This is a collection of error messages seen in SL. Some are system messages; some are viewer-generated. The list is by no means complete.

If you get an error message that is not on this page, please:

• Report it in Firestorm Support English (in-world support group)
• Or File a Jira alerting us to it (please provide the complete, exact wording of the message; a screenshot is also helpful).
• If you found a solution or explanation, please let us know that too.

Thanks!

Please note that Marketplace has nothing to do with the viewer. These messages are noted simply for convenience.

Firestorm 6.3.2 (58052) Release Notes

“n/a” in the table below means “not available”; see the boxed note above.

More information about the 64-bit builds can be found here.

Firestorm 6.0.2 (56680) Animesh Release Notes

“n/a” in the table below means “not available”; see the boxed note above.

• SLURLs not working in your browser, or choose to open with a different viewer (Windows)
  • SLURL Proxy.zip
  • Instructions are included, but can also be seen on the Wiki here.

Please read https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/4520411/adobe-flash-end-of-support before considering installing flash. Flash has a LONG history of very serious security issues. If someone is providing content that only works with flash, please contact them and let them know that flash will be end of life in the near future, this means there will be NO security updates from the vendor beyond that point. Nobody should be forcing flash on anyone in this day and age, it is 2020, not 2001 anymore.

Firestorm 6.3.2, 6.2.4, 6.0.2, 5.1.7 Release

• Windows - Download in Firefox or Chrome to play Flash media inside Second Life.
  Choose the correct operating system under Step 1.
  Choose FP 32 for Opera & Chromium - PPAPI under Step 2.
  Install Flash.

• Mac - Ensure that you have the most recent version of Flash for Safari installed. You an get this via the normal update process, or from Adobe.
  Choose the correct operating system under Step 1.
  Choose FP 32 for Safari and Firefox – NPAPI under Step 2.
  Install Flash.

• Linux - You need to have the pepperflash plugin installed, which can be satisfied by installing Google Chrome.

Firestorm 6.3.2, 6.2.4, 6.0.2, 5.1.7

• Windows - Quicktime does not need to be installed to play media on Firestorm 5.0.1 or later.

• Mac - Quicktime to play streaming videos. (iTunes is not needed)

for Linux only

• Info for download to play streaming videos. (Please read page for info on installing GStreamer for your particular distribution.)

• Growl for Windows– As of November 2018 this site is dead. Users who already have Growl installed can continue to use it for the time being. Windows users may be able to download a copy from its github release page.

• Mac– This site will lead you to the Mac App Store for downloading. Please note the reviews and the update status of Growl before purchasing; Firestorm cannot guarantee its functionality.

• Linux: Growl is implicit in libnotify, which should come already installed in most distros. However, if you are on a 64-bit linux, you may need to install the 32-bit version of libnotify. For ubuntu and similar (like mint), run the following command:
  sudo apt-get install libnotify4:i386

Windows only

• DX runtime April 2011 to help increase performance and stability. For all versions of Windows. Please refer to this page.

Mac drivers are included with OS upgrades. However, to determine what card you have, select “About this Mac” from the Apple menu, then click “More Info”. Under Hardware select Graphics/Displays.

If you are not sure what type of video card you have, use GPU-Z found (Windows only) here. For linux, in a console use:
lspci | grep VGA

• Latest driverLast checked 29/09/2019 - Windows: 436.30 (2019.9.10) - Linux: 430.50 (2019.9.11)

• Latest driverLast checked 29/09/2019 - Windows: Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.9.2 (9/23/2019 ) - Linux: 19.30 (8/13/2019)
  

• Intel driver download page Intel does not have a universal driver set. Please go to Intel's site and use the auto-detect feature.

https://hg.firestormviewer.org/

The introduction of Server Side Appearance (SSA) has resulted in a significant reduction of problems concerned avatar bake fail (ie, skin or layered clothing failing to rez, your avatar remaining a cloud, etc). SSA completely changes how avatar textures are handled, and the new process is far less prone to errors introduced by connection or region problems.

Nonetheless, problems may occur and are largely due to network connection problems. This page addresses the known issues and offers solutions.

NOTE: If you receive a message that the system has “Failed to find [name of any item] in the database” every time you try to wear or remove something, please see this page first Failed to find in database.

• In your inventory, find a different shape from the one you normally use, and wear it, replacing the one you have on. If that doesn't fix the issue, then do the same thing for your
  • system skin
  • system eyes
  • system hair base
  • If that doesn't work, read on.

• If you have RLV enabled, in Preferences → Firestorm → Extras (top option), disable it and relog, then try the above step again.

• Go to one of the following locations, and remain there while working through the rest of this page:
  • Hippo Hollow (Moderate)
  • Ruth's Retreat (General)
  • Cyclops (General)

• Your inventory needs to be fully loaded before you will bake. Click on the Recent tab of the Inventory window. Make sure that the inventory count doesn't say “Fetched” or “Fetching”; if it does, your inventory is still loading. Let it finish. If it isn't moving, try typing random characters into the inventory search box.
  Should your inventory not fully load, please refer to this page for help on getting it to load.
  Once you have done that, try the first bullet point again.

• Select a different outfit in your Outfits folder and select Replace Outfit.

