Aishagain

You see...there's the fundamental misunderstanding. SL is not played solely by gamers that know how their rigs work. It is also embraced by folk that otherwise might not have known much more than how to turn a computer on and send an email. I wasn't much different myself 15 years ago when I first explored this virtual world (via On Rez and some sort of CSI game). We never stop learning but we do need the complexities explained now and then.

Yes, this should never have happened, the laptop was really rather unsuitable and had no cooling fans. The card accelerated to failure in a way that was rather unexpected and we will see if the maker acts responsibly over the matter. All the technical information has significantly improved my understanding of these functions. Shame it wasn't explained like this prior to all the hullabaloo.

Coo that got a lot of reaction. Some of it thoughtfull and informative, some of it rude and rather idiotic in its style. My comments were based on a thoroughly unscientific sample of an SL friend whose GPU attempted to set itself on fire before black screening and refusing to work again. As Beq says the Framerate limiter does just as good a job of preventing pyromanic episodes and while I don't see the stutter or choppiness (possibly my GPU {NVidia GTX 1660Ti} never hits the heights of FPS that some gaming rigs do) the set up does allow my system to use its resources without becoming a room-heater (I may need that this coming winter). I had assumed that the framerate limiter was a FS or at least TPV feature and it was rarely needed except on very quiet regions with few avatars present. A classic example of YMMV I suppose. Given the performance that the latest render code gives, the choice between V-Sync and the framerate limiter is now valid, it would not have troubled me in past viewers. I have not yet run for extended sessions with V-Sync disabled and I have used the limiter ever since it was introduced, so maybe I have no room to talk, but please be civil, it's not a lot to ask.

Disabling V-sync on your SL viewer is tantamount to removing the waste-gate from the turbocharger of your car's engine. Yes, it might go a bit faster....just before it goes "pop". Disable V-sync at your peril.

That suggestion, while on the face of it is something we've all wished for at one time or another is an open window to so many security exploits it makes my head spin just thinking of them.

Just my two penn'orth on this release. We were warned about two bugs in this release, inherited from LL. One affects right clicking objects inworld, I was told... for me this just does not seem to happen, except a minimal freeze on right clicking a scripted object. For me it is so slight it is negligible. I gather it is worse for others so I wonder if it is dependent on CPU speed. The other is crash to desktop if you attempt to save a 360° snapshot. Well, for me that is not an issue since I have NO idea what use I could make of it! In short, the new Firestorm 6.6.3.67470 is simply the best viewer I have used in SL to date. Busy clubs no longer force me to lower my quality level or reduce my FPS to slide-show speeds. The base Linden Viewer changes were good, this is simply better! Thankyou FS developers and testers you have given me my SL back.

Hmm I just posted a comment and it is "Hidden". Why? Eta: It is visible now...strange! PS: I and many others mourn the passing of our Monarch, Queen Elizabeth ll. God save The King.

Including that pesky right-click-select-freeze bug? That's LL's own creation and I guess their job to fix.

If I had a pound for every time I've seen comments like those above, I'd be rich enough to.....never mind. i've wondered many times why the default Linden Viewer is so user-unfriendly and yet is considered by some to be "less confusing" to potential new users. What balderdash! I hear innumerable comments about the poor UI, the lack of features and until recently the sheer poor performance of that application. Why is it seemingly so clunky? One opinion is simply that the developers of Second Life simply do not understand their potential clientelle or are so uninterested that they don't bother. Now I have seen much evidence that, as individuals at least, that is simply not so. They DO care, indeed many are ex or even current SL residents. The reason for the nature of the default SL viewer still eludes me.

Conversation overheard in the Linden Lab canteen: "So, did the Roll go OK today?" "Roll? What Roll? Oh THAT one. Dunno really, ask X"

As far as CPUs are comcerned, performance vs cost leaves AMD a clear winner at present. For ultimate performance a fast i7 is probably the best (the jury is out on the i9 for technical reasons, not to mention the eye-watering price) but the AMD Ryzen 9 3900 and 3950 beat Intel in nearly every performance parameter and their multi-core and multi-thread performance is unbeatable. I have used both Intel and AMD and while neither are perfect I suspect AMD win for SL. AMD GPUs are still a way off NVidia in OpenGL performance so for SL they are de rigeur in my experience (I've used both). Bearing in mind that most folks want their rig for both SL AND general gaming the choice is less clear due to AMD GPU performance on anything BUT OpenGL, but if SL is the focus (as it is mine) it is no contest, even though NVidia are busily trying to trash their own reputation with poorly coded drivers in recent months. A good PC for SL will need CPU cooling for sure and GPU cooling if you can afford it. 16GB plus RAM is a must, 32 is better and 64 must be nice, SSDs for your Main drives are by far the best option now, despite the above reservations - I have used all-SSD systems for 5 years now. SL was until very recently CPU bound and so a good CPU was required backed up by a decent, if not stellar GPU (I use an NVidia GTX1660Ti with an AMD Ryzen9 3900 CPU). It seems good to me. Whether the recent changes to the Second Life rendering code will change that is debatable.

