Official Launch!
We realize this release has been long overdue and we appreciate your patience while we have been very very busy over here in Phoenix Project land working hard to be able to offer you an official release of the Firestorm viewer. It was very important to us to ensure that Firestorm was as bug free and feature complete as possible before calling it an 'official release'. We did not want to disappoint or insult you by giving you something that isn't ready and still calling it an official. Although this release isn't entirely bug free (no viewer ever is of course) or 100% feature complete it sure is damn close! So with that said, we are very proud and excited to offer you the Official Phoenix Firestorm Viewer Release!
Please also take a moment to read a specially written letter from our Firestorm Lead Dev Arrehn Oberlander to you, our users. A word from our Firestorm Lead
Feature completion & What's New!
We're calling this our official release because it is very close to feature complete in comparison to our Phoenix Viewer with the majority of Phoenix's most popular features now included. Just to name a few... invite to group from profiles, spell check, optional notices in top right, text search in notecards, full screen mode, local bitmap browser, spam blocker, independent text entries in conversations/nearby chat bars, accurate radar, mouselook enhancements including visible beacons, inventory and chat as well as mouselook zoom and much much more!
Plus we've added lots of new and innovative features like Texture Refresh in the pie/context menu for those textures and avatars that refuse to load, Mesh uploader, Inventory search that lets you search multiple words at once, ability to fix folders that land outside your main inventory folder, 'is typing' indicators on tags and the list goes on and on. For a complete list of new features in this Firestorm release please see our change log here...
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=firestorm_official_release_change_log
Bugs and Things You Need To Know
Preferences reworked!
Much has changed in our preferences which may cause some confusion for our existing Firestorm users. As time passed and new features/options were added, preferences became cluttered, confusing and illogical. We realized this needed to be fixed prior to our official release so we have re designed preferences from the ground up. Options have now been relocated where folks would logically expect them to be found. We've also spent some time creating a preferences migration wiki page to help you relearn where things are. http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=fs3_preferences_moved
Bugs, performance and usability issues...
We've addressed the vast majority of our own major issues AND included the latest Graphics fixes from LL which addressed most of the bugs introduced with the release of mesh. However we have found that while LL's graphic fixes work best for most people, they have introduced new issues for some others. So we have decided to offer you two optional downloads.
Our primary download is versioned 3.2.2.24336 and we've found it works best for most people. This version is downloaded from the quick downloads links on the right of this page. However if you find it just isn't working well enough for you we suggest you try our alternative offer of 3.2.1.24179. Both have the exact same feature set but the later has fewer of the graphics fixes from LL. The 3.2.1.24179 version can be found here..
http://www.phoenixviewer.com/downloads.php
You can also see a list of common known issues with this release here..
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=firestorm_official_release_change_log#known_issues
Instructions & Support
As with all releases we highly recommend you perform a clean install. This is especially important with this release! Instructions on how to perform a clean install can be found here...
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=fs_clean_reinstall
As always, our dedicated support team will be standing by to help you in our in world support groups or through support tickets on our JIRA. You can also file a support ticket by emailing Support@phoenixviewer.com. In the subject line, put a short description of your problem in 8 words or less, and explain the problem in detail in the body of the email. This will automatically create a support JIRA which our team will be able to respond to. More information on how to reach support can be found here...
http://www.phoenixviewer.com/support.php
Don't forget we also host free classes for new and old Firestorm users alike. Our classes range from very basic to very advanced and the schedule can be found here.
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=firestorm_classes
We also have a VERY in depth Wiki with answers to all the most common and many uncommon questions; it has a trouble shooting guide too!
Note: Please don't post help questions in the comments of our blog posts, we simply cannot provide support through blog comments.
What about Phoenix Viewer with mesh?
Stay tuned! It's right around the corner!
Sincerely,
Jessica Lyon and the entire Phoenix Project Team!
