Firestorm Aniversary Party, And Gifts

 

On Saturday, September 12, Team Firestorm would hold an anniversary party, it's sixteenth. Their actual anniversary of when they were founded as Team Phoenix in 2010 was on Thursday September 3. But they moved it to the weekend after Labor Day so more people could celebrate.

 

Firestorm is turning 16 this week! Our actual birthday was on September 3, but we want to celebrate BIG TIME, and we want you to join us. That is why we are moving our party to the weekend… Saturday September 12. Yes, we will have a party. And yes, there will be gifts – four really nice ones. There will also be some amazing entertainment. There is only one more thing we need – you! Please join us.

 

The fun started at 12 with the popular SL singer Maxamillion Kleene. At 1PM, singer Tally Mercury took his place. From 2 to about 3 SL time came DJ Trick. To make sure more people could enjoy the fun, the party took place at the intersection of four sims.  Beq Janus, the Project Manager since founder Jessica Lyon stepped down in January 2024, was there with the partiers. So was Pantera Północy, noted for filming Linden events such as monthly Concierge & Land User Group meet-ups. 

 

There was a lot of fun to be had, with lots of people in avatars of all kinds dancing away to the music.

 

And as always, Team Firestorm had some presents available for those attending.  One was "a bohemian inspired" bedroom set, which had a spacious bed along with a nightstand and lamp. It was described as "legacy and PBR textures applied," as well as having single and couples animations (I didn't check to see if any were clearly for behind closed doors). There was also a post with a set of birdhouses, with a weathered rustic look. 

 

There was also a a fiery pawed cougar from Wild Kajaera. It's a forever pet which needs no food but can't breed either. One can make it breedable, for a fee, but it will then need food every so often. And finally, there was the KittiCatS collectable kitty. They had another for it's third anniversary, a red one. This one was different, black with flames of a different shade of red. When it's new, you can place it on your shoulder if you know where to click. 

 

If you're interested, the gifts are still available. But they won't be up forever. So if you haven't yet, check them out. - https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Firestorm%20Ghost%20Town/14/240/3903 

 

Happy anniversary Team Firestorm. 

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

Team Firestorm Anniversary Thursday September 3

 

 

A couple days ago, Thursdayday September 3, was the sixteenth anniversary of Team Firestorm's, then Team Phoenix, founding. Team Phoenix came out of the "Emeraldgate" scandal, that hit what was then Second Life's most popular third-party viewer in August 2010, eventually causing Linden Lab to react, then Jessica Lyon and others to break away and form a team of their own "From the ashes of Emerald." The details of the controversy can be read in this 2018 article. 

 

For it's first 15 anniversaries, there were announcements of parties. But while their viewer marked the occasion with pink lettering and a short message, there was no new announcement in their blog (https://www.firestormviewer.org/). Perhaps in a few days.

 

Happy anniversary Firestorm.

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

Scenes From The Firestorm Anniversary Party

 

  Saturday Sept 3 was the twelfth anniversary of Team Firestorm, or Team Phoenix as it was known back then. And they celebrated with a big party that had close to 150 people at peak times. Originally scheduled for two hours, it lasted at least three. And there were many gifts for those dropping by.

Read the full story in Events. 

Ten Years Ago: Linden Lab Puts More Rules on Third-Party Viewers

 
It was about ten years ago on Friday February 24 2012 that Linden Lab annoyed a number of fans of Phoenix (the predecessor to Firestorm) and other third-party viewers by announcing changes on their Third-Party Viewer Policy. Before the change, viewers were free to make innovations that allowed different feature from the Linden Viewer, such as Phoenix showing what viewer others were using by displaying the name over their avatar names. 

The reason the Lab gave for the change was to protect the residents' "users’ privacy and security." It was also stated elsewhere they thought the users of their viewer were being bullied by some of Phoenix's users, pressured to stop using the Linden Viewer and run Phoenix instead. While some residents thought the Lab was being reasonable, seeing the move as applying standardization, others thought the new rules were out of jealousy for Phoenix being much more popular than the Linden Viewer, and that the move might stiffle third-party viewer development. 

