Of all the bloody gall...

Okay, so someone was posting in a Phoenix Self Help group chat asking a question, and I responded with a comment that, while not very popular in some circles, is nevertheless absolutely true.

[2013/08/22 15:53]  Gulid Resident: Is there someone that can help me? My avi's body still looks grey even though I am on the v4.4.2 viewer, i did a clean update and everything and yet my avi si grey so idk what to do at this point :/
[2013/08/22 15:53]  Gulid Resident: i mean clean install
[2013/08/22 15:54]  Sophie Katsu: Guild you mean you're on Firestorm?
[2013/08/22 15:54]  Archangel Mortenwold: Might want to check the Firestorm Viewer support group, though I'll tell you right now their only response is likely to go out and buy a new computer.
[2013/08/22 15:54]  Mister Acacia: Guild, this is the Phoenix viewer group. You want the Firestorm group > secondlife:///app/group/3a1be8d4-01f3-bc1a-2703-442f0cc8f2dd/about
[2013/08/22 15:55]  Mister Acacia: Archangel, don't be an idiot.
[2013/08/22 15:55]  Gulid Resident: but mine says phoenix firestorm
[2013/08/22 15:55]  Gulid Resident: i dont know the difference
[2013/08/22 15:56]  Archangel Mortenwold: Who's being an idiot?  That's their response to most issues raised by users.
[2013/08/22 15:56]  Masdison Resident: You don't need a new pc other viewers work
[2013/08/22 15:56]  Mister Acacia: Guild, Phoenix viewer is a V1-based viewer that is now obsolete. Firestorm is made by the same people, it's V2/3 based and is current.
[2013/08/22 15:56]  XLR8RRICK Hudson: Guild I will IM you and help
[2013/08/22 15:57]  Archangel Mortenwold: There's Singularity and there's Cool VL Viewer, which both work well.  As for Phoenix being obsolete, that's true only so long as no one picks up the code and updates it.
[2013/08/22 15:57]  Mister Acacia: That's bullshit Archangel.
[2013/08/22 15:57]  Archangel Mortenwold: Isn't there anyone willing and able to that task?
[2013/08/22 15:57]  Sophie Katsu: why is it bullshit?
[2013/08/22 15:58]  StarlightShining Resident: really Arch - you told such troll rubbish
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Sophie Katsu: Jessica said anyone can have at it if they want to update it
[2013/08/22 15:58]  StarlightShining Resident: sure - go ahead - several have tried
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Mister Acacia: Because the support team does not automatically tell everyone to buy a new pc.
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Masdison Resident: Another thing the ssb has nothing to do with your avatar being gray, your av should look good its all the other av's that are gray
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Archangel Mortenwold: What's this "rubbish" to which you refer?
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Sophie Katsu: has that changed?
[2013/08/22 15:59]  StarlightShining Resident: sophie - go ahead and pick up Phx - many that actually know how to deal woith a viewer have tried and given up
[2013/08/22 15:59]  Sophie Katsu: oh ok i thought you were talking about his other comment
[2013/08/22 15:59]  Sophie Katsu: why are you telling me that?   i'm not a coder
[2013/08/22 16:00]  Sophie Katsu: i just repeated what Jessica said in one of the interviews that i saw on video
[2013/08/22 16:00]  StarlightShining Resident: as you said sophie - anyone can pick it up and take it forward
[2013/08/22 16:02]  Masdison Resident: I still use phoenix at time and its working fine in most sims but if you go to a sim that has the ssb all the av's look totally gray but your av looks good
[2013/08/22 16:03]  Mister Acacia: SSA (was ssb) is on all regions now.

At that point, the moderator blocked my ability to post in group chat.  Here's the screen cap so you can see for yourself.

Now, just to show you how true it is that the typical response to any and all issues with Firestorm really is to go out and buy a brand new computer, here's a screencap lifted right from the Firestorm blog itself.

Wow.  That looks like someone being told to go out and get a new computer, with the ass clown making the reply not even bothering to ask if the person to whom he is replying is even on a PC that uses Windows XP.  My computer runs Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition, with the following specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 260 Processor (3214.35 MHz)
Memory: 8192 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6600 Series
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0010.1077
OpenGL Version: 4.1.10750 Compatibility Profile Context

And guess what?  Firestorm won't run for you-know-what.  If it doesn't crash on start-up, it does very soon thereafter, and in the interim all I get is blackness with nothing fixing it.  My PC was designed to allow me to run graphics-intensive programs on high settings without breaking a circuit.  Yet the typical response to any and all issues with the badly-programmed Firestorm is "go out and buy a new computer, come into the modern age", as though that and not the crappy programming by the developers is the only thing to blame.  And when this is pointed out, it's met with name-calling, profanity, and censorship.  This is what the Firestorm developers and their merry band of suckups are like, dear readers.  You don't usually see this kind of behavior, this sneering contempt for one's own user base, in a lot of other places.

So yeah, I left that group and have no plans to return.  Now that Server Side Baking has gone grid-wide, I'm using Singularity Viewer full time.  Its building features still aren't quite on the same level as Phoenix, but the developers are a lot more receptive to input than the Firestorm elitists are, so who knows?  It just may end up becoming the premiere viewer for builders.

Seriously?

With a host of bugs and security problems running rampant through their craptastic viewer, forcing many users to roll back to earlier versions, you'd think the lying douchebags who develop Firestorm would be smart enough to do something sane, like, you know, fix the damn bugs instead of denying they are bugs and ordering people to go out and shell out money they don't have for new computers.  But no, now they're seriously considering blocking access to older versions so that the only viewer users can log in on is the last three updates.

Many users can't use the three most recent updates because of insurmountable problems with the viewer code, so they will be effectively blocked from using Firestorm at all should the developers decide to pull this stunt.  Worse is that they are seriously considering blocking access to Phoenix, after a suggestion by one Firestorm user.

According to their own message on the viewer log-in screen on Phoenix, some 28,000 SL users still use Phoenix (I'm one of them).  If Jessica Lyin' and her merry band of assholes do decide to block Phoenix, it would mean further alienating, literally, tens of thousands of people.

