Second Life News 2013-17 #4

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Not much new news today. I think everyone is at the glorious Fantasy Fair. But, there are few things to be thinking about.

Network Lag

Users outside the US have seen some increased lag. There is no certainly as to where the problem is. If you are seeing high ping times read through Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection and file a JIRA with a TRACERT print out.

I can’t even get a sense of how large or small the problem may be. It is a technical glitch, so many people will not recognize what is happening.

There are a number of various threads on lag from overseas users. See: (chat delay outside US -FIXED-) Discussion: Why did a restart of secondlife fix this?

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KirstenLee Viewer S19 (404) Blackbird Released

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A new version of an older KirstenLee Viewer has been released, which is surprising. The news comes from KirstenLee’s blog. It is a short one sentence announcement. I show the blog page as this first image.

KirstenLee Blog Page 2013-17
KirstenLee Blog Page 2013-17

KirstenLee’s last release was in September 2012 and a version S22. In December of 2011 Kirsten had to stop viewer development when his (RL)/her (SL) family was dealing with health issues. See: The End of Kirsten’s Viewer, which describes the failure of a ‘CrowdFunder™’ effort to save the viewer.

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COF Corruption

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Seems there is a big GOTCHA coming. COF is Current Outfit Folder. It is used by the SSA – Server side Appearance, a service that bakes your avatar appearance. This should end bake fail, blurry avatars.

Too Cute
Too Cute

The COF has been around for a while (early 2012). Long enough for us to know it is often at the heart of inventory problems. What some have not realized is that the folder is also at the heart of login problems. If the COF gets corrupted you often cannot login. You’ll have little clue as to why.

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Firestorm Viewer Information

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There is a lot of things happening. More will be happening in the coming few weeks. Chances are really good that something you used to do a specific way is going to change. There is a good chance you will also be seeing some odd behavior in Second Life™. Things won’t work the same.

A great source of quick answers for Firestorm Viewer users is Lette’s Trivia and Trivial Stuff blog. Lette has a new article up listing the questions most heard by the Firestorm Support Group: Frequently Asked Support Questions: April 23.

If you have an ATI video card, there is a problem with black screens in Firestorm 4.4.0. They have the fix posted.

Avatar Offset

There is a longer explanation of the Height Offset that has been removed from the SL System, not just the Firestorm Viewer, in Lette’s article. The FS Team did remove the control. They expected to get lots of blowback from that and they have. But, it can’t be helped.

However, they did get Nyx Lindens quick fix for the problem added to their appearance editor. You can see how to use that here: Firestorm Height Adjustment. It sucks… not FS… the system fix. I wrote about the problem in: Second Life Avatar Offset. Check it for what you can do to get a usable offset back.

Hidden Buttons

Can’t find some user interface buttons? The answer is there. The team made some changes and added the possibility to modify the user interface in new ways. There is a nice how to in Lette’s article.

Kokua Viewer on TPV List

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I see today that the Kokua Viewer, the successor to Imprudence Viewer, has been added to the Second Life Third Party Viewer (TPV) Directory. You’ll find it listed in the second section of the list. The Kokua wiki page is here: Kokua Viewer.

Kokua/Imprudence Viewers
Kokua/Imprudence Viewers

The second section of the directory is for viewers that do not report crashes or do not have enough users to report a significant number of reports. So, it may move to the first section when enough reports are collected.

The Kokua team has announced the release of Kokua Viewer 3.5.1. The Release Notes are here. The notes are difficult reading. The Kokua Viewer Download is here. I only see Windows and Linux versions.

They also have a development viewer: Kokua Viewer 3.5.2.