Viewers

General Viewer Information

Firestorm Milestone

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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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Kirsten Viewer S21(8) Released Review

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New release, Kirstens S21 2.8.0 (8) Jul 10 2011, with new stuff is out. This viewer is based on Linden Lab’s viewer code 2.8. The Snowstorm Development viewer has just gone 2.8.0 this week. This viewer will give us a glimpse into new features coming to SL.

Oops - Attachments

Download & Install

File download size is about 32 mb. The install is typical Kirsten. The previous RC3 is uninstalled. Settings, logs and other stuff are saved, except for your graphics settings which are changed to the defaults for your graphics card.

There are some reports of problems from the settings file. So, if you run into problems, delete the settings.xml from C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Kirstens S21\user_settings. The viewer will generate a new file on the next startup. See: S20 Cache & Settings Manual Clearing Howto.

Also, there are some inventory features that are a bit laggy as some of the new stuff in inventory is not yet supported by the server side. That should correct as the features get rolled out to the main grid. Part of the problem is your inventory is connecting to the SL Market Place and that can cause an initial delay.

INSTALL UPDATE 7/11: The normal uninstall/install doesn’t work well. It is better to do a clean install of S21 for this version. See the comments for where KirstenLee noticed that my install was not right.

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Second Life Outfit Folders

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I like the way the new SLV2 Outfits work, somewhat. I have several problems with how the sidebar handles them. There is a work around that I came across in the JIRA that handles my problem with organizing outfits.

Outfits Panel

Problem

The Outfits Sidebar provides only a single list of outfits. This mixes together the outfits I make and the default outfits provided by Linden Lab. As I create more outfits this is going to become more of a problem. So, I want to create folders in the Outfit Panel. But, that is not possible.

There are a number of JIRA feature requests and bug reports about the lack of folders in the Outfits Panel. I’ll get to those later.

Work Around

There is a way to get outfits into folders, sort of. First off, know this is for Series 2 viewers. Don’t mess with your Linden Outfits Folder in Series 1 viewers. Doing so is likely to cause you problems. Also, know you will get different results depending on which version of a Series 2 viewer you use. So, you may need to be flexible.

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Firestorm Beta 2.5.2 (16922) Release Review

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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.

Firestorm Viewer Beta 2

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-Firestorm Survey

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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.

The Phoenix Hour

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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#SL and Scale

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Or how tall are you? Really? There is a great post by Penny Patton in the SL Forum. See: A Matter of Scale – How scale affects content creation and land ownership in Second Life. Every builder should stop by and read the post. I doubt many people think this through before they build.