Firestorm Q&A Sept 14th

Latest firestorm question and answer session was held on Sept 14. A video has just been released of that session, watch and enjoy.

Playing with Lumiya the Android Secondlife mobile viewer

A new updated version of Lumiya  the Android secondlife viewer app for your mobile phone or tablet was just released a few days ago. With the update they have increased the quality of the graphics now with the ability to display mesh also, which is impressive since it comes off devices like smart phones.

In the app you can walk around, teleport, give and received items from people, communicate in open chat, groups and send private messages. In addition your able to operate objects, sit down on items, fly. Many of the basic things you can do in secondlife can be done here.

Unlike some secondlife apps on the android platform you don't have pay a monthly fees just to use it, Lumiya is a one off price of £1.87p. With its ability to keep you in contact with people in secondlife, participating via text or visually is useful and an impressive way of keeping in touch when you maybe out of away from your normal computer set up.

Below is a video comparing how the app handles graphics on a smartphone in comparison to a laptop

How To Get Firestorm To Feel Like A V1 Viewer

We heard earlier last month in a post that the Phoenix viewer creators were officially stopping supports for that version of the viewer which is an interface to the second life grid.

The problem being that the structure of Phoenix viewer is based on an earlier V1 core and we are now at the V3 stage, this means just to get certain things working requires constantly finding ways to make basic functions work properly instead of innovating.

 Very soon the way avatars are going to be displayed will change, this will further break that viewers ability to function properly and its too time consuming to be trying to keep this viewer up to date when they already have one in Firestorm which works with all the newer server core codes.

To help migrate users from the now unsupported Phoenix to the newer firestorm viewer a video tutorial has been made to show how you can get the Firestorm's UI to function similarly to how you had Phoenix or other V1 viewers set up.

New Phoenix update and Firestorms gets FUI

Everyone run round shouting and screaming we have "FUI" things will never bee the same, what did I do without FUI and it doesn't come from hong kong (you have to be kinda older or for some reason have been re-watching 70's cartoons to get that joke, you'll probably just google it anyway).

Anyhow, those of you using firestorm, FUI stands for Flexible User Interface....yeah I know after all that hype, you would have expected something a little more exciting. But wait, you think V2+ interfaces sucked harder than a lemon FUI may come to your rescue as it allows the user and  developers to make it easier to create an interface that's more suited to you and yes that included a version of the older V1 interface......Its like eating mummy's pie all over again. For a less over the top explanation, while I go and download the updates have a watch of the video the phoenix team has kindly crafted for you.

Pheonix/Firestorm article HERE

Interview with Oz Linden about policy changes

If you watched last weeks video which featured Jessica Lyon from the phoenix third party viewer team talking about the changes proposed by linden labs regarding the use of third party viewers, you would have heard her mention having an interview with Oz Linden, this interview was conducted a few days ago and we have a link of the video for you to watch. Hope it answers people questions about the possible changed being proposed.

Some Of The New Second Life Policy Rules Explained

Some of you may have watched the film length video from the previous post concerning the new policy changes being made by secondlife. There's still seems to be a little confusion regarding what is being changed and what isn't.

What seems to be in linden labs (creator of second life) mind is they want to keep the users shared experience in SL the same if at all possible. The way they propose to do this is to not allow third party viewers (not the official SL program/viewer) to create new features users in other viewers can't see. For instance something like coloured tags above players heads or the placing of viewer names in the text above other users heads.

As of now that colour and viewer name tag feature is broken and should not work. The argument here is could this stop third party viewers innovating and creating new features. For instance, something like breast physics (wobbly boobs to you and me) was created originally by a third party viewer (TPV) team and was only viewable on those with compatible viewers, the official viewer originally not being one of them.

Now, because at the time of conception it wasn't available on the official viewer, if done now it would be classed as breaking the shared experience as the official viewer couldn't see it. Of course linden labs adopted a body physics feature at a later date an now there isn't a need for the original hack. But it was the hack and the work of third party viewers which encouraged the feature in the first place.

Linden Labs would like TPV to work with them and helping them improve the features of SL by submitting ideas and concepts, it just hasn't been fully worked out how that would be achieved.

The bottom line regarding shared experience is if you can't see it in the official viewer its braking shared experience and must be removed.

Real Online Status

Some Features in devices like this may be broken if scripted online status is removed for none script owners

viewers like phoenix and firestorm seemed to have circumvented the fact that people may have put as a privacy option that they wanted to remain offline to friends or members, but in these viewers it still showed if they were online when checking their profiles. Also LL propose to break the online status indicators found in devices. Which there are many found in officers of the GFC. The original proposal was that these devices would only show the online status of someone if the script running the command belonged to that person.

So in other words if i created an online status device and the script was owned by me, it would work, but if i create the same device but had it check the online status of someone else, it wouldn't work and since most online status devices aren't using scripts created by the person its checking, a lot of these devices would break. As of now, LL are reconsidering its proposal regarding online status, so for the moment, nothing has changed there.

In the future temp textures may fail, not because there's a desire to ban them but fixing a bunch of features may create the situation that temp textures will get broken. On this one we'll just have to wait and see.

All in all, most of you wont notice any significant change in how you use secondlife on your third party viewer other than tag colours and viewer names tags. The coming weeks we'll get more of an idea of what the changes really mean long term, but for now, there isn't a huge amount to worry about.

Second life policy change Q&A

The third party viewer phoenix blog team secured a Q&A discussion regarding the policy changes which have been proposed recently. Here is a video of that discussion.

More info from the Phoenix Team HERE

Second Life Third Party Viewer Policy Changes

A new policy in how third party viewers like firestorm and phoenix functions and use certain features have been announced. Though a little confusing and unclear how exactly it will effect these viewers, we can surmise the some of the impact.


The phoenix viewer site did a really good write up on this so i'm not going to reinvent their wheel in this article, use the links below to get an idea of what is being proposed.

Phoenix viewer article HERE
Third Party Viewer Policy Changes HERE
Policy on Third-Party Viewers HERE

We will be keeping an eye on the development from a research division perspective, we'll be looking at
how this may effect present devices.

List of possible exclusions in the future.

Online indicators in viewer and scripts

viewer  indicator and colour tabs

RLV or aspects of it.

Features which aren't in the official viewer could be deemed as a violation, so in other words if it aint in Secondlife V3 you can't have it unless you work with SL for implementations in their system.

I'm sure there are going to be many discussions about the possible ramifications of this so we'll try to keep our ear on the ground and keep you informed.