Firestorm 5.1.7 (55786) Release Notes

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

Firestorm 6.0.1 (56538) Animesh Beta Release Notes

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

• Windows
• Mac
• linux

Windows

Version	32/64-bit	Grids	Havok	Level of Support	Download
Windows 64-bit Havok	64-bit only	SL only	X	Beta	Firestorm Beta 6.0.1.56538 64 bit Windows Setup.exe FIXME SHA1 Checksum:
Windows 64-bit OpenSim	64-bit only	SL and other grids		Beta	Firestorm Beta 6.0.1.56538OS 64 bit Windows Setup.exe FIXME SHA1 Checksum:
Windows 32-bit Havok	32 and 64	SL only	X	Beta	Firestorm Beta 6.0.1.56538 32 bit Windows setup.exe FIXME SHA1 Checksum:
Windows 32-bit OpenSim	32 and 64	SL and other grids		Beta	Firestorm Beta 6.0.1.56538OS 32 bit Windows setup.exe FIXME SHA1 Checksum:

Mac

Version	32/64-bit	Grids	Havok	Level of Support	Download
Mac 64-bit Havok	64-bit only	SL only	X	Beta	Firestorm Beta 6.0.1.56538 64 bit Intel Mac.dmg FIXME SHA1 Checksum:
Mac 64-bit OpenSim	64-bit only	SL and other grids		Beta	Firestorm Beta 6.0.1.56538OS 64 bit Intel Mac.dmg FIXME SHA1 Checksum:
Mac 32-bit Havok	32 and 64	SL only	X	n/a	n/a
Mac 32-bit OpenSim	32 and 64	SL and other grids		n/a	n/a

linux

Version	32/64-bit	Grids	Havok	Level of Support	Download
Linux 64-bit Havok	64-bit only	SL only	X	n/a	n/a
Linux 64-bit OpenSim	64-bit only	SL and other grids		Beta	Firestorm Beta 6.0.1.56538OS 64 bit Linux.tar.bz2 FIXME SHA1 Checksum:
Linux 32-bit Havok	32 and 64	SL only	X	n/a	n/a
Linux 32-bit OpenSim	32 and 64	SL and other grids		Beta	Firestorm Beta 6.0.1.56538OS 32 bit Linux.tar.bz2 FIXME SHA1 Checksum:

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

• 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 at slurl_proxy

Firestorm 6.0.1, 5.1.7, 5.0.11, 5.0.7, 5.0.1 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 6.0.1, 5.1.7, 5.0.11, 5.0.7, 5.0.1

• 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 (win only) here. For linux, in a console use:
lspci | grep VGA

• Latest driverLast checked 15/12/2018 - Windows: 417.35 (2018.12.12) - Linux: 410.78 (2018.11.15)

• Latest driverLast checked 15/12/2018 - Windows: Adrenalin 2019 Edition 18.12.2 (12/13/2018) - Linux: 18.50 (12/13/2018)
  

• 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.phoenixviewer.com/

Firestorm 5.1.7 (55786) 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.

• 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 at slurl_proxy

Firestorm 5.1.7, 5.0.11, 5.0.7, 5.0.1 Release

• Windows - Download in Firefox or Chrome to play Flash media inside Second Life.
  Choose the correct operating system under Step 1.
  Choose FP 30 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 30 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 5.1.7, 5.0.11, 5.0.7, 5.0.1

• 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.)

Linux has this already

• Windows Download To get external notices about events when the viewer is minimized.
• Mac Download To get external notices about events when the viewer is minimized.

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 (win only) here. For linux, in a console use:
lspci | grep VGA

• Latest driverLast checked 21/07/2018 - Windows: 398.36 (2018.6.26) - Linux: 390.77 (2018.7.16)

• Latest driverLast checked 21/07/2018 - Windows: Adrenalin Edition 18.5.1 (5/23/2018) - Linux: Linux Download Center
  

• 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.phoenixviewer.com/

Firestorm Release Notes 6.0.1 (56538) Animesh Beta Release

Firestorm Release Notes 5.1.7 (55786) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 5.0.11 (53634) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 5.0.7 (52912) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 5.0.1 (52150) Bento Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.7.9 (50527) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.7.7 (48706) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.7.5 (47975) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.7.3 (47323) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.7.1 (45325) Beta Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.6.9 (42974) Hotfix Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.6.9 (42969) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.6.7 (42398) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.6.5 (40833) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.6.1 (40478) Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.5.1 (38838) Beta Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.4.2 (34167) Server Side Appearance Update Release

Firestorm Release Notes 4.4.0 (33720) Server Side Appearance Capable Release

Firestorm Havok - Release Notes 4.3.1 (31155) Havok Release

Firestorm Havok Beta - Release Notes 4.3.0 (30936)

Firestorm Official - Release Notes 4.2.2 (29837) With Pathfinding Tools HOTFIX

Firestorm Official - Release Notes 4.2.1 (29803) With Pathfinding Tools

Firestorm Official - Release Notes 4.1.1 (28744)

Firestorm Official - Release Notes 4.0.1 (27000)

Firestorm Official - Release Notes 3.3.0 (24880)

Firestorm Official - Release Notes 3.2.2 (24336)/3.2.1 (24179)

Public Beta 3 - Mesh - Release Notes

Public Beta 2 Release Notes 7/5/2011

Public Beta Release Notes 6/14/2011

Preview 2 Release Notes 3/23/2011

Preview Release Notes 1/30/2011

This page shows all changes since the 5.1.7.55786 Release.
If you are updating from an earlier version then 5.1.7, see HERE for previous release notes.

For a summary of all the major new features and improvements in this release, please
see Inara Pey's Firestorm 6.0.1 blog post FIXME.

Too many to list them all here.
See the full change log for details.
Highlighted fixes are listed below.

• Merge up to Linden Lab viewer 5.1.6 code-base
  Firestorm 6.0.1 is fully merged up to the Linden code-base, plus some cherry picked fixes from upstream.
  Ansariel Hiller

Firestorm 6.0.1 is still using the RestrainedLove API: RLV v3.2.1 / RLVa v2.2.0.55786

Here are the full RLVa 2.2 Release Notes

German - Ansariel Hiller
Polish - PanteraPolnocy Resident
Japanese - Hiroshi Kumaki
Italian - Sniper Siemens

Please note: Viewers play a minor part in voice functionality. The bulk of voice support is given by the external application called SLVoice, which is made by the SL voice provider, Vivox. Voice failures are almost always due to one of the following reasons:

• Your ISP is throttling or blocking the voice service;
• failure of the Vivox service;
• voice issues on the region you are on;
• voice being throttled by bandwidth set incorrectly - please check it by following the instructions here;
• voice hardware (mic, headset) not configured correctly in your operating system settings;
• voice hardware not configured correctly in the viewer;
• another application has your voice hardware in use (example, Skype);

• your anti virus software has “mangled” the voice application; see steps on this page: here.

• your firewall is blocking slvoice. Add slvoice to your firewall's exclusion/allow list.

Since 4.7.9, voice has not always connected to the voice servers. This is due to some coding issues that we inherited from the official SL viewer and that code's interaction with the latest voice files. The issue is documented on LL's Jira. A workaround is to disable and then re-enable voice. But if you're presented with the voice connection failure message that tells you “Voice communications will not be available”, you may need to disable voice and then relog before voice will try to reconnect.

Steps:

• Go to Preferences → Sound & Media → Voice, and untick “Enable Voice.”
• Relog.
• Wait 10-20 seconds, or until the viewer has finished rezzing the scene.
• Re-enable voice.

Version 5.1.7., voice crashes when turning on microphone. See BUG-225293 and FIRE-22940
Fixed on LL Viewer. Fix pending on FS viewer.
Note that the SLVoice executable in this viewer is not compatible with most older viewers; do not copy it into other viewers.http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release/5.1.8.518593

Most voice connection issues happen when the viewer tries to connect to voice during the login process. The workaround is to disable voice before you log out, and then only enable it after logging in when you need it. You can toggle Voice from the Media Controls at the top of the viewer (not enabled by default for Vintage or Latency skins) by hovering over the speaker icon and then checking or unchecking the last checkbox, or by going to Preferences ⇒ Sound & Media ⇒ Voice and checking or unchecking the top option.

If you have issues hearing but not being heard, or vice versa, then make sure that your headset is properly connected to your computer. Unplug it, then plug it back in, making sure it is fully inserted.

And on a related note, if you plug your headset in while logged into SL, you will very likely have to relog to get it to be recognised.

Due to the many different versions of each operating system (Windows, linux distros, Mac OSx's), it is very difficult to give specifics for each one. Nonetheless, make sure that your operating system is correctly configured for voice: that voice is going to your headset (or speakers, as you prefer), and that your mic is enabled and configured.

If you can hear people but cannot be heard, or vice versa, it is most likely a problem in this area.

A bit more specifically, for Windows and linux, check in Mixer that SLvoice is listed, and not muted. Check that input and output devices are correct. For Mac, look in the Sound Preference pane.

• Go to Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Sounds. Find the Voice Chat slider and make sure it is not all to the left. Try increasing the volume.
• Make sure that Voice chat is enabled on that preferences tab.
• go to Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Voice. Click on Audio Device Settings. For Input and Output, use the dropdowns to select your voice devices (headset, microphone, whatever you use). It is best not to leave these at Default.
• Close Preferences and locate the Mic button on the button bar. Click the Lock checkbox then the actual button, and try speaking (hopefully, you went to Voice Echo Canyon so you can test).

Try reinstalling the drivers for your sound card, if you have one. Sometimes, these drivers conflict with the sound component of graphics card drivers. Similarly, you may have success by reinstalling your graphics card driver.

If voice still does not work, then continue working through this page.

If you find that voice cuts in and out, particularly right after a TP, and at the same time, you notice that things are not rezzing in for you very well (avatars, objects, etc), then the likely cause is that your router is being “overwhelmed” with texture transfers. So reboot your router/modem, and then your computer, and see if the problem is solved.

You can also try adjusting your bandwidth as explained here.

If that does not help, then proceed with the section below.

Chances are good that the problem lies with the SL servers or the voice provider, Vivox. Still, there are things you can try:

• May 2018: If you had a recent Windows update, see this page.

• Open Preferences, and go to Sound & Media → Voice, and click Reset (circular arrow).

• Shut down all applications that use, or can use, voice - like Skype, etc. Then relog.

