Wednesday 26 January 2011

Important Announcements!

During yesterday's Phoenix Office Hour we announced that we have formed a partnership with the SpotOn3D grid. 
I highly encourage you to watch the recording of that Office Hour here for more information:
http://rezzed.tv/2011/01/the-phoenix-hour-25th-january-2011

What this means is that we will be providing SpotOn3D with customized Phoenix Viewer builds for use specifically on their grid. These Custom viewer builds will contain all the same features the Phoenix viewer for second life has plus many SpotOn3D specific features. Because the additional features aren't 100% compatible with the Second Life grid there will be an additional download for the Phoenix-SpotOn viewer available on the SpotOn3D Website. We expect to have a Windows and Mac version for them by the end of the week, and a Linux will follow during the weekend. We look forward to working with the folks at SpotOn3D in our continuing effort to improve the user experience where ever our viewer is used.
You can visit there website here:
https://spoton3d.com/

Many people are probably wondering what does this mean to them in regards to Second Life... Our primary focus is still on the Second Life Grid and will continue to be, however a few of our developers will work part time on the Phoenix-SpotOn3D Viewer. Nothing will change for our Second Life users. Development will continue on the Phoenix Viewer, Firestorm Viewer and now the Phoenix-SpotOn3D viewer.

Speaking of Firestorm! As most of you already know, we have been very busy working on the Firestorm Viewer. Most of you seem to also know that we plan to put out a "Preview" build of firestorm at the end of this month.. and most of you seem to be very eager to try it out. A lot of work has gone into Firestorm already but is mostly interface improvements and changes. It is critical that you understand the Firestorm Preview is just that... a preview, it is not yet ready for full time use. But this will give you an idea of what's in store in the future. If you would like to try out the preview of firestorm at the end of the month, please join our in world group named Phoenix-Firestorm Preview Group. The build will be announced in that group and you can find help there as well.
Group link here.
secondlife:///app/group/7ba4569c-9dd9-fed2-aaa7-36065d18a13c/about

Do understand! The Firestorm Preview build should be considered Pre Alpha! Not beta,, not Release Candidate.. it is pre alpha and as such it has a lot of bugs that still need to be worked out.

Equally important! we have a new Tutorial video online that shows you how to customize the Firestorm User Interface as well as other functionality. Please watch this video before you log into Firestorm for the first time!
The video will be available from the following link within a few hours of the time of this posting.
http://www.youtube.com/user/PhoenixViewerSL

Thursday 13 January 2011

42 group limit is officially live on the grid!

Linden Lab has now officially announced that they have indeed enabled 42 group max on the server. In their blog post they also discuss some other exciting changes current and in the near future.
Read the blog here:
http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/technology/blog/2011/01/13/technology-improvements-for-q1-including-raising-group-limit-to-42

In expectation of this 40 group limit, Phoenix Viewers 725 and 818 already have support for them, however you have to enable it in the debug menu first. Here is how...
1. If you do not already have the advanced menu open, click on the Phoenix Menu, next to help at the top and click "Show Advanced"
2. Click the advanced menu, look down to the 4th from bottom and click Debug Settings...
3. Type in phoenix40GroupsSupport
4. Set the drop down below that too TRUE.
5. Relog.

Now early on Linden Lab had announced they would increase group limits to 40 originally, so we set it to 40, however Oskar Linden convinced them to increase it to 42 groups <3. While phoenix will say you have a 40 group limit, you can actually join 42. The next version of Phoenix will have this addressed.

Many have asked what will happen if Linden Lab reduces this number down the road.

I've been assured that the result of such a decision would not cause you to lose any groups you belong too. However to join a new group, you will need to leave groups to 1 below the changed limit. For example, if you join 42 groups and Linden Lab reduces the max to 40 later, you will need to leave 3 groups, to open a slot to join a new group.

Enjoy the additional groups!

Jessica Lyon
Phoenix Viewer Project Inc.

Monday 3 January 2011

This and That... Some updates...

False Anti virus alerts
We have had some reports that McAfee Anti virus has started reporting a trojan virus in our 1.5.2.818 installer. We have double, triple and quadruple checked and can say without a doubt that this is a false positive. It is being detected as a threat because the installer has a downloader built into it which downloads the required Vivox SL voice files along with fmod.dll for sound. Since we do not have a license to distribute Vivox or Fmod, we must have the installer download these files from their source at Linden Lab. It is because of this download built into the installer which is triggering McAfee to call foul falsely. We have contacted McAfee and when they send their next update, this issue should be resolved. Our installer and release binaries ARE safe, however until this issue is resolved you may have to disable your anti virus program while you install the viewer.



Phoenix 101 Classes
In our ongoing efforts to help and improve the user experience, we are starting educational "Phoenix 101" classes for our users on the Phoenix Viewer. The first set of classes will be covering our extensive preference options and explain what they all do. The classes will run from 1-1.5 hours long and done in voice.
The initial classes will be on the following dates.
Tuesday Jan 4 2011 @ 1 PM SLT
Thursday Jan 6 2011 @ 8AM SLT
Saturday Jan 8 2011 @ 6PM SLT.

Classes will be held at:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wailele%20Moku/64/64/22 
Hosted by our very own Ed Merryman, Support Lead.

Once we get through the first set of classes we will be able to better modify our format, curriculum and demand needs. We will then announce regular on going classes of different subjects here on this blog. 



Common Support issues
Below is a list of the most commonly reported issues people are having currently. Where available I will also post links to these issues on our wiki.

Bake fail: Avatar textures/clothing textures failing to display properly or as a ghost/cloud.
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=bake_fail

Display Names ???
This has been widely reported by users as having ??? for names. This is a server side load issue which LL is working hard on fixing. It should have gotten much better in the last few days, and will continue to get better as they progress.

Poor performance issues on 818 SSE2:
Uninstall 818SSE2, download and install into a new folder, 818 SSE. In some cases a clean install may be needed. Please see:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=clean_reinstall


Teleport Failures/crashes:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=tp_fail

Bridge issues:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=bridge
As a note, if you cannot get bridge to work, contact support.

Many other solutions to problems can be found here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=troubleshooting_and_quick_fixes

Note: We cannot provide support for people in the comments section of this blog. If you are having problems and cannot find the solutions on our wiki, please contact support. Support can fix just about anything!