In the Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday March 3rd, 2015, Jessica gave a rapid-fire overview of performing a clean install. In trying to keep the video to around 5 minutes in length, the result, while informative, came across as rushed.
Given people did feel the first video did feel hurried, and that clean installs can be a necessary part of viewer life, the latest Tool Tip Tuesday video from Jessica might be referred to as “Clean installs: the Director’s Cut”.
With a running time a little under 13 minutes, the new video provides greater information and clearer instructions on:
Saving your chat and IM logs to a custom location on your PC
Using Firestorm’s backup capability to save and restore your viewer’s global and per-account settings
Performing a clean install.
The video both complements the original clean install video, and stands as an instructional guide in its own right, providing a lot more explanation and background. So, if you were confused by the speed of delivery in the original video, this revisit may well be for you!
Important note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read this report.
OnLive, the company providing the SL Go service, announced on Monday, March 9th, that new users signing-up to the service can now pay for their use of the service with Linden dollars via a pilot scheme involving secure in-world payment booths offered through OnLive’s SL Go support island.
The news came via a statement from OnLive that reads in part:
You’ve probably heard of SL Go, the viewer that streams Second Life from the cloud in ultra-rich graphics, right to your tablet or low powered computer. You might have wanted to try it, but hate giving out your credit card info and personal information. Well, we now have a great solution for you!
If you sign up for SL Go with a NEW USER account you can buy weekly subscriptions in-world using Linden Dollars (L$). There is a private sign up booth where you can create your free SL Go account, and then pay for subscriptions using L$. Each week is only L$650, and you can buy up to 4 weeks at a time. Also, you can return and renew or extend your subscription in-world at any time.
Dennis Harper, OnLive’s Product Manager for SL Go contacted me to provide a few extra details. “This move will initially be for a limited number of new users,” he said. “The fact is, while payment in Linden Dollars has been frequently requested, we just don’t know how the community will use this new feature. Hopefully, given Linden Dollar payments have been so requested, this will be wildly popular. If so, we will take the cap off and offer it to all SL Go user and subscribers.”
Part of the problem here is that payment via L$ can only be made on a non-recurring basis; so there is a risk that people could end-up signing-up to use SL Go for a week, and then never renewing, which would not be particularly good for OnLive’s business model or for SL Go itself. Hence the pilot programme, which allows OnLive to test the water.
The new SL Go in-world payment centre – new users can use this to sign-up for an SL Go account, and renew their payments, with Dennis Harper (centre) and Jersey and Robby (to the right) from OnLive
However, if the pilot does prove successful – and Dennis and OnLive believe it will be – then paying for your subscription to SL Go via L$ will become a standard payment option provided by OnLive, and the company will implement a means by which existing SL Go users can transition to paying for their use of the service with Linden Dollars if they so wish.
Another reason for not offering L$ payments immediately to existing users is that of technical complexity; there’s a lot involved in providing the means for users to switch over to a L$-based payment plan. As such, it makes sense for the company to trial the system with new users first.
The SL Go in-world sign-up and payment centre provides up to three teleport discs to three secure sign-up areas (the number available may vary, depending on whether some / all of the sign-up areas are currently being used – they will accept only one avatar at a time)
“Solving the transition issue is difficult and will take some more time,” Dennis told me. “We need to figure out how to ‘stack’ payments via Linden Dollars upon an existing recurring subscription end-date, and implement a means by which their existing recurring can be cancelled, without it impacting their use of the service.”
He continued, “And then what happens if a user decides payment via L$ isn’t for them, and they’re happier using a recurring subscription? How do we facilitate switching them back, again without impacting on their use of the service or making them sign-up all over again? So it’s much more complex, both technically and from a user-experience angle, to provide Linden Dollar payments to existing users.
“But, if the pilot programme works out, it is something we’ll be working towards providing!”
Each of the sign-up areas provides instructions on how to sign-up for an OnLive account using the television, how and how to download the OnLive client (PC / Mac) and app (iOS / Android). A payment sphere is also provided for your initial payment (made to OnLiveBanks Resident), which is a minimum of L$650 for one week
In the meantime, those wanting to give SL Go a try, but who might have fought shy of the idea due to the need to supply credit card and personal information can now do so by visiting the in-world sign-up and payment centre at SL Go Island. Signage at the centre will walk you through the sign-up process (which you only have to complete once; after that, you can renew your use of SL Go via the payment orbs located on the ground level of payment centre).
Please note that, for obvious reasons – including the potential to game the system – users signing-up via the in-world payment method will not have the 7-day free trial period offered to them (it can, for example, be too easily gamed).
If you haven’t tried SL Go yet, and would prefer to pay via subscription, you can still sign-up via the SL Go website, which is still offered with the free 7-day trial period. Existing users can obviously sign-up for a new OnLive account using the in-world method if they wish, but will then be paying for two OnLive accounts until such time as they cancel one or the other.