• What sometimes helps to get voice working is disabling voice in Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Voice, hitting Ok, waiting a minute and then enabling voice and click Ok. When these methods fail (assuming voice usually works for you) it is usually the Vivox voice servers that are the problem.

• If this does not work at your current location, go to a region where other people are able to use voice at this time. One possibility is Firestorm Social, but any region where voice is known to be functioning is fine. Disable voice in Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Voice. Relog, using the last location selection on your login screen. Wait a couple of minutes. Reenable voice. Wait another couple of minutes (in other words, give the connection time to be established). If voice comes on, then the problem may have been the region you were in before. Was voice disabled there? If not, a region restart might solve the problem.

• Go to Preferences → Network & Files -> Connection and reduce your bandwidth setting to 500 (if it is not already set there). Repeat the above step to toggle voice off and back on. See here for more information on setting your bandwidth properly, but bear in mind that lower levels than those calculated there may be necessary for troubleshooting purposes.

• Log out of the viewer, then check Task Manager (or equivalent) and see if SLVoice is still running. If so, kill the process, restart the viewer and see if voice connects.

• Try a relog, or even a reboot of the computer.

• Sometimes device settings can reset, so check in Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Voice→ Audio Device Settings, to be sure that the input and output are set correctly.

• 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.

• Does your headset/microphone work outside of SL? ie when using Skype, Yahoo or MSN

• Does your headset/microphone work in Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Voice→ Audio Device Settings?

• Is your voice chat volume turned up and not muted?

• Is the SLVoice.exe (simply SLVoice on Mac) that is in the Firestorm folder in the exceptions/allowed list for your firewall? If your firewall is turned off, turn it on and add the SLVoice.exe (or SLVoice) anyway.
  If your Firewall has SLVoice listed twice, then remove both instances, and allow it again. For Win10, make sure that SLVoice has Private unchecked, and Public checked. If you had these set differently, change them, then close the window, log out of SL, reboot.

• Check the bandwidth you are actually getting and what you have set in Preferences → Network & Files → Connection. Please refer to this page for specifics.

• Go to top menu, Advanced → Debug Settings, and in the window that opens, type: Cmdlinedisablevoice - then ensure this is set to FALSE. (Use Crtl-Alt-D to enable the Advanced menu, if it isn't.)

This page describes all necessary steps to build the Firestorm viewer for Windows, using the updated build infrastructure introduced with Linden Lab's project Alex Ivy.

This is needed for compiling any viewer based on the Linden Lab open source code and only needs to be done once.

All installations are done with default settings (unless told explicitly) - if you change that, you're on your own!

• Install Windows 10 Pro 64bit using your own product key
• Alternatively: Install Windows 7 or 8.1 Pro 64bit

• Install Visual Studio 2013 Professional
• Note: If you don't own a copy of Visual Studio 2013 Professional, you might consider installing the Community version (requires creating a Microsoft account if you do not already have one ) (If the download link for 2013 on visualstudio.com leads to a dead page even after logging in and out and back in again, try Googling “Visual Studio 2013 Community update 5 download” for a direct link. MS has recently changed things with accounts and the free subscriptions.)
  • Run the installer as Administrator (right click, “Run as administrator”)
  • Uncheck all the “Optional features to install:” - they are not required

• Download and install DirectX SDK (June 2010)
  • Run the installer as Administrator (right click, “Run as administrator”)
  • At the Installation Options screen, set everything except the DirectX Headers and Libs to “This feature will not be installed”

• Download and install TortoiseHg 3.2.3 or newer (64bit)
  • Note: No option available to install as Administrator
  • Use default options (path, components etc.)
  • Add the following directory to your path:

    C:\Program Files\TortoiseHG

• Download and install at least CMake 3.4.3 (32bit is only option)
  • Run the installer as Administrator (right click, “Run as administrator”)
  • At the “Install options” screen, select “Add CMake to the system PATH for all users”
  • For everything else, use the default options (path, etc.)
  • Make sure that the following directory was added to your path:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\CMake\bin

• Download and install Cygwin 64 (64bit)
  • Run the installer as Administrator (right click, “Run as administrator”)
  • Use default options (path, components etc.) *until* you get to the “Select Packages” screen
  • Add additional packages:
    • Devel/patch
  • Use default options for everything else
  • Make sure that the following directory was added to your path.:

    C:\Cygwin64\bin

• Download and install the most recent version of Python 2.7 (32bit)
  • Linden Lab advises to use the 32bit version as the VMP requires it. However, Firestorm currently doesn't use VMP, so the 64bit version might work (use at own risk!)
  • Note: No option available to install as Administrator
  • Use default options (path, components etc.) until you get to the “Customize Python” screen
  • Change “Add python.exe to Path” to “Will be installed on local hard drive”
  • Add the Python installation dir to the system path:

    C:\Python27

Confirm things are installed properly so far by opening a Cygwin terminal and enter:

cmake --version
hg --version
python --version

If they all report sensible values and not “Command not found” errors, then you are in good shape.

• Install Boostrip pip
  • Download (Save As) get-pip.py and copy to a temp folder
  • Open Windows Command Prompt
  • Switch to that temp folder and execute it:

    python get-pip.py

  • Pip will be installed
  • Add the following directory to your path:

    C:\Python27\Scripts

• Install Autobuild
  • Open Windows Command Prompt and enter:

    pip install hg+https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/autobuild-1.1#egg=autobuild

  • Autobuild will be installed. Earlier versions of Autobuild could be made to work by just putting the source files into your path correctly; this is no longer true - Autobuild must be installed as described here.

• Set environment variable AUTOBUILD_VSVER to 120

• Check Autobuild version to be 1.1.7 or higher:

  autobuild --version

• You must install the Unicode version here and not the one from the NSIS page
• Not required unless you need to build an actual viewer installer for distribution, or change the NSIS installer package logic itself

In order to make it easier to build collections of related packages (such as the viewer and all the library packages that it imports) with the same compilation options, Autobuild expects a file of variable definitions. This can be set using the environmenat variable AUTOBUILD_VARIABLES_FILE.

• Clone the build variables repository:

  hg clone https://hg.phoenixviewer.com/fs-build-variables <path-to-your-variables-file>

• Set the environment variable AUTOBUILD_VARIABLES_FILE to

  <path-to-your-variables-file>\variables

• Start the IDE
• Navigate to Tools> Options> Projects and Solutions> Build and Run and set maximum number of parallel projects builds to 1.

Plan your directory structure ahead of time. If you are going to be producing changes or patches you will be cloning a copy of an unaltered source code tree for every change or patch you make, so you might want to have all this work stored in its own directory. If you are a casual compiler and won't be producing any changes, you can use one directory. For this document, it is assumed that you created a folder c:\firestorm.

c:
cd \firestorm
hg clone https://hg.phoenixviewer.com/phoenix-firestorm-lgpl

This can take a bit, it's a rather large download.

Most third party libraries needed to build the viewer will be automatically downloaded for you and installed into the build directory within your source tree during compilation. Some need to be manually prepared and are not normally required when using an open source configuration (ReleaseFS_open).

If you want to use FMOD Studio to play sounds within the viewer, you will have to download your own copy. FMOD Studio can be downloaded here (requires creating an account to access the download section).

c:
cd \firestorm
hg clone https://bitbucket.org/Ansariel/3p-fmodstudio

• After you have cloned the repository, copy the downloaded FMOD Studio installer file to C:\Firestorm
• If you downloaded a different version of FMOD Studio that is currently used in the viewer, you will have to modify the file build-cmd.sh in the root of the repository. Right at the top, you find the version number of FMOD Studio you want to package (one short version without separator and one long version). Change these values to the version you downloaded:

FMOD_VERSION="11005"
FMOD_VERSION_PRETTY="1.10.05"

Continue on the Windows command line:

c:
cd \firestorm\3p-fmodstudio
autobuild build --all
autobuild package

While running the Autobuild build command, Windows might ask if you want to allow making changes to the computer. This is because of the FMOD Studio installer being executed. Allow these changes to be made.

Near the end of the output you will see the package name written and the md5 hash below it:

wrote C:\firestorm\3p-fmodstudio\fmodstudio-{version#}-windows-{build_id}.tar.bz2
md5 c3f696412ef74f1559c6d023efe3a087

where {version#} is the version of FMOD Studio (like 1.10.02) and {build_id} is an internal build id of the package.

cd \firestorm\phoenix-firestorm-lgpl
cp autobuild.xml my_autobuild.xml
set AUTOBUILD_CONFIG_FILE=my_autobuild.xml

Copy the FMOD Studio path and md5 value from the package process into this command:

autobuild installables edit fmodstudio platform=windows hash=<md5 value> url=file:///<fmodstudio path>

For example:

autobuild installables edit fmodstudio platform=windows hash=c3f696412ef74f1559c6d023efe3a087 url=file:///C:\firestorm\3p-fmodstudio\fmodstudio-1.10.02-windows-180191431.tar.bz2

Open the Windows command prompt.

If you are building with FMOD Studio and have followed the previous FMOD Studio setup instructions AND you are now using a new terminal you will need to reset the environment variable first by entering

set AUTOBUILD_CONFIG_FILE=my_autobuild.xml

Then enter:

 c:
 cd \firestorm\phoenix-firestorm-lgpl
 autobuild configure -c ReleaseFS_open

This will configure Firestorm to be built with all defaults and without third party libraries.

autobuild configure -v -c ReleaseFS_open

There are a number of switches you can use to modify the configuration process. The name of each switch is followed by its type and then by the value you want to set.

• -A <architecture> sets the target architecture, that is if you want to build a 32bit or 64bit viewer (32bit is default if omitted).
• –fmodstudio controls if the FMOD Studio package is incorporated into the viewer. You must have performed the FMOD Studio installation steps in FMOD Studio using Autobuild for this to work.
• –package makes sure all files are copied into viewers output directory. You won't be able to start your compiled viewer if you don't enable package or do 'compile' it in VS.
• –chan <channel name> lets you define a custom channel name for the viewer
• -LL_TESTS:BOOL=<bool> controls if the tests are compiled and run. There are quite a lot of them so excluding them is recommended unless you have some reason to need one or
  more of them.

