Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, August 2nd
This summary is generally 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.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current release viewer version 6.4.4.543157, dated June 11th, promoted June 23rd, formerly the CEF RC viewer – ROLL BACK..
Uses new viewer build tool chain, but does not include any user-facing updates outside of bug fixes.
Release channel cohorts:
Tools Update 2 RC viewer updated to version 6.4.6.545699 on July 29th.
Mesh uploader RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544027, issued July 27th.
On Tuesday, July 28th, 2020, Firestorm released a beta version of their viewer – 6.4.5.60799 – that provides support for the Lab’s Environment Enhancement Project (EEP), and which includes a number of other Lab-specific updates to the viewer, such as the Camera Presets capability.
There are a number of points of note to make about this viewer, which may influence people’s choice on whether or not to try / adopt it:
While it contains the EEP updates, the following should be kept in mind:
There are a number of known issues with EEP, several of which currently have fixes contained within the Lab’s Love Me Render RC viewer (version 6.4.5.544028, dated June 30th, at the time of writing), and which is being prepared to be promoted to de facto release, possibly in the next 2-3 weeks.
There is a known performance hit related to EEP, for which an interim (and unsatisfactory) fix can be to disable Linden Water rendering (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-7), even if Linden Water is occluding in your view. The underpinning causes of this issue are still being investigated.
Given its beta nature, this version of the viewer has not passed Firestorm’s QA cycle, nor are there formal release notes, although general notes on this version can be found here.
Because of the above, the following is not a full overview of the release; I will provide one once this version of the viewer reaches a formal release status. Instead, this article is designed to provide a general overview of the core visible changes in Firestorm 6.4.5: those of the EEP integration and particularly how it has been integrated with Firestorm’s Phototools floater, and those of the Camera Presets, which differ slightly to their implementation in the official viewer.
Installation
As this is a beta release:
There is no need to do a clean install.
By default, it will be installed into a different folder to the release version of Firestorm you have installed.
If you encounter issues with Firestorm 6.4.5, it is important you preserve your log files before starting any session using the release version of the viewer, and make sure you zip and attach them to any Jira you file.
Linden Lab Derived Updates Overview
Firestorm 6.4.5 incorporates updates from the following Linden Lab viewer releases:
Second Life Release Viewer version 6.4.4.543157, the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) Update 2020 – provides better support for media playback options win the viewer, including the ability to live stream into Second Life.
Second Life Release Viewer version 6.4.3.542964, the FMOD Studio viewer, dated May 29th, 2020 – updates the viewer audio playback support to use FMOD Studio.
Second Life Release Viewer version 6.4.2.541639, the Camera Presets viewer, dated May 11th, 2020 – see Camera Presets, below, for more.
Second Life Release Viewer version 6.4.1.540593, the Zirbenz Maintanence viewer, dated April 27th, 2020.
Second Life Release Viewer version 6.4.0.540188, the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) viewer, dated April 17th, 2020 – see below for more.
Camera Presets
Camera Presets provides the ability for users to create one more more custom camera presets to define where and how the viewer camera is placed relative to your avatar, More than one set of presets can be created and saved, so that you can, for example have a camera position for general exploring, another suitable for combat games, another for building, etc., all of which can easily be accessed and used at any time via the Camera Presets drop-down.
Firestorm’s Camera Presets Options – note that depending on the viewer skin you are using, the Camera floater (middle left, above) many have a slightly different layout to that shown
For a general introduction to Camera Presets, please refer to: Tutorial: Viewer Camera Presets. However, when doing so, please note that:
The Firestorm Camera Floater is laid out differently to the official viewer, being more compact, as show in the image below.
If you wish to manually set a camera position using the camera controls (orbit / tilt and slide left/right / up/down), you must open the Camera Position floater via the Position… button, and then save adjustments from that floater, as adjustments cannot be saved directly from the Camera floater, as is the case with the official viewer.
Environment Enhancement Project (EEP)
There’s unlikely to be many people who have not heard of the environment Enhancement Project (EEP). But in short:
Replaces the use of Windlight .XML files to control the water and sky environments seen in Second Life.
Environment settings are saved within environment assets that you can keep in your inventory and / or share with others.
Environments can be applied to a region or to a parcel (subject to region permissions) and / or to your avatar (thus allowing those travelling in vehicles to maintain a consistent environment across multiple region crossings).
Allows up to four different, independently controlled sky layers.
Allows the Sun, Moon and Cloud textures to be replaced with custom textures uploaded to the viewer.
Provides an extended day cycle of up to 168 hours, thus allowing a 7-day, 24-hour day / night cycle to be defined, for example.