This obviously is not sitting well with blog readers:

Honestly, I have never seen this kind of behavior before by any organization or business that wanted to remain open.  Do you think McDonald's got to be the top burger chain by ordering its customers to go out and spend money they don't have just to be able to make use of their product, lying to said customers, and preventing them from gaining access to their restaurants?  Hell no, not when the competition is so fierce.  It would be stupid and suicidal for them as a business.  Firestorm may not be demanding that people pay money for the "privilege" of using their viewer, but just as with any business, they are producing a product — a defective one at that — and if they want people to use that product, they had better grow up and start going to work fixing their many mistakes.

UPDATE: 15 AUGUST, 2013:

Upon logging in this afternoon, I was hit with the following window in Phoenix:

What this means exactly is yet to be known, but I will keep you updated as information comes in.

Can Phoenix Viewer Be Resurrected? Yes. Will It? Unlikely.

Since the Firestorm elitists decided to kill off their most popular viewer, Phoenix, in favor of the buggy, crashtastic Firestorm, I've been looking for someone with the necessary programming skills to take the files I managed to save and use them to bring the viewer back in some form.  Unfortunately, there have been no takers as of yet.

It's a real shame, because Phoenix has always worked better than Firestorm and always will, mainly because of inherent flaws in the V2-V3 code that V1 never had.  The developers managed to fork Henri Beauchamp's mesh coding and incorporate it into Phoenix, and that helped keep the viewer alive far longer than they wanted to.  But when Linden Lab announced the move to Server Side Baking, the devs saw their opportunity to finally stop updating Phoenix, and so they did.  Far from LL throwing some nonexistent switch to shut down Phoenix and other V1-based viewers, the decision to kill Phoenix was always that of its own development heads.

Now, this isn't to say that Phoenix Viewer can't be resurrected in some form, updated to include SSB and other new "goodies" from LL, such as pathfinding.  Nothing is really "impossible".  But with no one willing to take on the task of updating the code and releasing it under another name, the chances of a comeback are pretty low.  That could mean an uptick in the number of Singularity and Cool VL Viewer users, however, since many SL users prefer viewers that work consistently, use fewer computer resources, and have an easy to understand interface.

So Phoenix Viewer is pretty much dead, and it isn't likely to come back, even under a different name.  That's too bad, because its building features were top notch.

Jessica Lyin' to Firestorm users: Don't Expect Working Update Any Time Soon

Well, at least she's not springing any big surprises on anyone.  Jessica Lyin' posted an entry on her blog April 5th stating flat out that there will be no usable update to Firestorm any time soon.  With server side baking coming at some undisclosed date in the near or not-so-near future, disgruntled users asking questions but receiving no honest or real answers, and as usual, Ms. Lyin' is, well, lying.

On the one hand, she says that the "coming Firestorm release DOES support Server Side Baking."  Then she turns around and says that she and her team of suckups won't release the new viewer now "[b]ecause Linden Lab has not released their viewer with Server Side Baking yet. And if we release Firestorm now, and then LL realizes there needs to be more code changes for Server Side Baking that will affect both their viewer and ours, then we will have to do yet another release immediately after."

Okay, so where, you might be asking, is the lie?  In the first sentence of the blog entry, Lyin' says flat out "that the release is quickly approaching."  Define "quickly."  If we go by the timeline Linden Lab has traditionally adopted, "quickly" could be six months or a year from now, or two years from now, or maybe never.  That's not what any reasonable person would call "quick".

So basically, Jessica Lyin' is telling Firestorm users that although the next update will be ready to roll out very soon, if not now, they're going to wait to release it until Linden Lab officially rolls out Server Side Baking, which could be a while in coming.

Commenter Bear Silvershade rightly called B.S. on this one, stating:

I had to think about responding to this thread, because invariably, the small number of people who voice an opposing view get bashed or labelled a troll. Sadly, that is likely to happen to me, but I am so frustrated.
So let me see if I have this right. You are not releasing a version of Firestorm you have, that you feel is stable, and would likely include the long awaited snapshot tiling fix, because… you don’t think it would be cool to have to release an update a few days to a few weeks after this one?
I admit I am not a loyal firestorm user. Though I think it is one of the best viewers available, the infrequency of updates to take advantage of newer code or newer features has always been a concern. That came to a head in December when the tiling bug fix came out. Since one of my main activities in SL is making images, that was a major fix, and one that many others had been waiting for as well.
That’s when Firestorm lost me completely. It’s now four months without that fix being implemented. The absurdity of including William Weaver’s phototools to make this an ideal viewer for image makers, even starting a flickr group to show off images made with it, but not getting out the tiling fix as soon as possible still has me shaking my head.
Other viewers, including LL, release regularly. Are you saying that you can’t even come close to living up to that standard?
More annoying, it appears from one blogger’s comments that there was a stable beta available some weeks ago, apparently only available to a select few.
Now we have to keep waiting, even though you have something you feel is releasable? I am sure I am not alone in being willing to update my viewer a few days after a release. It happens with all kinds of software.
Now, before the putdowns start, you really want users avoiding posting for fear of retaliation or otherwise being shut down or disregarded? Or would you rather have an inclusive group where users feel like they are contributing and their concerns are honestly being listened to.
I will likely try the new viewer when it comes out, hoping that it lives up to the wait, though I have some concern that it won’t.
But that’s as may be. The fact is, in the end, there are other viewers out there, including the Lab’s, that do offer regular updates, so problems are dealt with and new features/fixes are available.
Jessica, I applaud your and the team’s commitment to quality. But it’s time to leave this no beta model/favoured few model behind and show a little more respect for your user base.