Examples:

• To build a 32bit viewer with FMOD Studio and to create an installer package, run this command in the Windows command window:

  autobuild configure -c ReleaseFS_open -- --fmodstudio --package --chan MyViewer -DLL_TESTS:BOOL=FALSE

• To build a 64bit viewer without FMOD Studio and without installer package, run this command:

  autobuild configure -A 64 -c ReleaseFS_open -- --chan MyViewer -DLL_TESTS:BOOL=FALSE

There are two ways to build the viewer: Via Windows command line or from within Visual Studio.

If you are building with FMOD Studio and have followed the previous FMOD Studio setup instructions AND you are now using a new terminal you will need to reset the environment variable with

set AUTOBUILD_CONFIG_FILE=my_autobuild.xml

Then run the Autobuild build command. Make sure you include the same architecture parameter you used while configuring the viewer:

autobuild build -A 64 -c ReleaseFS_open --no-configure

Now, sit back, read War and Peace, calculate PI to 50 places, tour the country, whatever you desire. Compiling will take quite a bit of time.

Inside the Firestorm source folder, you will find a folder named build-vc120-<architecture>, with <architecture> either being 32 or 64, depending on what you chose during the configuration step. Inside the folder is the Visual Studio solution file for Firestorm, called Firestorm.sln.

• Double-click Firestorm.sln to open the Firestorm solution in Visual Studio.
• From the menu, choose Build → Build Solution
• Wait until the build is finished

Older versions of the viewer before the merge of Linden Lab's project Alex Ivy use Autobuild 1.0 that is incompatible with the build process as it is now. By default it is not possible to install two different versions of Autobuild on the same computer at the same time. Making use of virtualenv will overcome this problem, allowing simultaneous installations of Autobuild 1.0 and Autobuild 1.1 in two distinct “virtual” Python environments.

Install virtualenv by opening a Windows command prompt and enter:

pip install virtualenv

This requires the Boostrip pip already installed. After virtualenv has been installed, you can create virtual Python environments using the command

virtualenv <virtual-environment-name>

This will create the directory <virtual-environment-name> within the Python installation folder and add some required folders and files. Among these files is a batch file called activate.bat in the folder Scripts. To switch to the newly created virtual environment execute the activate.bat batch file. After switching to the virtual environment, your command prompt will be prepended by the name of the virtual environment.

In this example we will create a virtual environment called “Autobuild11”:

virtualenv Autobuild11
c:\Python27\Autobuild11\Scripts\Activate.bat

Your command prompt should look like this now:

(Autobuild11) C:\

After you switched to a particular virtual environment, you can now install as described in Set up Autobuild and Python.

Complete example:

virtualenv Autobuild11
c:\Python27\Autobuild11\Scripts\Activate.bat
pip install hg+https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/autobuild-1.1#egg=autobuild

Configuring and building the viewer from the Windows command line is basically identical as described in Building from the Windows command line with the difference that you now have to call the activate script first:

c:
\Python27\Autobuild11\Scripts\Activate.bat
cd \firestorm\phoenix-firestorm-lgpl
autobuild configure -c ReleaseFS_open -- --fmodstudio --package --chan MyViewer -DLL_TESTS:BOOL=FALSE
autobuild build -A 64 -c ReleaseFS_open --no-configure

If you plan to build the viewer from within Visual Studio, you will have to configure the viewer the same way as if you were to build from the Windows command line:

c:
\Python27\Autobuild11\Scripts\Activate.bat
cd \firestorm\phoenix-firestorm-lgpl
autobuild configure -c ReleaseFS_open -- --fmodstudio --package --chan MyViewer -DLL_TESTS:BOOL=FALSE

To be able to build from Visual Studio, you will have to set a Windows environment variable called VIRTUAL_ENV pointing at the virtual Python environment to use, in our example “C:\Python27\Autobuild11”. Now open the Firestorm Visual Studio solution to start Visual Studio and build the viewer.

When trying to execute the Autobuild build command, you might encounter an error similar to

../build.cmd.sh line 200: SystemRootsystem32: unbound variable

This error is caused by the order of the items in the Windows “path” environment variable. Autobuild exports all paths set in the “path” environment variable into Cygpath names and variables. Since these Windows “paths” can also contain variables like %SystemRoot% and they can also depend on each other, it is important to keep the dependency order intact. Example:

%SystemRoot%
%SystemRoot%\system32
%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem

The following screenshot shows the correctly ordered paths containing variables and depending on each other.

Here is a sample of what you will see when looking at a profile:

• Name: Self explanatory.
• UUID Key: This is the avatar's Universally unique identifier, a key which uniquely identifies this avatar from all others.
• Online status: will show whether the avatar is online or offline.
• Profile picture: On your own profile, clicking this will open a texture picker window, allowing you to select a new profile picture. If the profile is that of someone else, clicking the picture will cause the full sized image to open.

• Born: Shows Month, day year and exact age.
  Example:
  08/27/2006 (4 years 9 months old; 1745 days)
• Account Info: Indicates Resident status, and whether payment information is registered with LL.
• Partner: If the avatar is partnered, the partner's name will be shown here.

• Groups: Shows the list of publicly visible groups to which the avatar belongs.
  • Plus sign: (Only on profiles of others.) Clicking this will allow you to invite the person to a group.

• About: A brief summary written by the avatar to describe him/herself.

• Give Item: You can drag and drop an item into this space to offer it to another person.

• Find on Map (button): This will be greyed out if not on your friends list; otherwise, this will open a map showing the avatar's current location in-world, if online.

• Offer Teleport (button): Sends a teleport offer to the avatar; if accepted, the avatar will be brought to your current location.

• Add Friend (button): Sends a request to the avatar offering friendship. If accepted, this results in them being listed on your Friends list and their calling card being added to your Calling Cards inventory folder.

• Pay (button): Allows you to send L$ directly to the avatar.

• Instant Message (button): Opens an instant message window for direct one-on-one communication.

• Block (button): Blocks the avatar from communicating with you. Equivalent to the “Mute” button in Phoenix viewer.

• Gear (button): Clicking this gives a menu:
  • Share: Selecting this, an IM window opens, and inventory items may be given to he other avatar by dragging them into it.
  • Call: starts a Voice call with the other person.
  • Add to Contact Set: opens the Add to Contact Set window when viewing another's profile.
  • Copy Name: Copies the avatar's name to the clipboard, for later pasting into a notecard or script or external document (paste with Ctrl-V).
  • Copy URI: Copies the URI for the avatar to the clipboard. This looks like:
    secondlife:///app/agent/989652fe-598c-4324-8712-1e8cede7cb97/about
  • Copy UUID: Similar to the above, but copies only the UUID; for example:
    989652fe-598c-4324-8712-1e8cede7cb97
  • Report: Select this if you wish to file an abuse report concerning the person whose profile you have open. This opens the Report Abuse window, with the avatar name already filed in.

If you have a display name and wish to change it (or if you wish to set one for the first time), you will first need to have display anmes enabled in Preferences→ General: View Display Names. With that set, you will get a wrench icon on your profile, to the right of your user name. Click that to open the Change Display Name window.

This page covers the Features tab of the toolbox window in Edit and Build modes. This tab is shown in the image to the right. The upper section of this window is described here.

In Edit mode, some fields will be unavailable if the object is not modifyable.

NOTE: The term “Object” is used to refer to a single unlinked prim, or to a linked set of prims.
Most of the settings below can only be applied to individual prims; they will be disabled if you are editing a linked set.
Note that the overall properties of a linked set are the same as the properties of the root prim.

There are several groups of settings here, mostly unrelated to one another.

Animesh is a feature developed by Linden Lab that allows non-avatar objects to play animations like avatars do today.

Resources
Linden Lab blog post: Animesh is here!
Inara Pey's Animesh blog post
Animesh User Guide
Animesh Forum

Animesh LSL methods:

• llStartObjectAnimation
• llStopObjectAnimation
• llGetObjectAnimationNames

Applicable to boxes, cylinders and prism types, this makes the prim flexible (usually known as a flexi prim). Such prims are usually path cut and hollowed. Flexible prims are commonly used in clothing attachments like capes, for flags and other wavy things. Flexible prims are automatically made phantom.

Flexible prim characteristics are as follows:

• Softness: Controls the stiffness of the prim on a scale of 0 to 3, where 0 is the most stiff and 3 is the most soft.
• Gravity: Controls how hard gravity pulls down on the prim. If you enter a negative value, gravity pulls the object upward instead.
• Drag: Controls how much drag the atmosphere appears to exert on the prim when it's moved.
• Wind: Controls how much this prim bends in response to the current region's wind.
• Tension: Controls how much force is pulling the top of the prim away from its base.
• Force X/Y/Z: Controls how much artificial force is applied on the prim, from different directions.

• Physics Shape Type: Physics Shape type selects between different “physical” representations of the object. The physical representation is different to the visual representation. The latter is (perhaps obviously) what you see, whereas the physics shape is what you collide with. It is important in determining whether you walk through, around or over an item, and importantly, it pays a very key role in determining where an item drop/dragged into the viewer will actually be placed.
  There are 3 possible options, but not all are available to all objects and in some cases cannot be used in certain circumstances.
  • None: Physics type None is only available for child prims of a linkset. It disables the physics processing for these prims and crucially, removes their physics cost (see later) from the LI calculation.
  • Convex hull: A convex hull is a mathematical term, stop wait…come back…., seriously, it's ok. It just means “the shape I get if I cover this object in plastic wrap”. The convex hull is, therefore, an approximation of the shape of an object. It does not support holes on objects and a wall containing a doorway with a convex hull physics shape will not let you pass through. The plastic wrap analogy holds good for pretty much all such examples. Convex hull is available for all objects but can force a prim to cost more than 1LI. This is the default for Mesh.
  • Prim: This is without the doubt the most confusing name in the list. The “prim” physics shape is generally only seen on Meshes. It actually tells the region to use the objects custom physics shape, a dedicated shape that the creator of the object decided was a good and appropriate shape for the object. A “prim physics” shape allows the creator to specify exactly which parts of an object you can collide with and which parts you walk through, allowing them, for example, to open up doorways but keep windows impassable, if they so choose. Unfortunately, many creators are neglectful in this selection and the prim physics shape is often not very useful. The reason for the name is clearer when considering that this is the default mode for traditional prims and reflects a physical shape that matches the visible shape of the prim closely.
• Material: (Only applies when the object is physical.) The notional real-life material that behaves most like this object. It affects the friction and bounce of an object in collisions, as well as the default sounds made. *Important: This has nothing whatsoever to do with the texturing “materials”.
• Gravity: (Only applies when the object is physical.) Affects the way that an object interacts, 1.0 is earth standard gravity (i.e. 1g) a negative value will cause a physical object to rise.
• Friction:
• Density:
• Bounciness: (Only applies when the object is physical.) These three override the defaults implied by the “Material”.

