My Take on the Firestorm-Phoenix Q&A Video

If you read the announcement of the Firestorm-Phoenix (FS-PH) Q & A, you know there was a reason for having the secession. Jessica Lyon, the voice for the FS-PH Team, said the reason was anger and frustration in the community. So, what is the anger and frustration about and where is it coming from?

You probably know Third Party Viewers (TPV) developers are leaving, KirstenLee and Kirstens Viewer, and new ones are appearing, Cinder and Milkshake Viewer. We also know Linden Lab is advancing their viewer at a blistering pace. In general we see things moving forward and new technology is adopted. A Neilson report shows that Second Life has almost doubled market share (New World Notes) in the last few months.

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#SL Phoenix Viewer Problems

Users have found some problems in the recent Phoenix 1.6.0.1591 release. Three errors were considered critical and quickly fixed. The result is a Phoenix 1.6.0.1600 release.

Visit the Phoenix Viewer Download page and get a new copy.

This release fixes:

  • Opening of scripts while LSL Preprocessor enabled causes crash to desktop. PHOE-3593
  • Scripted dialogs from deeded objects fail. PHOE-3600
  • Right click > wear from inventory is broken. PHOE-3583

Phoenix with Mesh

The Phoenix Team has released a new version of Phoenix. This one has mesh support, as in it renders mesh.

Read Phoenix Viewer Mesh Update.

The team is warning this viewer is not their most stable release, at least they do not expect it to be.

They are also saying it is possibly the last version of Phoenix. There may future releases if needed. But, more likely not.

RLVa did not get updated. If you are looking for the newest and greatest RLV viewer check out Catznip. Kitty Barnett writes the Catznip Viewer and works on Firestorm’s RLV implementation.

Also, the team is providing less Phoenix support and focusing on Firestorm.

 

Phoenix Hour Summary and Index Week 42

A new Phoenix Hour meeting was last week. I’ve indexed the video below. You’ll see indexing after the summary.  You can find the video here: Phoenix Hour Oct. 18, 2011.

Summary

There is not much new information this week. I decided to condense it down to quick summary.

Both Firestorm and Phoenix are waiting on Linden Lab fixes to problems in the V3 code. That means we do not know when we will see the next release of either. Last week several adoption blockers were discussed. Most of those are now taken care of, so the next release probably won’t be a beta.

Also, the next release of both viewers will have mesh rendering. Firestorm almost has a working mesh upload. They will also include a right click feature to have the selected texture download from the server. This is for those things that just simply won’t rez.

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Phoenix Hour Week 41

You can find the latest Phoenix Hour video here: Phoenix Hour. The following is my summary of the Hour. There are several interesting items disclosed in the meeting. But, there are no ETA’s on FS (Firestorm) or PH (Phoenix) release dates. There is one BIG PROBLEM looking ahead, see 53:00.

01:00 – 1 year of Phoenix Hour Shows

02:00 – LL server upgrades – No one had any clue what they were talking about. You can skip this section. See the Server News here. In the menu  click The Stuff -> SL Server Related.

04:00 – Fake support groups. A number of fake support groups with rather rude and abusive support people pose as Phoenix support groups. This is resulting in complaint coming into the Phoenix Team.

One can tell if the group is a ‘real’ Phoenix support group. Look in the member list for Jessica Lyon or Ed Merryman. If a group is a real Phoenix group, it will have one or both of these names as the group owners. Use the fake groups at your own risk.

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Phoenix Viewer Hour Week 38

A new Phoenix Hour has come and gone. Here is my index of the video.

The video is here: The Phoenix Hour – Sept. 20, 2011

Phoenix Hour

00:00 is zero minutes and seconds.

01:30 – Introductions end. Vacations for the Firestorm-Phoenix (FS/PH) Team are over now that holidays are past. So, work should progress faster.

02:00 – FS has some render problems. The problems are in the Linden code. Once the Lab fixes their GPU problems the team plans a new FS release ASAP. In the mean time effort are under way for Windlight problem. Windlight settings are reverting to defaults on teleport and relog. The contacts list has been displaying two columns of names, display and login. That is a bug.  Spell check will be in the next release.

03:15 – The Inventory panel has a really annoying problem. You see it when working in the inventory panel/window. The list suddenly jumps to the top entry. The team has set that as a high priority and hopes to have it fixed in the next release. Hope is the keyword.

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Phoenix with Mesh?

Today I’m seeing Plurks and Tweets about the Phoenix Viewer getting mesh. Looking at the Phoenix Viewer site, I find they are adding mesh support to Phoenix. Interesting.

Henri Beauchamp, of Cool VL Viewer fame, has back ported the render engine from SL Viewer 3. He is allowing third party viewer developers to use his work. One of the Firestorm-Phoenix team made the conversion to Phoenix, Ansariel Hiller.

A new release of Phoenix is coming soon. You can read the details on the Phoenix blog (link above).

So, it seems series 1 viewers will be getting the ability to render the new free style models we call ‘mesh’.  Jessica explains this viewer version will probably be more crash prone. Also, that Phoenix is on its last legs. She makes a point that the ‘team’ did not make this addition. A couple of team members made it as a personal project. Now it is being added into the Phoenix Viewer project.

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Phoenix Viewer Most Stable

Oz Linden updates the Thrid Party Viewer (TPV) List every so often. A recent update shows the current Phoenix Viewer at the top of the list. That means it had the fewest crashes during the reporting period. \o/

Phoenix is still a Series 1 viewer and lacks mesh and other Viewer 2 features. But, Phoenix remains a popular viewer. It has many features not found in the SL Viewer 1.23, which while not a TPV is the most stable viewer currently in use.

Congratulations Firestorm-Phoenix Team!