Naturally, Lyin' went on the attack with her patented brand of lies combined with condescension and dismissal.  Bear replied:

Perhaps you could try not trying to pack so many changes into each release? You will always be chasing the next feature, and if you are waiting till a whole bunch is perfect, well this is the result, that needed working features aren’t released, because you are waiting on something else.
As to regular releases, well, I am not worried about how popular the viewer is. Exodus, like Zen, appears to have ceased development, though while they were developing, offered nightly builds. Singularity, when the tiling fix and others features/patches came out, got a baseline viewer out that they plan to build on, in a reasonable time frame.
But Dolphin releases regularly, usually every two weeks or so. Niran, while I think it goes too far wit UI changes, also releases regularly.
But as to “irresponsibly releasing a build” that’s what a system of development and beta releases are for… let us decide, instead of adopting this paternalistic and, frankly, somewhat condescending attitude. If I am trying a LL dev build, as I often do, and it has a problem, I don’t get angry at them, it was my choice. I’ve never got to report a bug, since others usually find them before me.
Though you say you are not dismissing my concerns, frankly, that is exactly what you are saying in your final sentence. “We have reasons, you just don’t understand” is how that comes across to me.
Maybe if I say it more clearly.
1) It is disrespectful of your larger user base to release betas to a special few so they can enjoy the benefits (and, yes take the risks)
2) It is a poor model that ends up with four months between releases, leaving users without fixes that are ready to go.
3) Incremental releases allow us to decide what level of chance we are willing to take.
4) Contrary to your comments, many viewers, including LL and TPVs, release more regularly, getting improvements into the stream as they are available.

More lies, condescension, and dismissal from Jessica Lyin', followed by a disheartened final response from Bear.  Again, no big surprise there.  The baseline response from Ms. Lyin' and her merry band of suckups is always to go on the attack, dismiss any and all criticisms no matter how legitimate, and engage in rampant dishonesty.

User Sorrow made the following observation:

Only issue is they generally don’t screw up either. Every CoolVL weekly patch has worked flawlessly, every Singularity Alpha build aren’t problematic, same as Nirans, etc.
Only up to date released problematic and buggy viewer is Firestorm.
With firestorm updates being so slow, by the time this next version is released, it will already fallen 1-2 months behind the Official, CoolVL, Singularity Alpha, etc as the other viewers are already far ahead in development with the next batch of LL Patches, code, and new features..
It’s almost like, instead of thinking ahead like other 3rd party developers and working with LL developmental code and beginning to code and enact their own version of the LL future development, instead you wait until the official LL viewer to implement it, then barely start working on it, while on the other hand, the other 3rd party viewers have already released their own updates as they already completed development of the new features.
Sorta like this Server Side baking.. it’s been talked about for months and months, implemented on the developmental viewer then beta viewer for months as well, however it doesn’t seem like the FS team bothered* to begin working on it during this time (like the other developers), instead waited all the way when LL was ready to roll it out on the official viewer, thus months behind everyone else.
“viewers with such a small user base can afford to screw up where we cannot.”
you should follow CoolVL’s or Singularity’s model, have weekly or bi-weekly (even monthly would be better than nothing) releases labeled as “Alpha (Use At Your Own Risk)” no matter how small the patch, having regular releases, even if they are alpha or beta versions, this will more likely keep everyone satisfied, plus help your team locate and identify bugs if you have an alpha version JIRA rather than previously where the bugs end up being located within the official major releases (much better idea than this “Preview Idea” as a few days probably isn’t enough to locate all problems in a viewer.

I put the key parts in bold-type. *: I corrected a grammatical error so the sentence conveys the writer's meaning.  Anyway, Sorrow makes a very good point: Henri Beauchamp and Siana Gearz update their viewers much more frequently than Jessica Lyin's team does, and their crews are smaller.  They do, however, have the benefit of being more talented programmers, and they stay ahead on the updates.  Lyin' is basically dismissing these and other TPV developers as being too small and insignificant to emulate so as to better serve her users.  Do you feel insulted by that attitude?  I am, and I don't even use Firestorm.

So there you have it.  Jessica Lyin' has what she claims (probably falsely, as usual) is a workable update to her crappy viewer, but won't release it until after Linden Lab rolls out Server Side Baking, which means it could be any time between now and never.

Oh well.

By the way, for any of you programming wizards out there who might be interested, I managed to download the code for Phoenix Viewer (not Firestorm), so that it can be updated and resurrected under a different title.  I have no programming skills, but I can pass on the files for you to work with.  What you do with them is up to you.  Send me an e-mail or reply in the comments to let me know if you're interested and I'll find a way to share the files with you.

Problems with Server Side Baking

Here are some links regarding the in-development server-side-baking feature being prepared for gridwide use by Linden Lab:

http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/sl-projects-week-8-3-viewer-materials-and-ssb-load-test/

http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/playing-with-ssb-and-viewers-quick-test/

http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/viewer-round-up-summary-week-8/

As expected, there are some issues with the feature, but many Third Party Viewer (TPV) developers seem to be getting their viewers up to speed, most notably Singularity and Cool VL Viewer.

Not surprisingly, the Firestorm elitists and liars are having a tougher time getting their resource-hogging, crashtastic, low-frame-rate to work, and are claiming that it will likely be some time before a stable version that can handle Serve Side Baking will be released -- so naturally, the Firestorm clowns will release a version of the viewer that has SSB before they can even get it working properly with Linden Lab's code.  "Genius" at its finest.

Also not surprising is that some commenters aren't buying the lies Jessica Lyin' and her merry gang of suckups are telling.  "Joseph" writes:

It really does not surprise me at all that Firestorm is in such a terrible state right now. And at the meeting it sure had a tone and implied like so many problems are caused by LL’s code even though Jessica did make sure to state that many problems come from Firestorm itself. The LL 3.4.5 is a GREAT viewer and certainly isn’t some mess of buggy code like it sounds like the Firestorm devs make it out to be. If any Firestorm user or any of the Firestorm devs truely used the LL 3.4.5 viewer for a decent amount of time they would see that not only does it perform a hell of a lot better than Firestorm it has a hell of a lot less bugs. Firestorm is a crappy clunky mess in comparison. All things considered the LL 3.4.5 viewer is an awesome viewer. The problems Firestorm is having right now is because instead of just adding features and UI improvements over the past couple of years to the LL viewer, they have delved and messed with so much of the internals of the program itself thinking they can do everything better than the lab. If one looks at the commits to the code since the beginning of Firestorm over two years ago, the developers have mucked and messed with so much more of the code than just adding features and UI changes. Instead of just letting LL deal with the internals of the program they have gone in and tinkered and messed with so much of the guts of the program itself and this is why now after merging it is such a terrible mess. If the Firestorm devs had a minimalistic approach to what they changed in the code other than UI improvements and adding features, the current internal version wouldnt be the unstable horrendous god awful mess it is now. Anyone can go to their mercurial repository and see exactly what they do to their source code, and see hundreds if not thousands of commits since the beginning of the project of them making changes to the core engine of the program so to speak and that is why they are in the mess they are in today. Often times Phoenix was described as a monstrous unmaintainable collection of hacks held together by bail wire, spit, duct tape etc…and the irony is that now a days that is exactly what Firestorm has become.