To the right of Physics Shape Type is an eye icon. Clicking this switches in and out of physics view. Physics view will show the object's physics shape in a colour that reflects the physics cost.
The physics cost is not normally used for prims, but becomes important if a prim is linked to a mesh, or has any modern feature such as a bump map applied to it. A low physics cost will be a passive blue, moving through a worrying orange to an angry red. If you plan to link a prim to a mesh or use any other modern feature it is worth checking this quickly to avoid your Land Impact (LI) from sky rocketing. See this blog post for more details.

Cause the prim to emit light. In order to be able to see the light, you need to have Preferences→ Graphics → General→ Local Lights enabled.

• Color: Click this to open a color picker, from which you can select the light color.
• Intensity: Sets the initial brightness of the prim; the possible values are between 0 and 1.
• Radius: Specifies how far the light travels, in meters. The maximum is 20m.
• Falloff: Sets how quickly the light's Intensity fades as it travels to its outer Radius. Lower values are more gradual.

For general information on projectors, please refer to this SL page.

When you have Advanced Lighting Model enabled (in Preferences→ Graphics, then you can make use of projectors. In the Features tab of the edit window, you will see additional fields in the lower right.

• Texture: This is the texture to project. Clicking it will open the Texture Picker.
• FOV: The FOV setting defines the field of view of the projector, in radians. The field of view is the angular width of the cone of light projected. The possible range of values from 0.0 to 3.0 correspond to widths from 0 degrees to approx 172 degrees (almost a hemisphere of influence). Fidelity of shadows caused by a projector may degrade as the FOV becomes larger.
• Focus: A projected texture appears blurrier the further the projection point is from the projector. The Focus value controls how attenuated this effect is. Positive values keep the projection sharper for farther distances, negative values make the projection start to blur at a closer range.
• Ambiance: Ambiance adds a very blurred version of the projected image to all faces within the cone of influence, regardless of whether they are in shadow or facing away from the projector. The goal is to roughly simulate light influence being diffused in all directions by surfaces receiving a projected image. Thus it is acceptable that this be even brighter on faces facing away from the projector. The brightness of this effect is proportional to the Ambiance value.

This page covers the General tab of the toolbox window in Edit and Build modes. This tab is shown in the image to the right. The upper section of this window is described here.

In Build mode, most of the fields will be greyed out, as not applicable. Similarly, in Edit mode, some fields will be unavailable if the object is not modifyable.

NOTE: The term “Object” is used to refer to a single unlinked prim, or to a linked set of prims.
Everything below applies to objects, or individual prims selected from a linked set using Edit Linked.
Note that the overall properties of a linked set are the same as the properties of the root prim.

The first portion of this tab contains basic information about the object:

• Name: This will hold the name of the object. The name is limited to 63 characters.
• Description: An optional description of the objects, maximum 127 characters.
• Creator: Name of the avatar who created this object. This can never be changed.
• Owner: Shows the name of the current owner of the object. If the objected is group owned (see below), this will show the group that owns it.
• Last Owner: Name of the avatar that owned the object when it was previously rezzed in-world. In other words, if you buy an object, rez it out, take it, then re-rez it, this will show your name.
• Group: The name of the group to which the object is set. ¹⁾
  • Share: If you enable this, you are granting other group members the ability to manipulate the object: move, rotate, etc.
  • Deed: If you click this, the object will be deeded (donated) to the group it is set to. ²⁾

• Click to: Here you can set the action that will occur when the object is left clicked. By default, this is Touch, but it can be any one of: Touch, Sit on, Buy, Pay, Open, Zoom, None. ³⁾

• For Sale: Click this if you wish to set the object for sale. The other fields in this section then become applicable.
  Note that this describes the new Firestorm behavior incorporating seller protection; if you wish to revert to the older method, enable Preferences→ Firestorm → Build 2→ Use old “Set Object For Sale” behavior.)
  • Drop Down: Here you select exactly what you are selling: a copy of the object (only possible if the object is copyable for you), the contents of the object (rather than the object itself), or the original object (the owner will need to take it once bought).
  • Price: Specify the price of the item.
  • Apply: when you are happy with your choices, click this button and they will be applied. This gives you protection in that the item is not actually set for sale until this button is pressed, preventing others from perhaps purchasing a valuable item for the default 10L while you are still making changes.

• Copy Keys: This copies the UUID(s) of the object to your clipboard. Clicking the button will copy the UUID of the root. Press and hold Shift while clicking to copy the UUIDs of all prims; this is a list of comma-separated UUIDs.
• Show in Search: If you enable this, the object will be listed in SL search, and thus help others find it.

• Permissions Permissions in SL are a somewhat complex topic. You are directed to the SL wiki on permissions for details.
  • Anyone:
    • Move: if this is enabled, anyone will be able to move the object.
    • Copy: if enable, anyone will be able to copy the object. This essentially makes it free to all. They can right click it and select Take Copy.
  • Next Owner: this sets the permissions the next owner of the object will have ⁴⁾
    • Modify: If enabled, the next owner will be able to modify the object.
    • Copy: If enabled, the next owner will be able to copy the object.
    • Transfer: If enabled, the next owner will be able to resell or give the object away.

And finally, the current pathfinding attributes are dissplayed at the bottom. These can only be changed via the Pathfinding Linksets window (top menu→ Build → Pathfinding → Linksets)).

• Allow Remote Scripted Viewer Controls (aka RLVa or RestrainedLove API): Enables RLVa (Requires restart).
  Documentation on RLV is available here and here.
• Always rez objects under the land group if possible: Many regions are set to only let objects be rezzed by group. When creating an object, the viewer will attempt to set the group of the object if the avatar is in the same group as set for the land. Note: This is not always possible due to circumstances beyond the viewer's control.
• Create particle effects when scripts communicate: If this is enabled, when a script “chats”, the object containing the script will appear to generate swirling particles. Disable this option to turn that effect off.
• Deactivate tracking beacon when reaching the targetted avatar (⇐ 3m): Normally, a tracking becon (such as one set via map will vanish once get get within 3m of it; with this disabled, the beacon will remain visible until clicked.
• Disable Login Progress Screens: Disables the black login progress screen.
• Disable Logout Progress Screens: Disables the black logout progress screen.

• Enable progressive draw distance stepping: Enables PDD; the slider allows you to adjust the time in seconds between each draw distance increment.

• Enable LSL-Client Bridge:

  Enables the Firestorm bridge. See this page for more on what the bridge is and what it does.
• Flight Assist drop-down: The bridge can offer flight assist functionality, if this is enabled. Note that you should not wear any other scripted flight assist if you turn this on, as they will conflict. (Requires the bridge to be enabled.)
  Flight speed can be boosted; you can select by how much.
  Note that the SL flight height limit is now 5000m; below this, a flight assist is not required.

• Block left-click sitting on objects: Some objects are set such that a left click will result in sitting on them rather than touching; enable this if you want to avoid accidentally sitting on such objects. But note that this will prevent all left-click sitting; you will need to explicitly right click and select sit from the menu.
• Allow scripts to show map UI (llMapDestination): Certain teleport systems open the map for teleporting when clicked. Enable this if you wish to allow this feature.
  If you find the world map unexpectedly opening for you at some locations, and re-opening if you shut it, disable this setting temporarily, until you leave that location.

• Revoke Permissions: Removes an object's permission to animate or control your input. If this is not done, the object retains permission to animate your avatar indefinitely¹⁾:
  • Never (original behaviour): Objects will retain permission to always animate your avatar.
  • Revoke on SIT: Revokes permission when you sit on the object.
  • Revoke on STAND: Revokes permission when you stand up from sitting on the object.
  • Revoke on SIT and STAND: Revokes permission when you either sit or stand.
• Texture Lag Protection:
  • Automatically hide large objects with high texture area: Enabling this will cause objects with large texture area to not be rendered. This can be used to combat griefing done via specific objects.
  • Threshold: Sets the threshold area to use; prims over this value will not be rendered. This may cause some normal objects to not display either.
• Enable Spam Protection: These items allow you to protect yourself against various forms of spam, such as might be used in griefing attacks:
  • Enable Spam Protection even for objects owned by you: Above option must be enabled as well.
  • Max lines in a single message: this is the limit where the spam protection will start blocking messages from that source. ie. anything over this number of lines will be clocked.
  • Max events from same source: indicates the maximum number of events that can be recieved from a single source in 2 seconds before the source is blocked.
  • Sound play requests multiplier:
  • Sound preload requests multiplier:
  • Unblock all spam sources: will unblock anything that was blocked by the spam protection.
• Confirm before paying. Threshold: Shows a confirmation dialog before paying sums over this value. To always show a confirmation, set the value to 0 (zero).

• Amount that Avatar's head follows Mouse: Set both these sliders to zero if you do not want your avatar's head following the mouse cursor for unfocused mouse movement. They do not affect whether your head moves to look at something your camera is focused on.
  • Vertical range that avatar's head follows mouse: Controls how far or how little your head moves up and down to follow the movement of your mouse cursor.
  • Horizontal range that avatar's head follows mouse: Controls how far or how little your head moves left and right to follow the movement of your mouse cursor.
  • Disable random avatar eye movements: As the title suggests.

• Selection beam particle effects:
  • Beam updates/sec: Controls how many particles the stream uses
  • Scale: Width of beam particle effect
• Enable selection beam: Disable/enable the display of the particle beam
• Send selection data to chat: (Formerly called SL Particle Chat). If enabled, selection start/stop information, and global position of an object being selected (edited) are sent on chat channel 9000.

• LSL-Client Bridge external protocol integration:²⁾
  • Allow OpenCollar protocol to enable or disable the built in AO
  • Allow LockMeister protocol to enable or disable the built in AO

• Automatically change environment to use region/parcel settings: If enabled, your WL settings will change if you TP into a region that has windlight region-level windlight settings. This is the same as top menu bar→ World → Environment Editor → Environment Settings→ Always use parcel/region settings.
• Crossfade region environment sky presets changes made from quick prefs: Dynamically transitions sky settings.
• Crossfade region environment water presets changes made from quick prefs: Dynamically changes water settings.

