Why our long release cycles?
While Firestorm is plugging along towards another huge release, I often get asked why our releases are so far apart compared to other viewer projects'. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is that updating is a royal pain in the butt, and I understand most users hate updating unless there is something really worthwhile in the update to make the effort. Because of this, I want each and every one of our Firestorm updates to have enough value that you will want to update to it and not be insulted by frequent minor updates that do little to improve your experience. When I say "value," I mean a significant combination of great new features, along with bug, stability and performance fixes that make the update process worth your time and energy. Now, not everyone on our team agrees 100% with this strategy, and I'm sure there will be some of you who don't, either, but I believe it to be a matter of respecting you (our users) and your time. In the future, however, we plan to make that updating process easier for you by setting up seamless behind-the-scenes updates you will hardly even notice, allowing us to provide more frequent updates and even hotfixes to improve your experience faster!
Upcoming Firestorm "value"
I'm VERY excited to say we have some great new improvements coming, like integrated Phototools contributed to us by Paperwork Resident! Paperwork has spent a lot of time with our developer Ansariel Hiller, getting his phototools integrated into Firestorm with their own floaters and panels. But we'll also have features like the ability to save/restore custom camera positions, improved Spellchecker and Autoreplace (courtesy of LL), an RLV update, crouch to toggle, a new "Dyslexia" font, "Autoresponse Sent" message in IMs, the ability to highlight people in a region through the object list in the About Land floater, customizable audio alerts for friends going on/offline, voice visualizers in the radar, the ability to exclude group-owned objects during selection, configurable interface sounds in Prefs, an option to report collision messages to scripts, etc., etc., etc. Not to mention a gazillion more stability and performance improvements. It's all coming soon!
OpenSim and our compatibility efforts
While Second Life still remains the primary focus of our development efforts, we have begun working towards bringing Firestorm Viewer into better compatibility with the OpenSim Platform. It is important to point out where the extent of that effort ends, though. We are making Firestorm work better on the "base" OpenSim Platform, but we cannot fix problems that arise on specific OpenSim grids because of changes those particular grids have made to their OpenSim code. For those issues to be fixed, we will rely on those grids to provide us code contributions to address those issues.
Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy
Several weeks ago, we were contacted by Mr. Douglas Maxwell, who is a
Science and Technology Manager for Virtual World Strategic Applications
of the Simulation & Training Technology Center. This is a branch of
the United States Army Research Laboratory, and he runs the Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) project. While MOSES does have a presence in Second Life, their primary
focus and virtual headquarters exist on the Open Simulator platform.
They expressed an interest in working together with us on Firestorm
Viewer. More specifically, they intend to make the Open Simulator
platform more secure for their grid, but more importantly to also give
that work back to the OpenSim community by contributing it to our open
source Firestorm Viewer. We think this is a fantastic goal and have
already begun working with them. We are certainly looking forward to the
results of these efforts in the future. If you have any questions for Mr. Maxwell, you can reach him through his email here.
Our new second home on OSgrid
Walter Balazic, owner of the Littlefield System, and Hiro Protagonist, who runs the servers the Littlefield regions run on, have very generously donated a couple of regions on OSgrid to us to use as we please. Not only that, but Walter and Camryn Darkstone landscaped and furnished one of them to be our OSgrid headquarters! See a snapshot here, or if you would like to check it out in person, you can create an account on OSgrid here and, once inworld, open the Map and look for an island called "Firestorm Island." Having a region there helps us to further test Firestorm's OpenSim capabilities and work towards ironing out all the bugs there. The region is absolutely beautiful, and we are so ever grateful for their generosity! Thanks Littlefield!
Jessica Lyon
Project Manager
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
Firestorm earns #1 spot in popularity and crash rate!
Belated Happy 2nd Anniversary!
We've been so busy lately, we didn't even realize until Monday that Sunday, Sept 2nd, was our 2nd year anniversary as a team! Time sure flies!
And what have we achieved in two years?
- Lowest crash rate ever!
This morning we got our crash rate in for our latest 4.2.2.29837 release and it's at 8.54% according to Linden Lab's Statistics!!! This is an all time record low crash rate for any v2/v3 viewer in recorded history! It even beats the current crash rate for LL's aging but stable 1.23 viewer!
- Firestorm beats Phoenix as #1 viewer in SL!
Furthermore, we also received an email through the opensource-dev mailing list from Oz Linden this morning that stated the following:
"On behalf of Linden Lab, I'd like to extend congratulations to the
Firestorm Viewer team.
