Firestorm – Page 36 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Second Life News 2013-30 #2

2013/07/28 by Nalates Urriah

Some of the most interesting news comes from the Third Party Developers meetings. This is not a meeting that is well publicized. I suspect many think that having just the well informed attend is more productive. I tend to agree.

This article is 2,600+ words. It has some work-around methods for some current problems that people are experiencing. It covers some of the most informative news about SL that is available.

Server Side Appearance

SSA is going extraordinary well. The stats coming in are as expected, which means the backend is performing as expected. This means the Lab’s estimates for the amount of hardware needed are going to be correct.

View adoption is going pretty well. About 75% of users have adopted an SSA capable viewer. (84% of Firestorm users – see chart) Looking at that the other way, something like a quarter million people login each day with an old viewer. Also, the numbers vary quite a bit from day to day.

Firestorm Viewer 4.4.2-34167 Released

2013/07/02 by Nalates Urriah

I see late yesterday the FS Team released viewer 4.4.2. There is an announcement on the FS Blog: Mandatory Firestorm 4.4.2 Update. This version fixes the problem of overloading the Linden stats servers. Users would not notice a problem. So, many might not update and stats indicate that would be the case. The result is this is a mandatory update.

Firestorm Viewer Download is here. Look in the right hand column, white area.

You may have found that your 4.4.1 viewer will no longer login. You get an update message on the splash screen. If you close it and attempt to login, you get another notice and the viewer does not login. If you close that one and attempt to login again, you find you are in a loop. The viewer is not going to login because the FS Team has told it not to. It is blocked by the FS Team.

Viewer Updates 2013-27

2013/07/01 by Nalates Urriah

We seem to be coming to a crunch point in viewers. The Lab is changing things so quickly third party developers have a challenge keeping up. Henri Beauchamp does well with Cool VL Viewer, which is a viewer based on V3 code with a vintage V1 user interface.

Niran seems to have leapfrogged the Niran’s Viewer to having all the latest Linden features by jumping to a recent SL Viewer V3 model. Niran’s Viewer is now Nirans Black Dragon viewer. Niran’s features from previous versions are being added to the new SL V3 Viewer code in Black Dragon. Eventually Niran will have Black Dragon on a feature par with his previous versions.

So, both of those viewers have materials. Firestorm 4.4.1 doesn’t and Tonya Souther of the Firestorm Team explains why, in a blog post: Tracking LL’s big changes, and why the 4.4.2… well now that there is an emergency roll out… 4.4.3 version won’t either.

Firestorm 4.4.2 Emergency Rollout

2013/07/01 by Nalates Urriah

Emergency Bug Fix

The 4.4.1 version has a bug. It is going to get re-called the version 4.4.2 will be rolled out ASAP. This version will NOT need a clean install. You’ll see this hit today or tomorrow. It seems this version has a bug that overloads the stats server. Once the roll is available the 4.4.1 viewer will be blocked.

As of NOW the 4.4.1 version download is blocked.

The 4.4.2 version is not yet ready.

See: Emergency 4.4.2 Coming

Firestorm Considerations

2013/06/30 by Nalates Urriah

The FS Team is working on Materials, Sunshine, and adopting the CHUI to Firestorm. I am sure they would love to see all of those in 4.4.2. But, they aren’t saying what they will be able to do because they haven’t even been able to get all the Lab’s code for these features. The Lab is just not done with it. Things are changing as it is developed. You don’t try to hang pictures in a house before the walls are built.

The FS Team asked the Lindens if their release of a new viewer requiring a cache clear is loading up the asset server. Monty Linden says the asset system has lots of head room and is not the likely bottle neck. But, the inventory system that tracks what you have in your inventory is near capacity. Consider the inventory an index that deals with permissions and lots of interactions between you and backend systems of SL.

Jessica has explained that people are convinced clearing cache solves every problem and speeds up their viewer. The opposite is true. But, sometimes without a stop watch people cannot get past their subjective impression.

Whatever the case, it looks like the Lab is going to start making plans to look at cache operation. Monty Linden is going to take a look to see how a Firestorm-clear-your-cache release may be affecting the SL servers.

Most of the current inventory problems are with inventory cache, which is not the same as the basic cache. It is possible to clear inventory cache and not clear the basic cache of textures, mesh, and objects. But, it is a clear that has to be done manually.

Firestorm Releases 4.4.1

2013/06/272013/06/27 by Nalates Urriah

About 21 hours ago the Firestorm blog announced the release of Firestorm Viewer version 4.4.1-34164. From the teams point of view this is a MUST UPDATE TO release. If you are running the newest version of Firestorm 4.4.0, you STILL need to update to the new viewer.

A number of users have reported problems with the 4.4.0 viewer that have kept them from using it. The team has made every effort they could in the time frame available to fix problem discovered in 4.4.0. They believe they have fixed the majority of problems blocking use of 4.4.0. So, 4.4.1 should work for you.