• Use Firestorm Parcel Windlight sharing: Enables parcel level windlight sharing.
  • Auto apply WL settings from friend's land: If enabled the viewer will automatically see the windlight settings (no prompt) on a friends land if set.
  • Auto apply WL settings from my groups' land: If enabled the viewer will automatically see the windlight settings (no prompt) on group land if they are set.
  • Auto apply WL settings from any parcel: If enabled the viewer will automatically see the windlight settings (no prompt)on all parcels with it set by the owner.
  • Crossfade region environment changes for Parcel WL: Allows for dynamic changes between WL settings when a region with WL settings has parcels with their own, different, settings.
• Crossfading duration: You can indicate how long the above crossfade transition effect should last.
• Cloud Texture: You can select a different texture to be used to create Windlight clouds. Select from the drop down list. A relog is mostly likely required after changing.

Please refer to this page for more information on using Windlight with Firestorm.

NOTE: For a video tutorial on setting custom default prim parameters, see here.

Allows you to change parameters of your prim when it is first rezzed.

• x/y/z Size: Sets the size, in meters, of the prim.

Default settings to use for newly created objects.

• Phantom
• Physical
• Temporary
• Material: Lets you choose the default material

Set default texture parameters for newly created objects.

• Texture: Select the default texture to apply to newly created prims. Click to open the texture picker window.
• Color: Click to open the color picker window, to select a default color.
• Alpha: default transparency value.
• Glow: Default value for glow.
• Full Bright: whether full bright should be on by default or not.
• Shiny: A drop down from which you can select the default shiny value.

It is possible to automatically include an item into newly created prims.

• Embed an item into new prims: Enable this to embed items.
  Then drag the desired item (for example, a landmark) into the space marked Drop an inventory item here. Once dropped, the space below will show the name of the item.

Default Creation Permissions Opens a window which allows you to select permissions to be applied, by default, to newly created items of different types. (Same as top menu, Build → Options → Set Default Permissions.))

Allows you to change the pivot point of an object.

• Show axis arrow on root prim position: Moves the axis from the center of the object to the center of the root.
• Values are percent: When enabled the values are percentages.

• Name of the font used in the LSL script editor
  • Monospace
  • Scripting

• Size of the font used in the LSL script editor
  • Monospace
  • Scripting
  • Small
  • Medium
  • Large

• Enable LSL Preprocessor: Enables the functionality offered by the LSL Preprocessor. This has a few additional options, if enabled:
  • Script optimizer: Enables the script optimizer
  • Switch() statement: Enables Switch/case statements.
  • Lazy lists Enables Lazy lists.
  • #includes from local disk Allows the use of the #include directive.
  • Preprocessor include path

• Enable highlighting of selected prims: Shows the yellow highlight on prims you select. Deselecting this can increase viewer performance when several prims are selected.
• Highlight boundary of currently selected parcel: When editing an object, this will outline the containing parcel.
  • Show boundary up to maximum build height: When this is enabled, the highlight will be extended up to the max build height (currently 4096m).
• Limit Select distance: Enable this is you wish to limit the distance at which you may select (edit) objects. To the right, you can specify the maximum distance, if this option is enabled.
• Limit drag distance: If enabled, you won't be able to move objects over a distance greater than the limit set to the right. Disable to remove limits.
• Constrain rotations to multiples of: Manual rotations will always “snap” to this number of degrees - when “snap to grid” is disabled.
• Show unlink confirmation dialog if linkset has minimum: When unlinking a linkset, you will be asked for confirmation if there are this many, or more, linked items.
• Use old “Set Object For Sale” behavior: Uses the old style for setting objects for sale. The new behavior safeguards against an object being purchased for the default 10L$ while you are setting the correct price. You click “For sale”, specify the price, then click Apply.
• Save scripts edited from inventory as Mono: Allows you to set that scripts edited in inventory, will compile with Mono rather than LSL2.
• Save textures from inventory to disk as PNG instead of TGA by default: Changes the default image save format, to save you having to change it manually.
• Use Ctrl+mouse to grab and manipulate objects: If this is enabled, pressing Control while left clicking an object, will allow you to move it in-world.
• Allow click-drag or click-scale (together with caps lock) of a texture face in build mode: If this is enabled, you will be able to click and drag - or scale- textures on a prim face. To do this, you need to be in Edit mode on the prim, enable Select Texture then click the prim face that you wish to modify.
• Preview animations on own avatar during upload: If enabled, animations will be played in preview on your avatar when uploading them.
• Enable extend script info details: Add Option to extend basic script info feature with various details useful for builders.

This tab shows default Inventory folders for various types of uploads. In order to change a default upload folder, right click the desired folder in your Inventory window, and select Use as default for, then pick the upload type.

Reset default folders button resets all upload folders to default destinations.

The mini-map gives you an overview of the region in which you are located. It shows the region and people and objects in it.

You can use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out. Press and hold shift, then left click to pan the view around. If you click and drag the lower right corner, you can resize it.

The mouse cursor is a small cross hair, superimposed on a circle. The color, opacity and size of this circle can be changed, in Preference→ Colors -> Minimap→ Pick Radius.

The mini map contains color coded symbols, as follows:

• Yellow dot in the center: That's you!
• Cone of light: This comes from the yellow dot; it shows which direction you're facing and your field of vision.
• Yellow dots: Yellow dots represent nearby friends.
• Grey dots: Grey dots represents residents that you have blocked/muted.
• Blue dots: Blue dots represents Linden residents.
• Green dots: Green dots represent other Residents of Second Life

NOTE: the colors of these dots may be changed in Preferences → Colors -> Minimap.

Avatar dots change shape depending on their height relative to yours:

• Round dot: An avatar at about the same height as your camera viewpoint; for example, if you're standing next to them.
• ^ - An avatar above your camera position. They may be flying, or in a very high building.
• v - An avatar below your camera position. This may also show if the avatar is over 1,000m.
• ǂ - Height over 1020m and that does not have a viewer object representation, usually meaning out of draw distance.

• Dark gray blocks: These are objects owned by others.
• Cyan blocks: These are objects you own in the area.
• Fuchsia blocks: These are objects deeded to (owned by) a group you're in.
• Pale Orange blocks: Scripted objects.
• Dark orange: Temp on rez objects.
• Red blocks: Physical objects.
• Tiled dark blue: These are areas beyond your vision. You can see them by moving closer, or increase your draw distance in the Graphics tab of the Preferences window.
• Red areas: The Mini-Map turns red if the Region is offline or your viewer has lost its connection.

Some of the above are not enabled by default. Right click the mini map, and enable as desired in the Show sub-menu.

If you mouse over an avatar symbol, you will get a hover tip showing the avatar's name and distance from you. Clicking the orange (i) allows you to view their profile.

Right clicking on the map opens a menu:

• Zoom Close/Medium/Far/Default: A quick way to change the map zoom level.
• Show: Shows a list of what you want to show on the minimap.
• Rotate Map: Enabling this makes the map rotate, keeping your field of view directed upward. Otherwise, the map will be oriented North, and your field of view will change on the map as you move and turn.
• Auto Center: If enabled, the minimap will keep your avatar at the center of the window.
• Chat Distance Ring: If enabled, draws chat limit rings:
  • Show Whisper Distance Ring (10m, blue)
  • Show Chat Distance Ring (20m, yellow)
  • Show Shout Distance Ring (100m, red)
• Place Profile: Opens the place profile window, showing information about the parcel.
• World Map: Opens the world map for the region.

If you right click on an avatar, the menu will have more options:

• Profile: Opens the person's profile. (Versions after 3.2.2 only.)
• Cam: Allows you to cam on the avatar - assuming parcel privacy allows it. (Parcel privacy is set in About Land→ Options)
• Mark: Allows you to color the specific avatar's dot differently.
• More options:
  • Add Friend: Offers friendship.
  • Add to Set: adds the person to a contact set.
  • Remove Friend: Remove the person from your friends list (if they are a friend).
  • IM: Start an IM conversation
  • Call: Initiates a voice call
  • Map: Shows the person on the world map, if they have granted you map rights.
  • Share: Allows you to share inventory items with the person.
  • Pay: Opens a pay window, so you can pay L$.
  • Offer teleport: Sends a teleport invite.
  • Request teleport: Sends a message asking that the person send you a teleport.
  • Teleport To: Directly teleport to the person.
  • Invite to Group: Allows you to send a group invitation.
  • Get Script Info: Gets information on the running scripts the person is wearing.
  • Block/Unblock: Blocks (mutes) the person - or reverses this.
  • Report: Opens the Abuse Report window.
  • Derender: Temporarily Derenders the person.
  • Derender + Blacklist: Permanent derender.
• Start Tracking: Enables tracking avatars by drawing a beacon.
• Stop Tracking: If you have a red beacon active, this will clear it.

If you wish to take in-world snapshots, click the Snapshot button on the bottom button bar, or from the top menu bar, Avatar → Snapshot. ¹⁾ The Snapshot window gives options which allow you to control where to save, how large the image should be, and several others. They are explained below.

On the right is the snapshot preview area. This shows what part of your view will be included in the snapshot. Click Refresh, upper left, to refresh the preview.

If you click the « to the right of Refresh, the snapshot window changes orientation, becoming vertical with a smaller preview window. Click the » to revert to the default layout. This page describes the default, but the same principles apply to the vertical layout.

To the left of snapshot preview area, there are several options:

• Capture section: you may select what you wish to take a snapshot of:
  • Colors or Depth: Colors speaks for itself. Depth creates a grey-scale image where objects close by are dark, while those further away are light. Such an image can be combined with the Color image in image postwork.
  • Interface: If enabled, this will include the viewer interface in the picture.
    • L$ Balance: Whether to include your on-screen L$ balance in the snapshot.
  • HUDs: If enabled, any HUDs you might be wearing will be included in the picture.
• Freeze Frame: If you click this, the entire scene will freeze (except particles) allowing you to capture that perfect moment, and then spend time in getting exactly the right camera angle. Uncheck this to disable the “freeze”.
• Auto-Refresh: If enabled, the preview window will be updated every time you move the camera. Causes noticeable client lag while enabled.
• Filter: Allows you to apply some interesting effects to the image. If you are interested in the technical details behind filters, refer to this SL wiki page.

