The Firestorm team has formally announced the forthcoming blocking of version 4.6.1 of the popular third-party viewer. The move, which is part of Firestorm’s policy of only allowing three active version of their viewer to access Second Life,
The plan is for this block to only affect Second Life, it should not prevent OpenSim users continuing with version 4.6.1 if they so wish. However, at the time this article was written, this was still being tested.
The Firestorm announcement on the blocking reads in full:
In keeping with our three-version rule, we will be applying a block to version 4.6.1 on Friday, February 20th. This block will only apply to logins for Second Life grid; OpenSim grid logins should still work. Versions 4.6.5, 4.6.7 and 4.6.9 will be the only officially supported versions, but we highly encourage all users to be on our latest release of 4.6.9.
Version 4.4.2 is still exempt from the rule due to Mac-specific issues. However, Linden Lab’s statistics from January 21st indicate that there are still around 8,000 people using this ancient, pre-fitted mesh version. Because of the volume of users who cannot see the world properly, it is harder and harder to justify allowing it to remain exempt. We will be blocking it as well before our next release.
If you are using version 4.6.1 please update as soon as possible to avoid problems logging in on the 20th.
Currently, it looks as though the next release for Firestorm should be around the end of March or early April; however, this is not an official date – the viewer is still being worked on. Therefore, eyes should be kept on the Firestorm blog for information on the next release.
Jessica is back with a further Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video, this one focusing on the People panel – notably the Nearby tab and mini-map functionality within Firestorm.
The Nearby Tab of the People panel is a quick and easy means of keeping an eye on what is going on around you, and the Firestorm team have, in response to requests for users, added a lot of additional functionality and options to it – so much so that getting to grips with it can be a trifle bewildering.
Jessica offers walk-through of a number of option and settings for the People Panel, including the display options, and how to configure it so that it displays the information you want. As the video indicates, all of what is referred to within the People panel is equally applicable to the Radar panel as well.
The Nearby tab in the People panel (shown here with the mini-map displayed as well), offers a wealth of options to users
An overview of some of the mini-map options follows, noting how these can be linked to options within the People panel.
As the video demonstrates, there is a lot to cover with both panels, so much so that i places the video feels a little rushed (breathe, Jess, breathe! 😉 ), however, this doesn’t detract from the amount of information provided, and if you haven’t plumbed the depths of the People panel / radar, this video offers a great introduction. You can also find more information on the options available through both the Nearby tab on the People panel and the Radar panel by visiting the Firestorm wiki’s Radar page.
The announcement follows several months of collaboration between the Firestorm Team, lead by Jessica Lyon, and the folk at OnLive, lead by Dennis Harper, the results of which now mean that with immediate effect, SL Go now provides a choice of TWO viewers to subscribers and users:
The existing SL viewer – which OnLive are referring to as “SLV” – can be used from any Mac computer, PC, and from Android devices and iPads to access Second Life
AND The Firestorm viewer, initially available for Mac computers and PCs, which can be used to access Second Life and OpenSim grids.
SL Go’s pricing options remain the same whichever viewer you opt to use, and you can swap between them at any time you like, should you wish. Simply make your choice from the SL Go selection screen.
SL Go users accessing the service via PC or Mac now have a choice of viewer: the SL Viewer (SLV, as OnLive refer to it) or Firestorm (image via OnLive)
Since its launch in March 2014, which I covered in-depth at the time, the SL Go service has proven to be very popular with people who are using low-end systems which traditionally have problems when trying to run the viewer locally. Because the viewer is streamed from OnLive’s dedicated servers, it’s the servers that do all the heavy processing, delivering a fast, smooth service to users, thus helping to give a new lease of life to older hardware.
Of course, because SL Go is streamed, it means that – like the SL viewer offered by OnLive – certain functionality within the Firestorm offering has either been removed for security reasons (such as the Develop menu, and no access to debug settings and content cannot be uploaded), or has been disabled (such as the option to save snapshots to a hard drive – as that would effectively mean saving them to the OnLive server).