• Make sure that all of the 4 required system parts are worn:
  • Method 1: In your Inventory window, Inventory tab, Current Outfit folder, make sure the four required system parts all show as worn: shape, skin, eyes, hair base. If not, right-click them and wear them.
  • Method 2: Open the Appearance window (Avatar menu → Appearance), go to the Wearing tab, scroll to the bottom, and make sure that the last four items listed are your shape, skin, hair and eyes. If one of those items is missing, find it in inventory and wear it.
  • If you are unable to wear all 4 items, create a new folder in your inventory with the 4 basic items, plus system clothing if you wish (no attachments). Then right click the folder and select Replace Outfit.

• If you are connected via cellphone, you will most likely see yourself and everyone grey. You need to have a decent internet connection. So if possible, switch to that, then see if you rez in normally.

• Reboot your router/modem.

• If none of the above helps, then continue reading.

If you have more than one monitor, and run Firestorm on any but the primary, try moving the Firestorm window to the primary monitor.

If this doesn't help, continue with the next section.

This also applies if you are a cloud.

The best way to fix this is not via the usual rebake (Ctrl-Alt-R), but instead by right clicking your avatar name tag and selecting Tex.Refresh:

• Context menu: right click → Texture refresh
• Pie menu: Right click → Appearance → Tex refresh.

This is generally the result of the viewer not loading or using all the bake data - which may be a sign of a connectivity problem. If it persists, try going to a different region, preferably a known low lag one like Hippo Hollow or Cyclops.

For more info, you can refer to this JIRA.

The first thing to try is a Tex.Refresh, as described above.

If this does not help, chances are very good that one of the textures on the (layered) clothing you' re wearing, is bad.

• Remove all worn layered clothing, tattoos and alphas, then Tex.Refresh as described above.
• If this results in a fully baked, naked avatar, start re-adding the clothing layers, one at a time. One will probably show entirely or partly grey. This will be the one with the corrupted texture(s), and needs replacing.
• If you are still grey, or partly grey with no layered clothing worn, try a different avatar skin, see if that rezzes in correctly. If so, then the problem is with the avatar skin.

For more info, see this LL JIRA.

This issue can also occur if you are using a cellphone connection to access SL. This is currently under investigation by LL. For more, refer to this forum thead.

This issue can also occur if you are having DNS problems. The DNS problems usually occur in such a way that the only symptom you will see will be grey avatar textures and the problem can be intermittant. The workaround for this is to change your DNS to Google Public DNS.

See Duplicate Current Outfit Folders Causing Bakefail for one specific problem.

If you find that a change of outfit can be seen by you, but not by others, then you most likely are affected by an issue which seems to be the result of using a certain other third party viewer. Only LL can fix this issue; you will need to file a support ticket with them.

Firestorm supports both the new Region Windlight, introduced by LL, and Parcel Windlight, which was introduced with Phoenix Viewer. Both of these allow you to customize your in-world sky and water, but they operate at different levels: one is region-wide, while the other is restricted to single parcels.

Parcel Windlight allows individual parcel owners to customize their own land as they wish. Region Windlight is most effective on region-wide parcels, or where Region owners wish to provide a consistent experience to visitors.

There are several ways in which you can control you personal Windlight experience. You can opt to use whatever sky and water settings have been selected by region and/or parcel owners, or you can use your own. You can also create your own sky, water and day cycle settings.

General options concerning Windlight are set in Preferences→ Firestorm→ Windlight tab; please refer there for details.

If you wish to use your own day/night cycle, or set to a specific time of day, then use top menu bar→ World → Environment Editor → Environment Settings.

If you own a region or parcel, you can customize the Windlight settings for yourself, and for others visiting your land.

Region Windlight can only be changed by region owners or estate managers. It is set by going to the top menu bar and selecting World menu → Region Details. On the window that opens, select Environment. Regions can be set to use the default SL day cycle, a custom day cycle, or fixed time of day. See here for more on how to configure a region's Windlight settings.

Parcel Windlight sharing is a feature of Firestorm that allows land owners to specify a Windlight preset for the viewer to use while on their land at the parcel level.

The land owner just needs to put a plain text string at the end of the parcel description. Parcel description is set in the About Land floater, General tab.

/*Windlight Sky: "[name of the preset]" RegionOverride*/

NOTE: The Windlight name must be exactly as shown in the Windlight list, including all spaces, capitalization, and punctuation. One way to make sure you get the name exactly right is to go to World → Environment Editor → Sky (or Water) Presets → Edit Preset. Select the Windlight you want from the dropdown list, then copy the name.

Windlight water presets are also supported:

/*Windlight Sky: "[name of the preset]" Water: "[name of the WL water preset]"*/

Water settings can be used by its self just like sky if wanted.

Example: If the sky preset is to be [TOR] BIG SUN - Awwyeah and the water preset [TOR] Watermelon juice and the parcel's description is “My awesome place” then the parcel description would be like this:

My awesome place

/*Windlight Sky: "[TOR] BIG SUN - Awwyeah" Water: "[TOR] Watermelon juice"*/

Zones

Parcel WL settings also support zoned settings based on altitude. This allows skyboxes to have a different sky settings than ground level.

/*Windlight Sky @ [lower]m to [upper]m: "[name of preset]"*/

Example: If the parcel wide settings are to be [TOR] MIDDAY - Cheery cyan for the sky and [TOR] Ice-like for the water with a skybox between 500 meters and 600 meters using [TOR] NIGHT - Moony for its sky, the config line would like like so:

/*Windlight Sky: "[TOR] MIDDAY - Cheery cyan" Water: "[TOR] Ice-like" Sky @ 500m to 600m: "[TOR] NIGHT - Moony"*/

The parcel wide settings for sky and water are optional. Zones can be used by themselves leaving the rest of the land at region defaults.