Last week, Firestorm took over the #1 spot on the list of Second Life
viewers in terms of total user time, surpassing its elder cousin,
Phoenix. The Phoenix viewer still has a slight lead in number of
sessions, but Firestorm viewer sessions are on average significantly
longer - which may in turn be due in part to its substantially better
stability.
The Firestorm team has worked long and hard to support users who want
both the latest Second Life features being developed by Linden Lab and
the additional capabilities you provide, and this achievement is one you
can all be proud of. Thank you."
What does it all mean?
I use our viewer statistics as a measurement of how well we are accomplishing our goal of improving the user experience. The fact that Firestorm is now the most popular viewer in Second Life AND is the most stable viewer tells me we're doing it right!
I couldn't be more proud of our Development Team, our Support Team and our QA and Beta Testers than I am today. Achieving what we have can only be done through team effort and a lot of it! But more than that, I want to thank all of you, our users. Through the last two years you've supported us, trusted us, guided us to what we've been doing right and what we're doing wrong. You've helped set the temperature to when we're moving closer or further away from improving your experience, and we've listened. We couldn't have reached this level of success without you as well!
Thank you Developers, Support, Beta Testers and Users!
Sincerely,
Jessica Lyon
Proud Project Manager!
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc
We've been so busy lately, we didn't even realize until Monday that Sunday, Sept 2nd, was our 2nd year anniversary as a team! Time sure flies!
And what have we achieved in two years?
- Lowest crash rate ever!
This morning we got our crash rate in for our latest 4.2.2.29837 release and it's at 8.54% according to Linden Lab's Statistics!!! This is an all time record low crash rate for any v2/v3 viewer in recorded history! It even beats the current crash rate for LL's aging but stable 1.23 viewer!
- Firestorm beats Phoenix as #1 viewer in SL!
Furthermore, we also received an email through the opensource-dev mailing list from Oz Linden this morning that stated the following:
"On behalf of Linden Lab, I'd like to extend congratulations to the
Firestorm Viewer team.
Last week, Firestorm took over the #1 spot on the list of Second Life
viewers in terms of total user time, surpassing its elder cousin,
Phoenix. The Phoenix viewer still has a slight lead in number of
sessions, but Firestorm viewer sessions are on average significantly
longer - which may in turn be due in part to its substantially better
stability.
The Firestorm team has worked long and hard to support users who want
both the latest Second Life features being developed by Linden Lab and
the additional capabilities you provide, and this achievement is one you
can all be proud of. Thank you."
What does it all mean?
I use our viewer statistics as a measurement of how well we are accomplishing our goal of improving the user experience. The fact that Firestorm is now the most popular viewer in Second Life AND is the most stable viewer tells me we're doing it right!
I couldn't be more proud of our Development Team, our Support Team and our QA and Beta Testers than I am today. Achieving what we have can only be done through team effort and a lot of it! But more than that, I want to thank all of you, our users. Through the last two years you've supported us, trusted us, guided us to what we've been doing right and what we're doing wrong. You've helped set the temperature to when we're moving closer or further away from improving your experience, and we've listened. We couldn't have reached this level of success without you as well!
Thank you Developers, Support, Beta Testers and Users!
Sincerely,
Jessica Lyon
Proud Project Manager!
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc
Monday, 27 August 2012
Firestorm Update 4.2.2.29837
It's release time again!...Again!
Part II.
For those interested in the back story behind why we had to pull the 4.2.1 release, have a read on Tonya's latest blog post. If you installed the 4.2.1 release we recommend you update to this one and we apologize for the inconvenience!
__________________________________________
With this release we bring you Pathfinding documentation, tools and scripting functions in Firestorm, as well as an RLVa 1.4.7 update, more crash fixes, stability and performance improvements and a bunch of new features too!
New in 4.2.2.29837
- Skin improvements to Starlight, Vintage, Metaharper, FS High Contrast and Ansastorm.
- New windlight sky settings, including Ambient Dark, Grey and White and a new Tron Legacy series.
- Added pathfinding LSL functions from Linden Lab.
- Ability to disable group chat on a per-group basis!
- Snapshot uploads to Flickr (thanks to Katharine Berry and Exodus Viewer for that work).
- Temp uploads from snapshot floater.
- Cool new SLurl command line feature!
- New toolbar buttons for ground sit, sound explorer, asset blacklist.
- Our own less intrusive "Rebake terrain" button next to no build/no script/no push icons in menu/nav bar.
- Improved AO handling with other animating inworld objects.
- Ability to join our support group from Help menu.
