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.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC4 is the fifth release candidate in the 1.23 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). It's looking increasingly like the objective is to release before the Second Life sixth anniversary (23 June).

Barely any changes this time around, so either Linden Lab isn't really aware of any showstoppers or doesn't perceive them as such. The context menus have had one small reversion, there are updates to the Mac crash reporter, and a fix relating to object updates that affected poseball visibility.

Continue reading Second Life 1.23 (RC4) now available

Second Life 1.23 (RC4) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC3 is the fourth release candidate in the 1.23 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). The 1.23 series is being fast-tracked, as it is scheduled to go live by the end of June.

We're expecting this one or the next one to be the last before official release -- because frankly, there's not a lot of time-left before the Lab's self-imposed deadline. Probably the biggest reason you'd want to try this one out, is that it fixes a bug introduced in an earlier official viewer where cached information was discarded too aggressively, leading to things that should have been cached having to be redownloaded.

Oh, there's a bunch of good bug-fixes besides that, but that's really the one you want. Read on for the rest.

Continue reading Second Life 1.23 (RC3) now available

Second Life 1.23 (RC3) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The 1.23 Second Life viewer with the necessary support for Adult content is still being rushed to meet a June deadline, the exact reason for which seems a little unclear. There's some outstanding issues with the viewer release-candidates, but it seems fairly low on actual showstoppers and looks likely to make an official release in the roughly one fortnight remaining.

Definitions for the content ratings have been finalized, though they show little noticeable deviation from Linden Lab's originally proposed drafts. It appears that all the changes have been simple explanatory wording changes. The PG rating holds a couple of surprises, though.

Continue reading Second Life adult content updates: Viewers, namechanges, grannies and grade-schoolers

Second Life adult content updates: Viewers, namechanges, grannies and grade-schoolers originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC2 is the third release candidate in the 1.23 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). The 1.23 series is being fast-tracked, as it is scheduled to go live by the end of June.

This release features six crash-fixes, problems with window-sizing, and issues with trees. Restore-to-last-position has been disabled, to prevent potential inventory-loss. There are some more pie-menu changes, but some of the changes in the previous candidates have been reverted.

Continue reading Second Life 1.23 (RC2) now available

Second Life 1.23 (RC2) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 21 May 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC1 is the second release candidate in the 1.23 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). The 1.23 series is being fast-tracked, as it is scheduled to go live by the end of June.

The last RC's propensity to false-trigger at least one anti-virus program has been sorted out, along with several fixed to appearance updates (though if you try a strip-tease, you'll likely crash the viewer), along with a bunch of bug-fixes that include some crashes and a failure to startup.

Continue reading Second Life 1.23 (RC1) now available

Second Life 1.23 (RC1) now available originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 08 May 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC0 is the start of a new series of release candidates, apparently scheduled to complete by the end of June.

This release features a number of changes, including the promised Shadow code (which is more than a little experimental), and the new support features for Adult content. While it has only been out for a day, there's quite a bit of controversy over a reordering of texture layers on the avatar head, which reportedly breaks a lot of skin content and makes avatar faces that use them appear 'clownish'.

Certain European locale settings may cause this release to crash on startup, and the viewer itself may be unusually slow to start up.

Continue reading Second Life 1.23 (RC0) now available [updated]

Second Life 1.23 (RC0) now available [updated] originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 01 May 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence Project has a release new candidate viewer for Second Life available. Imprudence 1.1 RC2 (unlike Linden Lab, the Imprudence Project counts starting from one, not from zero) features a number of improvements and fixes over RC1.

This release candidate has a new storage allocator for Windows which improves frame-rates, reduces memory-usage and is all-around more efficient. Several crash-bugs have been fixed, and support has been improved for Linux systems that use the PulseAudio sound server. A few UI tweaks and inconveniences have also been tidied up. Unfortunately there is still no version for the Mac as the Imprudence Project is starving for a Mac developer to handle that side of the code. Full release notes are after the jump.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.1.0 RC2 available

Imprudence 1.1.0 RC2 available originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC10 is the eleventh release candidate in the unexpectedly elongated 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). It seems like the 1.22 series has been going on for ages, doesn't it? RC0 was in November.