NOTE: There is a 3 meter minimum distance between zones, zones should be at least 10 meters apart and over lap the desired area by a least 5 meters to allow for the 5 second delay on detecting changes.

If you have set region WL to use a fixed sky or a custom day cycle, region WL will always override parcel WL unless you use the RegionOveride flag

For example:

/*Windlight Sky: "[name of the preset]" Water: "[name of the WL water preset]"RegionOverride*/

Advanced

If there is not enough space in the description for the desired config line, there are several optional formatting and whitespace

/*Sky:"[preset]"Water:"[preset]"*/

Is the same as:

/*Windlight Sky:"[preset]" Water:"[preset]"*/

Zones can be shortened as well:

/*Sky@[lower]-[upper]:"[preset]"*/

Be sure to use “straight quotes,” both double and single, not “curly quotes.”

Please refer to this page for details.

So you have the latest viewer and still can't see mesh - what's the deal?

Well, it isn't necessarily automatic. Depending on your specific hardware, certain settings that need to be enabled for mesh, may be set off by default.

Go to Preferences→ Graphics -> General; then enable Basic Shaders.

If this remains greyed out, then increase the level of Render Quality until Basic Shaders becomes enabled and can be checked.

Make sure you have a reasonable draw distance. If you have difficulty rendering mesh, lower it; if your draw distance is over 128, set it to 128, or less. (The optimal value for draw distance is entirely dependent on your own hardware; you will need to experiment to find what works best for you.)

In some cases, worn mesh attachments will not render properly still. Go to Preferences→ Graphics -> Rendering and disable both of the Alpha Mask Rendering options.

There are also rare instances of glitches where mesh that you are wearing appears worn by another avatar (yes, it is bizarre!). In that case, try going to Preferences → Graphics → General, and enable Hardware Skinning.

In some cases, low-end graphics cards or very old graphics drivers may require you to turn hardware skinning off rather than on. Before doing this, please try updating your graphics drivers and review the other options on this page, as turning hardware skinning off may reduce your performance.

If you have Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus, see Webroot Issues. For other antivirus apps, see our Whitelisting Guide, and be sure to whitelist all parts of the viewer. This may need to be done from scratch each time you upgrade to a new version.

If mesh is simply slow to appear, but does appear eventually, that is not necessarily a problem with mesh itself; please work through this page: Slow Rezzing.

HTTP fetching may be overloading your router; please try the suggestions given here; if they do not help, revert the changes made then return to this page and continue.

If none of the above work - and make sure you try all of them first! - then in the top menu bar, open Advanced → Debug Settings, type in Mesh2MaxConcurrentRequests and gradually decrease (not increase) the value. (If Advanced is not visible on the top menu bar, press Ctrl-Alt-D.) If it does not help, try increasing the value from the default. Under no circumstances should you increase this beyond 64. Please see this comment on a related JIRA ticket for an explanation of the possible drawbacks of increasing this setting. Additionally, we recommend returning it to default once the mesh you're trying to see is visible.

In most cases, this is due to the mesh item being made low LOD so as to reduce its land impact. You should never try to resolve this by increasing LOD above the maximum allowed in Preferences → Graphics → General (4), as that would result in greatly increased memory use, usually leading to a significantly increased rate of crashing. Rather, the issue is inherent in how the mesh item was made. So you either live with it, or replace the item.

The opposite effect of what was described above. This happens when mesh objects have far too many triangles in the high LOD models. The viewer is overloaded and cannot render anything else. To resolve this, you will need to remove some nearby items, preferably the ones that are too complex. You can try to determine which those are by editing each item, looking at the Object tab, and look at the mesh information on the right. Any mesh item – or group of mesh items – with an excessively high number of triangles is possibly causing your problem.

Reference this SL JIRA issue for more information, where you an see that it is considered expected behavior.

This happens more frequently for those using ATI/AMD graphics and drivers, but has been seen occasionally with Nvidia graphics and drivers as well. Visit Graphics Glitches for ways to address this.

If you can see most mesh fine but a specific mesh item fails to render and/or displays a pyramid, triangle, or ducky when it's first worn or rezzed, then read on. This is caused by mesh that fails to load, and in many cases is a result of having too high a draw distance in the presence of a lot of complex mesh.

• Reduce draw distance significantly, then relog. That often clears the problem.
• If that doesn't help, reboot all your network hardware and then your computer.
• (If the problem occurs only on selected regions, it could simply be a symptom of region lag–see this page for information. In this case, there may be nothing you can do about it.)

If this still doesn't help, then:

• Back up your settings - see this page
• Wipe your settings manually, as explained in this page
• Log back in and see if the mesh renders correctly. If it does…
• Restore your settings (see the backup page above), then check the mesh again.

In Preferences → Graphics → General, make sure Basic Shaders and Hardware Skinning are enabled.

Modern mesh bodies and heads often use a lot of smaller pieces to make up the whole item, so parts can be hidden under clothing. Sometimes the rigging information for one or more of these pieces gets corrupted during download and stuck in the viewer's cache. Currently, the best way to fix this issue is to clear cache.