The buttons below allow you to select where the image should be saved.

Select the size of the snapshot from the drop-down. You can do the entire current window, or chose from several pre-defined sizes, or use a custom size, which you can type in below. ²⁾

Below, select the image format. You can select one of: PNG, JPG or BMP. If you select JPG, you will also be able to select the quality. Lower quality results in smaller file sizes.

Save location and filename between sessions.

Click Save to save the image to your hard drive. Click the down arrow to change to Save As if you want to select a folder for the image, and/or change the name of it. Selection button returns to the main window.

As above, you can select the size of the image to save to inventory. Note that sizes are constrained to square images, and powers of 2 (ie, 32×32, 64×64, 128×128, etc).

Click Save to upload the image to your inventory. Note that this will cost L$10, which you must have on your account. Selection button returns to the Main window.

This saves the snapshot to your web profile feed.

Again, you may specify the image size. Furthermore, you can also type in a caption for the image, and indicate whether the in-world location should be included once the image is posted.

Click Post to upload the image to your profile, or Cancel button (used in versions 4.7.1 and 4.7.3) or Selection button (used in version 4.7.5) to return to the main snapshot window.

Clicking this will open a new window with multiple tabs. The active tab will initially be the second, Photo, where you will see a small preview of the snapshot, and where you can type in a comment to include with the picture.

If you have not yet connected your Facebook account, click on the Status tab, then the Connect button. More info on connecting to Facebook can be found on this SL wiki page.

From the Status tab, you can also make text-only posts to Facebook. Simply type in the What's on your mind? field, then click Post.

The Check In tab allows you to post your current SL location to Facebook, including some text about it.

Friends will show your FB friends.

If you wish to disconnect from your FB account, go to the Status tab, and click the Disconnect button. To remove SL sharing from Facebook, go to the App Center, find the Firestorm application, mouse over the app, then click the “X” on the upper right of the field. Click Remove.

Click this will open a new window, with two tabs, the first of which, Compose, will be active.

If you have not yet connected to your Twitter account, click on the Account tab, then click the Connect button. You will need to authorize Firestorm to post to your Twitter feed. More info in this SL wiki page.

Once the account is connected, you can write tweets on the Compose tab. Just above the text area, on the right, you are shown how many characters remain available for your tweet. The #SecondLife hash tag is supplied, but you can erase that if you like. You may opt to include your SL location, and/or a photo. Doing so reduces the number of available characters for the tweet itself.

Below, you can select the size of the image to include (if you have opted to), and where to apply any image filters to it. a small preview is shown under this.

Click Tweet to post to your Twitter feed, Cancel if you have changed your mind.

Clicking this button opens a new window for Flickr upload, with two tabs.

If you have not yet connected to your Flickr account, will will need to do so before you can post pictures. So click on the Account Tab, then Connect to authorize Firestorm to post to your Flickr feed. Further details on this SL wiki page.

Once you have connected to your Flickr account, click on the Photo tab. As with other snapshot windows, you have a small preview, and can set the image size, and apply various types of image filter.

Below the preview, you can specify a title for the image, and give a description. Optionally, you can include the SL location, and supply tags for the image.

Lastly, you should select the appropriate rating for the image. Please be sure to do this or you may find your account being “frozen” till you correct any incorrectly rated images.

Click Upload to post the image to your Flickr feed.

Here, you can send pictures from SL directly to someone via email.

In the Message area, supply the name of the person you're sending to, the name of the sender (your SL user name is filled in, but you can change this), a subject line, and a message.

In the Settings tab, you can change the size of the image to be sent, and also select the image quality. (Images will be in JPG format.)

The Selection button will return to the main window.

A tutorial video about auto-replace can be found here.

Auto-replace now allows for the dynamic replacement of text with other text in notecards as well as in chat. This can be used from situations such as automatically correcting words you commonly mistype, to a full blown macro system.

Corrections and expansions occur when the space bar is pressed, so when “afk” is typed it is only expanded to ”(Away from Keyboard)” after a space is added.

Important: This feature does not work with non-letter and non-characters. For example, the autocorrection of a smiley like ”:)” cannot be transformed into ”???”, but one can transform “sm” into ”???”.

• Enable Autocorrect: Enables the auto correction mechanism.

• Import List..: Allows a list of entries that can be corrected by specifying an XML file from the computer. To get the correct formatting of the file, use the Export List function (described below) and modify it accordingly.
• Export List: Exports the list of abbreviations so that they can be saved the computer. The format is XML.
• New List: Create a new list of abbreviations.
• Delete List: Removes the list of abbreviations.

Below these buttons is a list of, well, the lists you have defined. Lists have a priority: they are scanned in order, top down. This is you have an abbreviation defined in two or more lists, the first one found will be used. You an change the order of the lists with the up and down arrows to the right.

Then comes the contents of the highlighted list, shows as Keyword and Replacement.

• Add: Allows you to add a new keyword/replacement pair.
• Remove Entry: Removes an entry from a list.

Click on Save Changes to save any modifications made, Cancel to close the window without saving.

Firestorm versions 4.2.2 and earlier used a feature called “Auto-Correct” for expanding abbreviations and correcting misspelled words. Firestorm versions 4.3.0 and later use a rewritten version of the same thing, called “Auto-Replace.” Both Auto-Correct and Auto-Replace use xml files for storing changes and custom-made lists, but a saved Auto-Correct list will not be compatible with Auto-Replace without some small changes.

If you're not confident about working in the xml files, then please do not use this method; instead, rebuild your Auto-Corrects into Auto-Replaces through the viewer itself, as described in the section above. It is also recommended to make a copy of the file you're editing before you make changes, in case something goes wrong.

To adapt an Auto-Correct list to be compatible with Auto-Replace:

• Open the Auto-Correct xml file.
• Find the line that says: <key>author</key>
• Change the word “author” to “name” (without the quotes).
• Find the line that says: <key>data</key>
• Change the word “data” to “replacements” (without the quotes).
• Save the file.

Follow the instructions in the section above for importing the list to the viewer.

Additional note: A “Custom” Auto-Correct file from the old feature actually saves its own name as “You,” and if you don't change that name in the xml file, it will import with the name “You” (not “Custom”). This does not affect its function; it's just a name. But if you want it to be named something other than “You,” then include this other change before importing:

• Find the line that says:<string>You</string>
• Change the word “You” to whatever you prefer for it to be called.

Click on the color boxes to choose custom colors different types of chat text. Most are self-explanatory:

• My text
• Others
• Objects - objects using llSay to chat
• Friends
• Linden - LL employees
• Muted
• System - Messages from LL
• Errors
• Objects IMs - objects using llInstantMessage to chat (the chat shows in local chat, not an IM window)
• Owner - objects using llOwnerSay to chat
• URLs - Color used for the domain part of a URL
• URL Query part: Color used for the path/query component of a URL.
• Direct - objects using llRegionSayTo to chat
• Chat Headers Colors to use if chat headers are enabled - or rather, when V1-style headers are disabled in Preferences→ Chat -> Chat Windows:
  • Avatars
  • Objects
• Beyond chat range diminish factor: The factor used to fade the chat as the speaker's distance increases.
• Color IM/Group chat distinctly in console: Enable this if you want to set a different color for IM and group chat displayed in chat console (console is the lower left area of the screen, where local chat is shown).

You can color name tags separately, as follows:

• My tag
• Friends
• Muted
• Linden Lab
• Match - if someone's display name matches their user name, this color will be used.
• Mismatch - if a person's display name is different from the user name, use this color.

• Color user names distinctly: If you enable this, you get another color box, which allows you to select a color for user names; display names will then use one of the colors above.
• Color friend name tags distinctly: Apply the color setting above to friends.

• Color (box): Here you can select the background color to be used for name tags.
  • Name Tag/Bubble Chat/Console Opacity: The farther left the slider, the more transparent the floater will be.
  • Name tag Z-Offset: Allows you to adjust the height of your name tag above your avatar. Handy for non human avatars, from tinies to large dragons, so the name isn't embedded in the avatar, or floating way above.
• Show distance in name tag: If enabled, avatar distance from you is shown in the name tag.
• Color name tags based on distance: If enabled, several mode color boxes are revealed, allowing you to select colors to be used to indicate how far people are from you (see this LL wiki page):
  • Chat range - 20m
  • Whisper range - 10m
  • Shout - 100m
  • Beyond shout range

• Background Opacity: Allows you to change the minimap background opacity.
• Pick Radius: Here, you can vary the color, opacity and size of the “pick circle”, which is displayed under the mouse crosshair cursor.
• Minimap dots: Select colors to use for people visible on the minimap:
  • Me
  • Others
  • Friends
  • Linden Lab
  • Muted

• Display rings on the mini map indicating the whisper, say and shout chat ranges: Adds a ring on the minimap that shows local chat range. This reveals three color selectors, to set colors for:
  • Whisper range
  • Chat range
  • Shout range

Note: Other options concerning minimap are found under Preferences→ Move & View -> Map & Minimap.

Various other color options, as follows:

• Selection effects (particle beam)
• Script Dialog F/B: Foreground and background colors for script dialog windows.
• Floating Window Opacity: The farther left the slider, the more transparent the floater will be.
• Console Opacity: Similar to above, but for chat console (the lower left area of the screen, where local chat is displayed).
• Preferences Search Highlight Color: Color to use to highlight search results. Matches chat text color by default.
• Area search beacon Color: Color to use to highlight area search crosshair beacon.
• Always show script dialogs always on opaque background: If enabled, dialog windows generated by scripts will always have a fully opaque background.
• Always show group notices always on opaque background: If enabled, group notice popups will always have a fully opaque background.
• Override pie menu background color and opacity: Allows you to customize the color, opacity and Fade out of the pie menu. (The pie menu is enabled in Preferences→ User Interface -> General.)

• Preset in use: Shows the name of the graphics preset in use.

