Linden Lab says it hopes to have a public beta of the Second Life 2.0 viewer in February, presumably targeting an official release in March. Given that the Lab wants to move forward with quarterly planned viewer releases, this means that the current Second Life 1.23 viewer will lose official support at approximately the end of June.

Linden Lab says it has already finalized features and the user-interface at this stage, and is not planning on making any substantive changes between now and release. Any work beyond bug-fixes and stabilization for the viewer is to be deferred to the mid-year 2.1 release.

Continue reading Second Life 2.0 viewer for February/March

Second Life 2.0 viewer for February/March originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Quite a delicious seasonal treat for those that use the third-party Second Life viewer from the Imprudence project, as they've got a test-build out today with all the usual goodness, but rebased against the 1.23 source tree.

What the heck does that even mean anyway? Well, it means that the Imprudence viewer now supports adult content ratings and restrictions, and is compatible with a larger variety of third-party features and extensions than previously.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.3 merge test build for Second Life

Imprudence 1.3 merge test build for Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab recently warned Second Life users to avoid the use of the new bulk permissions editor, a feature which was added in the 1.23 viewer. There's a lot of confused conversation and observations about the matter, some of which are contradictory, because what is happening is confusing. Some claim that the bug makes content fully-permissive. That's not entirely the case.

The essential problem that is at the heart of JIRA issue SVC-4444 is that the bulk permissions feature fails to correctly and completely communicate with internal grid systems at some level and under some circumstances. All the while appearing as if it has actually done what it is supposed to have done..

Continue reading Linden Lab warns Second Life users to avoid bulk permissions feature

Linden Lab warns Second Life users to avoid bulk permissions feature originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has released the new viewer, bringing Second Life up to 1.23 a few days earlier than expected, off the back of a very short release-candidate cycle.

The new viewer brings three things with it: The new Adults-only continent (formerly Ursula and now Zindra), user-verification by documents or payment-status, and a new Adults-only content rating that opens up Second Life to more extreme sexual and violent content.

Continue reading Second Life moves to 1.23, opens adult continent, allows more content

Second Life moves to 1.23, opens adult continent, allows more content originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 16 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. 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.

Over the next week or so, we've been expecting a new Second Life viewer release-candidate (1.23), with the usual slew of bug-fixes, and stabilization enhancements (1.22 yielded a 20% drop in overall viewer crash rates), and very likely the first real release of the dynamic shadows code.

Now, it seems that that is not to be. 1.23 is being pushed out to (probably) June, and the focus for this next release-candidate series will be code-support for the new Adults-Only content category. We're not sure how much of the regular fare will make it into 1.23, as just the AO-content support promises to be quite a substantive code-drop, and it's something that needs to 'just work'.

Continue reading Lab rearranges viewer development. Adults-only content trumps other work

Lab rearranges viewer development. Adults-only content trumps other work originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While it isn't clear yet which Second Life server versions will no longer support group voting, the upcoming 1.23 viewer release candidate (due any time now) will no longer include support for the feature, which will then be phased out of the servers at a subsequent date.

"It's being removed because there are still a number of bugs (including significant database load issues) in the voting system," said Soft Linden in response to user enquries, "however the metrics team found that the feature is virtually unused." (We think that might ultimately be because of the bugs and poor performance).

Continue reading Second Life to lose group voting feature

Second Life to lose group voting feature originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.