Please note: this only applies when parts look broken or incomplete. For mesh parts that look ok but that are simply floating in space, see Slow Rezzing.

If certain mesh objects are invisible on Firestorm 5.0.11 on OpenSim grids, set the debug setting FSEnforceStrictObjectCheck to False. To change that setting:

1. Go to top menu, Advanced (Ctrl-Alt-D to enable Advanced, if it isn't), Show Debug Settings
2. Type in FSEnforceStrictObjectCheck, set to False
3. Close the DebugSettings window.

On OpenSim grids, mesh should never be uploaded using “Analyze”. Analyze should only be used on grids that support Havok.
On Firestorm 5.0.11, mesh uploaded with Analyze is likely to render invisible when FSEnforceStrictObjectCheck is set to true.

Windows 10 updates since March 2017 have resulted in users experiencing stalling or crashing at “initializing VFS”.

Firestorm addresses this issue, but you must do this additional step once you have installed the 64bit version:

1. While logged out of Firestorm.
2. Right click the desktop shortcut for the 64bit Firestorm → Properties → Shortcut tab.
3. In the “Target” text box, go to the end of the text, *add a space* and then add this exact text to the end: --noprobe

"C:\Program Files\Firestorm-Releasex64\FirestormOS-Releasex64.exe" --set InstallLanguage en --noprobe 

4. Click “OK” to apply to save changes and launch Firestorm using the Desktop shortcut. (Note that if you use the pinned application on your task bar, make sure you pin the shortcut, not the running viewer.)

For reference, see: https://jira.firestormviewer.org/browse/FIRE-21109
[Windows 64bit] Windows 10 - Stuck on “Initializing VFS” after KB4015217 on Intel HD, Intel HD 2500 & Intel HD 4000 cards on 64bit viewers only.

Reminder to check directly with the Intel website for the most up to date drivers. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/

NOTE: For a video tutorial on backup and restore, see here.

If you've ever run into the situation where the fix for a problem is to clear your settings, you face a not insignificant task of redoing all those settings. It can be frustrating, especially if original problem doesn't go away.

What if you had a known-good backup of your settings? Then you could clear out the current ones and just pop in your good set. Easy.

IMPORTANT: Don't use backups for a different viewer. They're not compatible with each other.

With Firestorm, you can back up most settings directly from the viewer itself, via Preferences→ Backup. You may wish to backup to a thumb drive, for additional protection.

• Make sure you are logged into SL.
• Go to Preferences → Backup.
• Specify a path (folder) where the backup files should be saved, by clicking the Set button at the upper right, and selecting a folder. Ideally, make a new folder on your computer, specifically for Firestorm backups.
  Do not use the Firestorm settings or install folder for this; use a new folder.
  
• Note: You may want to name your folder something like “Firestorm Backup.” When you make the backup, Firestorm will automatically create a subfolder with your avatar name.
• Click on the Backup Settings button.
• Confirm that you wish to save to the Directory specified and overwrite a previous Back-up if saved there.

This will back up all global settings, and the settings for the account you logged in with. If you have multiple accounts, with different per-account settings, you should do the above for each account.

Note: All settings are backed up, regardless of which checkboxes are selected. You can restore selectively.

• Log in with the viewer (restore needs to know what account to restore to).
• Go to Preferences → Backup.
• If you have just wiped your settings, or if settings were reset for some reason, you will need to select the path (folder) where your backup files were saved, by clicking the Set button. Use the checkboxes in the 3 tables to select what settings you want restored; you can select all of them by clicking the Select All button at the upper right, and then browsing for the folder.
• Click on the Restore Settings button. NOTE: be careful NOT to click the “Backup” button or you will wipe out your backup!
• Log out of Firestorm, then restart it.

Settings backup will store all settings for the account you are logged in with, be they global settings (that is, those that affect all accounts on a given computer), or “per account” settings. If you run multiple accounts and wish to have a backup of its “per account” settings, you will need to log in with each one and do a backup.

It follows that you can backup settings from one account and restore to another, but this will only restore global settings, since the “per account” settings refer to a different account.

“Per account” Settings are backed up to a folder with that account's avatar name, inside the backup folder you specify.

This window is accessed from Preferences→ Chat -> Typing. It is used to indicate whether you wish chat to be translated to another language and, if so, which service to use.

NOTE: The translator will translate what you and others type in nearby (local) chat, into the language you choose. It does not translate IMs or group IMs.

NOTE: Translation service is provided by external, third parties; as such, if translation fails to function correctly, it is not the responsibility of the Firestorm viewer.

• Enable machine translation while chatting: Check this if you wish to turn on chat translation. You will then need to configure the service to use.

• Translate chat into: Select a language to translate into.

• Choose translation service: You may select one of two online providers to handle the translation:
  • Bing: It appears that Bing has totally changed their API, and that our connection to it is no longer functional.
    Ref. FIRE-6459.
  • Google: You need to supply an API key, which you can obtain from Google (click the underlined link to go to the web page; you may also obtain pricing information). Once you have done that, click Verify to have the key checked. After that, translation should be available.

Some users have noted that when they have Chrome browser installed, it becomes the viewer used when clicking a link in Firestorm, even if you have already set another browser as the default. The reason for this is because of some settings that appear to not apply globally

From this jira comment:

On a debian- or ubuntu-flavored distro, I typically need to run both of these to get all programs to call the desired browser.

sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-www-browser
sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

Looking at the Linux start scripts for common SL viewers, x-www-browser is the first one tried, so that's what you want to tweak.