Despite the concerns, Phoenix and other third-party viewer teams went with the new regulations. On Tuesday Feb 28 2012, Phoenix's Jessica Lyon would appear in a public meeting to explain what was going on. 

While there was much complaining, life, or in this case virtual life, went on. But there would soon be other topics for the residents to discuss.

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Firestorm 10th Anniversary Party This Sunday

 

After being delayed for about a month, Team Firestorm, the volunteers behind the Firestorm Viewer, is ready to throw it's tenth anniversary bash. It's real anniversary was actually last month, September 3 2010 being when the team (known then as Team Phoenix) was formed. The event starts at Sunday October 18, Noon SL time, and will last for three hours to 3PM SL time. Each hour offers music from three big-name musicians.

We’ve lined up 3 BIG names to bring us live performances through our 3-hour party!

Savannah Rain opens up the party for us, 12–1 pm! ...

Maximillion Kleene rocks the second show from Canada, 1–2 pm. ...

Keeba Tammas and the Tiny Maniacs performs the finale show, 2–3 pm. ...

As with most of their anniversary events, Team Firestorm is offering presents to it's fans. One is a tiger from Wild Kajaera. The other, appropriately enough, is a pet phoenix made by Rezz Room.

Rezz Room is celebrating Firestorm’s anniversary by donating an incredible, animesh, fiery Phoenix companion pet. It can be worn or rezzed and can be set to a radius or to follow its owner.

The SURL of the location hasn't been officially announced yet, the team asking you check their blog an hour before the event. Though a search for Firestorm-owned places revealed a likely location high above their sims.

Once again, the party is on Sunday October 18, from Noon to 3PM SL time.

Bixyl Shuftan

Interview With Tonya Souther of Team Firestorm

It was a week ago Sunday that Team Firestorm celebrated it's anniversary. One member of the team whom was around since the start is Tonya Souther, whom is in charge of development of the Firestorm's Macintosh computer viewer. The Newser recently interviewed her about how she came to Second Life, the end of Team Emerald and the beginnings of Team Phoenix (now Team Firestorm) from her point of view, and some of the challenges the team has faced since.

Read the interview in People.

Phoenix Squadron

Among the first things a newcomer resident to Second Life learns is pressing the "Fly" button to get around faster. But what about truly flying like one can in real life? The Newser had a chance to meet one group of Second Life pilots: Phoenix Squadron. The group performs for charities, air shows with friends, or just simply flies for fun.

Read the story in People.

Team Firestorm to Celebrate Five Years

It's been five years since the events that lead up to the creation of Team Firestorm (originally known as Team Phoenix), which was formed from members of the team behind the Emerald Viewer following their breakup after a DOS attack on one of their critics. On their blog, the team announced there will be a celebration at 1PM September 3 tomorrow, asking people to check later for more details such as the location, which as of now is still a secret. What is known is that there will be live music from musician Seth Regan.

Team Firestorm's Fourth Anniversary and Interview with Jessica Lyon

This week, the people behind Second Life's most popular viewer celebrated the fourth anniversary of the founding of the team. From it's tumultuous beginnings, Team Firestorm quickly won the respect, and viewership of the Second Life public. And now it was time for the volunteers, and friends, to relax with a party and a couple gifts.

More in Events.

Team Firestorm Celebrates It's Third Anniversary

September 4 was the third anniversary of Team Firestorm, then called Team Phoenix. And to celebrate, the group held a little party at it's "Phoenix Firestorm Support" sim.

Finding the SURL on Daniel Voyager's webpage, I headed over. But arrived at a spot far away from where the party was on a platform over 2700 meters in the air. Getting there took a few minutes. When I arrived, none of the Firestorm staff were there, although Daniel himself was.

In front of the Firestorm Phoenix was a dance floor where a few were dancing. Nearby were a few gifts people could pick up. These were a wreath of flowers, a Firestorm logo necklace, and a "Firekitty" breedable cat. Next to them was a model of a birthday cake.