Fixes this time around fix saving textures that were embedded in notecards to disk, and some problems relating to voice crashing the viewer or getting generally hung. There's also another minor fix to Japanese text localization and a voice behavioral change. There still seem to be some lingering issues with raycasting.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC10) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC10) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

And around we go again. Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC9 is the tenth release candidate in the unexpectedly elongated 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). RC5 was supposed to have been the last release-candidate in this series, but unfortunately a number of serious issues prompted the release of RC6, and now we have some major changes, which by all rights should mean quite a few more release-candidates before becoming an official release.

If you got your hands on RC8, you may have noticed problems with voice, crashing, more raycasting issues and problems with sculpties loading. Well, the good news is that three out of four of those seem to be fixed. Voice seems to have quite a road to apotheosis in 1.22.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC9) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC9) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC8 is the ninth release candidate in the unexpectedly elongated 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). RC5 was supposed to have been the last release-candidate in this series, but unfortunately a number of serious issues prompted the release of RC6, and now we have some major changes, which by all rights should mean quite a few more release-candidates before becoming an official release.

OpenAL and gstreamer support are the big surprises. We're wondering if Quicktime has been given the flick entirely. This mirrors the work being done with the Imprudence Release Candidate, though the Imprudence Project does not appear to have the same difficulties with sound under Linux. That's a huge change for a release-candidate, especially so late in the series, and we'd be surprised if they released a new official viewer anytime soon on that basis alone.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC8) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC8) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence Project has a release new candidate viewer for Second Life available. Imprudence 1.1 RC1 (unlike Linden Lab, the Imprudence Project counts starting from one, not from zero) features a number of substantial improvements over 1.0, including openAL and Gstreamer support for general sound, as well as audio and video streaming.

This release candidate also features updates to the user-interface, arithmetic expressions in the build floater's texture and object tabs, quick-filtering for the inventory and more. Unfortunately there is no version for the Mac as the Imprudence Project is starving for a Mac developer to handle that side of the code. Due to licensing issues, Imprudence cannot ship with voice components, but you can add them yourself very easily. Full release notes are after the jump.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.1.0 RC1 available

Imprudence 1.1.0 RC1 available originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC7 is the eighth release candidate in the unexpectedly elongated 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). RC5 was supposed to have been the last release candidate in this series, but unfortunately a number of serious issues prompted the release of RC6, and now RC7.

Someone over at the Lab is obviously doing something right. It isn't all that long ago that the bugs that were fixed in this release-candidate either would not have been found or would have been passed over on the way to release. There aren't many of them, but particularly the crash in the texture decoder would have made some people sad.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC7) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC7) now available originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC6 is the seventh release candidate in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). RC5 was supposed to have been the last release candidate in this series, but unfortunately a number of serious issues cropped up.

There are six crash fixes, texture performance was severely degraded, and there were a number of 'raycasting' problems (raycasting maps the position of your mouse pointer to objects in the virtual environment. Problems with this process cause the system to think you're clicking somewhere other than where you actually are). Additional code is included to track driver-based crashes, and there's the usual localization fixes. Full release notes for this version are after the jump.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC6) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC6) now available originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC5 is the sixth release in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). Barring any showstoppers, this appears to be the last version in the series before the release of 1.22 as the official Second Life viewer.

This edition has four more crash fixes, fixups to the wonky selection algorithms, localization fixes, and and fixes up some defective UI behavior.Full release notes for this version are after the jump.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC5) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC5) now available originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC4 is the fifth release in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). Mostly this version seems to be about final polish.

This edition has two more crash fixes, assorted tune-ups to defective UI elements, a small bundle of localization fixes and some almost completely impenetrable alterations to the thread watchdog (however it does now default to being off). We're not expecting an RC5 before this goes live - unless something outstandingly broken crops up. Full release notes for this version are after the jump.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC4) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC4) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC3 is the fourth release in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). As usual, we have a bunch of assorted fixes and crash fixes in this edition.

This edition has five more crash fixes, some tweaks to the watchdog code (because it wasn't crashing when it should) and assorted tweaks. The Planning tab has been removed from Group Information, because it basically just never worked properly.

This looks like it might be the last release before 1.22 becomes the official viewer, unless something is reported that stops the show. Full release notes for this version are after the jump.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC3) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC3) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC2 is the third release in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). As usual, we have a bunch of assorted fixes and crash fixes in this edition.

