Firestorm

Today on the Firestorm/Phoenix blog Jessica Lyon announced that Firestorm now has more unique users than SLV 1.23. Not only are there more people using the viewer, their total time in world with the viewer is more than the time in world with SLV 1.23.

Firestorm is still in beta. So, this is a big milestone. While this comes as no surprise to me, it deserves congratulations. Congratulations Firestorm Team!

The Sad Side

Of the 54 team members 38 are support personnel. None of these people are paid employees. The team is made up of volunteers. The viewer and support are provided for free.

In spite of the above there is enough abuse directed at the team that Jessica mentioned it in her blog post. While I have been in debates in the Myst-Uru community about online behavior and seen frustration used as a justification for poor behavior, I’ve never accepted frustration as an excuse. I think it shows a level of immaturity and a lack of ability to cope with life. In other words, such people need the help of a professional counselor.

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A new Firestorm version is out. Apple, Linux, and Windows versions are available. This is the big step up in Third Party Viewers for builders. The development team has added the build tools. I think it was the lack of this feature most holding Firestorm back. Following is my experience with the new Firestorm.

Download

Tuesday and Wednesday the download process was very slow. I am guessing lots of people are finally making the change over to a V2 type viewer. I certainly see patience with anti-V2 people running out in the support groups. Not Firestorm’s support people. They are great. But, the Firestorm users that chime into help other Firestorm users are getting an edge. After they made the change and survived.

May be I’ll make a T-shirt that says I survived the change… ummm… maybe I could word that better.

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The Phoenix hour is a bi-weekly show facilitated by Phaylen Fairchild (the nosey heifer – hilarious inside joke – see 52:00±). In the video Jessica Lyon is speaking for the Firestorm/Phoenix team. This week’s meeting is mostly about the recent survey on five features in the viewer, which the Firestorm team ran. The following is a summary of the meeting. The times are HH:MM:SS or just MM:SS and they are approximate. The words here are my paraphrasing of the video not a transcript. So, my take may be different than yours was or would be or than what Jessica intended. Simply it is what I took from what they were saying.

If you watch the video be warned that while the video starts at 00:00:00 the sound failed until about time mark 07:00±. So, you can skip into the video without missing anything. Also, the video is mostly just talking heads. So, if you listen without watching, you won’t miss anything. The only URL presented I give as a link below.

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Firestorm, often called Phoenix-Firestorm, is the series 2 viewer that will replace the Phoenix viewer. The Firestorm team is endeavoring to make Firestorm a transition viewer that series 1 viewer users can use without too much trouble. Also, new users coming from Linden Lab’s viewer won’t be totally lost. Plus the viewer can be customized to be more series 1 or 2 like.

Download and Install

(Download) The Firestorm announcement recommends a clean install of Firestorm and suggests the previous settings file won’t work with the new viewer. Unfortunately the Firestorm uninstall while asking if you want to remove all files, doesn’t. The cache files and folder are deleted. (C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Firestorm\). The settings and logs files are left behind. To remove them one needs to delete the files in: C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm\.

If you are into saving your chat logs, remember to move them to a safe location before deleting the folder.

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Today a new release of the Firestorm Viewer Preview is out. This viewer is alpha, or even pre-alpha, software. So, only attempt using it if you want to experiment and help the Firestorm Development Team. The download link is available through the Firestorm-Phoenix Preview Group. The announcements have warnings one should read, so I’ll not providing a link to the download. If you want the viewer, join the group. If you want to know some things about the viewer and then decide, read on.

Download & Install Firestorm Viewer

The download size is about 26mb. You are warned to uninstall the previous Firestorm Viewer be installing. The Firestorm Viewer uninstall program with the previous version does a good job of removing the install. The cache and cache folder are removed, the program files and folder are removed with the option to preserve any files you may have added, and the skins are removed. You have an option to save (default) your chat logs or remove those too.

I did not have to manually remove any files. The uninstall and new install gave me a working viewer.

Once removed, I installed the new Preview 2 Viewer. I tried running it but got 1.4 FPS on the initial startup. Ugh. Reboot time. After the reboot I get 40 to 67 FPS in my cottage with the default settings from the install. So, do a reboot after you install.

The install changes the default handler for SLURL’s changing it to Firestorm Preview. So, clicking an SLURL in your browser, if you haven’t customized your browser, will call Firestorm. If you want to change your registry to change your default viewer see: Emerald Viewer vs SLURL. Otherwise, just reinstall your favorite viewer. The last viewer installed generally becomes the default handler for SLURL’s

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