Once you have created an account in this way, you can continue paying for the service via the payment globes at the ground level payment centre (payments made to OnLiveBanks Resident) – there is no need to teleport to the secure areas in order to make further payments
Remember, SL Go isn’t for everyone. But if you have a need to access Second Life while on the go from either an iPad or Android tablet (using the SL viewer only at present), or if you have a low-end computer on which you’d like to run Second Life in all its full richness (using either the SL viewer or Firestorm), then SL Go may well be for you.
Updates for the week ending: Sunday, March 8th, 2015
This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: 3.7.25.299021 February 24th – no change
Maintenance RC viewer version 3.7.26.299610 released on March 6 – multiple fixes and improvements (download and release notes)
Tools Update project viewer version 3.7.26.299443 updated on March 4 – builds Windows and Mac viewers using the new tool chain and autobuild process and also incorporates the revised viewer log-in screen (download and release notes)
LittleSight for Android updated to version 1.6.1.0 on February 22nd – core update: changing the default log-in to a user’s home location to avoid log-in failures.
Tuesday, March 3rd, saw the Main (SLS) channel receive the server maintenance package deployed to the RC channels in week #9. This includes:
A server-side fix for BUG-8297, “Unable to teleport anywhere using SLGO”
Improvements to server logging.
There were no deployments to the RC channels on Wednesday, March 4th.
Upcoming Server Updates
During the Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday, March 5th, Caleb Linden, who now chairs the meetings, indicated that an upcoming deployment to the RC channel will include a change to the number of off-line IMs delivered when you log-in.
Currently, the cap is set to 25, but it’s not clear what the new limit will be, although it might vary (or be adjustable) depending on whether a user is a Basic or Premium member. This change will not affect the forwarding of off-line IMs to e-mail.
SL Viewer
The new Tool Chain Update viewer was promoted to Release Candidate status on Wednesday, March 4th. Version 3.7.26.299443 see a change to the tools used to build the viewer (e.g. the use of Visual Studio 2013, Xcode 6.1, and some other tools improvements). This update also incorporates the log-in screen update to a single button, replacing the need for the Log-in Screen RC viewer.
Future Viewer Updates
Avatar Layers Global Limit
In 2014, BUG-6258, “Popularity of Mesh Attachments Facilitates Need For More Alpha Layers” is a request to raise the number of alpha layers which can be concurrently worn, prompted the Lab to consider the introduction of a global limit on the number of clothing layers an avatar could wear,so that, like attachments, an avatar can wear as many clothing layers in any combination, up to that limit, rather than having individual limits enforced per clothing layer.
During the TPV Developer meeting in week #9, Oz Linden indicated that while there had been major progress on this idea since it had been first raised, something would likely be appearing later in the year. Since then. Whirly Fizzle has spotted a viewer code repository from Vir Linden: “SL-103 WIP – viewer enforces wearable limits based on total articles of clothing rather than per-type limit. Limit is artificially low for testing, will bump before release.”
This doesn’t mean new global limits on avatar cloting layers will be appearing in the next few weeks, but it does indicate that it is one of several avatar related projects he’s working on (together with the new Avatar Hover Height feature and fixing at least some of the current crop of attachment issues).
Notifications Changes
Also during the TPVD meeting in week #9, Oz commented that some “cosmetic” work was being done to the way notifications are presented through the viewer. Again, thanks to Whirly’s poking around, this would appear to be in connection with BUG-8000, “Separate transaction notices from group notice/invites or provide some means for sorting incoming notifications”, which has been imported by the Lab and is being worked on.
A preliminary version of the proposed new notification panel (see BUG-8000). Note that is is a work-in-progress and may be subject to change prior to release (image courtesy of Whirly Fizzle)
Group Chat
Simon Linden is continuing to bang on things to try to correct issues that have arisen since the last set of updates at the end of week #9. According to Caleb Linden, who now chairs the Server Beta Group meetings, those groups that are affected are seeing up to a 20% failure rate in delivered messages.
Other Items
Rigged Mesh Crashers
Further to my last report on this issue, Whirly Fizzle (who is genuinely one of the great powerhouses in helping to keep SL rolling along) stepped up to provide a more detailed explanation of the issue based on her own extensive investigations into the matter (thanks Whirly! 🙂 ).
In her comments, Whirly notes that Chalice Yao has developed a debug setting within her own NACL viewer setting specifically stop cap rendering of worn rigged meshes, and that Nicky Dasmijn from the Firestorm team is working on a patch for their viewer. However, while the setting works, it can also prevent “legitimate” rigged mesh items with high vertices counts from rendering.
Further discussion of the problem with regards to BUG-2082, which includes new viewer rendering controls, confirmed this would not help with the issues presented by this particular kind of rigged mesh crasher but it will prevent issues such as the animated mesh “tail of doom” which can cause viewer crashes as a result of overloading memory.
Tuesday, March 3rd, saw the Main (SLS) channel receive the server maintenance package deployed to the RC channels in week #9. This includes:
A server-side fix for BUG-8297, “Unable to teleport anywhere using SLGO”
Improvements to server logging.
There were no scheduled deployments to the RC channels on Wednesday, March 4th.
