While it has been called Viewer 2009 once or twice, almost every Linden Lab staffer who mentions it calls it Second Life 2. Once on the drawing-board as a major overhaul of Second Life both at the server and at the viewer (client), the idea of a huge developmental jump was abandoned some years ago, and all of the features slated for Second Life 2 were added to Second Life 1, incrementally.

Well, except for the last item on the list, the user-interface. Essentially Second Life seems to now everything SL2 was originally planned to be, sans the new interface.

Continue reading Looking forward to Second Life 2.0

Looking forward to Second Life 2.0 originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Soft Linden said today that Windlight, which has been confined to Second Life's First Look preview viewers until now, is now on track to release and will appear in the first 1.19.1 release candidate.

No timeframe has been provided, but it appears we can expect the 1.19.0(RC4) release candidate to become the official viewer any time now and the first 1.19.1 release candidate viewer to be in front of users around the same time.

That puts Windlight's improved rendering pipeline only a few weeks away (approximately) from winding up in the mainline official viewer. Oh, there's some pretty eye-candy there too as a nice side-effect.

Second Life Windlight headed for release originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dazzle (the Linden Lab project for updating the appearance of the Second Life viewer, and not the fashion brand) has made it into a separate First Look preview viewer, rather than being a manual download and install.

Linden Lab's Dazzle project serves two purposes; one being a graphical overhaul of the Second Life user-interface, and the other being to further develop the interfaces that allow the user-interface to be reworked, reskinned and customized.

Continue reading New Second Life Dazzle release: 1.19.0(80267)

New Second Life Dazzle release: 1.19.0(80267) originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated for the second time this week. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

More details and a list of fixes and changes after the fold. Not too many Windlight-specific changes in this release. The largest change involves building this against the 1.19.0(RC2) code-base and inheriting the bug-fixes from there. Interestingly, Linden Lab announces this to be version 80042, whereas the actual download is 80044. Additionally, the chat font now seems to be in bold.

Continue reading New Second Life Windlight release: 1.19.0(80044)

New Second Life Windlight release: 1.19.0(80044) originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with a number of bug-fixes wrapped up in a tasty new First Look viewer. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

More details and a list of fixes and changes after the fold. Mac Users are urged to update to 10.5.2 - twice, apparently to get the proper drivers installed and running. Mostly the fixes this release are somewhat pedestrian, but it is good to see them all the same, despite the fact that the Linden Lab blog post didn't list all the changes.

Continue reading New Second Life Windlight release: 1.19.0(79674)

New Second Life Windlight release: 1.19.0(79674) originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with a number of bug-fixes wrapped up in a tasty new First Look viewer. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

More details and a list of fixes and changes after the fold. This is the first Windlight build released on the 1.19.0 base code, which will please a lot of people to see. A lot of ATI problems sorted out, but only with the latest Catalyst drivers (8.1-57717, we presume), also some Mac performance and general lighting improvements.

Continue reading New Second Life Windlight release: 1.19.0(79185)

New Second Life Windlight release: 1.19.0(79185) originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 06 Feb 2008 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with a number of bug-fixes wrapped up in a tasty new First Look viewer. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

More details and a list of fixes and changes after the fold. Major highlights include a bundle of fixes for some Mac bugs/crashes, which appear to have a flow-on effect of also producing improved frame-rates for other systems. There are still a couple of major outstanding issues for MacBook Pro users that are in Apple's court right now, but fixes appear to be on the way for those.

Continue reading New Second Life Windlight release - 1.18.6.77495

New Second Life Windlight release - 1.18.6.77495 originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with a number of bug-fixes wrapped up in a tasty new First Look viewer. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

More details and a list of fixes and changes after the fold. Major highlights include fixes for some Mac bugs/crashes, fix for the big black bands/rings in the sky, and rendering fixes for water, tree-lighting, and distant terrain.

Continue reading New Second Life Windlight release - 1.18.6.76886

New Second Life Windlight release - 1.18.6.76886 originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In response to the security issue with the German language viewer, Linden Lab yanked both Second Life viewers today (although they didn't actually say why - Jacek Antonelli has her own take on how she feels the situation should have been handled).