As evidenced from this and other comments, not everyone believes what Ms. Lyin' has to say, and for good reason -- people know from actually trying to use Firestorm that it's an unworkable mess of code, the very same critiques used against Phoenix, which actually works on more people's computers and which has now been abandoned by the developers.

As for the Server Side Baking issues, it's clear that the official roll-out may not come quite as soon as previously stated by Linden Lab or others.  It'll be implemented across the grid sooner or later, but it seems clear that the TPVs most likely to have stable viewers that have SSB won't include Firestorm.

End of an Era for Phoenix Users

As many of you already know, the Firestorm snobs have officially abandoned their only viable SL viewer in favor of an unusable, bug-riddled, resource-hogging piece of software junk.  The decision to kill Phoenix Viewer was always that of its developers, and now they've pretty much done it.  People can still log on to Second Life using Phoenix, but since it's no longer being updated features will continue to break as Linden Lab implements new code that is incompatible with Phoenix.

And it's a real shame, too.  Phoenix has a user interface that is far superior to Firestorm, is intuitive, and doesn't force you to spend countless hours trying to figure it out.  What's more, Phoenix always had and will always have a higher frame rate, more stability, and use fewer computer resources, than Firestorm.  Abandoning it might just bite the Firestorm snobs in the arse as people move on to Singularity and Cool VL Viewer.

Well, I guess it's time for me to move on to Singularity full time.  I won't be able to do as much building on that viewer, since its abilities to position prims aren't as precise as Phoenix, but I'll keep on the developers to get that problem addressed.

Doctor Who Series 6 and Sarah Jane Adventures Series 4, Decision Time, and Demolishing the Lies About Viewer 1

 DOCTOR WHO SERIES 6, SARAH JANE ADVENTURES SERIES 4

I was able to get hold of both seasons on DVD, and once I've gone through all episodes of SJA, I'll issue a review of the latter series.

I maintain my criticism of Moffat's tenure as head writer of the show as one fraught with inconsistency — on an overall storytelling basis, that is.  Moffat does well in doing one-off stories, but trying to keep a longer term story arc running and maintaining story continuity are two tasks he can't seem to balance.  We'll see how Sarah Jane Adventures' final season pans out.  Considering it was the last complete series of the show before lead actress Elizabeth Sladen passed away, there's going to be a certain poignancy watching that is bound to color my review, but I'll try to do justice with an honest one.

DECISION TIME

Now, I've been thinking a while on the events of the past year or so.  2011 was, needless to say, horrible for me, and a fairly large chunk of the SL side of things was my own fault.  Swiping prims from a copied Dalek avatar in a fit of impatience was pretty stupid, and that's going to haunt me for a long time to come, no matter that I paid back the guy whose builds were swiped and admitted what I did.

Since then I've passed the remains of Archangel Network over to others, and it now exists in the form of Sci-Fi Enterprises.  Right now the only things it sells are unscripted TTC exteriors and freebies, and that's it.  I haven't had the time or the inclination to package up my unscripted console builds, but I've been seriously thinking of changing that.  I'm tired of having them sit in my inventory gathering pixel dust.

Of course, even if I were to do that, what then?  Who'd buy an unscripted console?  The whole point of having a TTC in Second Life is to have a grid-wide teleporter that serves triple duty as a skybox and role-playing scene.  It kind of defeats the purpose if it doesn't actually do more than look pretty.

It doesn't help that two of my closest friends in SL are on indefinite hiatus from SL, and one of them was a scripter whose skills were slowly but steadily improving.  I was hoping that my consoles would one day be sold with a functioning set of scripts again, and that is true of two of them, which are sold through Novatech.  Those are the Steampunk and the Zero 3.0 console.  But the rest languish in my inventory, and that's just a waste.  I'd love to be able to script them myself, but I've had to accept that I'll never be able to find someone willing to teach me what I need to know.

So what are my options?  I can try to convince my scripter friend to return to SL, hoping she'll script my consoles for me, or I can hire someone else to do them up and do a fifty-fifty split on sales.  But then, given that the last scripter I had disrespected me, then stabbed me in the back by trying to take over my company, I've got obvious issues with the idea of letting someone else have that kind of advantage over me again.  I've been burned too often by trusting all the wrong people.  Never again.  I can always submit my builds to other sellers, but most of the Whovian TTC sellers in SL are either severely backed up on submitted builds or not inclined to have anything to do with me.

I'll have to make a decision soon as to what I want to do with my builds, and more than that,what I really want to do in SL.  I have goals I'd like to achieve, but never the means.  And really, there just isn't any point to having those goals if I can't ever possess the resources to accomplish them.  And then what's the point of even staying in SL?

Ya know what I'm sayin'?

 "VIEWER 1" IS NOT "GOING AWAY"

There are certain people going around spreading lies about the fate of SL Viewer 1.23.  They claim that because Linden Lab is no longer offering updates or support, this means that the viewers are going to go away any time now, so we had better get on the crappily designed, highly unstable, resource-hogging Viewer 2 and its clones — or we will be forced out of SL altogether.  The truth is that Viewer 1, or more accurately, Third Party Viewers (TPVs) that use the Viewer 1 graphic user interface (GUI), are going to be around at least until their developers decide to quit the projects.

One person to expose the Big SL Viewer Lie for what it is is Henri Beauchamp, the programmer who brought us Cool VL Viewer.  Henri's code work was incorporated into the latest Phoenix Viewer release, albeit grudgingly and still with the lies about Viewer 1 going the way of the dinosaurs.

Why is this claim a lie?  For one thing, no one making it is able to give a definitive date for Viewer 1 GUI being shut off.  This is because, according to witnesses, Rodvik Humble himself stated that Linden Labs "would NOT be turning off v1.x access - just that they would NOT be updating the 1.x viewer themselves, so their version would not be kept up with the new features - that would be the responsibility of the TPV coders."