The original members of Team Firestorm were part of the team behind the first third-party viewer to gain popularity: the Emerald Viewer. Known as Modular Systems, they were very popular for a while, rivaling the official viewer in use. Then in August 2010 one of the team resigned, accusing teammates of abuses. This was followed days later by a Denial of Service attack on the website of one of Emerald's critics that was traced to computers using Emerald Viewers at the time. Linden Lab took Emerald down from it's list of approved viewers and gave it's team a list of conditions to reapply. But among the conditions was the resignation of a few key members, and one refused to do so. The team then split apart, Jessica Lyon leading the breakaway members. They would form a new team, and on Sept 4, 2010 announced the launch of the Phoenix Viewer. Days later, Emerald was no longer useable, and Phoenix was on Linden Lab's list of approved viewers. Two key members of Emerald's staff would be banned from Second Life, and a third disappearing. They were last heard of working on a minor virtual world platform known for a small adult grid, and almost nothing has been heard of them since.

Things settled down for Phoenix after it's story begining, and the viewer and it's team leader Jessica became quite popular. Phoenix soon surpassed the official viewers in popularity. Keeping up with technical developments, the team created a new viewer, Firestorm. They continued to update the older Phoenix for a while, but eventually Jessica decided it was becoming too difficult and it was time to move on. Despite that Phoenix is no longer supported, a number of loyal fans persist on using it. Firestorm persists as being more popular than the Linden viewers.

More pictures of the event can be seen on Daniel Voyager's Flickr.

Bixyl Shuftan

Team Firestorm Holds Public Meeting

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Saturday August 10 at Noon SL time, Jessica Lyon and others of Team Firestorm held a public meeting concerning developments with their viewer. Staff included, the meeting was attended by close to 80 residents. Jessica talked about the CHat User Interface or CHUI, and that putting it into the Firestorm Viewer was taking some work, "Linden Lab put a lot of stuff in" with code that conflicts some with Firestorm's own programing. Fixing it was proving to be something of a "nightmare" with "broken" codes.

Of Linden Lab's Project Sunshine, Jessica thought it was going smoother than she believed it would. She had earlier predicted that it would take three rollouts before the first part of it could get going, and the Lab had gotten it right on the first try. She told the audience Project Sunshine and it's server-side baking currently covered about 20% of the Grid.

Jessica and others in the staff, such as Tonya Souther, talked about other issues, such as the "chiclets," or mini pictures on the Linden and Firestorm viewers, Jessica commenting, "We've been trying to kill chiclets for ages." Whirly Fizzle stated in chat, "we have chiclets as optional for the next release." Of the next Firestorm update, Jessica promised it would be a major one.

For those who were more than a little critical of Team Firestorm's work, and it's discontinuing work on the old Phoenix Viewer, Jessica reminded that they were a group of volunteers working for free, and telling them what to do was a bit like "herding cats." This got some chuckles as Jessica'a avatar is a neck catgirl with ears and a tail, and teammate Tonya Souther a furry tigergirl. There were also reminders about filing JIRAs, "seriously, file a JIRA issue and explain as concisely as you can what the problem is and what you want to see changed and if we need more clarification, you'll be asked."

Someone also brought up the old Emerald Viewer, and there was a short explanation to newcomers that Jessica and others on Team Firestorm were once part of the team behind that old popular 3rd party viewer before some "drama" with Linden Lab, and they left to form Team Phoenix.

The Firestorm Viewer is the most popular among supported third party viewers. Except possibly for the old Phoenix Viewer which it developed but no longer supports, no other Second Life viewer is as popular.

The Phoenix blog is on http://www.firestormviewer.org/. Tonya Souther, who leads the Mac development team, has her own blog at: http://secondden.blogspot.com/.


Bixyl Shuftan

Firestorm Viewer Undergoes Emergency Update

By Bixyl Shuftan

Users of Firestorm are having to upgrade their viewers once again, at least those whom had just upgraded to the version before. Linden Lab informed Team Firestorm the viewer was causing them problems. So the team went to work on a new update in a hurry.

It was June 26 when Firestorm released version 4.4.1 of their viewer. Jessica Lyon told the users this was a mandatory upgrade due to it's Project Sunshine and its upcoming rolling out of server-side baking, or server-side appearance as it's being called now. Five days later, The Firestorm blog had some bad news.