This edition has five crash fixes, additional debugging to isolate the causes of graphics driver crashes, some fixes for PPC systems, and some more attempts to get object selection/cursor positioning right for edge-cases. More details after the jump.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC2) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC2) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Second Life viewer dev team has been working furiously away for some time now, and you may be forgiven for wondering where the fruits of that labor are. It has, after all, been some time since we've seen a new viewer other than emergency security fixes.

There are lots of little things in this viewer, mostly bug-fixes. What is particularly peculiar is that whispering seems to be back. Whisper was a short-range chat option that was discarded from the Second Life viewer back in 2005 due to it being confusing both conceptually and in the user-interface. Whispering has a 10 metre range and while it has been a deprecated script function for years is still available to scripted objects.

Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC0) now available

Second Life 1.22 (RC0) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Well, at last we know what all the fuss was about with all the sudden software updates over the last week for the Second Life servers that caused so much disruption during the last few days. It appears we were on the money with security fixes, and exploitable vulnerabilities have received urgent attention.

As a result a new Second Life viewer is available for download now -- that's 1.20.17(98669) -- and you can expect a new Release Candidate viewer (RC5) very very soon. Both are likely to be mandatory updates.

So, what's all the fuss about?

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Second Life security updates. New viewers

Second Life security updates. New viewers originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A new Second Life viewer is available. Not a release candidate, but an update to the 1.20 series -- what's generally referred to as an 'official' or production viewer. The version number for this release is 1.20.16 (97603), and only contains one listed change over 1.20.15.

The lone change appears to be security-related. The text of the change (not yet available in Wiki release notes) is "Discard messages sent over UDP that should not be trusted."

It isn't clear exactly which messages those are, precisely, and whether they might be sent from servers or spoofed from other hosts (or if they should simply be being carried on another transport protocol) -- however if it was important enough to release a fresh production viewer with just this one change, it is likely to be an important upgrade for users.

The new viewer is available for download now for Linux, Windows, or Mac (universal binary). We assume that if you've had problems running the 1.20.15 viewer, 1.20.16 will not work any better for you.

Linden Lab has not yet announced this release on any of its blogs.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Production Second Life viewer 1.20.16 available now [updated]

Production Second Life viewer 1.20.16 available now [updated] originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have been working very hard to attempt to bug-fix and stabilize the SLS-1.24 Mono-enabled Second Life simulator server software (try saying that three times, fast). Since Monday, the 8th of September, we've counted no less than 19 distinct versions of 1.24.5 that got far enough along to test.

Right now, the top candidate (and the version that has been rolling out onto the Second Life grid) is build 96115. A test rollout of build 96378 was attempted, but was somewhat crashier than 96115, so it was replaced with the slightly earlier build. There are several later builds already being tested and assessed as candidates for the next rollout, the latest being build 96505. There's quite a list of fixes, almost (but not entirely all scripting related). Notes for builds up to 96378 are available, however it isn't yet clear what any more recent builds might contain.

While all this is going on, the viewer team has managed to crank out a new release-candidate (1.21-RC2), which runs on the Mac PPC, and for those of you who were having that nasty crash-or-freeze-every-minute-or-six problem, or issues with sculpt textures, there's a fix for those too.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Second Life 1.21(RC2) available. SLS-1.24.5 rolled out

Second Life 1.21(RC2) available. SLS-1.24.5 rolled out originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have issued a new Second Life viewer release-candidate series. Starting with 1.21(RC0), this new viewer series offers support for the current rollout of Mono and touch-position scripting, among other things.

There's also new text colorization. It's configurable, but does rather go a long way towards invalidating a lot of existing tutorial and informational material that currently exists. That said, it is kind of visually appealing, if you have a compatible color set loaded. Look for those settings under Edit > Preferences > Text Chat.

