Tuesday 26 April 2011

Phoenix 1.5.2.1050 goes to Official Release!

Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.1050 is Official!

Yes! Today is a great day! After receiving lots of feedback from our users combined with the crash statistics provided by LL, we are taking 1.5.2.1050 out of Release Candidate and making it an official release! There is nothing new to download, just the title has changed.

According to this week's crash statistics covering last week we've actually made new record for stability in a Third Party Viewer with a 9.88% crash rate!! While we do expect the crash rate will rise slightly as more and more people move to it, we don't expect it to rise very much, lets hope it stays right where it is! As previously mentioned the focus leading up to this release was stability and crash fixes. We investigated, found and fixed a huge amount of crash bugs for this release. But it wasn't all us! Credits and thank you to Imprudence, Singularity, Henri Beauchamp, Linden Lab, Code Contributors from the SL Community and many others for sharing their own crash fixes with us under the spirit of Open Source. 

1.5.2.1050 Troubles?

We haven't based this decision solely on the crash statistics. We also based it on feedback from our users and our Support Team. While most people found 1050 to be fantastic, some did have problems. Fortunately these problems have proven to be solvable with little trouble.

Some of the most common issues were poor performance. If you are having poor performance on 1.5.2.1050, please read the "A Note on Performance" section of the following wiki page:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=change_log_1.5.2.1050

Most people who did have crash or stability issues with 1050 were resolved by performing a clean install. Instructions on how to do a clean install on the following wiki page.
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=clean_reinstall

Japan Donation!

We made the donation today to go to Japan Relief! With just a few dollars lost due to transfer fees from LL the final donation was $2277.54!! Way to go people! The reciept can be seen here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=japandonation

Sincerely,

The Phoenix Viewer Project Team.


Thursday 21 April 2011

Phoenix Viewer Release Candidate 1.5.2.1050

Phoenix Viewer Release Candidate 1.5.2.1050 is now live. Release candidate means that while the release has been thoroughly tested by our Quality Assurance Team and passed, we want to make sure that it is as good as it possibly can be. Your feedback over the next few days on this version will help us determine whether we get to change it to an official release. Although this is a release candidate, it is official and we will be providing support for it.

Where to download?
From our website links on the right -->
or from here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=downloads
Change log here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=change_log_1.5.2.1050

Why should you update?
- This build is expected to be our most stable ever, we have fixed dozens and dozens of crash bugs and spent a great many hours on stabilization.
- We have resolved many more sculpt rezzing issues.
- Most importantly... The Client Bridge prim has been updated.

About the Bridge update and why it is so important to update your phoenix viewer to this release.

The client bridge is an object the viewer creates and attaches to your avatar. This prim expands the functionality of the viewer for things like double click Teleports and greater accuracy for positional data of avatars on the built in radar.
The bridge was invented long before Phoenix and was created using a bug which allowed the prim to be 100% invisible. This is not the same as being transparent or made transparent with a texture, it is truly invisible. However if you could see it, you would see a default sized spherical prim attached to your waist.

Linden Lab is fixing the bug which was used to create this invisible prim and this fix will quite possibly cause the prim to render with a plywood texture. Effectively if you don't update, you will be seen wearing a plywood sphere around your waist when this fix is implemented by the Lab.
More info on this fix here: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-6782

We have created a new bridge prim in this release using a very small micro prim, made fully transparent. When you first log into this release, please log into a region where you can build so the viewer can create the new bridge object. Once created the object should go to your Objects folder first, then be automatically moved to the #Phoenix folder in your inventory.


Remember that if you have problems with this release our Support Staff will be standing by to help, but please be patient and understand that they will be very busy over the next while.

Note: RLVa has not been updated due to time constraints.

Enjoy!
The Phoenix Viewer Project, Inc

Friday 1 April 2011

Gotcha! Happy April fools Day!

Our Phoenix Viewer users have all noticed on logging in today that there is a Neko avatar staring back at them on the login page. This is my avatar, Jessica Lyon,  Project Manager of the Phoenix Project. There has been some concern that the viewer has been hacked, this of course is incorrect. Unfortunately our Legal department email address has been inundated with concerned residents. As some may not realize the login screen is loaded dynamically from the web and can be changed at any time, just as the LL login screen changes almost every time it's loaded. While most of our users got the joke, some were offended by it. I'd just like to point out at this time that there are websites all over the internet participating in jokes on this day including Wikipedia, Google, Microsoft, WoW and many many others.
There's a big list here http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com

I apologize if you were offended by the prank, it's all in good fun and tradition!
You can download the 12 different login page images here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=april_1_textures

On another note.. and this is NOT a joke.. our fund raiser for Japan relief has generated over $1700 US so far thanks to you! Thank you all SO much! It's important to remember that while we may not have much.. we have more than they do right now. Keep those donations coming!

Sincerely,
Jessica Lyon
Project Manager
The Phoenix Viewer Project, Inc