Second Life Viewer Troubleshooting

Over the years I have seen Second Life™ and the viewers we use change. Computers, screens, speakers, joysticks, and video cards have all advanced as well. But when things go wrong the types of problems and how to troubleshoot them has remained mostly the same. And when it comes to “which viewer” they are all the same for troubleshooting purposes.

We now have Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it is advancing. It is possible to use AI to help troubleshoot. But it can add some complication. But give it a try.

Troubleshooting with Firestorm Viewer

Here I’ll cover the basic and advanced steps needed to troubleshoot issues. Basic understanding of where a problem may exist can save you days of work… literally

Do you actually have a problem?

There are ‘problems’ and there are ‘glitches’. Problems are persistent. Glitches are transitory. They do not repeat, consistently.

Glitches are fixed by shutting down the viewer and relaunching. This is normally the first step in troubleshooting. Some glitches confuse Windows/Apple operating systems and the computer needs to be restarted, second step a issue persists. Network glitches are fixed by restarting your modem/router/gateway device, often the third step.

The point here is these steps are easy and quick.

If after the restarts the problem persists then you have a ‘problem’.

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Second Life News for June 2025

I thought I would try some AI scanning to gather SL news on a monthly basis. This is what I found for June.

SL Mobile: Grumpity and Philip point out that work continues on the rendering capability of mobile devices. There has been a 10x increase in people signing up and onboarding via mobile and Project Zero. Nice.

Homes: A new neighborhood, Ridgewood Enclave, is planned for Premium+ members. The availability of commercial regions tied to the new homes is mentioned. Also, some refurbishing of existing home themes is planned. Some PBR updates to existing themes is mentioned.

Gacha: OK, most of us know Gatcha is back. Some of use think that is a good thing. I have my doubts.

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SL22B Exploring

Still undecided on what to do with this blog. I use it for historical reference. Stuff like when the Lab introduced mesh and other historical references. I play more in Second Life now. I put more photos into the Second Life(TM) Forum. I only pay a ‘little’ attention to what is happen technically in SL. … Read more

Problems…

2/4/2025 – Update. I finally took time to make a quick patch. There is more left to do. Basically PHP and Python updates make my thyme obsolete. I’ll have to decide if I keep the blog and update the thyme or move on. Decisions, decisions… I don’t blog as much as I used to. So, … Read more

Optimizing Second Life Snapshots: Alchemy Viewer & Reshade Guide

I don’t write often these days. A couple of things have inspired me. One is ValKalAstra posting an interesting image. You can see it here on the Second Life Forum or on Flickr. For me this was a ‘how did she do that?’

The Second Life viewers, the Lab’s and third-party viewers, have filters for the Snapshots. Those are easy to use. To change the active render one has to get into tweaking a huge set of settings. Not so easy. And the sort of wireframe look in Val’s image was something I know I could not do in Firestorm or Black Dragon.

For whatever reason I though this was done in the Alchemy Viewer. I didn’t know about Reshade. Reshade is an add-on app for video games. It used to add image filters to a game that does not have them. So, the wireframe looks of the image intrigued me. I though Alchemy had some new twist on wireframe mode. So… I got the viewer.

ReShade Image from Alchemy
Playing with ReShade in Alchemy Viewer

Alchemy Viewer for Second Life

Alchemy is a third-party viewer. You’ll find it listed in the SL Wiki’s list of Third-Party Viewers. See the Details.

I downloaded and am running Alchemy Beta 7.1.9.2492 (64bit).

Alchemy supports RLVa and uses version RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.5.0.2492.

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