This makes me wonder. some time ago I noticed that none of those pre-materials bump texures appear to work on objects I was editing and dismissed the issue as trivial. The above makes perfect sense to me. I suspect that when hiring newer staff the Lindens have failed to impress upon them that some of SL's considerable legacy assets are in fact of some use! Another argument in favour of a considerable overhaul of the system?

I'm seeing a common factor to this issue. Some time ago (a matter of weeks only, I think) LL updated some aspects of the Library feature in viewers. There was an issue with the format of the new texture files which led if I recall to a number of region crashes (strangely not viewer crashes). Now we have basic texures not simply not rezzing but simply not loading at all. I think it behoves LL operrations and those responsible for such things as file format compatibilty within SL to take a close look at these issues. Is there any mileage in the fact that some of these textures have an alpha component to them?

Better late than never...again.

For me, this (even for LL) silence is unsettling. Last week's tranche of assorted non-routine Maintenance rather suggested that something in the murky depths of the SL code needed fixing. It is not long since either Mazidox or another Linden mentioned that they had returned to weekly region "bounces" out of little more than "an abundance of caution". That there was nothing on the GSP may merely suggest that the oppo given that task in on holiday, but still... Anyone seen my crash hat?

I've seen absolutely nothing yet, neither on the GSP nor here. There WAS new code on the RC Channels last week but so far...silence.

Ah well, as ever, I can only speak for myself. I AM informed.

Solar, much of the time I either agree with your testy comments or at least see their point. This time I do neither. Many TPV devs are regular visitors and contributors to these Fora and their views are sometimes changed by what is posted here. The likelihood of The Lab enforcing anything in this context has been discussed and described as unlikely or "not going to happen". One or two Lindens also look in on these threads, especially Monty. Whether ot not the debate has been productive remains to be seen but it was most definitely informative.

As I was in a slightly different context, perhaps. 🙂

@Love ZhaoyingThe maptile issue (which?, there have been so many!) is only one of the outstanding issues. Teleport failures (not disconnections), friends list mispopulation, to use their term "agent presence" and the others that need attention and correction, all call upon SL Operations' time.

Again, I may well be wrong but the present plethora of maintenance operations being carried out by LL seems to me to be a belated and rather clumsy attempt by Operations to deal with a significant volume of outstanding system issues within SecondLife that have accumulated since Oz Linden's retirement. Quite what the product of this work will be I cannot predict but the map tiles issue is but one of them.

I may be wrong but I suspect that errors and inconsistencies with the world map was one of the subjects of the maintenance carried out just over an hour ago by LL.

While all the above comments do suggest there was a net outage affecting SL later yesterday US time, the fact that LL are going to perform a planned Maintenance session shortly covering the same set of issues suggests to me that there is more than a net outage going on. Granted the short duration suggests also that LL know what they need to do, but I still wonder what these Restarts have tickled to the point of sneezing. Scheduled Maintenance Scheduled Maintenance Aug 17, 11:30-12:30 PDT We will be undergoing scheduled maintenance at this time. Residents may experience difficulties with logging in, appearing as a cloud, loading inventory, adding/removing objects, and rezzing. We expect any interruptions to be short-lived. Please follow the blog for updates. Posted on Aug 16, 13:18 PDT

Unplanned Maintenance Investigating - Second Life is undergoing unplanned maintenance. During this time, some Second Life services may be unavailable including, but not limited to: logging in, teleporting building, chatting, web services and object rezzing. Please refrain from rezzing in-world, in addition to transacting in-world, on the Marketplace, or on the Lindex during this time. Please monitor this blog for additional updates Aug 16, 12:52 PDT

Might I suggest that you either contact the Firsestorm Support English group in SecondLife, or, failing that create a support request on the Firestorm JIRA? https://jira.firestormviewer.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa