EOTB: Server Side Apperance Appears This Week, Maybe Today

In the Linden Blog this week, it was announced Project Shunshine, also known as Server-Side Baking, would be rolled out onto the Grid.

This week, the server component of Project Sunshine will go live across the entire grid! This means that all the improvements we discussed in our previous post will be available to everyone in Second Life.

It’s important to remember that you need to be using an up-to-date Viewer to enjoy these improvements. If you’re still using an outdated Viewer, the server-side changes rolling out now will cause you to see some avatars as broken or incomplete. As of this week, all avatars will be using the new system and will appear broken to you if you don't update. 

Besides the official viewers, there are several third-party viewers that have been updated to handle server-side baking, such as Firestorm, Singularity, and Cool VL. For those who use a viewer not updated to handle the new way textures are loaded, in the words of Firestorm's Tonya Souther it's the "Last Call." As she sees it, if one's computer can't handle the newer viewers, it's time to get a new machine or bid Second Life goodbye for a while.

According to someone in a group chat I was in last night, Server-Side could come early as today:

A Reminder for Everyone...    SSA -Day Tomorrow.. ServerSide Appearence  Arrives Tomorrow! 
Tomorrow LL rolls out Server Side Appearance.  Anyone using an outdated viewer will have problems seeing other avatars at Arinultra  and anywhere else in Second Life.  All those WITH current SSA enabled viewers should notice a huge improvement.  This will pretty much put an end to all those endless gray, blurry, or cloudy "wardrobe malfunctions."   Up-to-date Viewers are Required such as Firestorm, Singularity or others, including the basic LL platform.

So the day some of us have been anticipating, or dreading, has finally arrived.

Sources: Linden Blog, The Tigress' Den

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