Phoenix Team releases Firestorm Beta 2

In an ongoing effort to stay ahead of the planned Linden Lab shutdown of all V1 style viewers (including Phoenix) later this summer, The Phoenix Viewer Development Team this week released Firestorm Beta 2, V2.5.2.16922.

As always, the Phoenix Team is adding new features to a V2 style viewer to make it more user friendly and configurable.  Beta 2 comes with new features such as:

- Lots of Skin fixes and improvements

- V1 style group profile windows

- Copy outfit your wearing to text option in the worn tab on appearance panel. From gear menu, copy to clipboard.

- Double click teleport from Mini Map

- Save zoom level for Mini Map

- Inspect floater improvements

- Bridge creation improvements and fixes

- Seconds in time stamps for chat logs

- Griefer protection from Animation grabbers Prefs> Firestorm> Protection tab

- Quick Preferences panel (located on bottom bar)

- Content creation tools (Build tools)

1. added most of the build options from phoenix
2. Clickable group name on build floater
3. Object highlight toggle on build floater
4. Pivot point controls
5. Default size and material controls
6. Link number of build floater (with same bugs as Phoenix)
7. Build options pref panel Prefs> Firestorm> Build
8. Copy/paste obj pos, size, rot, and prams; as well as textures
9. Alt, control and shift keys modify increment on spinners (Alt: x10. Control: x1/10. Shift: x1/100)
10. Higher precision on pos, size and rotation
11. Phoenix's additional path profiles and transforms types
12. Added button for copy keys (UUID) to clipboard
13. Require confirm before setting object for sale (prevents sale sniping)
14. Expand/Collapse button
15. Always show last owner

- corrected layout for when the network statusbar is showing, added preference to show

- changed the land name to be clickable, instead of having to click the i icon

- backed out new GPU table so some linux distros can run the viewer

- added restore to last position in inventory right click menu

- contact tab in conversations is now closable

- mute gestures doesn't mute non avatar sounds or your own gesture sounds

- reverted max HTTP requests to 8 instead of 16

- world map search results are now alphabetical

- added control to adjust avatar z height in quick pref

- option of adding seconds to time in chat and logs

- increased hardware class level for some nvidia GPUs

- Added phantom on/off message.

- language translations and bug fixes

- New windlight sky presets

- Loads of crash fixes (including the new common animation crasher).

With the LL roleout of Mesh style prims, V1 programs will no longer function, and any content built with Mesh will appear as simple triangles, not the object created.  Overall this will enhance the SL experience, hopefully reducing lag and improving building abilities.  But anyone using a V1 viewer will soon be forced to migrate to either Linden Lab's Viewer 2, or preferably Firestorm.

Having used Firestorm Beta 1 since it's early release, I found the learning curve difficult at first, but now I can see no other way to operate in SL.  Beta 2 promises to improve the user experience even more.

Congratulations once again to Jessica Lyon and her Phoenix/Firestorm team of volunteers, who do this simply to help the SL resident enjoy their time in Second Life.

Firestorm Beta 2 can be downloaded at the Phoenix Viewer website.  The Wiki on enhancements and bug fixes can be viewed here.  Jira submissions can be viewed here.