Firestorm viewer on SL Go from OnLive (click for full-size)
The big benefit in using Firestorm through SL Go is that – with the noted exceptions due to security issues, etc., – it brings the richness of Second Life’s most popular third-party viewer to those on older systems who have perhaps felt themselves to be increasingly edged out of Second Life, something Firestorm Project Manager Jessica Lyon commented on when discussing the release with me.
“I’m really happy about this,” Jessica said. “For years folk on lower-end systems have seen significant improvements to Second Life, particularly with how the world looks, pass them by because their systems are unable to run them. We’ve even heard from many that they simply cannot use Firestorm or any other viewer and as being pushed out of SL completely.
“This release of Firestorm through OnLive, together with the existing SL viewer, hopefully gives those people a new way to enjoy Second Life. I really hope this works for them!”
I can personally attest to that. In 2010, I purchased an Asus PC EEE 1201N notebook, which has found running a viewer like Firestorm increasingly heavy going. With Firestorm through SL, with all the bells and whistles turned-up, I’m averaging around 60 fps!
Firestorm on SL Go from OnLive: almost 60 fps on a Asus PC EEE 1201N notebook with all the bells and whistles active! (this image replaces an earlier version, after I realised I’d uploaded the wrong screen cap – one with shadows disabled)
That SL Go does bring a new lease of life to older hardware can be seen in the fact that since the launch of the service in March, 2014, the largest take-up among users has been by those using the service through the OnLive PC and Mac clients. But those who want Firestorm on their mobile devices need not fear – it will be coming in 2015. This is something Jessica is also looking forward to.
“A could of years ago we fooled a great many people with our April Fool’s joke of a Firestorm Mobile client,” Jessica said. “The excitement over the announcement, and the outcry when it turned out to be just and April Fool’s joke, was overwhelming. The great news is – and no joke this time! – that OnLive will be making this capability real very soon!”
And it doesn’t end there. One capability that Firestorm brings to OnLive and SL Go users is the ability to log into other grids as well as Second Life. The version of the viewer supplied to OnLive is the OpenSim version, which means it is complete with the grid manager and start-up grid selection drop-down, allowing you to log into all your favourite grids – as I did, logging-in to Kitely and Fallingwater at the Seanchai Library.
Use Firestorm on SL Go and any PC / Mac / laptop to access your favourite OpenSim grids (click to enlarge)
Thus, with a single subscription to OnLive, you gain access to the entire metaverse from any low-end PC or Mac in your home.
“We’re happy to be able to empower SL Go users with more choice. They’ve told us they want a choice of viewers, so offering the popular Firestorm viewer was a natural next step.” said Rick Sanchez, VP of Product and Marketing at OnLive, at the launch of the new offering.
I’ll have a more in-depth look at Firestorm on SL Go available shortly.
As indicated in my update to the Firestorm 4.6.9.42969 release review in this blog, a couple of issues have been found within that release, which may affect some Firestorm users.
As a result, the Firestorm team have released a hotfix update to the viewer, which includes fixes for those issues and offers three more the team has also implemented.
After releasing 4.6.9.42969 we discovered a few bugs that affect just enough users to warrant a hotfix update. However, if none of the issues addressed in this hotfix affect you personally there is no need for you to update to it.
We have replaced the 42969 links with the new version 42974 on our download pages.
As per the blog post, unless one of the issues addressed by the fixes above affect you, there is no need to update your version of Firestorm. None of the fixes should directly impact on the elements of the viewer included in my 4.6.9.42969 review.
Pssst! The next release just might have group bans after all!
Jessica Lyon, project manager for the Firestorm team has officially announced the upcoming release of the next version of SL’s most popular viewer, although no actual release date is given.
A new release has been hinted at several times over the last few weeks, and the team is working hard to keep to a 3-monthly release cycle. At the moment, the upcoming release is focus of the Firestorm QA team and is being poked at by beta testers.
Releasing a viewer isn’t necessarily straightforward as might be thought; new features and shiny have to be measured against current code status, stability, and so on, and bugs and their fixes must be weighed against the opportunity to add new shiny or not. All of this made for a balancing act for all concerned; one in which – especially given the size of Firestorm’s user base – not everyone is going to come away happy when a release arrives.