In general, Nvidia graphics cards and drivers work very well with Second Life.

This issued occured with nVidia driver 378.49, when Advanced Lighting Model is disabled, on 64-bit viewers only.

Bug is fixed with nVidia driver 378.66 or newer.

Refer to this JIRA issue for more information.

Recent Nvidia updates, including driver version 381.65, may prevent Firestorm from launching. The crash is reported to occur on the “Detecting Hardware” step.

To solve this,

1) Try disabling Shadowplay in your Nvidia settings.

2) If this does not work, roll back to the last driver that worked for you. Be sure to completely uninstall the recent driver before installing the older one.

See also this page.

If you have Nvidia Shadowplay installed, disable it. Google “how to disable nvidia shadowplay” for instructions.

One user reports that on a recent Nvidia Experience version, turning off Share in the Settings menu disables Shadowplay without having to go through Windows controls.

There is a known Nvidia driver crash that occurs for some users on El Capitan and Sierra. See Mac El Capitan Nvidia Driver Crash and Mac Sierra Issues.

This windows gives access to all the viewer settings. Many of these are already accessible via the Preferences window or the top menu bar. Quite a few others, however, are not.

NOTE: Do not change settings here unless you know what you are doing, or are requested to do so by a member of the Support Team.

A full list of debug settings is available here.

To change a setting:

• Type in the setting name in the drop-down. You will notice that it attempts to auto-complete the name as you type.
  On versions later than 3.2.2, it will match even if you type something other than the start of the name. For example, render will match (among other things) DebugShowRenderInfo.
• Once you have the correct setting, set the value you want below. This might be a True/False type setting, or it might want a number; it will vary depending on the specific setting.

• To revert to the default value of a given setting, click the Reset to Default button.

The Firestorm client bridge is a scripted object that serves to enhance the user experience in ways that a viewer could not do otherwise.

If you are logging in with Firestorm for the first time, the bridge will be created automatically, and placed in a special folder in your inventory, called #Firestorm. The bridge will be named something like #Firestorm LSL Bridge v2.25 (the last numbers are the current version).

You do not need to log in to a parcel where you have build rights, in order for the bridge to be created. However, the parcel must be script enabled for you or the bridge script will not be able to initialize.

If for any reason you need or wish to detach the bridge, you may do so; it will not reattach automatically. To get it back on, you may rewear it, or, using the top menu bar, go to Avatar → Avatar Health → Recreate LSL Bridge. This will “clean up” any old bridges and make a new one.

Note: The bridge will not detach when using wear or Replace Outfit.

The bridge uses HTTP to communicate, which is inherently more secure than listens.

The bridge is created using an object from the SL standard library, which is part of your default inventory. For this reason, hiding the library is disabled.

Currently, the Firestorm bridge supports the following functions:

• Flight Assist: The Firestorm bridge has a built-in flight assist. This may be enabled in Preferences → Firestorm → Extras → Enable Bridge Flight Assist. Note that if you enable this, you should not wear any scripted flight assist; using both will cause them to conflict, with undesired results. The flight assist allows flight above 5,000 meters and provides a speed boost. The amount of boost can be selected in Preferences → Firestorm → Extras.

• Script Count: If you right click you avatar, or any object, and select “Script Info” from the context menu, Firestorm will output a line of information similar to this:
  [17:16] Script info: '[avatar name]': [22/22] running scripts. 1408Kb consumed for 0.015702ms of cpu time.
  This indicates how many scripts the object contains, how much memory they are using, and the script time.

• Radar:Radar functions are assisted by the bridge, particularly when people are beyond your draw distance. Enable in Preferences → Chat -> Radar→ Enhance radar with LSL-client bridge.

• Movelock: This function (in top menu, Avatar → Movement → Movelock) requires the bridge for it to function.

• Additional Movelock functions: Firestorm -> Move & View -> Movement Always re-lock position after region change, and Lock and unlock position after stopping or starting movement.

• AO Support for Objects: Allows collars or other scripted items to enable/disable the built-in animation overrider. This can be enabled/disabled in Preferences→ Firestorm -> Avatar.

Other features are planned, but not yet implemented.

For known issues with the Firestorm bridge, and how to deal with them, please refer to this page.

This window is accessed via Preferences→ Move & View -> Movement→ Joystick Configuration (button).

“Joystick” refers to compatible USB input devices, which can be used to control Second Life in exciting ways for exploration, moviemaking, and more. Examples are the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator, other joysticks, gamepads, and so on.

Assuming you have a 3D movement device installed and configured, Joystick Flycam mode is enabled by pressing Alft-Shift-F. This moves your camera, rather than your avatar.

This window is fairly technical, although the default settings generally work well with no or minimal changes. For details, see this SL Wiki page.

One user, Xente Aeon, makes the following recommendations for the SpaceNavigator (in this JIRA):

• In the preferences of the SpaceNavigator, apply “reverse” on the button called “zoom” that actually controls the movement up and down.
• In the Joystick preferences, change some, like this:
  • X Axis Mapping: 0
  • Y Axis Mapping: 1
  • Z Axis Mapping: 2
  • Pitch Mapping: 3
  • Yaw Mapping: 4
  • Roll Mapping: 0
  • Zoom Mapping: -1
• Leave unchecked: Direct 3D Zoom and Cursor, but check “Auto Level”

Refer to this page in the SL wiki for other info, including known issues.