• Quality and speed: Allows you to adjust the graphics quality (lower is faster). Many options are changed based on this setting.
  • Reload Defaults: The circular arrow to the right of the Quality and speed slider (above) will revert all graphics settings to default values. Use this if you have made changes that have a negative impact on the veiwer and cannot remember what you changed.
• Fullscreen Mode (requires restart): Enable this if you want to run Firestorm in full screen mode, as opposed to windowed.
• Shaders:
  • Transparent water: Allows water to look transparent instead of opaque. Enable this (if it isn't already) if you exeprience glowing water while wearing rigged mesh.
  • Bump mapping and shiny: Enables the rendering of shiny and bump mapped surfaces.
  • Local Lights: Globally enables/disables local lights.
  • Basic shaders: Allows rendering of high-quality water, basic lighting, and other graphical effects.
  • Atmospheric shaders: Enables advanced atmospheric and lighting.
  • Advanced Lighting Model: Check this to allow shadows and other features to be enabled. Note that enabling this can cause instability and performance issues; click here for known specifics. For more how shadows behave, see this SL wiki page.
  • Ambient occlusion: Checking this enables more realistic shadows; the stability and performance note above also applies here.

• Shadows:

  Lets you choose what light sources cause shadows; this is available only if the Advanced Lighting Model option above is enabled).
  • none
  • sun/moon
  • sun/moon and projectors
• Avatar Shadows: controls whether and how avatars cast shadows. The higher the setting, the more client lag it will cause.
  • None
  • Simplified
  • Optimized
  • Complex
• Water Reflections: Allows water to reflect terrain, objects, and avatars.
• Point Lighting: Affects the number of rendered light sources when Advanced Lighting Model (above) is disabled. A viewer restart is needed if this setting is changed.

• Draw distance:

  Affects how far out from your viewpoint objects will be rendered in the scene.
• Max particle count: Sets the maximum number of particles you are able to see on your screen at once.
• Maximum complexity: Controls at what point a visually complex avatar is shown as a jellydoll. ¹⁾ Current defaults are:
  • Low: 35,000
  • Low-Mid: 100,000
  • Mid: 200,000
  • Mid-High: 250,000
  • High: 300,000
  • High-Ultra: 350,000
  • Ultra: 350,000
• Max # of non-imposter avatars: Sets the number of avatars that will be fully rendered. See Avatar impostors below.
• Post process quality: Determines the resolution with which glow is rendered. A lower setting will cause glow to look slightly pixelated.
• Avatar Physics: Affects the detail of avatar physics. Set to 0 to disable avatar physics entirely.

• Level of Detail (LOD) Distance Factors:

  • Objects & Sculpts LOD: Determines the amount of detail the viewer will use in rendering object shapes; a lower setting causes objects to appear more angular and polygonal.
    Setting this higher than 4 via Debug Settings is not recommended. Please see here for details on why high values are not recommended.
  • Flexiprims: Determines the amount of detail the viewer will use in rendering flexible object shapes.
  • Trees: Determines the amount of detail the viewer will use in rendering (Linden) tree shapes.
  • Avatars: Determines the amount of detail the viewer will use in rendering avatar shapes.
  • Terrain: Determines the amount of detail the viewer will use in rendering terrain.
  • Sky: Controls the detail with which windlight skies are rendered. Higher values mean better quality but lower performance.
• Avatar Rendering:
  • Avatar imposters: Allows far-away avatars to be subtly rendered as two-dimensional images in order to improve your frame rate in crowded areas.
  • Hardware skinning: This allows some aspects of avatar rendering to be handled by your graphics card to improve performance.
  • Avatar cloth: Allows the rendering of flexible cloth on avatar clothing, such as shirts and flared pants.
• Terrain Detail: Choose the amount of terrain detail you would like to see. Setting this option to Low replaces the ground texture with a low-resolution ground texture.
  This option is not available (ie, it is greyed out) if Basic Shaders is enabled, in which case it is always set to High.

• Presets: Three buttons which allow you to save, load or delete graphics settings presets.
  • To create a preset, set your graphics settings as you like. Click “Save” and give the preset a name.
  • To load a preset that you have created, click “Load” and choose the preset to load.
  • To delete one, click “Delete” and choose the preset to delete.
  • The presets can be accessed either from Preferences → Graphics → General or from the presets button in the upper right of the viewer, near the media and sound controls.

• Anisotropic Filtering: Enables anisotropic filtering to improve texture quality. This setting may reduce your viewer's performance. For more information see this wikipedia page.
• Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects: VBO on modern hardware gives a performance gain. However, older hardware often has poor implementation of VBOs and the viewer may become unstable when this is enabled. VBO is explained in depth here.
• Enable Streamed VBOs: Allows the use of streamed VBO as well as static; only works if you have VBO enabled.
• Enable Lossy Texture Compression: If this is enabled, texture compression will be enabled for rendering. This gives improved performance, and a smaller grapics memory footprint, at the cost of lower quality rendered textures. Textures are compressed by the video card before being stored into video memory. Given that compressed textures can often end up pixellated, it is not recommended that this be enabled unless you have little video memory. Ref: SL JIRA MAINT-708.

• Antialiasing: Smoothes jagged edges. Renders a scene the number of multiple times that is actually shown and scales it down. Choose the level of antialiasing the viewer will use (requires restart).
• Gamma: Use the Windlight Sky Editor's Scene Gamma control on the Atmosphere/Sun tab instead of this; currently functional only if Atmospheric Shaders are disabled.
• Viewer Texture Memory Buffer (MB): This is the amount of graphics memory the viewer will use. By default, it is set to the size of your graphics card's memory.
  • 32bit versions only. This setting is hard limited to a maximum of 512MB. Lowering this value may resolve certain texture corruption and performance issues, but under normal circumstances you should not need to alter this setting.
  • 64bit versions only. This setting is hard limited based on the VRAM available with your graphics card. It is recommended you increase the slider to use the maximum available to prevent texture thrashing.
    • GPU 1GB = up to 768MB
    • GPU 2GB+ = up to 1024MB
    • GPU 4GB+ = up to 2048MB
• Fog Distance Ratio: Determines how far away Second Life's fog effect begins. Lower values = closer fog. Only used when you have Atmospheric Shaders disabled. If Atmospheric Shaders are enabled, this effect is handled by the Distance Multiplier control in the Advanced Sky Editor.

• Freeze updates to World (pause everything): This suspends rendering. Useful for picture taking, if you wish to capture a specific scene that might otherwise change while you are preparing.

• Use HTTP for receiving textures: Uses the HTTP protocol to fetch textures as opposed to the older UDP. Always on, as it is required for SL.
• Restrict maximum texture resolution to 512px (64bit only; requires restart) (default on 32bit already).

• Max Texture Quality Level: If you have a poor connection, you may wish to reduce the level of texture detail. This can be set to Normal, Minimal or None.
  Naturally, setting this to anything other than Normal will result in textures displaying poorly, or not at all. Do not change unless absolutely necessary - for example, if you have a very poor connection but need to be online, and don't care if you can see textures or not.

These options control when alpha masking should be used in an attempt to mitigate the well known alpha sorting issue, in which prims behind other prims may appear to flicker in front. The two options are:

• Render alpha masks when “Advanced Lighting Model” is not enabled
• Render alpha masks when “Advanced Lighting Model” is enabled

• Render Glow: If enabled, shows the glow effect on any prims that have it.
  • Strength: Controls the intensity of the glow effect. The default is 2.
• Show avatars that haven't finished loading: Equivalent to the debug setting RenderUnloadedAvatar.
  Note that this is not a solution to a bake fail, as it doesn't actually fix anything; it merely forces the viewer to display whatever it happens to have managed to load. It is recommended that this be always left disabled.
• Limit Framerate: Yield some time to the local host if a threshold framerate is reached. The framerate limit is set with the slider to the right.
• Show the Scene as Wireframe: Enables wireframe display of everything. Note that this setting does not persist after a relog.
• Enable Attached Lights (Face Lights): Enable this if you wish to see the affects of lights worn by avatars.
• Render Attached Particles: Enable to see particles generated by worn attachments.

• Time to delay while pre-caching before showing world: Allows the world to start caching before it is shown, at login.
• Quality of the shadows: Adjusts the quality of shadows. Note that increasing this will significantly impact rendering speed (FPS).
• Scale of Terrain Texture Rendering (requires restart): Indicates the scale of terrain textures, with lower values being more compressed textures.

Depth of field simulates real life blurring that occurs when things are not in focus. For example, if you are taking a photo of a person, then typically, things in the background will be blurred; the futher away, the more blurred. If you shift your focus to a tree behind the person, then the person will, in turn, become blurred.

For more information, refer here.

You can adjust the following settings to mimic RL camera effects.

• Depth of Field: Enabling this causes out-of-focus objects to be blurred, depending on distance.
  • Enable while in edit mode: Normally, DoF disables when you edit something; if you enable this, DoF will remain active.
• Camera F Number: Controls maximum screen radius from which to sample from, to avoid graphics card In real world terms this is the aperture setting for the lens and the lower the value the shorter the depth of field will be. The same applies to SL.
  The default value is 9.00
• Camera Focal Length mm: This tells the viewer what Focal Length/Lens Length to simulate for the DOF effect. Higher numbers produce a narrower depth of field.
  The default is 50.0
• Camera FOV degs.: This tells the viewer what FOV you would like to simulate for the DOF effect. Higher values will produce a more narrow depth of field.
  The default is 60.00
• Camera Aspect ratio: This is supposed to be aspect ratio of the camera you're modelling. For example, a 35mm camera has an aspect ratio of 3:2 (1.5). Second Life will use this as a frame of reference for how field of view and focal length must be adjusted depending on window size.
  Apparently, this currently has no effect.
  The default is 1.50
• DOF Focus Transition Time: This sets the time in seconds it take to the viewer to change focus from one object.
  The default is 0.50
• DOF Rendering Quality: This determines the quality of the DOF Effect. For non-photography uses '.25' is good. For setting up shots '.50' or '.70' is very nice. For shooting quality images '1.00' is best. Note that High values will slow down your FPS.
  The default is 0.70

At the Firestorm log in screen, next to the log In button, is a drop down menu, which allows you to select the default viewer mode. These can be one of:

• Phoenix
• Firestorm
• Hybrid
• Viewer 6
• Latency
• Text

This allows you to select the overall “look and feel” of the viewer. Text mode disables almost all rendering; it exists for those who need to get inworld on very low end computers.

NOTE: This will affect many settings but none that you have set yourself. In other words, if you log in with (for example) Phoenix mode, but then change one of the default settings to what would be Viewer 6 mode, that will remain set next time.

The table below lists settings and how they are set in the various modes.

“Jellydolls” are a new anti-lag feature created by Linden Lab. You can use this feature to reduce your lag and to protect yourself against graphics-crashing devices worn by others.