- lots more!
OpenSim specific
- LSL Bridge disabled on OpenSim.
- Grid manager help link and docu on login page.
- Group creation cost corrected.
- Mapto command now working in OSgrid.
- Upload cost amounts corrected.
For complete release notes, including new features, fixes, improvements, changes and known issues please see our change log here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/firestorm_release_4.2.2.29837_change_log
Please note: As usual we highly recommend performing a clean install.
We may be a little while before our next release since it's going to require considerable work, like merging to LL's latest code, Havok, setting up our separate builds for SL/OpenSim, and most importantly... stabilizing all that new stuff.
Enjoy the update!
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.
4.2.1 withdrawn as release
We discovered an ugly bug with our 4.2.1.29803 release and are removing it from downloads.
The bug comes from a fix we inadvertently pulled in from LL, to a fix a bug we don't yet have, which has created a pretty nasty visual bug with doors, wheels and other things that rotate.
Because of this we are temporarily removing our downloads of 4.2.1 and will have an update of 4.2.2 by the end of the day.
If you are already on 4.2.1.29803, don't panic, no need to downgrade, your viewer is still safe. The bug makes doors and things 'look' broken, but it does not actually break anything, it's purely visual. However we ask that you update to 4.2.2 once it's available.
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Jessica Lyon
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.
The bug comes from a fix we inadvertently pulled in from LL, to a fix a bug we don't yet have, which has created a pretty nasty visual bug with doors, wheels and other things that rotate.
Because of this we are temporarily removing our downloads of 4.2.1 and will have an update of 4.2.2 by the end of the day.
If you are already on 4.2.1.29803, don't panic, no need to downgrade, your viewer is still safe. The bug makes doors and things 'look' broken, but it does not actually break anything, it's purely visual. However we ask that you update to 4.2.2 once it's available.
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Jessica Lyon
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.
Sunday, 26 August 2012
Firestorm Update 4.2.1.29803
It's release time again!
With this release we bring you Pathfinding documentation, tools and scripting functions in Firestorm, as well as an RLVa 1.4.7 update, more crash fixes, stability and performance improvements and a bunch of new features too!
New in 4.2.1.29803
- Skin improvements to Starlight, Vintage, Metaharper, FS High Contrast and Ansastorm.
- New windlight sky settings, including Ambient Dark, Grey and White and a new Tron Legacy series.
- Added pathfinding LSL functions from Linden Lab.
- Ability to disable group chat on a per-group basis!
- Snapshot uploads to Flickr (thanks to Katharine Berry and Exodus Viewer for that work).
- Temp uploads from snapshot floater.
- Cool new SLurl command line feature!
- New toolbar buttons for ground sit, sound explorer, asset blacklist.
- Our own less intrusive "Rebake terrain" button next to no build/no script/no push icons in menu/nav bar.
- Improved AO handling with other animating inworld objects.
- Ability to join our support group from Help menu.
- lots more!
OpenSim specific
- LSL Bridge disabled on OpenSim.
- Grid manager help link and docu on login page.
- Group creation cost corrected.
- Mapto command now working in OSgrid.
- Upload cost amounts corrected.
For complete release notes, including new features, fixes, improvements, changes and known issues please see our change log here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/firestorm_release_4.2.1.29803_change_log
Please note: As usual we highly recommend performing a clean install.
We may be a little while before our next release since it's going to require considerable work, like merging to LL's latest code, Havok, setting up our separate builds for SL/OpenSim, and most importantly... stabilizing all that new stuff.
Enjoy the update!
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.
With this release we bring you Pathfinding documentation, tools and scripting functions in Firestorm, as well as an RLVa 1.4.7 update, more crash fixes, stability and performance improvements and a bunch of new features too!
New in 4.2.1.29803
- Skin improvements to Starlight, Vintage, Metaharper, FS High Contrast and Ansastorm.
- New windlight sky settings, including Ambient Dark, Grey and White and a new Tron Legacy series.
- Added pathfinding LSL functions from Linden Lab.
- Ability to disable group chat on a per-group basis!
- Snapshot uploads to Flickr (thanks to Katharine Berry and Exodus Viewer for that work).
- Temp uploads from snapshot floater.
- Cool new SLurl command line feature!
- New toolbar buttons for ground sit, sound explorer, asset blacklist.
- Our own less intrusive "Rebake terrain" button next to no build/no script/no push icons in menu/nav bar.
- Improved AO handling with other animating inworld objects.
- Ability to join our support group from Help menu.
- lots more!