One user, Kentdavis Edman, makes the following recommendations for the Steelseries 3GC Controller:

See the official SLLogitech Gamepad page.

Linux users do not need a 3dconnexion driver in order for the device to work in Firestorm. In fact, if you have a driver installed, it will conflict with the built-in support for the 3dconnexion device. So if you do not need the 3dconnexion device for anything else, uninstall the driver.

Alternately,you can stop it before running Firestorm. If you are using the free spacenavd driver, you can stop it by giving the following command in terminal:

sudo /etc/init.d/spacenavd stop

Latest drivers for current products 3dConnexion Drivers
Archived Drivers and Software 3dConnexion Archived Drivers

Getting to search is pretty easy:

• Click the magnifying glass icon on your bottom bar (if enabled)
• Go to the Content menu and choose Search
• Press Ctrl+F
• Enter your search term in the Search field at the top right (skip the next paragraph)

Search includes V2/3-style web search, as well as tabs for V1-style “legacy” search, all in one window.

The first tab in the search window is Websearch.

The starting search page has a search field, a categories pull-down menu, a search button, three tabs for quick searches - Events, which is already selected, Destination Guide and Land & Rentals - and maturity rating selections (Adult is only enabled if you are age verified). Below that is the results area. Without entering anything in search, this area shows a selection of results for the tab selected, as well as classified ads.

Once you enter a search term, press Enter or click the Search button. Optionally, you can filter your search to a specific type, like Groups, People or Events.

The results will be displayed, with filters on the left and adverts on the right. What shows in the results column is different depending upon what filter you applied. There are maturity icons for all results, and with no filter applied, the results also include a type icon, such as place, person, or group.

Clicking a result expands it, showing a bit of the description, picture and relevant action buttons depending upon the type of item it is.

Refer to this page if you have issues getting search to work.

The remaining tabs constitute “legacy” search.

It is important to bear in mind that “Legacy” Search accesses a different SL search engine than web search in Firestorm; this is the search engine used by Phoenix and other V1-based viewers. Thus you can and probably will get different results when search. Search results do not depend on the viewer, but rather on the data returned from SL.

You may search on the following categories:

• People
• Groups
• Places
• Land Sales
• Events
• Classifieds

Select the type you wish by clicking the appropriate tab, then type the search string into the wide bar, and click Search. The results, if any, will be shown below. You can click any result line to display more information on the right side of the window.

Depending on the Maturity Rating you have set in Preferences→ General, you can restrict your search to:

• General
• Moderate
• Adult

• Allow Multiple Viewers: Allows you to run multiple instances of Firestorm (may reduce stability and performance). See How to Run Multiple Firestorms at Once for more information.
• Allow login to other grids: Allows you to use Firestorm on other grids (not all grids will support Firestorm).
• Show Advanced Menu: Adds the Advanced menu to the top (menu) bar. (Use at own risk!) May also be achieved with Ctrl-Alt-D.
• Show Developer Menu: Adds the Developer menu to the top (menu) bar. (Use at own risk!) May also be achieved with Ctrl-Alt-Q.

• Disable VRAM detection via WMI probing on Windows Systems: Work-around for issues like FIRE-12671 and FIRE-15891. Please don't enable in other situations unless requested by a support team member. ²⁾
• Enable the use of animation timestamps: This setting may reduce the render load of distant avatars, but may also cause their animations to play at incorrect speeds.

• Amount of time, in milliseconds, to yield every frame to other applications when Firestorm is not the foreground window Default: 40; 1 second = 1000 milliseconds.

Reset All Settings (button) Clicking this will reset all of your global settings to default. This can also be done manually as explained here.

• Language default: Choose System Default or the language of your choice from the drop down menu.

• Content Maturity Rating: Allows you to choose what maturity level of content you are able to access in-world:
  • General, Moderate and Adult: Allows access to all content. You must be over 18 to enable this option.
  • General and Moderate: Lets you access General and Moderate content.
  • General: Limits you to General content.

• Start Location: This allows you to choose what default login location shows on the login screen.
  • Show on login: Check this to enable the login location picker on the login screen.

• Name Tags: Here you choose how you display residents' tags. NOTE these apply to what you see, not others.
  • Off: Will set it so you do not see tags.
  • On: means tags will always be visible.
  • Show briefly: shows the tags temporarily.
    • And you can indicate how many second to show them; the default is 10.

• You can enable/disable the following:

  • My name: when unchecked, will not show your tag. Note this is for your view only, others still see it.
  • Group Titles: unchecked hides ALL group titles.
  • View Display Names: when checked shows display names.
  • Highlight friends: colors tags of those on your friends list.
  • Legacy nametag positioning: If enabled, the nametag will stay fixed at the avatar position and not follow the avatar head if it moves because of animations.
  • Show avatar complexity: Shows avatar complexity information in name tags. ¹⁾
    • Only if too complex: Only shows the information if the complexity value is above your maximum complexity setting, in Preferences → Graphics → General.
    • Show own complexity: Shows your own complexity in your name tag.
  • Usernames: when checked shows usernames names.
  • Hide own group title: If enabled, this will hide your current group title from others. (Versions after 3.2.2 only.)
  • Legacy names instead of usernames: will show legacy names instead of user names.
  • Trim 'Resident' from legacy names: self explanatory. (Greyed out if the option above is disabled.)
  • Show autorespond mode in nametag: This will show whether you have autorespond enabled, in your name tag.

