Last Pre-PBR Firestorm Viewer To Be Around "Forever"

 

For years, Firestorm has had a three-version policy. Besides the current and latest version, they had available for download the two previous versions. All older versions would be no longer available, or be supported. So with recent trouble some have been having with the PBR update, there's been some worries that when the last Firestorm viewer made before that, version 6.6.17,  gets too old, it will be removed and a number of residents will find Second Life almost unusable. 

Several days ago, it was announced on the Firestorm blog that version 6.6.17 would not be going away and it would be available "forever." But, there would be a catch.

I am pleased to announce that, as part of a more comprehensive review of the so-called “three-release policy”, we are going to ensure that the 6.6.17 release is never blocked; we will also cease blocking in general in the short term pending a longer-term review to decide how we manage our ability to give our users support.

 

I hope that this will come as a relief to those of you who have been stressed and worried about potentially losing access to Second Life.

There will be no deadline to update now ...

So people who are having trouble with the PBR compatible viewer will not have to worry, for the moment. For those who use Voice, that option will soon be unavailable with the upcoming changes to it.

Linden Lab will launch a new WebRTC voice service in the next few weeks to replace SLVoice. These changes are entirely outside of our control and as this new system is entirely different to and incompatible with the old one, SLVoice will be turned off on the backend shortly after the launch, and older viewers will lose voice support.

And the problem with older viewers is they become more and more outdated.

 

The last non-PBR viewer will remain available for any users who are unable or unwilling to make the update. However, it will not be maintained, and we will not be able to fix bugs or retrofit new services, so the choice does carry a price tag; ...

As a non-PBR viewer, it will already fail to render PBR textures on objects and clothing, and any terrain that uses the new PBR terrain will show grey or white. You will also not have access to other post-PBR features such as Emojis.

They would also explain why their "three viewer" policy was changing.

 

The “three-version” policy for Firestorm allows only three active releases at any time. The oldest release is typically blocked three weeks after a new one comes out. This policy was established years ago to provide a degree of stability and certainty for our users who had made it clear that they would not readily accept the automatic updater employed by the Linden Lab viewer but satisfied the Lab that outdated viewers would not hold back progress.

Even though. at the time of this writing, almost 60% of Firestorm users have already upgraded to the latest version and while Linden Lab is busy developing further improvements for low-end machines, these will take time to get right and expected to be delivered over the remainder of this year. At the same time, major infrastructure projects, such as the imminent move to WebRTC voice, will mandate more Firestorm releases.

If we retained the three-release policy we were concerned that we’d be having to block the last non-PBR release well before all the improvements were ready and the maximum number of users felt able to update.

For some users, the problem is not technology but aesthetics; the lighting changes required for PBR have meant that many established custom environments and day cycles no longer appear as they should. It will take time for creators and communities to recreate those settings. Already, we are seeing a rapid growth of PBR products in the marketplace, and replacement environments (EEPs) are available, but the concerns from our users that they’d be locked out of Second Life or that their beloved way of life would be lost were clear.

While discussing the last release and the forthcoming Voice updates, we shared our concerns around our release strategy with Linden Lab. They were very willing to review the policy with us; and everyone is in agreement that while it might have been right back in the day, it is no longer appropriate.

So, with a big thank you to Linden Lab, we can now look to find a much better way to manage things.

They would also add that the promise not to block viewer 6.6.17 was not applicable to other viewers.

We will review how we manage our releases, including access to beta and alpha builds, to see if we can improve the timeliness of updates and if we can interest more of you in helping us test forthcoming updates to get feedback early and often. We will need to ensure that anything we do is aligned with the needs of the Second Life platform and, thus, is approved by Linden Lab. This is new territory for everyone, should it be found that this is not working out then we may by necessity have to revisit some form or retirement process, I would hope that anything we need to impose is still markedly better than the draconian three version limit.

 

For the blog post in it's entirety, Click Here.

 

Bixyl SHuftan