Provides a Personal Lighting floater that allows you to make viewer-side adjustments to the local environment for the purposes of photography.
Provides new LSL functions to allow scripts to interact with parcel environments and that can be used with experiences.
EEP Resources
EEP is a large and complex overhaul of environment settings for Second Life, and there are numerous resources available for it. As the Firestorm implementation is more-or-less as per the official viewer, I offer the following links to resources:
One of the popular elements within Firestorm is the Phototools floater. The Windlight (WL) tab, opened by default when accessing Phototools, has been revised for EEP, as shown in the image below.
The pre-EEP Phototools WL tab (l) and the EEP version (r). (1) The Drop-downs now select Day, Sky and Water settings from the Library → Environments folder; (2) Personal Settings button – opens the Personal Settings floater, allowing you to adjust the environment as seen in your viewer. This button essential replaces the Edit Sky Preset and Edit Water Preset buttons in the “old” Phototools WL tab; (3) cancels any changes made through the Personal Settings floater; (4) Pause Clouds – does what it says on the label; (5) Shared Environment – causes the viewer to use the local parcel / region environment.
Additional EEP Notes
There are around 200+ EEP environment settings to be found in the Library → Environments folder. These have been provided to Linden Lab by Whirly Fizzle of the Firestorm team.
As noted in the image above, these can be accessed via the WL tab in Phototools and via the drop-downs in Quick Prefs.
If you want to edit these any of the environment settings in the Environments folder, you must first copy them to a folder in your inventory (e.g. your Settings folder, or a sub-folder within it).
As per my tutorial, you can import the windlight settings you have on your local drive and convert them to EEP settings – see Importing Windlight Settings as EEP Assets.
For OpenSim
For OpenSim users, there are 3 key points:
The viewer incorporates Windlight ↔ EEP interoperability, allowing EEP viewer users to visit legacy Windlight regions.
The viewer supports the new OpenSim 0.9.2 with EEP, code-named “Ugly Sky.”
There is now a fast-entry grid feature on the login screen; simply enter a URI to add a new grid.
In addition, the last Firestorm OpenSim Release had a bug that caused crashes when rezzing items. This bug was responsible for 70% of all reported FS OpenSim crashes on the 6.3.9 version, and it has been fixed.
General Observations
Given Firestorm 6.4.5.60799 is a beta release and not a fully polished formal release, it may not be suitable for all users at this point in time – and this should be kept in mind when considering it. Should you decide to do so, again please remember:
Firestorm 6.4.5 can be installed alongside any current release of Firestorm, so you can swap between them.
Firestorm 6.4.5 has not been fully QA’d, so if you do encounter reproducible issues, please ensure you raise a bug report on the Firestorm JIRA.
With respect to EEP in particular:
Please take time to read the known issues in the beta release notes and, for EEP, those on the EEP viewer release notes from Linden Lab).
There are a number of EEP fixes forthcoming in the Love Me Render viewer (e.g: fixes for EEP specularity issue – BUG-228781 and BUG-228581, and for BUG-225784 “BUG-225446 regression – HUDs are again affected by environment setting”). It may also include additional fixes.
Linden Lab is still working on issues such as BUG-229079 “[EEP] Density multiplier does not allow full range of settings to be saved/loaded” and BUG-229031 “[EEP] Water has a large performance hit on EEP”.
There are known performance (FPS) issues with EEP / this version of Firestorm.
This version of Firestorm will likely go through a number of iterations prior to reaching formal release status.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, July 26th
This summary is generally 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.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current release viewer version 6.4.4.543157, dated June 11th, promoted June 23rd, formerly the CEF RC viewer – ROLL BACK..
Uses new viewer build tool chain, but does not include any user-facing updates outside of bug fixes.
Release channel cohorts:
Tools Update 2 RC viewer, version 6.4.6.545538, released on July 24th.
Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544639, dated July 17th, ROLLED BACK to RC status, July 24th.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, July 19th
This summary is generally 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.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release viewer version 6.4.5.544639, formerly the Tools Update RC viewer, promoted to de facto release status, Friday, July 17th – NEW.
Uses new viewer build tool chain, but does not include any user-facing updates outside of bug fixes.
It’s been a little over a month since my last update on Speedlight, the browser based Second Life client, so here’s a quick round up of the major updates since then.
Note that unless otherwise stated, the following notes apply to the browser version of Speedlight, as at the time of writing they had yet to be applied to the dedicated Android app version or (so far as I’m aware), the beta iOS app version.
Group Support
Perhaps the most noticeable update to the browser version of Speedlight since June is the expansion of Group related capabilities, specifically:
Search your groups.
