Category: Viewers

On Wednesday, December 13th, 2023 (SLT), the Firestorm team released version 6.6.17.70368 of their viewer. It should be noted that this is not a new release of the viewer, but rather a hotfix for issues found with the client-side animation overrider which caused the withdrawal of the Firestorm 6.6.16 release (November 29th) – see here for more. In addition, the release includes a number of additional updates and fixes.

Table of Contents General Notes Installation Version Blocking Important Additional Notes End of Windows 32-bit Builds PBR Materials Support A Note On Inventory Updates Core Updates in Firestorm 6.6.17 Animation Overrider Inventory Log-in Hang Fix Related Links

Given this, the following is not a complete review of the 6.6.17 update, but focuses on the changes within it which were not a part of 6.6.16, together with the important lead-in notes – for a complete list of major and minor updates and credits for those responsible, please refer to the Firestorm 6.6.17 release notes.

Therefore, if you did not update to Firestorm 6.6.16, please release to my overview of that release as well as reading the notes below.

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 6.6.17.

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 6.6.17’s release, as will version 6.6.16.

Important Additional Notes

End of 32-Bit Windows Support

• Linden Lab has recently moved their automated viewer build process to Github Actions (GHA) – see here for more. This will allow Firestorm to produce more timely updates, more in line with LL’s major updates.
• However, as the Lab’s new build process does not include the third-party libraries required to build a 32-bit Windows version of the viewer, and Firestorm is not in a position to continue to directly maintain those libraries, Firestorm 6.6.17 will be the last version of Firestorm to provide a 32-bit Windows version.

PBR Materials Support

• Linden Lab recently released a major update to Second Life: support for glTF PBR Materials – if you are unfamiliar with these terms, please refer to A simple introduction to PBR materials, reflection probes & glTF in Second Life.
• However, please note that Firestorm 6.6.17 does not support PBR Materials – this will be in the next Firestorm update.

A Note on Inventory Updates

• Both Firestorm 6.6.16 and Firestorm 6.6.17 include numerous Inventory updates. some of these see changes in inventory service communications with the viewer, designed to correct a long-standing bug wherein some deleted items became orphaned from the inventory folders and thus invisible.
• However, with the fix these “orphaned” items may now be randomly restored to your Lost and Found folder – which may require checking and clearing as a result.
• This issue is waiting a fix from Linden Lab – see BUG-234508.

Core Updates in Firestorm 6.6.17

Animation Overrider

Following the release of Firestorm 6.6.16, it was found that the viewer’s client-side Animation Overrider was suffering issues which were affecting a large numbers of users, prompting that version to be withdrawn. Specific fixes to address these problems in this release are:

• FIRE-33414 – “Built-in AO destroyed after installing the Firestorm 6.6.16 (70339) Nov 23 2023 19:40:32 (64bit / SSE2)”.
• FIRE-33300 – “FS AO doesn’t load animations on login”.

Inventory

• FIRE-33322 – “Inventory window randomly jumps to the top”.
• FIRE-33337 – “[BUG-234770] [SL-20682] Misbehaving Folders – can’t rename.
• Inventory Preview Images:
  • Inventory Thumbnail Images should not be displayed uniformly.
  • An option has been added to disable inventory thumbnail preview images (see: FIRE-33356).
  • A further option has been added to control the delay before showing the inventory thumbnail preview images (see: FIRE-33285).

• The issue of Inventory folder names failing to correct update after a rename should now be fixed (see: FIRE-33337 “[BUG-234770] [SL-20682] Misbehaving Folders – can’t rename”.
• The issue of tooltips always showing in inventory even though not needed, has been addressed. They should now only show for inventory items with a thumbnail or if it exceeds the width of the window.

Log-in Hang Fix

Firestorm could hang at log-in. The issue was triggered by having the statistics window open from a previous session, causing a cascade of problems, resulting in the viewer hanging.