What this means is that the CEO of Linden Lab himself is saying that there are no plans to turn off Viewer 1 access — no company is stupid enough to literally block access to its product for more than half its user base.  They're simply not offering updates or support for it anymore.  As long as TPV programmers are able to back-port features like mesh and other goodies, like Henri Beauchamp, Boy Lane, and the Singularity Viewer developers, SL Viewers that use the Viewer 1 GUI will stick around.  As one member posted on Henri's forum, the liars are starting with the false assumption that a viewer's features are inextricably bound to its GUI, and then using that false assumption to create a false rationalization for why they want to force everyone else who uses SL onto the Viewer 2 GUI viewers, namely, theirs.  But as was pointed out, "under-the-hood" features simply are not tied to the GUI.  At this point the only real difference between the official Linden Lab viewers and the TPVs generated using the Viewer 1 GUI is only...the GUI.

It is highly dishonest for people who love Viewer 2 GUI viewers and their clones, and despise Viewer 1 GUI TPVs, to claim that those viewers with the Viewer 1 GUI are going away.  They're not.  Linden Lab isn't claiming that they are turning off access to Viewer 1.  TPV developers who still like the GUI on Viewer 1 will continue to back-port Viewer 2 and Viewer 3 features into the Viewer 1 GUI until the only thing that is still "Viewer 1" about them is how the finished program looks on your screen; in fact, they're pretty much that way already.  If you don't like the Viewer 2 or Viewer 3 GUI, or if you simply find that the Linden Lab-approved viewers are still too buggy and unstable, you do have alternatives, and you will continue to have them for a while.

For your downloading enjoyment:

http://www.singularityviewer.org

http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/rainbow-viewer

Cool VL Viewer - http://sldev.free.fr

http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/windows/Phoenix_Viewer-1.6.0.1600_RELEASE_SSE2.exe


http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/Mac/Phoenix_Viewer_1.6.0.1600_Intel.dmg

http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/Linux/PhoenixViewer-i686-1.6.0.1600.tar.bz2

Jessica Lyon Proclaims Her Utter Contempt for Phoenix Users

In an insulting blog post that can basically be summed up as, "Here's a half-assed attempt at incorporating mesh into Phoenix, you whiners!  Now go install Firestorm already because we're through giving our users what they want!", Phoenix development team leader Jessica Lyon just alienated another chunk of what is probably going to be a rapidly dwindling user base.

Phoenix 1185 was, is and will always be our most stable release ever. Please do not expect this phoenix viewer with mesh to be as stable, it simply is not. If it has stability issues it's because it is now a hybrid of two different code bases. The bottom line is that a V1 viewer with a lot of V2 code hacked into the render engine is not going to give you stability as you've come to expect it from this project. Mesh was NOT designed to work with V1 code. We deliver you this viewer on an AS-IS basis.

Wow, that was unnecessarily harsh.  As if that wasn't bad enough, Lyon goes on to send a volley of hostility toward RLV users.

RLVa has not been updated in this Phoenix viewer release. This was my decision, not that of Kitty Barnett. Although I said some time back we would update RLVa in Phoenix it became obvious that the work/time commitment involved in doing so was simply not reasonable or responsible. Kitty is a very valuable asset to this team and I refuse to take her away from the ground breaking work she does in Firestorm and v2/v3 to put a large time commitment into a dying viewer code base. She is worth far more than that. If you want updated RLVa I would suggest using the Firestorm Viewer or Kitty's own Viewer Catznip. I offer you my sincerest apologies for going back on my word in regards to RLVa update in Phoenix, however I believe it was the right decision.

And now the condiment on this shit sandwich:

Please don't complain if this release doesn't work perfectly. If you find the viewer to be unusable you can return to our 1185 version without mesh or switch to the Firestorm Viewer. Complaints about the stability and usability of this release will largely go unheard, we did not modify the mesh code to work in V1 and will only spend limited time trying to fix issues resulting from it. Complaints about this project removing focus on Phoenix Viewer should go to me at [e-mail witheld by me — A.M.] .

Now, I get that customer support isn't something elitist tech heads are known far and wide for.  But even this lunatic ought to have sense enough to recognize that she's just invited a flood of angry e-mails with this.  How can a person spend an entire entry insulting and scolding her own user base and then be stupid enough to invite even more scorn than she's brought upon herself?  And her finishing move:

Phoenix Viewer is becoming harder for us to provide support for at an ever increasing rate. Almost all our support team members are using Firestorm (by choice) as their full time viewer, and being that Firestorm is now our default viewer this should be expected. Support for this release and the phoenix viewer in general will be far more limited this point on. Support will continue to try to help you but in many situations may be unable to do so. Please do not get angry at them if they are unable to provide help for you. Also, please remember... Our support team is not required to help you, they do so on their own accord because they want to.

In summation, "Suck it, Phoenix Viewer users!"

Now, I could go on to psychoanalyze Jessica Lyon's unhinged entry.  I could tell you that it is indicative of a spoiled little child who can't for the life of her understand why her backhanded attitude and lame insults toward her own user base aren't garnering her the respect and unbelievable oral sex she probably expected in return.  I could tell you that Lyon's attitude reminds me a lot of the Democrat Party of today, which continually insults its voter base while bending over backwards to placate the far right GOP that will still never respond with anything other than total political warfare with the ultimate goal of forever annihilating the Dems (hence my becoming a member of the Green Party in RL) — the only thing doing the opposite of what your base wants and then insulting said base accomplishes is to drive said base to go with another party, and that's always going to be true whether it's a political party or, in this case, a third party Second Life viewer.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad that the Phoenix development team finally decided to get around to producing a mesh-capable version of Phoenix, which always has been and always will be far superior to V2-V3-Firestorm.  But the fact is that as much as the Firestorm viewer itself is responsible for perceived negativity toward Jessica Lyon and her fellow clowns, so much more responsible is the shameful, over-hostile, elitist attitudes of the whole lot of them.  This is why alternate viewers such as Singularity, Cool VL, Rainbow, and other V1-based viewers will eventually outstrip Firestorm and the horrible viewers it's cloned from.

Phoenix Developers Release Official Firestorm Viewer to Mixed Reviews

So the official release of Firestorm is now available for download.  Many SL users, particularly those who never waste an opportunity to gush over Viewer 2 and Viewer 3 or dis Viewer 1, are singing its praises.  Unfortunately, many users are still experiencing the usual round of glitches and user unfriendliness.  Some criticisms include:

"hi hi just one question for you.... WHERE ARE MY GROUPS & FRIENDS ?"

