Nvidia Card Graphics Issues

When it comes to graphics cards, NVIDIA is one of two brands Linden Lab recommends your computer uses. But lately, it seems the latest driver programing is causing glitches and problems.

The Firestorm Wiki states a bug "appeared with Nvidia driver 515 and 516," with some also saying the issue is on driver 512.95, causing lines and/or flashing objects to appear on the screen, "and occurs when Advanced Lighting Model is enabled. ... Symptoms include horizontal lines on the screen, objects repeatedly flashing visible/non-visible, shadow issues on objects & avatars, and a wood-grain effect on some objects or avatars."

The solution, at least until the bug is fixed, is to "roll back the driver or use the Nvidia Studio Drivers instead." Or one can turn off Advanced Lighting.

This is not the only issue. The wiki also reported recent updates on Nvidia, "including driver version 381.65," may stop Firestorm from starting up, "The crash is reported to occur on the “Detecting Hardware' step."

Another issue is with 378.49 Nvidia drivers is there may be a blue tint on 64-bit viewers when Advanced Lighting is turned off.

Team Firestorm filed about the issue with Nvidia (here).

To read more about the issue, check out the page on Firestorm's Wiki, or this article on Modem World.

Image from Inara Pey

Bixyl Shuftan
 

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
 

Lab's Grid Tinkering May Affect Moderating Larger Groups

Jasmine Dawn Shuftan got the following from the Builders Brewery.

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Beginning tomorrow, Linden Labs will be rolling out some changes across the grid in the code for groups that will affect ALL viewers being used in SL right now - including the SL viewers. The rollout should be completed by Friday

What it means is that you will be unable to access the member lists in any group with 10,000 or more in the group.

You will still be able to get group chat. You will be able to send group notices and invite people to join the group if your group role allows it.

You will be unable to assign a role and you will be unable to eject anyone from the group since you will not have access to that particular individual's name. If you are a moderator in the group, you will be unable to exercise any mod abilities such as taking away chat privileges for the same reason..

The SL viewer should be updated soon. Firestorm will be updated but the timeline is unsure at this point (hopefully this weekend but that's not a sure thing yet).

We have no information about any of the other viewers at this time.

Addition:  Daniel Voyager reported the reason for the code changes, "The new code changes will fix groups using HTTP which makes it more reliable for loading and editing for 10k+ members in SL groups. This is a switch-over from the old UDP which is not that great for handling large groups with 10k+ members. Its slow loading and harder to edit things with additional issues within groups."