heidiperry's dashboard

Hi Chris, thanks for the kind words and the thoughtful ideas. Right now the Vivaty logo in the lower-right-hand side of the HUD will flash if chat activity is going on and your chat window is not open. Did you not see that happening? We are always thinking about ways to improve chat - 1 idea was to move to chat bubbles over the avatars' heads. Thoughts on that?

also, check out our newest features that launched yesterday - avatar skirts and a new "launchpad". more at blog.vivaty.com

thanks donza and buzz, good ones. we have a fishtank gift that you can make small or big. we agree we need something cuter with more emotional attachment like goldfish. dogs- good idea to go outside or take it w/ you. any other thoughts on dogs overall b/c we are in planning now on those. doors/ways to get around are also on the list. thx!

thanks, simon,

I’m not sure if the latest version of IE 8 that you have but our developers said there is a "run as Ie 7" button and we worked OK when we click that button in IE8. (do you have that button?)

Our devs can get into 17829 without problems with FF3 so does not seem to be content-related.

we are launching a new version of the player monday so perhaps that will solve the problem. If you want to further diagnose before Monday, please send over your dxdiag to help@vivaty.com.

thanks for your patience.

i will keep you guys posted, for sure. follow us on twitter to stay up to date! twitter.com/vivaty – heidiperry, on September 12, 2008 17:39

Viveka and Consiliera, thanks for the insights. Your anecdote about inviting friends to a party is well put. We made the decision to launch in beta as soon as we could – meaning we launched before key features like Mac support were ready. Our alternative was to wait months and months to launch when we were closer to “perfection”- but in the meantime, the virtual world space is changing rapidly and we wanted to be part of that movement.

What we gained by launching early-- is consumer feedback on the core experience and it's been invaluable. Unlike most web companies, we really meant “beta” to mean “beta”... we probably won’t lift that label until we’re on more platforms and have a lot more features.

Your thoughts have already been passed around and debated again and again inside our walls so seeing these sentiments again just makes us itch. We hope that people don’t judge any of these web-based virtual worlds on their first out-the-door experience. No matter how big or small, no one has truly figured this out in a web browser yet.

Think about how long it took photo sharing, video sharing or browser experiences to evolve. It was 5+ years between Netscape’s arrival and Firefox. If you are looking to make a quick decision on the winner, we hope we can convince you to hang in there with us (and other companies) a bit longer.

Getting a Mac port in 3D virtual worlds that have several layers- platform, player, and application – is not easy. One thing we have done is made a commitment to releasing features every 2 weeks. This will benefit Mac users once we have a port out the door. We hope we’re not talking 1 year from now, believe us!

Also, your player version should be 0.8.6.878

can you check what version you have by clicking into Control Panel, Programs and Features and telling me the number that is listed after Vivaty Player?

Hi Simon,

Thanks for this. Did you try on IE7? we are v. curious to see how this works for you because it will help us eliminate a few things. Also, if you are willing to help us diagnose this, maybe you can try firefox 3 with your non-vivaty add-on extensions disabled?

If firefox 3 continues to fail, a full dxdiag will help us to debug.

Also -
Does this happen as soon as you enter a scene, not after being in there and addding objects for a while? Do you ever visit more than 1 scene before it crashes? What is your host ID? (this is the number that appears at the top of the page after host= in the URL string on Facebook). So we can look up what's going on on the back-end.

If easier, please contact me at help@vivaty.com to continue this conversation and i can post back the resolution once we find one.

thanks!

hi lara, yes, we are not quite to IE8! it sounds like you now have some conflicting technology going on. i would uninstall everything related to Vivaty Player and hit Vivaty Scenes again with either IE or Firefox. All your content is saved server-side so you won't lose your scene or settings inside vivaty scenes. hope this works! thanks for your patience...

hi mutatron, yes, right now Vivaty works on Windows XP/Vista and IE 6, 7 and Firefox 3. We are also considering a Mac port sometime in the future, though i can't say exactly when.

hi simonhk, thanks for letting us know. What OS are you on? Windows XP or Vista? Can you try un-installing Vivaty Player and then going into Facebook again? Does the problem still occur? thanks

thanks, Earl. We're filing a bug on this. appreciate the find.

good idea, we'll add those to the list!

hi donza, yes, we agree. in a couple of weeks we'll have bookmark-able urls that go straight to the social scenes page in facebook. we're also launching something soon that gives you more guidance/context as to where you go -so it doesn't assume you want a personal scene first. thanks for the idea, we agree!

hi - to anyone following this thread, we just packaged some new bits with our installer so this may solve these issues. We also just launched Firefox 3 support today so if you're a FF lover, let us know if you have any issues. thanks!

hi everyone- for those following this thread, we launched Firefox 3 support today... please check it out and let us know if you have any issues. thanks!

hi whystler- i am posting this on behalf of Keith V, one of our co-founders... Also, as a side note, we launched Firefox 3 support today so let me know if that helps.

(from Keith V)
That is very surprising. I have never seen that behavior before.
Can you please send a screen shot of the window that shows the error? (help@vivaty.com)

As a workaround, you can do a File / Export X3d, then find the x3d file on your drive, and drag and drop it into an open Internet Explorer window.

Also, you might try uninstalling, then reinstalling both Vivaty Player and Vivaty Studio.

Please send the screen shot, as I would like to understand the problem.

Thanks!

Keith Victor

hi guys, would you mind trying again (with a fresh install?) we just pushed some new bits of our installer which should (key word is "should") solve this. we also now offer Firefox 3 support if that interests you.