I tend to leave drama out of my coverage, unless I feel I can contribute something to people’s understanding of it and hopefully reduce the drama. I think it worth your time to read Jessica Lyon’s recent post on the Firestorm blog.

See: A message from Jessica Lyon.

Obviously they are getting enough abuse Jessica felt a need to speak up. She did well.

Each week the blog Lette’s Trivia And Trivial Stuff publishes the week’s top support issues with the Firestorm viewer. Another issue is out. But, some issues are not limited to the Firestorm Viewer. One of those is mesh objects failing to render.

Lette has written up an excellent section on the problem. She focuses on: MeshMaxConcurrentRequests. This is a Debug Setting in both the Firestorm and SL Viewers.

Word on the virtual street is that setting this higher is better and a must. Well… as often is the case the general advice is wrong. It depends on your computer and connection. But, in general it is a bad thing to change. To solve specific problems it is an acceptable temporary fix. But, used as a permanent change, it is a lag producer for you and everyone in the region.

Find out how to use this setting and understand the tradeoffs: Frequently Asked Support Questions of May 17.

Lette has a new page up with solutions for the top three problems Firestorm Support is seeing: Frequently Asked Firestorm Support Questions: May 1.

Hippo Hollow – Phoenix Area

The three top problems are:

1. Missing Inventory Items
2. Textures Not Rezzing
3. Black Rectangles in Pictures

Lette has provided the fixes the Firestorm Team has.

The Firestorm team, in spite of running three pass QA, let some problems get through. This just shows how hard it is to catch problems in software. Whatever, the blog now has an article up on the top 3 complaints and their fixes.

Top 3 Complaints & Resolutions for 4.4.0 Release Firestorm Viewer.

The article leads back to Lette’s article, updated, from a few days ago. I covered Lette’s article here: Firestorm Viewer Information.

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.

I got a couple of things wrong in the previous article. The idea it was only for the SL grid was not right. This release has a version for the OpenSim grids. You can see the highlights of that release on the announcement page: Firestorm Major Upgrade.

Another point on the announcement page is information about the effort that has been put into providing an upgrade path for Phoenix users.

This video runs a little less than 8 minutes.

The video warns that you will have a slow start because they have flushed all the caches.

Update: The viewer has been released as 4.4.0 (33720) today about 3 PM SLT or PDT. Download: Firestorm Major Update.

I’ve been hearing rumors that a new release of the Firestorm Viewer is imminent. Some expected it Sunday. Some are saying today. We will have to wait and see when it releases. I expect it soon, like today. But, that could be wishful thinking on several people’s part.

But, we do not have to wait to see what is in this release. As part of a release the development team builds release notes. The team tries to do things professionally and have everything ready for users, including the viewer’s release notes. It usually is not too hard to find those once one knows a release is imminent.

One of the preview testers for Firestorm Viewer has leaked a link to a new feature of the viewer. We may see it in a coming release, may be Sunday or some time in the next week or two. Watch the Firestorm blog.

Secret Setting

Check the Firestorm JIRA FIRE-9791 for information: Secret Setting.