[RESOLVED] Windlight and Release Candidate temporarily unavailable
Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 11:56 AM by: Lotte Linden[3:30 PM PST] The updated Windlight viewer is now available for download as well. As mentioned before, these updates are required for anyone using these viewers. -Chiyo
[UPDATE 3:00PM PST] The Release Candidate viewer is once again available for download. The Windlight viewer should be soon to follow. This update will be required for anyone wishing to use these viewers. -Chiyo
If you are using our Windlight or Release Candidate viewer, you might have noticed that you are currently not able to login or download the latest version of either. We have found an issue concerning both of these viewers, that required us to disable them for the time we need to fix the problem.
We will update here as soon as we have news.
In the meantime, you still can login to Second Life with our main viewer.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:00 PM
If you’re going to do this sort of thing, I’d suggest putting it on the blog first, rather than 15 minutes later. I just spent those 15 minutes trying to debug my configuration, reinstalling Windlight, and so forth. Rather annoying to find out that this was all wasted effort.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:03 PM
phew thought it was me
December 29th, 2007 at 12:04 PM
Well isnt that great. I havent used the Main Viewer since Windlight came out. Mainly because it doesnt render very well for me. I guess I will go back to RL until its availlable. Good Luck.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:05 PM
Yep… tried to log several times and it told me I had to download the normal client release… annoying.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:05 PM
Nice to know.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:05 PM
You know, your reputation for customer care isn’t really wonderful as it is, and having the information posted on massively.com complete with a quote from Phoenix before putting it on your blog doesn’t help.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:06 PM
This doesn’t surprise me, SL has a well known reputation of pushing out updates without proper bug testing like the last windlight update. They knew about the ugly black bands in the sky but instead of waiting 1-3 hours to fix it right, they rushed out the update and told the users to fix it themselves by editing the sky settings.
SL seriously needs to get managment that knows how to control these over zelous programmers and make them do proper testing.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:08 PM
i have to agree #1 ..that was unnecessary……even an in world warning would have been nice…….since windlight seems to be the only version i can run practically crash free…..15 minutes of our lives we’ll never get back…hehehe
December 29th, 2007 at 12:11 PM
Also might want to check your support page. After checking blog, debugging my configuration, testing with the regular client, check the blog again, I go to file a support incident. Same as the LAST TWO TIMES I tried to file a support incident.
Error creating new Ticket: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘customer_id’, table ‘cyracle.dbo.cyticket’; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails.
Please warn us next time so I don’t waste time debugging YOUR issues and trying to use the broken support page.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:13 PM
i did not mind blac bands on the horizont at all, since windlight behaved much more stable. i mind not releasing bugfix version and just taking off possibility to log in again with windlight. not fair at all.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:13 PM
Quit your bitching and move on! Its a free service, they DONT have to do anything for you. Dont like it? Go elsewhere!!!
December 29th, 2007 at 12:14 PM
Awesome, I haven’t had the main viewer installed for 4 months.
I wonder what the problem was?
December 29th, 2007 at 12:15 PM
Just spend forever taking down all security checking permissions and trying to download…omg SL you did it again!!! Thanks for that timely response ..not
December 29th, 2007 at 12:15 PM
Oh God and why not use SL a Viewer befor that bug ? tzzzz SL …
Normal SL here crasht after a Minute .. i love it ….
December 29th, 2007 at 12:17 PM
#11.. Actually i ISNT free. I am a premium user. Please think before spouting off half baked assumptions.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:17 PM
Phil Priestman was lucky. Mac users were still getting the ugly black bands well after that. And I noticed that the Windlight client doesn’t set auto-preferences. It seems to carry them over from the regular client. I had to spend a couple of hours on the Mac forums to find out about all the new preference settings. Me, I’m going back to 1.18.5.
Byee!
December 29th, 2007 at 12:18 PM
Could we have better communications in the viewer to let us know what is going on? It would have more informative if the viewer said something along the lines of:
“Problem found with current version. Update pending. See blog for details.”
Linking to A3 to download an update that doesn’t exist is just not nice.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:21 PM
What do you mean a free service! there are those of us who pay for secondlife. Customer support does need to improve drastically.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:21 PM
Anyone notice the windlight sky is falling? (Quote by Chicken Linden)
December 29th, 2007 at 12:21 PM
#11 Free service? What about those of us that upgraded our accounts and actually pay? You must be young or new to SL..
SL is a business that produces a game to which has quite a history of poor managment decisions, rushing out buggy updates, forcing features onto their customers instead of paying attention to making the grid stable.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:21 PM
#11 — You always kiss that much linden tail when they screw up?
The Lindens RAN to tell a 3rd party website what the issue was BEFORE TELLING THEIR OWN PLAYERS ON THEIR OWN BLOG! Piss poor public service, no matter how much you wanna kiss up to them by attacking players with legitimate complaints.
WHY are they posting problems first on massively.com while leaving disconnected customers to twist in the wind and troubleshoot an issue that isn’t on their end? Special favors for a friend’s site or another ‘owned by a linden alt’ site, perhaps? After all, they were the first ones to hear about Cory Linden’s departure, from ’sources in the lab’.