If you're scripting in a non Mono-enabled simulator, you might want to pass on this release. Syntax errors are not reported for scripts compiled with 1.21(RC0) on a version SLS1.23 simulator. If all goes well, it will be a non-problem by the end of the week as SLS1.23 simulators are upgraded.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Second Life release candidate viewer 1.21(RC0)

Second Life release candidate viewer 1.21(RC0) originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the fifteenth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

This release looks like the final release in this cycle, unless something quite nasty appears. Mono is expected in viewer 1.21, and SLS1.24 (SLS1.23 is deploying this week) -- thus, there is nothing particularly earth-shattering in this release.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC14)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC14) originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the fourteenth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

If an overall 50% lower crash rate, measured across-the-board doesn't appeal to you, or improved quality texture decoding, how about the fact that the silver skin can now be disabled and replaced with an original recipe UI schema. Okay, so there's still a couple little glitches with that, but you can do it. Also it defaults to the familiar blue UI, which will please a lot of users.

Linden Lab are watching your choices as well. The viewer now reports which skin you have loaded so that information can be pulled out of log-files (or, so a web-site or web-service used by the viewer can offer you HTML skinned in a compatible set of colors) -- We think it's more the latter than the former, but it'd be silly not to gather usage data on skins.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC13)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC13) originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the thirteenth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

We're not sure if this is the RC with the least number of changes or not, exactly. Aside from a localization fix where the viewer was still talking about First Land, the remaining three items all seem to constitute code reversions -- essentially undoing what has been done.

User-Interface skin switching isn't in this release. We're going to go out on a limb and suggest that you won't see that for a couple weeks at least.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC12)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC12) originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the twelfth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

Linden Lab says this release candidate cycle will be extended, and some of the skinning project that was slated to come after 1.20 is being moved up, so that users will be able to switch the UI skin before this becomes the official viewer, rather than in some unspecified future release.

So, there will be a couple more release candidates before 1.20 becomes official, and it is pitched to take a bit longer between them.

This edition fixes some more crashes and freezes, but still has that nasty buffer-rendering offset glitch that afflicts snapshots, among other things.

1.20(RC11): Extended RC cycle, skinning moved up originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the eleventh 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

Linden Lab says that it is aiming for 1.20 to go live by the end of June, which suggests only two more release-candidate iterations -- so what you're seeing is very close to what the official viewer will be in a couple of weeks. Release notes are not included in the installer. This version apparently fixes the crash-on-startup with the Mac PPC, and fixes some of the snapshot problems: The UI is no longer silently included in the snapshot when written to disk, but the black bar (and occasional random pixel garbage) down the left-hand side is still there.

The thread-watchdog has been disabled for the rest of this series of RCs, the first-login-fails-with-Vista also appears to have been corrected, and pixel-garbage around avatar imposters has been fixed. There are an additional six crash fixes.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC10)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC10) originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the tenth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

Release notes are not included in the installer. More fixups with the thread-watchdog, fixes to flexi-prims to make them work more like existing viewers, a bunch of crash-fixes. However this version will not work on Mac PPC at all. Maybe the next RC will do so. That puts us at least one more RC out from a full-release.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC9)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC9) originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the ninth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

Release notes are missing again. Maybe they've chosen to stop including them with the installer. Changes primarily involve emasculation of the thread-monitoring system to solve a lot of situations where the viewer was intentionally crashing itself, fixing purchases via the Linden, and fixing up tooltips.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC8)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC8) originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 23 May 2008 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Three particular issues have turned up with the new Second Life 1.20(RC7) release candidate that you should know about. Two are relatively pedestrian, but the third is quite serious and appears to be an intentional feature. While the RC7 candidate has been withdrawn, those of you who are using channel gimmicks to use it anyway need to know about these.

One is the crash on login/connection (also on taking snapshots - or any other intensive activity that can take some time). Particularly for those of you that are either on slower hardware or who are further away from the Second Life servers in network terms. You'll need to disable the thread watchdog to work around this, as described here.

Continue reading 1.20 RC7: Unexpected issues

1.20 RC7: Unexpected issues originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 22 May 2008 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the eighth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

For those of you worried about the Dazzle UI being hard on the eyes (around two thirds of you), 'We plan to release Skinning Phase 1 (which will allow residents to install custom skins and switch between them, e.g. switch to a "classic" skin) before we make 1.20 mandatory,' says Steve Linden, '(hopefully well before-- we are trying to keep mandatory updates to a minimum), so we will support switching skins before imposing this release on everyone. However, this is the look we are planning to support going forward.'