"I'm having problems with the new version of firestorm. I can't rez and I have cleared cache, relogged. rebake and it's still not working. I've done this a dozen of times and i'm still a red cloud. Can anyone help me?"

 "I just downloaded it and logged in and don't like it. I'm a red cloud and can't get that to change, can't seem to get the 'advanced' tab, can't find anything... don't like everything spread out along the bottom and top, I'm a builder and no textures are rezzing... I'm using a new laptop with Windows 7. a An inworld friend said I could make it be more like Phoenix, which I do like, and there is a video to watch to do that. I'll try that... otherwise, I won't use it :( "

"Can it be that mesh is still summat, ummm, alpha-ish? How these releases could pass QA and get rolled out is over my head. I’ve been playing around with mesh-clothes on both versions and had a lot of issues with clothes not fully rezzing or not rezzing at all. I hear from others who are using the current releases that they only see (or rather don’t) my alphas but not my mesh attachments. I've tweaked several graphics settings, cleared cache, did clean installs -- but overall to no much avail. The issues persist. Given that mesh is one of the key features, or rather _the_ key feature, of V3-based viewers, this is simply absolutely intolerable from a plain player’s point of view. I must confess that I consider this not even beta-stage behaviour. It’s a clear show-stopper in my opinion. I’m well aware that this is very likely an issue which has to be addressed by Linden Lab, but all the same… And no, I didn’t test this against the current Linden viewer. I don’t want to climb up the wall and gnaw my way through the ceiling."

"On to day 3 of trying to get a working version of this viewer. Kinda hard to get anything done when this pile of code keeps telling me i belong to zero groups. friends list empty of names. This is getting more frustrating than making hair"

"Hi having issue with the latest firestorm viewer...ok so basically i did a complete clean reinstall and it works magically for about 10 mins then i spontaneously crash....i really dont know why i've tried lower my graphics reinstalling...i've tried the lesser graphic version but i'm still having these issue's as i use my partners alienware aurora to run SL i dont feel like its my p.c's fault ...any theories?"

 "did anyone else crash upon initial running of Firestorm.. or simply put, sim crashed? or is it just coincidence that i logged into a sim that crashed as firestorm began to load the world?"

"I've never heard of a sim crashing because someone logged in with a particular viewer. I'd have to guess it was an annoying coincidence. I've been getting errors about something called the LLAppViewer. I've looked at the Jira and apparently there are at least two others with the same issue. I'm starting to think that the latest version of FS wasn't quite as ready for prime time as they thought. On the other hand, anything with LL in the name makes me wonder if it's an SL issue and has nothing to do with FS. Actually, I do like FS.... when it runs. Sometimes it will run for hours with no problem and other times it crashes every few minutes for no apparent reason. Maybe I was wearing the wrong color socks."

"It is a lot better than previous versions of Firestorm. I simply hate though that you are so careless with space. Take the "People" window for instance: - First an almost empty line with only a minimize button on it. - Then a HUGE almost empty line with the word "People" on it and another 2 small buttons (geee.. that couldn't be all on 1 small line)? - Then another line where I can filter people. I don't need it but.. IF you want to use, at least place the options button next to it so you can ditch another row of pixels - then 4 tabs that are hardly interesting. "Nearby" is the only one ever used by me. the "Friends-tab" is already in conversations / contacts. Same with the "Group-tab". "Recent" might or might not be useful. So far I hear nobody who ever uses it... so ditch it? - Then you have a seperate button to add friends next to options. rightclicking on a name and then adding a friend is much more intuitive.. so get rid of that button? - Then there is a yet another row with "Profile", "IM", "Call" and "Share". Again... those things you can all reach by rightclicking on a username. That is much more intuitive and you can save another unnecessary line. This is just one window that has it... but litteleraly all windows have silly almost empty space in them or totally unnecessary options. I will not go back to Phoenix because I realise the technology is obsolete. On the other hand.. you have a very very long way to go till Firestorm has the compact and easy to use feel that Phoenix has."

That's pretty much the same set of problems people have been having with V2 and V3 since their initial release, and now on the official, non-beta release of Firestorm.  "Cindy" writes:

The bottom status / menu bar is still covered by windows, still no text labels, inventory / outfit management is still split over 43487565 different windows with different functionality / look and feel instead of 1,IM notifications are still in the bottom right and get covered up and missed, and the bottom chat entry is still on the same line as the buttons instead of its own line that pops up above the button bar as needed.

In general, windows still have too much crap in them filling my screen with stuff I don't need to see and reducing my view of the world.

So, it's better than the old firestorm but still contains the all the crap I didn't like about V2. You have added SOME v1 appearance, but all the badness of V2 is still there all over the place.

...

 Still no script pre-processor. OK, that makes Firestorm useless for scripting now as I was using that feature extensively, and once you have used it, ALL your scripts now NEED to use it if you want to edit them. Delete from hard disk.

...

I've been pushing to get the issues I've listed addressed since the first pre-release of FS. I must say that I'm very very disappointed that all the issues I created jira entries for are still problems in the "final" release. These are "core" to me and many others. My tone is based on the frustration of seeing some of our most critical concerns being ignored.

So what does FS give me that I can't get in other viewers? In other words, what is better about FS? Considering Mesh is in several v1 viewers so far it comes down to one, ONE little thing. Mulitiple clothing layers (such as wearing 3 shirts at once.) That's it. Why would I switch?

I was told by many many people to basically "shut up, it's still a beta, they will fix it!" Well, here we are, it's not not a beta anymore and still has some of the worst usability flaws ever seen in a modern software product.

I've been told that V1 viewers are a dead end, ancient technology, obsolete. Nobody has proven that however because it's not true. There is NOTHING that is currently in a V2/V3 viewer that can't be ported back. And guess what? Anything useful IS being ported back. If not already done, it's in progress.

I've been told that it's harder to make V1 viewers with V2 features than V2 viewers with a V1 GUI. Well, I have to point out that FS has been in development for 18 months by a team and is still lacking basic V1 GUI simplicity and usability, and that Mesh was ported to V1 viewers in 6 months by one guy. Ain't the truth a bitch?