For general information about Avatar Complexity (“jellydolls”), please see:

• Torley Linden's short video tutorial:

This will give you a good overview of how jellydolls work and how they can help you. Don't try to find the settings the way Torley describes, since those are the official SL viewer settings! See the rest of this page for the Firestorm settings.

• The official Second Life announcement: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Why-are-all-these-people-made-of-colored-jelly/ba-p/3031255

• Inara Pey's blog: https://modemworld.me/2016/08/09/firestorm-4-7-9-50527-i-see-jelly-people/

• The Second Life wiki page: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Avatar_Rendering_Complexity

Please note: the official Second Life pages (above) describe how to find the settings in the official SL viewer. See the descriptions below for how to find them in Firestorm.

• This determines which avatars will appear as jellydolls to you, based on their complexity.
• Go to Preferences → Graphics → General → Maximum Complexity.
• Note: Lowering this slider will decrease your lag and turn more avatars into jellydolls; raising the slider may lag you but more avatars will be fully visible.
• Note: Moving this slider all the way to the right is not advised, as this sets this setting to “No Limit” — which means that no avatars will render as jellydolls to you, but you will be subject to lag and worn graphics crashers.

• Right click on the avatar's name tag and choose from the menu:
  • Render Normally – avatar will be affected by your complexity slider (above)
  • Do Not Render – avatar will be a jellydoll for you
  • Render Fully – avatar will be rendered fully even if over your complexity slider setting
• In the pie menu, these options are under More → More → Render.

Go to the top menu bar> World menu and select Always show Friends normally.

Go to the top menu bar> World menu and select Avatar Render Settings. Here you can change how avatars render for you. Refer to this page for details.

• Go to Preferences → General and set “Show Avatar Complexity,” “Only if too complex,” and “Show own complexity” as you wish.

• This appears in the top right of your screen.
• Go to Preferences → Notifications → Alerts, and move “Warn me if my avatar complexity may be too high” to the “Always show” box or to the “Never show” box, as you prefer.

• This appears in the top right of your screen when you change clothes/accessories.
• Go to Preferences → Notifications → Alerts, and move “Warn me about my avatar complexity changes” to the “Always show” box or to the “Never show” box, as you prefer.

• Go to Avatar menu → Avatar Health → Show Avatar Complexity Information
• This shows complexity plus:
• * Rank (how close the avatar is to your camera; the closest is 1, next closest is 2…);
• * VisTris: recursively counts the number of triangles in every attachment at the current rendered LOD;
• * EstMaxTris: represents the sum of the estimated triangle count for each attachment to the avatar; and
• * attachment surface area in square meters.
• Note: The height of this hovertext cannot be adjusted.

Go to Avatar → Appearance and look at the bottom right of the window.

Here are three ways to see an item's rendering weight:

• Avatar → Appearance → Wearing tab (Ctrl+O); look in the righthand column for the number.
• Wear the item and then remove it, noting the change to your avatar complexity in the upper right of the viewer.
• Wear the item. Edit it → in the Build floater, click “more info” → and see the number listed for “Display.”

These are the default settings that determine the threshold at which you view avatars fully rendered or as jellydolls. They correspond with the “Quality and Speed” slider located in Preferences → Graphics → General. When the settings are left at these defaults, avatars whose complexity numbers are below these thresholds will be visible, while avatars with higher complexities will appear as jellydolls to you.

• Low: 35,000
• Low-Mid: 100,000
• Mid: 200,000
• Mid-High: 250,000
• High: 300,000
• High-Ultra: 350,000
• Ultra: 350,000

Une réinstallation propre exige plus que supprimer le viewer installé et le réinstaller. Si vous vous contentez de faire cela, vous laisserez tous les fichiers de paramètres, et simplement réinstaller ne règlera donc aucun problème. Pour procéder à une véritable réinstallation propre vous devrez donc commencer par chercher et supprimer tous vos fichiers de paramètres et - peut-être - de cache.

Si vous gardez vos journaux de chat, ils sont sauvegardés par défaut dans le dosier qui porte votre nom dans votre dossier de paramètres. Avant de supprimer ce dossier, il vous faudra trouver les fichiers de chat et les déplacer. Voir ici pour toute information concernant la façon de trouver les journaux de chat. Vous devrez vous connecter avec chacun de vos comptes pour faire vos sauvegardes.

C'est une mesure fortement conseillée juste au cas où un problème surviendrait et que vous perdiez ces paramètres ou que les fichiers se corrompent. Cela rend aussi la mise à jour ou la réinstallation du viewer beaucoup plus confortable et plus courte. La procédure et décrite ici. Il est recommandé de faire cette sauvegarde juste avant de réinstaller le viewer étant donné que certains fichiers (Historique de TP, cercles d'amis, etc. changent au jour le jour. Connectez-vous avec chacun de vos comptes pour effectuer cette sauvegarde.

RAPPEL: Si vous voulez conserver vos journaux de chat et vos paramètres, n'oubliez pas les Etapes 1 et 2 avant de supprimer vos paramètres.

Les paramètres de Firestorm peuvent se corrompre, surtout si vous avez crashé récemment; il est possible que les fichiers n'aient aps été sauvegardés entièrement à la fermeture du viewer, et des informations iportantes sont alors perdues ou brouillées. Lorsque vous installez une version différente du viewer les paramètres de la version précédente peuvent ne pas être compatibles et peuvent être à la source de problèmes de fonctionnement.

Voici comment supprimer les anciens paramètres :

• Démarrez le viewer mais ne vous connectez pas
• Cliquez le menu “Viewer” en haut de l'écran d'accueil, sélectionnez Préférences > Configuration > Dossiers.
• Cliquez le bouton Ouvrir les paramètres
• Fermer le viewer
• Dans la fenêtre où s'affichent les fichiers, remontez d'un cran dans l'arborescence. Si vous voyez un dossier user_settings et un ou plusieurs dossiers portant le ou les noms de vos avatars, vous êtes au bon endroit.
• Sélectionnez tout le contenu de ce dossier Firestorm et supprimez-le.

*Notez bien que le nom du dossier Firestorm veut varier légèrement en fonction de la version dont il s'agit.

Notez également que si vous avez installé la version 32-bit et la version 64-bit, vous ne devez supprimer que les paramètres de la version que vous avez démarré au début de cette étape. Il vous faudra répéter cette étape si vous voulez aussi supprimer les marapètres de l'autre version qui et toujours installée.

Il vous faudra utiliser votre explorateur de fichiers (Windows Explorer pour Windows, le Finder pour Mac…) poru trouver le dossier de paramètres. A son emplacement par défaut, le dossier est caché dans presque tous les systèmes d'exploitation. Pour le trouver, il vous faudra afficher les fichiers cachés. Voir cette page pour trouver votre dossier de paramètres.

Le cache ne doit être supprimé que lorsqu'il pose un problème spécifique, ou lorsqu'il y a eu dans le viewer des changements importants qui l'exigent (comme par exeple un changement dans le code KDU). Le viewer videra automatiquement le cache dans de telles circonstances, mais le faire manuellement est plus rapide.

Lorsque vous réinstaller une version antérieure de Firestorm vous devrez vider votre cache.

When downgrading, you should always clear the cache.

SI vous devez vider votre cache pour utiliser la version que vous allez installer, voir cette page.

La meilleurs façon est d'utiliser le panneau de configuration. Si vous avez un dossier Firestorm dans votre menu Démarrer, il y a peut-être un lien de désinstallation à cet endroit (uniquement pour la version 32-bit).

Naviguez jusqu'à vos Applications et supprimez l'App Firestorm.

Le répertoire d'installation de FIrestorm se trouvera là où vous avez extrait l'archive de téléchargement. Habituellement il sera quelque part dans votre répertoire dédié (Home directory), comme ~/Phoenix-Firestorm_*. Supprimez ce dossier et tout ce qu'il contient.

Si vous avez utilisé le script d'installation à la racine (root), cherchez dans votre /répertoire opt. Vous devrez su root ou sudo rm pour supprimer le répertoire de Firestorm à cet endroit.

Après toutes ces étapes vous êtes prêt à installer Firestorm, ce qui s'effectue de la manière habituelle pour n'importe quel logiciel.

Téléchargez l'installeur: de la version actuelle sur la page Téléchargements. Pour toute version antérieurs, allez sur cette page

Exécutez l'installeur que vous avez téléchargé. L'installeur 32-bit vous laissera choisir la destination du répertoire d'installation; l'installeur de la version 64-bit affiche la destination quand vous cliquez le bouton Options. L'installeur créera un raccourci bureau.

NB :L'installeur 32-bit propose de démarrer le viewer à la fin de l'installation, choisissez Non. Si vous choisisez Oui, des problèmes peuvent survenir, surtout si vous restaurez vos paramètre pendant cette session. Il vaut toujours mieux ouvrir le viewer à partir du raccourci bureau.

Trouvez le fichier .dmg que vous avez téléchargé et faites un double clic dessus. Faites glisser l'icône de l'App Firestorm dans votre dossier Applications.

Extrayez le tar.bz2 ou tar.xz que vous avez téléchargé dans le dossier que vous souhaitez et exécutez le script firestorm dans ce dossier pour le démarrer. Vous pouvez si vous le voulez créer un raccourci bureau de démarrage.

Une fois que le viewr est installé ou réinstallé, assurez-vous qu'il fonctionne normalement :

• Connectez-vous dans un région calme (essayez Hippo Hollow, Aich ou Hatton). Ne changez aucun paramètre.
• Testez les fonctions qui vous posaient un problème avec la version précédente, que vous ayez fait une simple mise à jour, une réinstallation, ou si vous êtes revenu à une version antérieure.
• Si vous avez du vider votre cache à l'étape 4 ci-dessus, ouvrez votre inventaire et laissez-le charger entièrement.

Si vous voyez que le viewer fonctionne normalement, vous pouvez restaurer vos paramètres et vous reconnecter. Vous devrez vous connecter avec chacun de vos comptes SL (chaque alt) poru restaurer les paramètres liés à chaque compte.

Connectez-vous de nouveau. Si le viewer continnue de fonctionner comme il le devrait, vous pouvez ajuster les paramètres supplémentaires que vous voulez puis les sauvegarder.

Notez bien que certains paramètres ne sont pas restaurés comme les préférences graphiques. Ceci parce que certains réglage graphiques incorrects peuvent poser problème.