 4 weeks, mid to end of April.

If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine
If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine by Charlie Namiboo, on Flickr

Oz Linden says the viewer side of Hover and Experience Tools are viewer side stable. So, the FS Team could start building those into FS. They have been holding off, busy with other stuff too, waiting for these to finalize. Oz is saying they pretty much have stabilized and the hold up is on the server side. 

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Firestorm TTT – Clean Install 2015

Hopefully by now you know TTT is Firestorm’s Tool Tip Tuesday. This week Jessica walks people through the process of performing a clean install. First step is backing up your Firestorm Viewer ‘s chat logs and settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gc0dBfVGJ0

None of the steps for a clean install are technically difficult for the intermediate computer user. However, if you are not used to working with files and navigating the hard disk, I suspect you will be in over your head. Copy-Paste, Move, and disk navigation using the Windows File Explorer (and Mac equivalent) are required skills.

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Firestorm’s Tool Tip Tuesday 09

It was Tuesday again. Seems to happen every week. This last Tuesday another FS Tip came out.

In this one Jessica is teaching us about the command line available in the Firestorm Viewer’s chat. This is one of the way neat things about the Firestorm Viewer. There are plenty of neat features. But, this command line thing is something power users will likely use several times per login secession.

These tip videos are getting about 9,000+ views after a couple of weeks. This is a very small percentage of the Firestorm users. Since Firestorm is used by more than half, closer to three-quarters, of the users of Second Life that means very few people know about TTT Videos. Pass around the link to the YouTube Channel.

Firestorm’s Tuesday Tip 2015-08

This week is the power users tool: Contact Sets. They have a 6 minute video.

This is a must know tool for those team combat games. It allows you create groups of people and to set those people to show as a specific color on the mini-map.

If you work with lots of people in any way, this is a tool that will make life easier.

The tip from 2 weeks ago, Auto Replace, has been watched about 9,000 times. Last week’s tip, People Panel, is showing about 3,000 views. This is not a lot of people considering the number of people using Firestorm.

If you point people to SL tutorials, please add this YouTube channel to your list of place to refer people to.