• Away Time out: Will set you to away if there is no mouse or keyboard input for the minutes set:
  • 2 minutes
  • 5 minutes
  • 10 minutes
  • 30 minutes
  • 60 minutes
  • never
• Sit when away: Will sit your avatar when in away mode.

• Log out after being away: Will log you out after being away for the number of minutes you set here:
  • 2 minutes
  • 5 minutes
  • 10 minutes
  • 30 minutes
  • never

If you have Intel HD 620 or Intel HD 630, and Windows 10 – This is an Intel driver issue.
The easiest fix is to use Firestorm Version 6.2.4. or newer.
If you are using Firestorm Version 6.0.2, use another viewer to remove the jacket layer.
(Ref. BUG-225655 and BUG-227078)

If you have Intel Graphics HD, Intel Graphics HD2500 and Intel Graphics HD4000, and are using the 64bit version of Firestorm 5.0.7 or later, on Windows 10, refer to this page.

If you don't have the above graphics and this occurs, chances are good that some part of cache is corrupt. Deleting it should solve the problem.

• Locate your cache folder. You will probably need to do this manually, if you are unable to log in. Use a file manager (like Windows Explorer for Windows system, Dolphin, or some such) to locate the cache folder. In its default location, the cache folder is hidden on most OSs. To find it, you will need to show hidden folders. Default cache locations are:
  • Windows 7, 8.1, and 10: press [Win] + [R] and type %localappdata%, then look for the Firestorm folder. (This method avoids having to un-hide folders.)
  • Mac: ~/Library/Caches/Firestorm
  • linux: ~/.firestorm/cache or ~/.firestorm_x64/cache
• Delete the cache folder you located.
• Log back into SL, to a quiet region (try Hippo Hollow, Aich or Hatton). Allow your inventory and cache to repopulate fully.

Windows only: If the above doesn't work, then click the speaker icon in the system tray, then touch the volume slider, just enough to change the volume slightly. It may be that the Windows sound system has stalled; this should “give it a kick”.

If the above fails, then try doing a full wipe of all settings.

This indicates that a debug setting (a control) is missing a comment. It is unclear which comment is missing, but the fix is to reinstall Firestorm using the Clean Install procedures.

Please see Recent Crashes on Windows, following a Driver Update for this issue.

Ref. FIRE-12339

This is almost always caused by the MemoryPrivatePoolEnabled being set to TRUE. It should never be set to TRUE. But before you try to fix this, we could really use a copy of your crash logs to help us work on a fix. See here for steps to collect your crash logs, then attach those logs to FIRE-12339.

Then, do the following:

• Make sure hidden files/folders are set to show - see here for steps.
• Browse to your user_settings folder. This is located at -
  • Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\ [USERNAME] \Application Data\Firestorm\user_settings
  • Windows Vista, 7, or 8, 8.1, and 10: C:\Users\ [USERNAME] \AppData\Roaming\Firestorm\user_settings
  • Mac: User/Library/Application Support/Firestorm/user_settings
  • Linux: ~/.firestorm/user_settings
• In the user_settings folder, find the file named “settings.xml”
• Open settings.xml in a text editor - For Windows, Notepad++ is ideal for this
• Search settings.xml for the term MemoryPrivatePoolEnabled
  You will see a block of text like so:

<key>MemoryPrivatePoolEnabled</key>
<map>
<key>Backup</key>
<boolean>0</boolean>
<key>Comment</key>
<string>Enable the private memory pool management</string>
<key>Type</key>
<string>Boolean</string>
<key>Value</key>
<boolean>1</boolean>
</map>

• Near the bottom there, change the “<boolean>1</boolean>” line just above </map> to “<boolean>0</boolean>”
• Save changes to settings.xml and edit the text editor.
• Login.
• Profit.

Issues outside of Firestorm can, and often do, result in viewer crashes….

• Make sure your file system is not corrupt by running chkdsk or equivalent for your OS.
• On Windows, ensure that your registry isn't messed up by running CCleaner or similar.
• Reboot your PC and modem/router.
• Ensure that video drivers are current, as well as your OS.
• Do a Reinstall of Firestorm. Be sure to use a fresh download of the viewer; either clear your browser cache or use a different browser for the download.

Several creators recommend specific settings in order for you to be able to better see their products. Sadly, some of these recommendations will lead to many people crashing more. For example, go to the top menu, Advanced → Debug Settings (press Ctrl-Alt-D to enable Advanced, if it isn't):

• RenderVolumeLODFactor should never be set over 4; a good value is between 2 and 3.
• TextureLoadFullRes should never be enabled (in other words, it should be set to FALSE).

If you are advised to raise LOD above 4, please disregard that advice.

Similarly, there is a notecard going round which suggests settings to prevent graphics crashes. Sadly, those settings can often result in perfectly ordinary content refusing to render. So if you have changed debug settings per such a notecard, revert them.

For both the cases above, should you not remember what settings you changed, then proceed as follows:

1. Back up your settings as explained here.
2. Then wipe settings by following the instructions on this page.
3. Log back in and see if this fixes your problem. If it does, you can try a restore and see if the issue returns.
4. If the problem does return, wipe settings again and set them from scratch.