According to Jessica, when the viewer was being beta-tested, it was made to "enable special data logging." This sent a sizable amount of information to Linden Lab's servers and user logs, "mainly avatar appearance debugging data and usage data."  Unfortunately, this feature wasn't turned off for when the viewer was released. The "usage" information was the bigger problem as the viewers were sending this information "every 30 seconds … instead of the usual 10 minutes. The result according to Linden Lab was their statistic servers were being overwhelmed. So Team Firestorm had to act fast.

Version 4.4.1 was removed from their downloads page right away. The team then went to work on a new version of the viewer with the feature for the extra data disabled. They stated it would be available on July 2 at latest. Later in the day, work on it was finished and it was made available as Version 4.4.2. Team Firestorm then began blocking the logins of Viewer 4.4.1s in service.

Those whom had yet to upgrade from 4.4.0 do not have to upgrade right away as their viewer wasn't blocked, at least not for a few days when Linden Lab's server side appearance goes into effect.  But it was recommended they make a "clean install," that is "clearing the settings from the hard drive, along with uninstalling the application and manually wiping the cache."

Jessica accepted responsibility for the error, "we screwed up, and because of our screw-up, thousands of you are going to need to upgrade yet again, only this time with little to no notice or choice whatsoever. We acknowledge this will be, at the least, very inconvenient to most of you and on behalf of myself and the entire Firestorm Team, we extend our deepest apologies."

"… we won't make this mistake again."

Various residents across the Grid also acted. Hearing about the emergency update, they spread the news, telling friends in-avatar as well as IMs, group chats, and group notices.

Jessica stated July 9 is when Linden Labs rolls out server side appearance. For those still using Phoenix, she urged them to upgrade to Firestorm, or use another Third-Party viewer that can handle this new way avatar data is processed. Otherwise for them, Second Life may become a very colorless place.

Source: Firestorm Blog

Bixyl Shuftan

Commentary: Doing the Lag-tastic

If there's one thing that bugs each resident almost constantly, it's the ever-present lag. Sometimes it seems worse than usual. Those of us with longer memories may wonder, "Is the lag really worse than usual, or is it just me?" So when a few others also complain, well, you figure you may be right.

But if person after person complains, saying they've had to stop using a new viewer for an older one, well, you may be pardoned for wondering if there's something rotten in Ahern.

So what's behind the lag behind these complains? Some I chat with blame the more recent updates to the viewer. And indeed the most recent update to the official Linden Lab viewer frequently causes things to freeze or even crash whenever I Instant-Message someone, or get an IM from someone. Others complain about their Firestorm viewers, going back to the old Phoenix, even if it's no longer supported by the team. One person compared it to going back to a worn and ragged but comfortable pair of old shoes when the new shoes kept pinching your feet.


For myself, Firestorm doesn't work on my computer, and except for the first release or two never has. The bugs I found in the official viewer meant going back to full time use of Cool VL, but the version I use is some months old, and at times such as a crowded sim can show its age. For some peculiar reason, their more recent Mac viewers won't work for me. Then a friend and I were talking about the Singularity Viewer. Mentioning I stopped using it when it stopped updating their Mac client, she told me they had started doing so again and the most recent update was just a few weeks ago. So I gave it a try, and it worked!

Well, not perfectly. Things still take a while to load. But it did put a stop the the occasional "invisible jacket" Cool VL sometimes game me. Then again, maybe the lag seeming so bad is just my imagination.

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Video: "Grease Coakes at the Heart of Gold"

While DJing at the Heart of Gold, Grease made this video of the music event, getting a good view of the space phoenix club.

The Heart of Gold Club

Grease Coakes has been a bit busy these days. Besides at the Green Meadows club, he's also been spinning the tunes at a place called the "Heart of Gold." So just what is this club and the people behind it? Grease has a few things to say about it.

Read Grease's article in Extra.

Phoenix Viewer Support to End Dec 31st. (Full Article)

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Monday Dec 17th, Jessica Lyon announced on the Phoenix-Firestorm blog that support for the Phoenix Viewer would soon come to a close. There had been a meeting Saturday the 15th in which the details were discussed. The news about the viewer support ending was first announced there. The reason: Linden Lab's plans for improving Grid performance in what they call "Project Shinning," which involves what the Second Life Wiki calls "Server side 'texture baking.'" For newer viewers the result will be less lag, at least according to Linden Lab. But for Viewer-1 based viewers, the result is what Oz Linden was quoted as saying "a world of gray, cloudy avatars."