Both Second Life viewers are now available for download and login again with fresh updates - updates you'd be well-advised to obtain, if you use the German language version.

Continue reading Windlight and release-candidate viewers updated and available

Windlight and release-candidate viewers updated and available originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The new HTML based login system starting from version 1.18.6 used in current First Look and Windlight Second Life (beta) viewers has an error in the German translation file which risks exposing login credentials of any user who uses these viewers with the German Language enabled.

The file /skins/xui/de/panel_login.xml (below the Second Life installation directory) which sets the information about the login form to be displayed (and thus to have your login information sent to does not access Second Life or Linden Lab webservers).

Continue reading German Second Life users at risk [UPDATED]

German Second Life users at risk [UPDATED] originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 29 Dec 2007 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with a number of bug-fixes wrapped up in a tasty new First Look viewer. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

More details and a list of fixes and changes after the fold. Major highlights include fixes for ambient lighting and avatar illumination - essentially, avatars under Windlight don't suck anymore. There's an interesting extra issue has popped up with this release for many users, however.

Continue reading New Second Life Windlight release - 1.18.6.76116

New Second Life Windlight release - 1.18.6.76116 originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

At approximately 8:55AM all login services for the 1.18.6 series of Second Life viewers (release candidate and first look) failed for approximately 40 minutes. There are no signs of the disruption being specifically load-related, and regular release viewers were able to log in normally (if a little slowly) during the affected period.

Even though the problem has just been resolved, there is no word from Linden Lab acknowledging the outage or giving any insight into the matter.

Second Life login services failure originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with a number of bug-fixes wrapped up in a tasty new First Look viewer. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

More details and a list of fixes and changes after the fold. Major highlights include some fixes for nVidia and ATI under Windows Vista, fixes for tree lighting and vanishing geometry, and an otherwise unmentioned merge with the new authentication/login system in the 1.18.6 code-branch.

Continue reading New Second Life Windlight release - 1.18.6.75762

New Second Life Windlight release - 1.18.6.75762 originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with a number of bug-fixes wrapped up in a tasty new First Look viewer. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

More details and a list of fixes and changes after the fold. The one that you'll probably most enjoy are fixes to shiny surfaces.

Continue reading New Windlight preview released for Second Life [updated]

New Windlight preview released for Second Life [updated] originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with a number of bug-fixes wrapped up in a tasty new First Look viewer. What the heck is Windlight all about? Check out our feature on it here.

The First Look browser is a beta-test browser that runs against the main (Agni) grid. If it eats your inventory, your files and your dog, that's at your own risk. The viewer will available from the First Look downloads page eventually, but right now the only way to get this new version is via the annoyingly slow built in auto-updater, as you log in - if a viewer download takes you 1-2 minutes with a download manager, the auto-updater will take you at least 15 minutes.

Continue reading Second Life Windlight update pushed out

Second Life Windlight update pushed out originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When the old Windlight First Look viewer for Second Life was withdrawn there were assorted howls. Then, after it recently returned in a fresh First Look viewer, the cheers outweighed the grumbling of "Oh great, features instead of bugfixes" despite the fact that there's been a significant shortage of new features compared to bugfixes in the last year and a half.

When an updated release-candidate viewer that contained a slew of bugfixes for some irritating problems, a lot of folks just plain didn't want to download it, preferring Windlight to bugfixes. So, what is it with Windlight?

Gallery: Windlight

Continue reading Windlight: what all the fuss is about

Windlight: what all the fuss is about originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The First Look release of the Second Life Windlight project has been updated with fresh code and a slew of bug-fixes to the new rendering pipeline. Much of the fixes in this release revolve around the installer, and level-of-detail issues.

The First Look browser is a beta-test browser that runs against the main (Agni) grid. If it eats your inventory, your files and your dog, that's at your own risk. The viewer is available from the First Look downloads page as usual, and we recommend the use of a download manager to grab it faster - without one, you're in for a bit of a wait.

We're still getting reports that this version also crashes on startup for a number of users.

Windlight update released originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.