If you are getting the error in the title, then please refer to this page, this page or this page for those using Intel graphics for possible solutions.

With thanks to Skua Sarrasine for having found the first of these.

Symptom:“This is a bug thats only experienced with Firestorm running. Basically, at seemingly random, but very infrequent times, my dual screens will bug out, producing two displays of solid colour, randomly. Sometimes Windows will return saying it recovered from an error code 7 or 3.”

Some research turned up this for error code 7; it suggests setting physX to CPU. And that seems to have solved the issue.

Note also the (apparent) interaction with Chrome.

This is a known issue with Windows 7, 8.1, and 10 with a 64-bit operating system; it affects other programs in addition to Second Life viewers.

Please try the following - but NOT while logged in.

• Go to the Start button
• Type services.msc and then press enter.
• Wait until the services window pops up.
• You may have to expand the window a bit to see the services.
• Look for DesktopWindowManager.
  • If it is running, right click it and select Stop. Wait until it stops.
  • You will probably see your desktop transparency window borders go flat. No worries.
• Right click again and select Properties.
  • In the Startup type, select Manual. Click OK.

• Open the Task Manager, by one of the following methods…
  1. Right click the task bar and choose Task Manager.
  2. Click the Start button and type Task Manager, then click on the result.
  3. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and choose Task Manager from the list.
  4. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc.
• Click More Details link at the bottom if needed
• Look at the several column headers, they will show a percentage of use. Memory or Disk may show a high percentage when Firestorm is not responding.
• Click on one of the high-percentage column headers to sort the processes. The top one is likely the cause. If it's your antivirus, make sure you have whitelisted Firestorm and its cache (refer to this page for whitelisting guidance).

If you find the Firestorm seems to freeze up every so often, then try these things, one at a time, testing after each one:

• Viewer freezes while “Loading world…“– If you have Intel HD 620 or Intel HD 630, and Windows 10 – This is an Intel driver issue. The fix is to roll back to driver 24.20.100.6025. Download Legacy Intel® Graphics Driver for Windows® 10 Version: 24.20.100.6025 (Ref. BUG-225655.)
• If you have chat saving enabled, and have a large number of chat transcript files, these could be causing the freezes. (Ref. FIRE-11322.) Try moving your chat transcripts elsewhere and see if the freezing stops.
  You can find your chat transcripts by going to Preferences→ Network & Files -> Directories→ Conversation logs and transcripts location; click the Open button.
• Set Preferences → Network & Files → Directories → Cache Size to maximum (9984MB or the maximum space available, whichever is less)
• Ensure that your antivirus software is not scanning the viewer cache folder. See Whitelisting the Viewer in Anti Virus Software for more information.
• If you have ever enabled “Full Res Textures”, disable this setting. Top menu bar, Develop→ Rendering → Full Res Textures (dangerous). Ensure that this is NOT checked. (Ctrl-Alt-Q to enable Develop, if it isn't.)
• Advanced → Debug Settings → Set FastCacheFetchEnabled to FALSE - then relog.
  Ctrl-Alt-D to enable Advanced, if it isn't.
• Preferences → Graphics → Hardware Settings → Viewer Texture Memory Buffer - raise this as high as it will go. Then relog. (64-bit version only)
• Mac with Bitdefender: Refer to this SL bug report for a possible explanation: mac freezes if tabbing away after teleport since macOS Mojave 10.14.3
• Tip from a user: Windows users: If you're running CrashPlan, open the “Advanced” section of “Backup” settings and uncheck “Back up open files.”
• Tip from a user: Windows users: If you have “Magic Control Technology Display Utility” (MCTDUtil.exe), disable it. See https://www.file.net/process/mctdutil.exe.html.
• Tip from a user: Linux users: Turn off compositing, see if it helps.
• Freezes when another avatar enters/leaves region:
  • One version of this is an old bug, mostly gone now, that was sometimes solved by a region restart. We don't know if that will still help the problem, but you could try it.

For additional suggestions, see the page on Severe Lag.

The following steps will show you how to make an git patch

• Ensure your git repository is up to date with firestorm:

 $ git pull 

• Back up any changes you have made, then update the working directory exactly to firestorm:

 $ git checkout -f 

• Now add your changes to this repository. Verify your changes with:

 $ git status 

• You should now see your modified files marked with an “M”, “R”, or “A”
• If you do not see an A or R next to a file you want to add/remove, cd to the folder with the file(s) you want to add\remove and use:

 $ git add 
 $ git remove

• Commit your changes to your local repository to make a changeset:

 $ git commit --author="Yourname" -m "Description of your change" 

• Export your changeset to a patch file:

 git archive --format zip HEAD --output descOfChange.zip 

• Upload your patch file to JIRA

• Make sure to include the name you want listed in our credits window.
  Make sure you mention that you give us permission to use and distribute your code under the LGPL (friendly, open source) license or equivalent.

• At this point you may want to roll back your local commit, just to make it easier to track firestorm:

 $ git revert HEAD 

Note: If you are on Windows and use TortoiseGIT

You can use the Repository Explorer and Windows Explorer context menu extension for updating and reverting the local copy.

Patch files can easily be created on the command line:

• Create a patch file for all changes:

 git diff > Mypatchfile.patch 

• Or create a patch file for specific files:

 git diff file1 file2 file3 > Mypatchfile.patch 

More git commands

• For more advanced commands, see: https://git-scm.com/docs