Firestorm Release 6.5.3.65658!
Firestorm 6.5.3.65658 is finally in the wind! Wow—it’s been a struggle
to get this one out, folks. But the wait is worth it, as this release
comes with a couple of groundbreaking new features we’re really excited
about. It also brings us to parity with LL’s 6.5.2, quite a jump from
our last release, which...
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- The Phoenix Firestorm Project Inc..
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Zusammenfassung ansehen
Firestorm Release 6.5.3.65658!Firestorm 6.5.3.65658 is finally in the wind! Wow—it’s been a struggle to get this one out, folks. But the wait is worth it, as this release comes with a couple of groundbreaking new features we’re really excited about. It also brings us to parity with LL’s 6.5.2, quite a jump from our last release, which was AGES ago. This is a major update.
Firestorm’s AO (animation overrider) has gotten love with bug fixes and improvements, OpenSim gets love with “Hear Voice Equally” support, and Linux got a LOT of love from Nicky. But really, too many bug fixes to count, too many performance and stability improvements. There’s a LOT, but some of the coolest highlights are listed below!
Linden Lab’s 360 Snapshot Tools!
This allows you to take photos that cover all 360 degrees around you. Your audience can then click and drag on your photos to look around. This is super cool. Great job, LL, for putting this together! More info on this feature can be read here:
https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/8853-introducing-the-360-snapshot-tool/Performance Floater and Autotune (This Is Game Changing Stuff!)
The
Performance Floater shows you in real-time what parts of the scene are taking the most time and slowing down your graphics (lag). In particular, this first release focuses on avatars and allows you to see which avatars are truly lagging you, and also allows you to examine your own attachments to see how they perform.
The FS Performance Floater is loosely based upon a project viewer from LL, released last June. We have completely revised the metrics behind the floater to make sure that it offers a realistic account of the rendering costs that you personally observe. In addition, we have created a brand new automatic tuning capability that, while still experimental, helps to manage your settings and provide FPS stability (sometimes at the cost of graphical glitz). We hope that feedback from our users will also help us to integrate this feature in a collaborative effort with Linden Lab.
Autotune. This is the first look at this new feature. Wholly developed by Beq Janus, Autotune allows the viewer to automatically manage some of your graphics settings in order to give you the performance level that you request, and keep you there. It’s like autopilot for lag! You set the target FPS (frames per second) you want, and Autotune will do its best to keep you there by dynamically adjusting your settings from scene to scene! However, it cannot work miracles, if your computer is ancient—it can only do so much.
We have a LOT of documentation ongoing for these two things available with the following links. We highly encourage you to read through them before playing. Also, please keep in mind that this is an experimental, in-development feature set which we hope to get feedback from the community to improve on.
Our wiki page on the feature:
https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/fs_autotune_perf_floaterBeq’s 1st blog post on it (more will follow on her blog):
https://beqsother.blogspot.com/2021/12/upgraders-of-lost-arc.html Beq’s 2nd post
https://beqsother.blogspot.com/2022/03/how-to-use-new-firestorm-performance.htmlInara Pey, as always, has done a very detailed write-up as well that should be considered necessary reading!
https://wp.me/pxezy-v6WKnown Issues
As with every release, there are issues and then there are the issues we know about. We have two in particular impacting Mac, listed below.
MAC- Mac users on Monterey operating system will not have voice working without following a workaround. We hope to have this resolved with our next release. The workaround can be followed from this wiki page, listed under the Mac tab: https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/fs_voice#by_operating_system.
- Special letter and accent key combinations (such as option-shift-e and foreign language letters such as Å) do not work. This may be particularly impactful if you have any of these characters in your login password. You can either change your password to exclude that key (go to your account on secondlife.com), or do not update to this version, or roll back to our previous version. This WILL be fixed in our next release. This problem was unfortunately inherited from a recent Linden Lab viewer.
LINUX- Linux ubuntu 16.04 will no longer be supported. However. we do support 18.04 and 20.04 going forward.
Multi-Factor AuthenticationSoon, Linden Lab will release their Multi-Factor Authentication viewer. If you are a user who switches between Firestorm and LL’s SL viewer, there is a good chance your login credentials will need to be manually entered each time you return to Firestorm. We will be working hard to get our next release out in a timely manner so that all users will have the protection of Multi-Factor Authentication as soon as possible.
Saying goodbye to Starlight Skins… unless!…
Unfortunately, we no longer have anyone to maintain the Starlight skins, and we haven’t for some time. We’ve kept them alive for as long as we reasonably could, but the time has come. Unless someone from the community expresses interest, has the skill set and is willing to commit to updating and maintaining these skins forever, our next release will no longer have them available.
I am hopeful someone will step up in the community, but before we get a thousand applications for this… You have to understand: Updating and maintaining viewer skins is a MAJOR job that never ends. It is a frustrating, thankless task that requires some strong XML skills, a lot of patience and an abnormal level of stubbornness to giving up. Before you apply, ask yourself if you are willing to spend hundreds of hours of your time for the next 5 or 10 years doing this task. If you are still interested… please drop an email to admin@phoenixviewer.com and list your skills, previous experience or knowledge… convince me you have what it takes!
Release Notes
If you’re a masochist who enjoys reading through commits and JIRAs, you can sift through our release notes here:
https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/changelog:firestorm_change_log_6.5.3.65658. But I think most will find Inara’s blog more informational and entertaining!
https://wp.me/pxezy-v6W.Thank you all for your patience, as it really has taken us a long time to get this one out. I sincerely hope you all enjoy this update and that it improves your user experience more than our last!
Jessica Lyon
Project Manager
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.
Note: As part of our 3 version rule, we will be blocking 6.4.12.62831 on the Second Life grid in 3 weeks from today. This will not impact OpenSim grids.The post
Firestorm Release 6.5.3.65658! appeared first on
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