"The clock is now ticking,"  Tonya Souther, the leader of Phoenix-Firestorm's Mac viewer development team, wrote in her blog, "We asked for at least two months' ntice, and yesterday we got that." She stated Linden Lab would like to bring the code active in February, but would work with Team Phoenix-Firestorm and other third-party viewer teams to make sure all have it and work it in before it finally arrives, "you will have to upgrade your viewer sometime in February or early March. No exceptions."

Oz Linden had made his intentions known months earlier in July, which Tonya commented put Viewer-1 viewers on "borrowed time … The loan is about to come due."

Jessica Lyon on the Phoenix-Firestorm website stated emphatically they were not trying to tell Phoenix users what to use, nor were they or Linden Lab blocking or actively stopping the Phoenix Viewer. But there were changes coming, and they had to change along with them. "I realize this decision will not be popular among our Phoenix users, and I apologize for that," but she asked users to read the facts, or watch the Office Hour video she made. before complaining.

In the speech she made, Jessica reminded Team Phoenix-Firestorm were volunteers, working without pay, whom liked helping people, being appreciated for it, and coding new features. They had created Phoenix more than two years ago in order for Second Life residents to keep using the features of the defunct Emerald viewer. But over time, it was becoming clear updating it with the Viewer 2 features was becoming increasingly difficult. So they created the Firestorm Viewer based on Viewer 2 technology. Continuing to work with the Phoenix Viewer was just simply becoming too difficult. "Can we keep it alive? Yes we can, but it would be a heck of a lot more work than it's worth." If someone wanted to "fork" the Viewer and develop it further themselves, they were free to do so. Though they knew of only "one or two copybot viewer developers" who were doing so.

Support for the Phoenix Viewer would officially cease on December 31, but they were creating a new "peer to peer support group" for those who still insist on using the viewer: "Phoenix Viewer Self Help." "It will largely be a group of Phoenix users helping Phoenix Viewers."

Tonya's comments to those whose computers couldn't use Firestorm or other Viewer 2 or Viewer 3 viewers: It was time to either upgrade their computers, or buy new machines, "Sorry, folks, but you will have to spend some money. There's no way around it."

Responses to both Jessica's announcement and Tonya's blog entry were mostly civil, even positive. Some responders called the move to halt Phoenix development "long overdue," happy to hear the team was free to concentrate solely on Firestorm.  Some, mostly polite, stated they would be sticking with Phoenix for now saying Firestorm didn't work on their computers as well. A couple readers stated that they would be preparing to leave the Grid, one saying, "Thanks everyone on the Phoenix team, the best viewer I've ever used in my time in SL. I'm really grateful and appreciate all the hard (no-pay) work you have done over the years. … But everything has an end, and this will be mine."

To watch the Office Hour video, Click Here.

Inara Pey's article on Project Shinning and "bake fail" Here.

For Daniel Voyager's article: Click Here. 

Sources: Phoenix-Firestorm Blog,  The Tigress Second Den

Bixyl Shuftan

Phoenix Viewer Support to End Dec 31st

Jessica Lyon announced on the Phoenix-Firestorm blog that support for the Phoenix Viewer would come to a close at the end of the year.

More on the story later. For now, check the Phoenix-Firestorm blog Here.

Pathfinding and Problems

Any1 Gynoid recently pointed out the latest entry on the Phoenix blog by Jessica Lyon. She explained that Pathfinding, the new tools for smarter non-player characters in Second Life, were going to be rolled out on August 7 which "may have an impact on the performance of your regions, as well as introduce some new bugs." Pathfinding would be running on the sims as soon as they were updated.

Jessica wrote that the Lindens assured her that the impact on the sims would be small. But Region owners and mangers could disable it (or re-enable) if they wanted. Or they could optimize it, which could be done by downloading the official Beta Viewer from Linden Lab. Unfortunetly, "along with Pathfinding come changes to the Havok Physics engine, which have introduced some new bugs … including issues with some vehicles, physics, phantom, and sculpts." She had sent a list of questions to the Lab, and got a few answers in response.