As for Mesh, agreed it's not ready. Not at all, especially for clothing due to the lack of a parametric deformer (the ability for Mesh clothes to be re-sized or automatically sized to actually fit your avatar.) In-world objects though it's pretty cool, but as I can get it in Singularity or some of the other V1 viewers, I have no need to perform self-flagellation and use FS to see it.

According to the most recently available statistics from LL, more than 50% of the users still use non-mesh viewers so it's a little loony to wear mesh hair / clothing as you look like you are totally naked wearing a box or sphere on you to the majority. Best to wait until Mesh viewer adoption has reached critical mass (>90% of users.)

...

I've been hearing that opinion that V1 viewers will cease working as LL turns off services being repeated over and over since 2.0 first came out.

Let's set the record straight. First and foremost, while LL initially indicated that some back end services may be retired, they have since backed down on most of that retirement such as the NON-web profiles.

But here is the kicker - any viewer that is still maintained will continue to work. Why? Very simple. Any V1-only protocol that is retired will simply be replaced with the V2 version as needed - just as Mesh was ported over. We will still happily use the far superior V1 interface as more V2 features and protocols are pulled in. That's it. That's the whole secret that the Firestorm team and it's cheerleaders don't want you to know.

The Phoenix/FS team has declared that the next Phoenix will be the last. Don't let them fool you - after all, the Phoenix rises from the ashes, right? Isn't that what the name is all about? It's open source. I'm sure it will be forked and maintained by avid fans. I know several people who are holding off doing any work on it until the final version is stabilized Even if Phoenix doesn't in itself get picked up, other V1 viewer projects regularly are picking up ideas and code to integrate back in to their alternatives.

In my not-so-humble opinion, Phoenix is still far and above the feature king. It's the most usable and user friendly viewer available, bar none. It is suffering a bit from performance issues however - Singularity has it beat hands down there, but that should get resolved with the Mesh back-end.

 Even people who enjoyed the beta version are having problems with the official release.

 I loved the Beta. The Beta crashed sometimes, but it worked pretty well.

Now the new one is remarkably slower. It still doesn't keep settings, such as window positions. But now it doesnt even keep my graphic settings. I was hoping to get a fixed version, but now it turns out to be worse.

I didnt check out the mesh upload capabilities. But im not sure if I can trust them yet.

I'm not using Phoenix anymore, but I won't be using this version of Firestorm either. I'll just wait for a version where the show stoppers are fixed, because they are really annoying.

 And that about sums it up: Firestorm still isn't ready for official release.  I'm beginning to wonder if it'll ever be.

Viewer Snobbery

The latest gripe fest on the Phoenix Viewer blog demonstrates just how out of touch the development team is with reality.  Now, don't get me wrong; I prefer Phoenix, which is still much more stable than, say Singularity, even though I believe Singularity will eventually supplant Phoenix as that development team ceases to update their viewer.  But the attitude coming from Jessica Lyon and her supporters is downright puzzling, not to mention irritating.

Lyon and her supporters are making the argument that trying to backport Viewer 2 and Viewer 3 features into Viewer 1 interface is like "taking a diesel engine from a school bus and fitting it into a ford pinto".  But Henri Beauchamp, the developer of Cool VL Viewer and whose code the Phoenix team used to bring mesh capability to Phoenix, cleared up a number of exaggerated claims by Lyon.  Far from taking "many" months of work, it only took Beauchamp two, two and a half at most, albeit with him working overtime in his spare hours to get the work done.  And contrary to the diesel engine metaphor, Beauchamp stated on his forum, "It's more like replacing the battery and alternator of the car engine with newer, more powerful ones (ll* libraries), replacing the mechanical injection with an electronic one to make for the increased mechanical power demand from the alternator (v2 classes in the viewer code) then adding air conditioning to the car (mesh renderer). Nothing that would make the poor car into a weird hybrid vehicle."

So it really isn't that difficult to backport the Viewer 2-Viewer 3 code into the Viewer 1 interface, contrary to what Jessica Lyon and her supporters claim.

I get the impression that the Phoenix Development Team decided to follow Linden Lab's lead and go with the crappy, bug-ridden, crashtastic, user-unfriendly, outsourced viewer that most Second Life users can't stand and would prefer not to use.  That's why so many people refuse to use the default SL viewer, and instead go with third party viewers such as Phoenix, Singularity, Cool VL, Rainbow, and others.  That's bad enough.  Literally adding insult to injury, however, was the condescending dismissal of legitimate criticisms that Viewer 2 and its clones (including Firestorm) are highly unstable, have a tendency to gobble inventory -- say goodbye to no-copy items forever -- eat up loads and loads of memory even on newer computers, and tend to crash said computers when the viewers alone aren't crashing, by telling disgruntled users to buy new computers instead of the decade-old ones we're allegedly clinging to.

This is a false assumption on the part of the Phoenix Development team, for many if not most users are not on ten-year-old computers.  I, for example, am on a computer that is less than a year old, has a monster graphics card, and is built for gaming purposes.  Yet the Viewer 2 and Firestorm beta I tried kept crashing on me, and often crash my computer altogether (even Phoenix and Singularity crash my comp).  Another dismissive claim is that users only tried Firestorm for a few minutes before giving up on it, despite people complaining that they spent hours on Firestorm only to have the same problems.  Simply put, people don't like the user interface no matter how much the Phoenix team tries to gussy it up, and the viewer itself is a bug-infested resource hog just like Viewer 2.  It's not a matter of people clinging to old technology, rather, they simply don't like the craptastic interface of a product that messes up their newer computers.

I think what's really driving the outright hostility coming from the Phoenix team and its supporters is simple snobbery.  They hopped on board a product that someone told them was the latest rage, and they genuinely don't seem to accept the legitimate reasons most people don't like it.  What if Coca Cola had stubbornly stuck by its "New Coke" product even after the massive customer backlash?  That company would now be out of business.  Instead, Coca Cola wised up, came out with "Classic Coke", and remained competitive with Pepsi, its closest competitor.  That was honest of them to do, and they survived by accepting and acknowledging their business mistake and correcting it.  If Phoenix developers want their viewer to remain the preferred one used by SL members, they will have to accept and acknowledge their mistakes, make the necessary apologies for their attitudes, and keep working to correct their mistake by continuing support for Phoenix Viewer.  it's what more of their user base seem to want anyway, and it makes better business sense.

