Day: November 29, 2023

Firestorm 6.6.16: year-end maintenance

Posted on by Inara Pey

IMPORTANT NOTE

It has been confirmed that Firestorm 6.6.16.70339 has a bug within the client Animation Override (AO) which is affecting multiple users. Because of this, version 70339 is being withdrawn from the Firestorm download page, and will be replaced once a version with the necessary fixes is available. In the meantime, those affected by the issue (not all Firestorm users necessarily are) should consider rolling back to release 6.6.14 to escape the problems. 

More on this available via the official Firestorm blog.

On Monday November 27th, 2023 (SLT), the Firestorm team released version 6.6.16.70339 of their viewer. This is another release to bring Firestorm up to parity with the more recent releases from Linden Lab as well as adding some new / improved options from the Firestorm team. It is also important for two additional reasons:

  • It clears a path for Firestorm to move towards a PBR Materials release in line with the Lab’s move to PBR Materials / reflection probes.
  • It provides a final 32-bit Windows build of the viewer. Going forward, only the 64-bit Windows version will be built and released. See below for more.
 Table of Contents

When reading the following, please note:

  • This article is not intended to cover every update / change / improvement within the release. These can be found within the Firestorm 6.6.16. release notes, which also provide full credit details for the changes.
  • This review focuses primarily on the new features included with Firestorm 6.6.16, together with an overview of its parity with Linden Lab’s official viewer code base and and overviews of various updates, improvements and fixes I believe will be of specific interest to Firestorm users in general.

Finally, I have not had time to personally try this release to any great extent, so am not offering any personal feedback on it.

Please note this release is not a Firestorm PBR release. PBR support will be in the next update.

please see A simple introduction to PBR materials, reflection probes & glTF in Second Life if you are unfamiliar with terms such as PBR.

General Notes

Installation

  • Only download Firestorm from the Firestorm website. Do not utilise and other third-party site purporting to offer the Firestorm viewer, and remember Firestorm will never ask for log-in credentials in order to download a release version of their viewer.
  • There is no need to perform a clean install with this release if you do not wish to.
  • Do, however, make sure you back-up all your settings safely so you can restore them after installing 6.6.16.

Version Blocking

As per the Firestorm’s teams standard practice of only supporting 3 active versions of the viewer at any time, note that version 6.6.3 will be blocked from accessing Second Life three weeks from the date of version 6.6.16’s release.

End of 32-Bit Windows Builds

Linden Lab has recently moved their automated viewer build process to Github Actions (GHA) – see here for more. The positive side of this is that Firestorm is particularly well-placed to leverage this change, reducing their own overhead in maintaining a build process whilst also producing more frequent updates. The negative side, however, is that in making this move, Linden Lab removed all of the code libraries required for building a 32-bit Windows version of the viewer.

This means Firestorm 6.6.16 will be the last Firestorm release to support Windows 32-bit, bringing the windows version into line with the Linux and Mac versions

A Note on Inventory Updates

This viewer includes numerous Inventory updates (see below), some of which see changes to the way in which communications between the inventory service and the viewer re managed. Whilst these changes fix a long-standing bug wherein some deleted items became orphaned from the inventory folders and thus invisible, they also mean that these “orphaned” items will now be restored to your Lost and Found folder. So you might want to check Lost and Found and ensure everything in it  is for deletion – or move any returned treasures elsewhere before clearing it.

As this re-creation of old items in Lost and Found can occur randomly, JIRA has been raised with the Lab – see BUG-234508.

Linden Lab Updates

Firestorm 6.6.16.70339 is fully merged up to the following recent Linden Lab viewer releases:

Inventory Extensions

  • The Inventory Extensions pop-up notification

    Viewer version 6.6.15.581961, October 2023.

  • Core features – Inventory item preview image; single folder inventory view. See below for a short overview.
  • Updated Object Profiles: right clicking an inventory item → Properties will display an update profile, which includes the ability to view an associated thumbnail (and create one if there is not one available).
    • Firestorm users can switch back to the old object profile via Preferences → User Interface → Interface Windows → Use Legacy Object Properties
  • Notes:
    • When using the inventory extensions for the first time, the pop-up shown on the right will be displayed.
    • This version of Firestorm includes and upstream fix from that Lab to suppress false reports of packet loss and log spam noise when visiting GLTF enabled regions on a non-PBR-enabled viewer. See BUG-234550.

Maintenance U – Upbeat Upgrades

  • Viewer version 6.6.14.581101, August 2023.
  • Core updates:
    • Increased limits to the number of Estate Managers and Ban list entries in Estates.
    • A move to VLC for improved parcel audio playback (streaming audio).
    • New option: Show Ban Lines On Collision (World → Show) when enabled, will only show ban lines around parcels will only be visible on collision, rather than whenever they are within draw distance.

Inventory Extensions Summary

The Inventory Extension viewer introduced two new features intended to make browsing the contents of your inventory easier. These comprise:

  • Inventory Item Preview – the ability to include thumbnail images (either your own or supplied by the item’s creator) of items within inventory (clothing, body parts, accessories, attachments). These images are persistently linked to the item / folder (unless intentionally deleted or changed) and displayed whenever the mouse pointer is hovered over the related element.
  • Single Folder view: the ability to see the contents of a single inventory folder in its own window.