Jessica's entry got a number of comments, mostly complaints about Linden Lab. In the official blog, a thread on the subject was started, which was more balanced. One woman there felt the update had gone so smoothly, Jessica hadn't the need to post about it. Others felt there were a few complications.

Sources: Phoenix Blog, Linden Blog

Phoenix Development May Stop Soon

To Phoenix fans, Tonya Southern of the Firestorm/Phoenix team has some less than pleasant news, "Viewer 1 is officially on borrowed time." In the latest post on her blog, she talked about a recent third-party viewer meeting with Oz Linden about some upcoming changes with Second Life. Specifically, Project Shinning. While it should stop "bake fail" in newer viewers, "it is incompatible with current viewers. … The result of the server-sized bake is that viewers that don't handle it will simply see gray avatars, with no way to fix them."

It was Tonya's opinion that the old Linden Lab Viewer 1, when this happens, will no longer be useable, along with third-party viewers not actively maintained. Aside from Singularity and possibly Cool VL, she didn't expect any other third party viewers based on Viewer 1 technology to continue, "Nobody else is developing a V1 Viewer any more."

And the Phoenix Viewer, which continues to be the most popular of the third-party viewers? Team Phoenix has yet to make a decision, but in Tonya's opinion, "it's time to say that we are not going to put any more effort into Phoenix."

"As far as I'm concerned, it's time to put Phoenix to rest. The developers don't like working in the codebase, as in many ways it's an unmaintainable tissue of hacks, the support team barely remembers how to run it, and Firestorm now provides essentially all of the function Phoenix has, and much more besides."

Tonya recognized this would be an unpopular change, especially those who won't or can't run Viewer 2 and 3 Viewers, but "there comes a point when making an old program run in a new environment simply isn't feasible." Her advice, those who vowed not to run Viewer 2 better change their mind or make plans to depart Second Life. Same thing with those with older computers, "Me? I'll be happily running Firestorm 5."

Tonya's post got a mixed reaction. While some agreed, others did not. It was similar with the article New World Notes did, people saying there was no way Team Phoenix would give up on the most popular Second Life Viewer.

If the Phoenix Viewer is becoming harder and harder for its team to work with, it may not matter much to them if they stop the updates. From the very beginning, they've been a volunteer project. Success or failure, they don't make any money, only prestige.

Fortunately for Viewer 2 haters, or those whom have no personal problems with it but their computers can't run it, Singularity and Cool VL are still out there, though Singularity hasn't had a Mac update recently. And what if down the road all V1-based Viewers stop working? For some, it'll be time to get out the credit card (though Mac lovers will feel a bigger bite on the wallet). Though it isn't hard to imagine some die-hard V2 haters, and sadly a few on older machines with limited budgets (or whom get sold a newer machine that performs worse), whom say farewell to Second Life. It should be interesting to see how many head to Opensim worlds.

Sources: The Tigress's Second Den, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Phishing Scams Target Phoenix & Firestorm

The development team at Phoenix/Firestorm are warning residents who use their viewers about a phishing scam that is targeting them.

The scammers claim that the people at Phoenix are paying Lindens to residents who take a survey. There is a link where the residents are led to a fake (but very realistic looking) login page. When the residents log in, their account name and passwords are taken. The scammers can then log in and steal the resident’s identity, Lindens and inventory. The scammers have even used the resident’s contact/friends list to send out phishing notes. This practice leads people to believe they are getting safe links since the information is coming from a friend.

Jessica Lyon of Phoenix/Firestorm stated that they are not paying Lindens for any type of survey. They are warning residents to be very careful about logging into fake sites. If residents believe they have been a target, they should immediately go to Secondlife.com to change their password.

For more information go to the Phoenix/Firestorm support site at http://www.phoenixviewer.com/. The site has detailed information on what URL to look for whenever you are asked to log into your account.

Information for this article was taken from http://www.phoenixviewer.com/.

Grey Lupindo

Editor's Note: Treminari Huet also wrote on the subject: http://treminarisecondlife.blogspot.com/2012/03/scammers.html