Note that that does not mean that Viewer 1.20 will contain it (skin switching) at release, or necessarily that it will appear in viewer 1.21 or 1.22 -- we're only promised that it will appear before support for 1.19 is dropped.

This release-candidate (which is not intended to be final, so really, there should be a less confusing name for it) contains 46 assorted fixes, plus other changes -- and a few known bugs. There's also user-contributed lip-synching for voice, and what appears to be the new Ruth in there. Bonus: The vanishing skirts problem finally seems to be fixed, and users are automatically unmuted if you interact with them (pay them or their objects, send an IM or inventory to them).

If you use a Mighty Mouse or 3DConnexion Space Navigator, apparently 1.20 will continue to make your life unpleasant.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC7)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC7) originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 21 May 2008 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the seventh 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0. This is accompanied by a new download page for all versions which appears to be designed to make Mac and Linux users feel like poor cousins.

Mighty Mouse users, while we were told that your problem was fixed in the last release candidate, it appears to be an open issue again. Perhaps it wasn't fixed at all. The nasty message from the smartheap library are supposed to be gone, and the way property lines have been glowing through objects has been changed. (There doesn't seem to be any indication that the vanishing skirt issue has been fixed -- April Fools' Day is long past, boys)

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC6)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC6) originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 07 May 2008 20:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the sixth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

Mighty Mouse users, rejoice. We're told that this release fixes your problems using this release with the device. As for everyone else, 8 specific crash fixes and a fixed problem that caused serious problems with some nVidia drivers -- well, that should raise a few smiles!

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC5)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC5) originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 01 May 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the fifth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

This is a rush-release, as you might notice that the previous RC3 was released only yesterday (Wednesday). Apparently attempting to enter the appearance editor caused an instant crash. Oops. So much for QA.

There isn't a lot else new to speak of in this viewer, except a known issue with terrain textures on MacBook Air notebooks, and that llLoadURL opens in the external web-browser by default, instead of the internal web-browser.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC4)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC4) originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Steve Linden, director of Linden Lab's 'Studio Shiny' development group has weighed in with the plans for the Second Life viewer for Q2 2008.

Everything planned focuses on one (or both) of two goals: Making the viewer more stable, and making the viewer more usable. Most Second Life users can agree that these two goals are quite laudable.

Continue reading Studio Shiny's Q2 viewer roadmap

Studio Shiny's Q2 viewer roadmap originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the fourth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

Apparently we're back onto one-release-candidate-per-week, which will no-doubt please some and irritate others. Each new release candidate is a mandatory update from the previous release candidate.

Most of the fixes in this look relatively minor, though apparently there might be some issues with the voice component. Issues with UI window sizes after startup appear to have been fixes, and some lossless texture-compression bugs, among others.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC3)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC3) originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the third 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

This release candidate fixes the instant crash for most Linux users, but it is still very crashy for all platforms if the graphic settings are turned up. Likewise a crash bug has been fixed that was specific to German, Korean and Japanese viewers.

We're not noticing skirts vanishing so frequently in this version (hooray!), but this still feels more like an early beta-candidate than a release candidate. Unless you're feeling particularly adventurous, you might want to give this series of release-candidates a miss for the time being.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC2)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC2) originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 19 Apr 2008 03:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the second 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

This release candidate restores the Friends dropdown on the map, disables avatar imposters -- as they're a suspected cause of crashes on nVidia hardware/drivers, fixes SLURLs which were bollixed up, fixes two crash bugs and adds a crash-on-startup bug for Linux users.

Linux users should NOT get this version. To avoid getting a forced upgrade, add --channel skipRC1 to your viewer startup parameters.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC1)

New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC1) originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the things that the new Second Life 1.20 release candidate viewer sports is a nifty new feature that busts some serious myths about avatar related lag. In short, by enabling the option, every avatar gets a number displayed over their heads showing how much work your PC needs to go through to render the avatar. This is the avatar rendering cost.

So far we have seen green numbers (low numbers, which are good), and red ones (high numbers, which are not so good). The amount of work that goes into rendering an avatar (now that we can easily measure it) isn't quite affected by things the way we thought it was.

Continue reading 1.20: Changing your mind about avatar lag

1.20: Changing your mind about avatar lag originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.