Phoenix Hour September 6th 2011

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” Importent Notice before installing the Beta Mesh Viewer: Due to our server host who today had a tractor sever their fiber optic cables.. our website and everything within it is suffering severe performance problems. We’re told this should be resolved within the next 48 hours. Because of this.. We are sending this release out as a notecard. if you are unable to access our website, you can read the blog related to this release directly from here http://phoenixviewer.blogspot.com.

Please read before installing Firestorm Mesh Beta

you can read the blog related to this release directly from here http://phoenixviewer.blogspot.com OR Read this notecard.

Due to popular demand we???ve decided we can’t hold back the Firestorm with Mesh support release, however this hasn???t been an easy decision. Unfortunately LL Mesh code comes with a lot of new bugs and undesirable behaviors which we honestly aren???t comfortable releasing with. Many of these issues we would consider blockers for a release. The issues which we wouldn???t consider blockers simply do not reach our expectations for a quality release. However, you asked for it! And you???re getting it in its current state!

For a list of LL Bugs effecting this Firestorm release, please see:

http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=hot_ll_jira_issues

When you first log into this Firestorm release you will note a few things. First, your settings ???should??? get reset automatically and your cache will be cleared. This is a must for this release because so much has changed that if you didn???t get settings and cache cleared you WILL have loads of problems. You must also ensure you install this to an empty directory on your computer and not over an existing installation.

Also, please be patient during your first login on this version as performance will be significantly degraded while your inventory and texture cache gets populated. We suggest just standing around for a few minutes while this occurs. The best way to know when it’s complete is to open your inventory and watch the numbers at the bottom. These represent how many inventory items you have loaded. When they stop, your inventory has completed the fetch and your ready to enjoy Firestorm with Mesh support.

We had hoped that this would be our official release and we would by now have reached our feature goals for the ???Official release???. However, fate has stepped in the way. Since the release of our Beta 2 we have had a large number of our developer team going on vacations IRL, and thus slowing down the development process, (Though I think they all earned it). Also, many features have had to take a back seat to mesh for obvious reasons; things like Spell Check simply couldn???t be completed in time. The good news though is that this is not our official release and we still have plans to reach our official release feature goals soon!

The better news is that we have achieved many of our release features already. Here???s a summary of some of the new features in this Firestorm release besides the Mesh, improved shadows, Depth of Field and other things we adopted from LL.

Default interface choices from login page. Phoenix/V2/Hybrid
Custom Colored name tags and more
Contact sets – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3zA24-Bi-U
Phoenix style contacts/Friend list
LGG Selection beam particle effects
Build in Flight assist with Bridge!
Script count!
Auto Correct
Font options!
New starlight skins
V1 similar volume controls so you don???t have to go into prefs
Volume sliders in the local speakers panel
Ability to fully disable your camera target hints
Improved Camera floater
Greater OpenSim Support
Calc and CAO from command line
Z-Offset is fixed, for changing the height offset of your avatar.
Updated RLVa
Ability to automatically undock side bar tabs
Group IM???s in nearby chat & Console
Italicized Emotes”