Group Chat
Following the last deployment of back-end group chat changed during week #9, some large groups with active group chat have reported an increase in issues of message failures, although they appear to do so somewhat randomly, with some people seeing them and others simply not receiving them at all.
Commenting on the problem at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, March 3rd, Simon Linden summarised the situation thus:
In short, yes, it’s cranky, and yes, we’re (as in I am) looking at it … the chat server itself is actually running better than before, believe it or not. A back-end service it relies on, what we call “agent presence” [used to help locate someone on the grid], seems to be having new problems, so the changes may have added load to those servers and is causing problems, or something else unexpectedly changed … [So] some people don’t get the messages when chat is failing … it’s dropping sending some updates and messages when it times out with some other internal requests.
Further updates will be provided as the Lab / Simon continues to look at the problems.
CDN Notes
There have been recent reports of people experiencing slow texture and mesh load issues, leading to questions concerning the CDN service (although some of the issues that have been mentioned might be related to local caching more than the CDN). In particular questions have been asked as to how long a CDN server retained its cache of data relating to regions prior to going “cold” and requiring a “reload” from the SL services. Commenting on this at the Open-source Developer meeting on Monday, March 2nd, Oz Linden said that some CDN caches do age out more quickly than others.
The Lab has also been experimenting with more than one CDN provider, and are continuing with different CDN configurations as well to further tune things, as well as continuing to measure results; so we may yet see further changes / improvements, and a possible decrease in instances that may be related to “cold” CDN loads.
Other Items
Rigged Mesh Crashers
The Server Beta Meeting on Thursday, February 26th saw the issue of a “new” mesh crasher being used on the grid. This is essentially a deliberately corrupted rigged mesh attachment which, when worn will cause viewers around it to immediately crash, with no warning or ability to take preventative action, such as muting the offending avatar.
Just over a year ago, some advice was given on how to counter graphics crashers by adjusting the viewer’s debug settings, and some people many be getting pointed towards it again in order to avoid being affected by the “new” crasher.
However, changing the specified debug settings can lead to a failure to render much of what you actually want to see, as noted in this comment following the article. At the time the advice was given, the Firestorm team tracked many of the problems their users were experiencing directly to the settings having been changed. Ergo, if you are pointed to this particular article as a means of combating graphics crashers, please keep in mind you may gain undesirable results, and keep a note of the original settings so you can switch back to them should this be the case.
During the discussion on this matter at the SBUG meeting, speculation was raised on whether or not the forthcoming new viewer rendering controls (see: STORM-2082). opinion is divided, as the viewer downloads the data which may cause a graphic crash and starts processing some of it in order to determine what to render or not, and even this initial processing could be enough to crash it.
SL Feed Issues
There has been an uptick in the number of snapshot uploads to the SL feeds failing over the course of the last week, with some additionally reporting issues of comments failure to appear / “loves” failing to stick. Some users also reported issues over the weekend with web profiles failing to load, and a JIRA (see BUG-8677) was logged on this issue on March 3rd.
The last several days have seen people again encounter issues with snapshots failing to process / display in their feeds
Whether the two issues had a common cause isn’t clear, but as the latter has been resolved, and you are one of those continuing to experience snapshot upload failures, please file a JIRA providing as much information as possible (links to any feed post with a missing snapshot, date / time of upload, number of failures, etc.).
Update, March 10th: In response to feedback following the release of this video, Jessica released a more in-depth video examining clean isntalls, settings back-ups, etc. The new video can be found here.
The Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for March 3rd, 2015, covers what can be a thorny and intimidating issue: that of performing a clean install of the viewer.
In an ideal world, clean installs wouldn’t be needed. However, there are times when installing a newer version of a viewer over an existing version, that things which shouldn’t happen do happen, and things that should have happened don’t happen correctly. And while the frequency with which people are asked to perform clean installs have decreased in recent times for most viewers, they can still be the first step in avoiding later issues.
Where Firestorm is concerned, and given it has so many additionally exposed features with supporting UI elements and so on, the chances of something hiccuping during an install and causing problems later cannot be overlooked. Hence why, when releasing a particularly complex update to the viewer, or when dealing with support requests from users after a complex update being released, Firestorm support will often advise / ask if a clean install has been used with the new release.
Firestorm’s settings backup feature can help remove some of the pain involved in a clean install, by allowing you to save many of your preferred global and account setting locally, and then quickly restore them after a clean install of a new version of the viewer
To make things easier, the Firestorm team has provided additional capabilities within the viewer which allow you to not only save things like your chat logs, etc., to a dedicated folder to avoid them being lost as a result of a clean install (as is the case with all viewers), but they’ve provided a means to back-up and restore all of your viewer settings. However, even with these capabilities, performing a completely clean install can be a daunting task for many.
So in this video, Jessica takes you through her preferred method of running a clean install on a PC – starting from ensuring all or logs files and setting are safely saved / backed-up through to launching the viewer after a clean install and restoring all of your settings.
In the Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday March 3rd, 2015, Jessica gave a rapid-fire overview of performing a clean install. In trying to keep the video to around 5 minutes in length, the result, while informative, came across as rushed.
Important note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read 
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 