Second Life and Virtual Worlds
On August 27 Firestorm 4.2.1 was released followed by an immediate OOPS! There is a problem that Tonya Souther describes as:
It turned out that 4.2.1 has a bug in it that makes most swinging doors not look like they act correctly (though they actually do). They appear to swing normally, then jump ahead, swinging farther all at once.
I’ve seen something similar in the Linden Development Viewers for some weeks now. So, this is probably not a Firestorm bug but something in the Linden Code.
Update Note 2014-04-10: The Photo Tools are not part of the Firestorm Viewer and do not need to be installed.
I saw these tools mentioned on Hamlet’s New World Notes in an article titled: Want to Take Great SL Images? Get Mr. Weaver’s Phototools! These are tools made for the Firestorm Viewer (Firestorm 4.1.1 (28744) Jul 9 2012 21:43:46 (Firestorm-Release)). The tools will only work with the default skins.
This is an interesting addition to Firestorm. It is a rational and logical arrangement of the controls by William (paperwork) Weaver that affects how the viewer renders with world. If you are a photographer this is going to be a way handy tool. All the settings that affect the render appearance are in a single panel consisting of 6 tabs. Some of the controls open other panels, but basically it is one new panel, but what a handy panel.
Now Open: Second Life’s Firestorm Support Island by Firestorm/Phoenix – Click to visit.
Today is the official opening of the Firestorm Island. See: Firestorm Support Island Opening for more pictures and information. For information from an interview with Jessica Lyon see Inara Pey’s article: Helping the community: the Phoenix Firestorm Support region.
Update: Opening Speech.
I received an announcement today that the Firestorm/Phoenix Team has created a support island that will be opening on August 25th. The island is for use of the SL community. The team is encouraging RHN, White Tiger Mentors, Mental Mentors and others to use the island for training and support. I get that other support groups are welcome too.
Update 8/25 – Now Open: Second Life’s Firestorm Support Island by Firestorm/Phoenix
Update 7/2017 – Photobucket has disallowed use of their hosted images on 3rd party sites unless I pay them. Images are here.
Obviously the island is designed to assist new Firestorm users and for the team’s support crew.
The island has a landing point that starts new users on an educational path, a literal path as you can see in the images. It is designed for those using the Firestorm Viewer. So, people using other viewer may be a bit confused by the images of what to click. But, confusing new users by showing multiple user interfaces might be worse.
Today the Third Party Viewer List was updated and the new Firestorm Viewer release has moved to the top of the list, being the most stable viewer in use, congratulation FS/PH Team.
Dolphin Viewer 3 follows Firestorm and is ahead of Imprudence.
I have yet to crash while using Firestorm… There are other minor annoyances, but crashing is not one of them.
More Phoenix users are changing to Firestorm. There are no numbers out on how many or how fast. They are rather secretive about those numbers.
This week the main grid is getting new software. The Lindens have decided the Advanced Creator Tools will be rolled out to the main channel. The Advanced Tools are also known as Experience Tools. These are the functions that were used to build Linden Realms.
I’ve gotten to use the new Firestorm viewer for a bit. I like the Firestorm default mode and have only been using that mode. It is nice. It is close enough to the Linden V3 interface I can find most things easily.
It has the debug settings for CameraOffsetRearView and FocusOffsetRearView, which I change on all my viewers to give a better camera position. See Camera Position Tips for more on that.
The performance of the viewer is faster than Linden viewers. I turned off Sun/Moon Shadows to get the skin color adjusted in my new N-Core Eloise ‘One Voice’ shoes. My FPS was hitting 40 in my apartment. Nice. My Core2 Quad and nVidia 560Ti are not as fast as I had hoped. But, this version of Firestorm is faster than the last.