There have been a lot of updates flowing out of the Lab during the past year, many of which have yet to find their way into Firestorm. But as Jessica notes, stability tends to win-out over trying to crowbar everything into a viewer release:
Firestorm is not, and has never been, a “bleeding-edge” viewer. We have always focused on quality over quantity, stability over shiny. Slow and steady wins the day. Despite complaints and objections, this strategy has helped make Firestorm the most widely used viewer in Second Life by a long shot. In code, almost anything new has bugs and kinks that need to be worked out regardless of who wrote it and how vigilant they were at it. That’s because despite how much testing you do, it isn’t until it lands in the hands of the many that the deepest rooted software glitches start to crop up. Knowing this is one of the reasons we do not merge in and release new features from Linden Lab right away.
While the updates coming out of the Lab have all be to the good, they’ve also not been without their own problems. The AIS v3 code updates, for example, resulted in some od bugs and issues of a non-trivial kind, some of which have only recently been fixed in the new Attachments RC viewer (version 3.7.20.296355) that appeared on Wednesday, November 5th. And while the CDN and the HTTP pipelining viewer have brought improvements to the majority of SL users, they also have generated some issues.
The SL Share 2 features for sharing photos with Flickr and Twitter, and adding post-process filters to images will probably not be in the next release of Firestorm
The upshot of this is that while the upcoming release of Firestorm will have new features, bug fixes and improvements, in order to keep code merges, etc., as straightforward as possible and avoid issues which may arise from cherry-picking features and updates from different LL releases, Jessica warns that when released, the new version of Firestorm will be without AIS v3, HTTP (although obviously, it will work with the CDN, just as all viewers do already), SL Share 2, and may not have group bans.
But it’s not all bad news, as Jessica notes:
But we absolutely will have plenty of other features, bug fixes and improvements worth updating for to which I’m very excited about!
Testing is still underway, so it will be another few weeks, most likely, before the new Firestorm release appears. When it does, if you’re a Firestorm user, please do keep in mind that if the feature you were really looking forward to isn’t in the release, it doesn’t men they’ve forgotten it or are ignoring it; they’re just trying to bring you the best, more reliable experience they can whilst trying to avoid showering you with unwanted bugs and issues.
I’ll of course have the usual review of the release when it appears.
September 3rd we turn four! Hard to believe but it has already been 4 years since we started developing viewers! First the popular Phoenix viewer and now of course the crazy popular Firestorm Viewer. Firestorm is by far the most popular viewer used in Second Life and we have you to thank for that! After all… we couldn’t have done it without your support and encouragement! So as a show of our appreciation and with what is becoming a bit of a tradition for us… we have partnered with a couple of content creators to bring you some really cool free gifts AND organized a Rockin anniversary party with Rockin entertainment!
Things will kick-off at 13:00 SLT on Wednesday September 3rd, at the Phoenix-Firestorm support Island, where Mankind Trace (aka Seth Regan in the physical world) will be starting things with a live performance, and he’ll be followed by Firestorm’s Ed Merryman, who will be spinning the discs until the last avatar drops (which in 2013 added up to a 18+ hour party!).
Do keep in mind that the region’s capacity is liable to be limited, but people will be coming and going – so if you don’t get in the first time – try later!
To further mark the event, two special gifts will be on offer. The first of this is another Firestorm cat from KittyKats. This one is called FireBall, and like the 2013 kitty, is fully interactive – it can wander, follow and even be held – and comes complete with a party hat, engraved collar and a cute matching bed!
The Firestorm 4th anniversary KittyKat and custom bike from Desert Morning Motors
Also on offer for a limited time is a Firestorm themed Cafe style easy rider bike, donated by Desert Morning Motors. Inspired by the Classic American Motorcycles of the late 1930′s to the late 1960′s, and capture the spirit of the American chopper bikes. So get ready to be a Firestorm Easy Rider!
Locations for obtaining both of these limited-time gifts will be announced through the Firestorm blog on Wednesday September 3rd, and will doubtless be available at the party!
Which just leaves me to pass on congratulations and best wishes to Jessica, Ed, and the team on reaching their 4th anniversary!
The Firestorm team has formally announced the forthcoming blocking of version 4.6.1 of the popular third-party viewer. The move, which is part of Firestorm’s policy of only allowing three active version of their viewer to access Second Life,
Important note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read 
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