Firestorm – Page 34 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Firestorm Viewer News 2014-7

2014/02/17 by Nalates Urriah

There is a load of new information about what is going on with the Firestorm Viewer. Some is great and you will be happy. Some of the news is a real downer and depressing. Mac users are going to be crying. Sorry…

Firestorm Viewer Releases

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From the TPV Meeting Jessica said her team hopes to have the HTTP changes merged in, QA’d and released by March 9. The key word in that is ‘hopes’. Then they will have a couple of months work to do before there next release (in May?).

By early next week (8) they will have a version of the HTTP code merged with Firestorm and out to FS beta testers. But, things are not simple. Read on.

HTTP Coming

HTTP is the project that deals with how the viewer and SL servers talk to each other. Monty Linden has been fixing the Linden code that deals with these communication problems.

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Firestorm Viewer Q&A January

2014/02/08 by Nalates Urriah

The Firestorm team has not been announcing their Q&A meetings. At least not in such a way that a non-fan-boy would notice. But, a recent post (2/7) announces postponing the planned meeting until this coming Friday (2/15).

The time will be 4 PM SLT. The location is the Firestorm Support Island. These meetings can run long, a couple of hours or more.

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Jessica Lyon says, “I expect we will have more solid info by the 15th for you along with some great news!

So our next Q&A will be Saturday, February 15th, at 4PM SLT. We hope to see lots of you there—exciting things are coming!”

This meeting comes the day after the SL Third Party Viewers Developer meeting. So, we may hear some interesting news.

At the recent Beta Server UG meeting the Lindens said again there are projects in the works they cannot talk about. When the Lab is quite this long, there is usually something up. Whether things are slow because Rod is leaving and was wrapping things up, we don’t know. I think the Lab develops plans, short and long term. So, work would not slow or direction drift because the CEO was leaving. The plans would keep everyone moving. A new CEO may change directions and priorities. That might cause a lull in releases, but I doubt it in the Lab’s case.

FireStorm Team Q&A 2014-2

2014/01/12 by Nalates Urriah

The Video

The last Q&A, Jan 11, was recorded by Chakat Northspring and placed on YouTube. It runs about 2 hours. I’ve covered the parts I found interesting. The video is not edited, that would be a big job, so it is hard for me to sit through. Too much dead air. I am happy Chakat recorded it, as these meetings are not announced until shortly before they start, making it hard to know about them and get there. This seems to be the Firestorm team’s way of avoiding an over loaded region for the meeting.

[youtube Hk74R3Dsh_Q]

Firestorm Support

Ed Merryman at Saturday’s Firestorm Questions and Answer secession spoke about their support volunteers. They are not paid. Therefore, they are not assigned shifts. But, they will be trying to provide one-on-one support to those needing help.

Fitted Mesh and Firestorm

2014/01/12 by Nalates Urriah

When is the next Firestorm release? According to Ed Merryman: when it is ready.

The next Firestorm release is waiting on Linden code for the new Inventory API’s. These are changes that improve inventory loading speed and reliability. They are changes that are targeted at fixing the last of the avatar bake fail problems.

Fitted

If you use Firestorm, or any Second Life capable viewer not yet updated for Fitted Mesh (meaning most viewers), and come across someone wearing Fitted Mesh, depending on how it was made, you may see parts of the item stretching off toward the southwest corner of the region.

It is thought there is a fix for the problem prior to the roll out of Fitted Mesh. The problem is caused because the avatar used by Fitted Mesh viewers is different than for non-Fitted Mesh viewers. There are additional bones in the skeleton. If your viewer doesn’t know about those bones, it does not know what to do with clothes that use the new bones. The result is vertices in the clothes are moved toward the 0,0,0 coordinate of the region (the southwest corner).

Second Life News 2013-49

2013/12/02 by Nalates Urriah

There will be a roll out Tuesday morning. The package running on Blue Steel and Le Tigre will get promoted to the main change. This is the one that includes the vehicle region crossing fix. RC Update Wednesday there will a single package rolling out to all three RC channels. This package contains a fix … Read more

Firestorm to Start Blocking Viewers

2013/11/18 by Nalates Urriah

Jessica Lyon, the project manager for the Firestorm Viewer, posted that they will begin blocking older versions of their viewers. Jessica is anticipating the drama this will bring on. By her writing you can tell she is expecting a chorus for complaints one might hear from a 10-year old trying to manipulate their parents. I suspect she is right.

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Jessica points out they have little choice. It is either the Firestorm team blocking or the Lab will take over blocking. I’m not sure that is completely accurate. But, I can see how some will see things that way. In general the Lab does not block viewers. But, if you use the newer viewers you really don’t have a choice about updating your viewer. It automatically updates by default. But, that can be turned off.

There are mandatory updates that the Lab requires from time to time. I expect as some of the current changes being made allow better overall SL performance, which are viewer dependent, more updates are going to be mandatory. So, whether there is a misconception about what is and is not going to be blocked and by who, you are going to be updating your viewer or find yourself unable to login. Otherwise you will be degrading other people’s performance.