OpenSim specific
- LSL Bridge disabled on OpenSim.
- Grid manager help link and docu on login page.
- Group creation cost corrected.
- Mapto command now working in OSgrid.
- Upload cost amounts corrected.
For complete release notes, including new features, fixes, improvements, changes and known issues please see our change log here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/firestorm_release_4.2.1.29803_change_log
Please note: As usual we highly recommend performing a clean install.
We may be a little while before our next release since it's going to require considerable work, like merging to LL's latest code, Havok, setting up our separate builds for SL/OpenSim, and most importantly... stabilizing all that new stuff.
Enjoy the update!
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.
Saturday, 25 August 2012
Phoenix Firestorm Support Region
Our primary goal has always been to "Improve the user experience." We do this on several fronts, including providing and developing viewers with features and functionality based on user requests; running a major support effort designed to help users with all kinds of different problems; providing classes that teach viewer functions, features and general trouble shooting; working closely with Linden Lab to try and ensure your issues and concerns are heard, etc.
As of today we are adding one more major initiative towards that effort, which is to provide a support region for both our own users and to all residents of Second Life where they can go to find help with viewer issues and just about everything else. This is not to be used as a hangout -- it's purely for those who need help.
This is a cooperative effort between us and the best of the best among Second Life mentor and helper groups, which will populate it with courteous, generous and highly knowledgeable volunteers in order to provide support and information to new and old users alike. We are extremely excited to say that members of the White Tiger Mentors, Resident Help Network, Mental Mentors and others have joined us in this shared effort and will be available in the region for you should you need help.
We are also thankful to the many bloggers who have written about this effort, which helps us explain what it's all about and expand on information about it. It also helps spread the word about the region because the more people who know about it, the more people it helps. We encourage you to have a read through their blog posts linked below.
To find the region, simply open your Map and search "Phoenix Firestorm Support" or click the SLurl:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Phoenix%20Firestorm%20Support/48/162/25
Bloggers' links, in no particular order:
http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/helping-the-community-the-phoenix-firestorm-support-region/
http://blog.nalates.net/2012/08/23/firestorm-support-island-opening/
http://firstlife.isfullofcrap.com/2012/08/24/wheres-the-love-man-wheres-the-heart/
http://jayrcelasecondlifetechnologist.blogspot.ca/2012/08/virtual-world-viewers-phoenix-firestorm.html
http://danielvoyager.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/my-visit-to-firestorm-support-region/
http://jayrcelasecondlifetechnologist.blogspot.ca/2012/08/phoenix-firestorm-island-party-success.html
Jessica Lyon speech at opening party
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pfs_opening_speech
As of today we are adding one more major initiative towards that effort, which is to provide a support region for both our own users and to all residents of Second Life where they can go to find help with viewer issues and just about everything else. This is not to be used as a hangout -- it's purely for those who need help.
This is a cooperative effort between us and the best of the best among Second Life mentor and helper groups, which will populate it with courteous, generous and highly knowledgeable volunteers in order to provide support and information to new and old users alike. We are extremely excited to say that members of the White Tiger Mentors, Resident Help Network, Mental Mentors and others have joined us in this shared effort and will be available in the region for you should you need help.
We are also thankful to the many bloggers who have written about this effort, which helps us explain what it's all about and expand on information about it. It also helps spread the word about the region because the more people who know about it, the more people it helps. We encourage you to have a read through their blog posts linked below.
To find the region, simply open your Map and search "Phoenix Firestorm Support" or click the SLurl:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Phoenix%20Firestorm%20Support/48/162/25
Bloggers' links, in no particular order:
http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/helping-the-community-the-phoenix-firestorm-support-region/
http://blog.nalates.net/2012/08/23/firestorm-support-island-opening/
http://firstlife.isfullofcrap.com/2012/08/24/wheres-the-love-man-wheres-the-heart/
http://jayrcelasecondlifetechnologist.blogspot.ca/2012/08/virtual-world-viewers-phoenix-firestorm.html
http://danielvoyager.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/my-visit-to-firestorm-support-region/
http://jayrcelasecondlifetechnologist.blogspot.ca/2012/08/phoenix-firestorm-island-party-success.html
Jessica Lyon speech at opening party
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pfs_opening_speech
Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Pathfinding Server Rollout
Pathfinding is rolling out on all regions today and may have an impact on the performance of your regions as well as introduce some new bugs. INFO: What is pathfinding? Click here
Pathfinding & Region Performance
Once your region has been updated today, it will have Pathfinding running on it. Until your region has been optimized, this may have a performance impact. Linden Lab has assured me the impact will be at worst 4ms on main regions and 1ms on homesteads and at best won't be noticed. In layman's terms, this is around 18% max of region performance. In order to optimize your region, you will need a viewer with pathfinding tools; currently these tools are only available in a LL Beta Viewer.