View group notices and send group notices.
Leave a group.
Invite someone into a group.
Obviously, all group actions are subject to the group permissions assigned to your role within the group.
Notes:
Groups are accessed via the Group option in the Speedlight client menu.
The Group option will display your current groups as a searchable list, via the Search option at the top of the list.
When using Speedlight on a mobile device, the group list is displayed as an overlay to the main group information display, and is shown / hidden by tapping the Groups>> link displayed at the top of the options menu.
Tapping on the name of a group in the list will open the Group Info panel, shown below (and auto-close the Group list mobile devices).
The updated group display panel showing: 1. The pre-existing Group Chat button; 2. the new Group Notices button; 3. the Button to Join / Leave a group; 4. the Group Invite button.
Group Notices
Note: at the time of writing, the group notices functionality was only available to the browser version of Speedlight (any browser / device).
To view your group notices, click / tap the Group Notices button.
The Group Notices panel will open and load any available notices.
Click / tap on any notice to display it below the list of available notices.
Note that notice attachments cannot presently be viewed / opened, but are listed in the text of the notice.
View a group notice in the Speedlight browser version
The Group Notices panel has two buttons associated with it:
Send New Notice – described below.
Schedule a Notice – this option is either awaiting implementation or a Gold / Patreon subscription option. As I currently do not have either of the latter, I was unable to check, ergo it is excluded from this article.
Send a Group Notice
Subject to group permissions you can also create and send group notices from Speedlight:
From the Group Notice panel, click the Send New Notice button at the top of the panel.
The New Notice panel is display. Here you can:
Enter a title for the notice.
Enter the text of the notice. Note the character counter will turn red if you exceed the 512 character count for a notice, and the text beyond that point will be truncated when the notice is sent.
Click the Send Notice button when you’re ready to send your notice.
Send a Group Invite
Subject to group permissions you can send a group invitation to one or more users from Speedlight:
From the Group Info panel, click the Invite to Group button.
The Invite to Group panel is displayed.
Speedlight Invite to Group panel
Role To Invite: select the required role (if available) that will be offered in the invite.
Resident Name: enter the avatar name of the person whom you wish to receive the invite.
IM Message (optional): if you wish, you can send the person you are inviting an IM alongside the group invite – such as an explanation on why you’re sending it, etc.
Note you can use the listed variables to personalise the IM. For example, clicking the %FIRST_NAME% option will precede your IM with the recipient’s first name, while %GROUP% can be used to display the group’s name in the IM.
When you’re ready to send the invite, click the Invite button.
Additional notes for group invites:
Pressing ENTER after typing the recipient’s name will actually send the invitation, so if you want to send an IM with the invite, be sure to click / press TAB / tap to position the cursor in the IM field.
You can also append “sent from Speedlight” to the invite IM (and any other initial session IM you send to someone) by going to Settings in the left menu and then checking Append “Sent from SpeedLight” to my IMs (first message of the conversation only) .
Other Updates
Search Functionality
The Search functionality has been tweaked so that you can now:
Search for friends in your Friends List.
Search for IMs in you IM history by sender’s name.
Search for a group in your groups list (as described above).
Teleport Offers
You can now accept / decline teleport offers via the Notifications bar.
Multi-Line Text Entry (Chat and IM)
Both IMs and local chat accept multi-line text entry – use SHIFT-ENTER to start a new line / offer a paragraph break.
RLV Support
RLV support is now available to Speedlight Gold and Patreon users. However, it is not clear if this is Marine Kelley’s RLV API or Kitty Barnett’s RLVa API.
Android and iOS App Versions
The Android version has yet to receive the multi-line text input option and the group updates, as noted. However, it has received a series of bug fixes and allows errors or issues to be reported back to the developers.
The iOS version version of Speedlight is available for Speedlight Gold and Patreon users, and requires Apple’s TestFlight app to be installed on the device using it.
Feedback
The group updates are good to have, with the promise of more to come. Further performance improvements are in the offing as well, apparently. This may well be a good thing, as it appears the issue from April of an avatar refusing to stop moving once set in motion in the 3D World view, is back, and once again requires a relog to stop it. I’ve no idea how widespread this issue is, or if it is encountered on Android devices (as my poor little Nexus 2013 HD cannot run Speedlight’s 3D rendering, being stuck on Android 6.0.1), but for me, it is consistent and appears to be a regression. I shall await further updates with interest.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, July 12th
This summary is generally 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.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11th, promoted June 23rd, formerly the CEF RC viewer – No change.
Release channel cohorts:
Tools Update RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544474 on July 7th.
Arrack Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544465 on July 5th.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 