The Item Preview capability comprises two parts:

  • The ability to view the included thumbnail images on on mouse-over, as noted above.
  • A dedicated tool for creating thumbnail images, as shown below, right
    • Note that thumbnails can also be created via an object’s Properties floater.
Elements from the Inventory Extensions capabilities – view and generating thumbnail images

The Single Folder View allows users to open an Inventory folder within a floater of its own, allowing the contents to be viewed without distraction, with them displayed in in one of three ways:

  • Gallery view – displaying only the thumbnails of those items in the folder for which thumbnails have been created.
  • List View – all of the folder’s contents, displayed much as they are seen within the open folder in Inventory.
  • Combination View – those items with an associated thumbnail will have that thumbnail displayed, those which do not will be listed.

Any folder in Inventory can be opened in this manner by right-clicking on it and selecting Open In New Window from the Inventory Context Menu. Further, the floater displaying the open folder includes:

  • Search (including filtering options) and navigation controls at the top of the floater.
  • The same tools for accessing additional Inventory management options at the bottom of the floater as those found in the main Inventory panel, together with and additional trash can icon to which items can be dragged-and-dropped to move them to Trash (or can be clicked on when one or more items are selected to move all of them to Trash).
The Single Folder View (right) as supplied by Linden Lab and incorporated in Firestorm 6.6.16, and the menu option used to access it. Note the floater here is set to display in the combined view, in this case showing the thumbnail image supplied by the item’s creator 

Important note: Firestorm has had a “Show in new window” option offering similar (but with lesser functionality). This option remains in the viewer for the present, but may be removed in the future. Unfortunately, the Context Menu option for accessing it is displayed directly above the new Open In New Window option (see image above), and the two should not be confused.

Further information on the above capabilities can be found in Looking at the Second Life Inventory Extensions Project Viewer – this blog.

Firestorm Updates

Inventory

Browser-Style Navigation
Inventory browser-style navigation

The ability to page back and forth between visited Inventory folders in a manner akin to the page back / forward buttons in a browser, and to move back up the folder tree via a similar button. These can all be found in the top left of Inventory floaters.

Inventory Settings

Firestorm 6.6.16 adds a new option called Inventory Settings to the gear icon in the lower-left corner of all Inventory floaters. When clicked, it will display a floater defining how the Inventory view button (again found at the bottom of Inventory floaters, to the left of the Elements count) and how the Show in Inventory option (right-click on an attachment you are wearing and select from menu) and the Find Original option Inventory option (used with inventory links) all behave.

See the images below for both the menu option and the floater it displays with its options.

The Inventory Settings option and floater. Use the radio buttons to set the options in the latter

Preferences

  • New option for sorting in “Attach to” menus:  Preferences → Firestorm → Build 2 → Sort Attachment Spots in “Attach to” Menus Alphabetically (Requires Restart).
    • When enabled, attachment spots are sorted alphabetically after a restart.
    • When disabled, attachment sports are ordered according to the hierarchy for alpha priority.
    • See: FIRE-33127.
Preferences update – sorting “Attach to” menus

UI Updates

  • Menus: the Help → Report Problem now redirects to an informational  / instructional page on obtaining help from both the Firestorm team and Linden Lab, as shown below.
The new Firestorm Help informational page

Rendering

The issues with motion blur / ghosting after enabling /  disabling Shadows has been fixed. This also fixes the related bug that caused saved snapshots to be too dark when Shadows were disabled if Ambient Occlusion was disabled. See: BUG-234275, BUG-234461 and FIRE-33151.

Other Updates of Note

Firestorm 6.6.16 includes numerous bug fixes and improvements  – notably with viewer skinning in light of the new Inventory Extensions UI elements, and numerous small improvements to UI element layouts. Please refer to the release notes for details.

Library Updates

  • FMOD Studio updated to version 2.02.18 – Release Notes.
  •  KDU updated to version 8.3.

Linux Updates

  • CURL changes: as the use of CURLINFO_SIZE_DOWNLOAD and CURLINFO_SPEED_DOWNLOAD has been deprecated since Curl version 7.55 (2017), the respective replacements are CURLINFO_SIZE_DOWNLOAD_T (documentation here) and CURLINFO_SPEED_DOWNLOAD_T (documentation here). This change will correct the deprecation warnings when compiling with newer versions of curl on Linux.
  • Library Updates:
    • SDL updated to version 2.28.4.
    • Curl library updated to version 8.3.0.232750741.
    • Nghttp2 library updated to version 1.56.0.232750738.
    • OpenSSL library updated to version 1.1.1w.232750656.
  • The IME checkbox has been renamed from “Use IME Text Input” to “Enable Full IME Support” per FIRE-32074.

OpenSim Updates

  • For OpenSim the Estate Ban limit and number of Estate Managers remain at 500 and 15 respectively, and the new Second Life limits of 750 and 20 respectively are ignored. OpenSim developers will need to add server-side support to enable the higher limits on their grids to make use of the increasing in the viewer.
  • A fix has been implemented for a potential region crossing crash.
  • General note: OpenSim does not current support the Inventory Extensions features outlined above.