Your options will be to A) optimize your region; B) turn Pathfinding off on your region; or C) do nothing. Instructions for the first two options below...
Note: Only Region Owners and Estate Managers can work with Pathfinding.
Only Region Owners and Estate Managers can enable/disable Pathfinding on a region. Parcel owners can optimize their parcels on a Pathfinding enabled region.
Instructions to optimize your regions:
Download the LL Beta Viewer (Win, Mac, Linux) and go through the process of optimizing your region / parcel.
Turn Pathfinding off
1. Get sim console open.
Phoenix: Go to the top menu bar, Advanced > Consoles > Region Debug Console. (Press Ctrl-Alt-D to enable the Advanced menu if you do not already have it enabled.)
Firestorm: Go to the top menu bar, Develop > Consoles > Region Debug Console. (Press Ctrl-Alt-Q if you do not have Develop menu enabled.)
2. In the console window that opens, type (without the quotes), "set dynamic_pathfinding false", and press enter.
3. Restart your region.
Note: More information about Pathfinding can be found here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pathfinding
New bugs you should be aware of!
Along with Pathfinding come changes to the Havok Physics engine, which have introduced some new bugs we think you should be aware of, including issues with some vehicles, physics, phantom and sculpts. You can view the list of issues we are aware of at the following link. None of these issues can be fixed by our support team:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pathfinding_server_bugs
Note: Unfortunately there are quite a few Linden JIRAs on this list that have been set hidden from public view. There is nothing we can do about that beyond offering a description of the issue.
Questions & Answers from Linden Lab
Yesterday I sent a list of questions off to LL and received the answers back this morning. These questions and answers may be of interest to you, as well, so I've put them online here.
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pf_questions
Sincerely,
Jessica Lyon
Project Manager
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.
P.S. Please pass this blog post along to all the region owners you know!
Permalink http://phoenixviewer.blogspot.ca/2012/08/pathfinding-server-rollout.html
Pathfinding & Region Performance
Once your region has been updated today, it will have Pathfinding running on it. Until your region has been optimized, this may have a performance impact. Linden Lab has assured me the impact will be at worst 4ms on main regions and 1ms on homesteads and at best won't be noticed. In layman's terms, this is around 18% max of region performance. In order to optimize your region, you will need a viewer with pathfinding tools; currently these tools are only available in a LL Beta Viewer.
Your options will be to A) optimize your region; B) turn Pathfinding off on your region; or C) do nothing. Instructions for the first two options below...
Only Region Owners and Estate Managers can enable/disable Pathfinding on a region. Parcel owners can optimize their parcels on a Pathfinding enabled region.
Instructions to optimize your regions:
Download the LL Beta Viewer (Win, Mac, Linux) and go through the process of optimizing your region / parcel.
Turn Pathfinding off
1. Get sim console open.
Phoenix: Go to the top menu bar, Advanced > Consoles > Region Debug Console. (Press Ctrl-Alt-D to enable the Advanced menu if you do not already have it enabled.)
Firestorm: Go to the top menu bar, Develop > Consoles > Region Debug Console. (Press Ctrl-Alt-Q if you do not have Develop menu enabled.)
2. In the console window that opens, type (without the quotes), "set dynamic_pathfinding false", and press enter.
3. Restart your region.
Note: More information about Pathfinding can be found here:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pathfinding
New bugs you should be aware of!
Along with Pathfinding come changes to the Havok Physics engine, which have introduced some new bugs we think you should be aware of, including issues with some vehicles, physics, phantom and sculpts. You can view the list of issues we are aware of at the following link. None of these issues can be fixed by our support team:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pathfinding_server_bugs
Note: Unfortunately there are quite a few Linden JIRAs on this list that have been set hidden from public view. There is nothing we can do about that beyond offering a description of the issue.
Questions & Answers from Linden Lab
Yesterday I sent a list of questions off to LL and received the answers back this morning. These questions and answers may be of interest to you, as well, so I've put them online here.
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pf_questions
Sincerely,
Jessica Lyon
Project Manager
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.
P.S. Please pass this blog post along to all the region owners you know!
Permalink http://phoenixviewer.blogspot.ca/2012/08/pathfinding-server-rollout.html
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