Ooh, Rainbow Viewer is back...But for How Long?

While chatting in the Singularity Viewer group in Second Life, someone was kind enough to point out that Rainbow Viewer, based on the old SL Viewer 1.22, has gotten an update as of July 10th.  You can read the newest entry here.

I used both Rainbow and Emerald viewers until Emerald went kaput last year for reasons explained in this blog entry.  From the ashes of the Emerald Viewer arose Phoenix, which had most if not all of the functionality and user-friendliness of Emerald, and a great graphics engine.  It has had its bugs, such as objects (both local and attached) suddenly de-rendering with right-clicking only working to re-render them sporadically, and conference and group chat windows not showing who else is participating, but overall the user interface was and always will be far superior to Linden Labs' Viewer 2 and several third party viewers based on it, like Kirstens.  Of course, Linden labs is jealous of third party viewers that give users what they like and want, and they're determined to kill off all Viewer 1-based viewers by breaking the code that allows them to function.

For its part, the Phoenix team decided it was better to suck up to Linden Labs than it is to make users happy, so they've been working long and hard on a viewer that is in most aspects that I can see identical to Linden Labs' Viewer 2, which they've called Firestorm.  The viewer is currently in public beta mode.  If this weren't bad enough, the Phoenix team apparently thinks that it can dismiss legitimate concerns with the user unfriendliness of Firestorm by insulting its users.

I'm happy to say though that the unhappy folks are only a small minority, however they can be very vocal, loud and discouraging.

Yeah, way to alienate your user base.  Maybe if you didn't respond to user complaints with such snark as "Viewer 2 is coming, get used to it," you wouldn't be forcing harsher replies.  Alas, some people never learn.  Oh well.  At any rate, with Linden labs forcing everyone to adopt its inferior Viewer 2 software and layout, it looks as though a lot of long term users will find themselves forced to leave Second Life for greener pastures.  Fortunately, Singularity's development team has managed to do what the Phoenix development team apparently refuses to do, namely, make a Viewer 2-based viewer that actually has the superior Viewer 1 layout and controls.  I heard through the user support group in-world that they are working on getting the mesh import feature, and that they are very close to succeeding in bringing it in.  No date was given, which is understandable considering that anything can happen which might delay release of an updated viewer.  But at least Singularity seems to be trying to make its users happy.  And they do seem to listen to people's concerns with a much friendlier attitude.

In the meantime, I've installed the new Rainbow Viewer update and it is working splendidly so far.  It is anyone's guess as to exactly how long it will remain functional, however.  As I've written, Linden Labs is working diligently to break Viewer 1-based viewers for Second Life.  Rainbow will probably end up joining Phoenix and all the other better viewers out there on the Viewer 1 trash heap.  But until that happens, I'll enjoy it and Singularity until they are no more or until I am no more.  I'll keep Firestorm around just in case its developers wise up, but chances are I won't be using it much, if at all.

UPDATE (10:09 PM EDT/7:10 PM SLT): Calisto Llewellin  has brought it to my attention that Singularity is indeed based on Viewer 1.  My apologies for giving the wrong information.

Phoenix Viewer Soon To Be Broken by Linden Labs, Horrible Firestorm To Take its Place

Reading through the dismissive blog entry on the Phoenix Viewer web site about complaints from Viewer 1 users, I couldn't help but be reminded of the replies in-world to people trying to use the Firestorm beta asking where various features were and getting unsatisfactory responses.  The general attitude was, "Viewer 2 is coming so get used to it".  Never mind that Viewer 2 is unusable for most people who started Second Life on Viewer 1.  Granted, Phoenix does have a video in which it claims to help users make their Viewer 2 viewer look more like Viewer 1 (using voice, naturally, and the volume isn't loud enough for people with impaired hearing).  But the issue here isn't just that by making a viewer that most Second Life residents who signed up before Viewer 2 can't use they are in fact helping Linden Labs to alienate a huge swath of its customers.  It's the condescendingly dismissive attitude in the face of legitimate complaints.

After all, no one told the developers who work on Phoenix Viewer to make it so that the inventory button doesn't show up at all unless you right-click the bottom of the viewer screen, and even then you have to hide another button as the trade-off.  And no one forced the Phoenix development team to make it so that the inventory menu remains hidden behind the chat window and that resizing the inventory menu isn't an option.  This means that every time you want to gain access to your inventory, you have to move or close the chat window in order to do it.  Phoenix Viewer didn't make you go through that nonsense.  Whatever window was active, that was the one that appeared on top of others.  And if you wanted to make another window active, all you had to do was click that window.  But Viewer 2 doesn't allow that.  Nor will it allow anything from inventory to be saved as an off-world .xml file — even if it's full-perm, and even if it's a texture image that is full-perm.  If you didn't make the object yourself, and if you didn't upload the texture image yourself, forget about making a backup.  So when Linden Labs servers decide to completely delete parts of your inventory, say goodbye to them forever.  The only way currently to make .xml backups of your full-perm inventory is to use a viewer like Meerkat, and soon that will be broken as it is Viewer 1-based.

In essence, the Phoenix development team caved in to Linden Labs and made their viewer an almost carbon copy of the unusable Viewer 2.  And by dismissing legitimate complaints from users as unfair attacks on volunteer staff who have been rude and condescending, a fundamental point gets lost: the Phoenix development team could easily have kept the viewer 1 layout while making the viewer itself compatible with Linden labs' demands.  It can be done because it already has been — by the Singularity development team.  The graphics engine on Singularity seems to have some deficiencies, like over-saturated colors, too-intense lighting effects, and a pixelated look making everything appear way too cartoonish.  But these are things I'm sure the Singularity team is working on, or will soon.  And they built their viewer to have the same layout and features Viewer 1 does while being compliant with Linden labs' unreasonable software demands.

Maybe instead of insulting its user base, which arguably made Phoenix Viewer the most popular one of choice for residents seeking an alternative to the unusable Viewer 2, its developers should actually listen to them and go back to the drawing board.  Just because they want to bend over backwards to please Linden labs doesn't mean they have to make their users suffer, or dismiss user complaints with insults.