You can fanboi for the Lab as much as you want, Freddy, telling people to leave isn’t going to cover over Linden screwups nor keep anyone from complaining when the lindens play favorites with info.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:22 PM
@11 Frederick Schafer
Youre joking or not? I pay for Second Life every Month so its not a free Service, its a payed Service, but its good that they take the entire Windlight thing off for now, i read something about it in a Jiira Entry.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:22 PM
Bad timing again …
I had a photoshoot planned at 21:00 CET and guess what ?
No Windlight, no nice water, no nice sky …
What should I tell my client ? :-((((
And we have the Rezzable Photo Contest running till this night 23:59 SLT. Well, no pictures I guess …
December 29th, 2007 at 12:22 PM
Wow ….. I just almost tried to reinstall my PC to solve the problem, thought is was my OS who was corrupted, luckely I see now due to the blog here I am not the only one who got this problem here !!!
Hey LINDEN guys, what are you doing ! I understand you want to make SL better moving forward, but SL making better will mostly depend on the people living in here. If u touch a running system without informing people before, it will lead to further decreasing numbers of DIE HARD second life users (including myself) and that 1.8 % of users are your future ! People who also invest RL money !
The company that I run myself does tuning, testing, trying all upgrades or mods standalone without touching our core business. It is even forbidden to touch the core without having a 100 % GREEN LIGHT on the result on the intensive test environments !
Moving forward please think first before acting !
thx ahead,
GHOST
December 29th, 2007 at 12:23 PM
It may be free for you Frederick but that is not the case for everyone. The availability of free Basic Accounts is an irrelevance, LL is a company that makes money from paying clients, and this should have been blogged here immediately. You may be a free player but i have hundreds of US$ invested in land, and friends who own multiple private islands at US$299 + UK VAT per month. Tell THEM it’s a free service and LL don’t have to do anything for them!!
Maybe i am a little gung-ho but for me the cess-pit of functionality bugs is far more important than new features, or the latest discovered security holes. WE live with security holes every day in every other bit of software we run on our computers. Having said that i too have been using Windlight constantly since it’s latest reincarnation and find returning to main viewer a somewhat dull experience by comparison. For me the lastest Windlight viewer was the best viewer made available to date, for stability, features and aesthetics.
And as for black bands… one tiny tweak of the mouse and it was fixed - all of 5 seconds effort. The Lindens could have given more explicit guidance on this though.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:24 PM
@16
Go nto Preferences, Graphics, chack Custom, drag the Sky slider back ONE notch/increment, you should see the band dissapear, or if not, go one more notch at a time, they will.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:24 PM
opps, chack=check
December 29th, 2007 at 12:27 PM
Thanks for the note. I have been using the standard viewer more frequently these days because of the laborious start-up of WindLight, which 50% of the time results in a failed login. Hope this gets fixed at the same time.
Happy Holidays.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:27 PM
If there will be a proper quality control within Second Life, would have to not using the residents as laboratory rabbits.
It is a software poor, with continuing shortages. Attempts to changes in vain. And never, and I repeat, never thought of the residents.
All have no major hardware at home. And even so bent on creating software that before leaving the residents is already corrupt.
The payments to FS, if they are effective and quick by SL, but the benefits to residents are null by SL.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:33 PM
Anyone know what the issue was? This was kind of abrupt.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:33 PM
Hi,
I had to switch back to the main viewer, and now it crashes ~2 minutes after login. Does anyone know why this happens?
Thanks
Justis
December 29th, 2007 at 12:33 PM
Why is everyone complaining? This is not even the main client and you all act like its the end of the world? I don’t understand why, but anyways.
I’ve noticed a few problems myself with Windlight, such as avatars being invisible and…well wait, thats the only problems I have! Why am I not complaining? Because Windlight is not the main client! I don’t mind if they take down them to fix some serious bugs, especially if they just randomly caught it. I hope that its fixed, whatever the problem, and Windlight gets back up again soon
December 29th, 2007 at 12:35 PM
I would like to remind everyone that all the clients except the official release are test clients, and that the point of downloading them is to find errors and report on how you discovered them. They aren’t meant to be stable builds. If they were, they would be an official release.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:37 PM
The problem in this case is a colossal, and quite funny linden blunder.
http://www.massively.com/2007/12/29/german-second-life-users-at-risk/
December 29th, 2007 at 12:40 PM
i keep crashing on the normal viewer with every try to teleport also no grouplist available. i cannot change the group. this is what the normal viewer brings for me. no chance to play the game
December 29th, 2007 at 12:40 PM
Ah that bad, even very bad. Since it emerged the Windlight I do not use the viewer normal more, now the Second Life lost all the grace and magic that brought Windlight.
They could leave it running and go solving the problems the meantime, there is nothing wrong in that. I will have to re-use the viewer probre again?
Frankly, not to have taken the Windlight. Bring it back please!!!
Without the Windlight I see more grace in Second Life. Lost the charm for me.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:41 PM
Stable build is one thing. Serious security risk is another.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:43 PM
…and i don’t even USE the bloody German viewer. Can’t you just tell people to NOT USE GERMAN LANGUAGE for the viewer if THAT was the security risk?
December 29th, 2007 at 12:43 PM
no prob…
December 29th, 2007 at 12:44 PM
I don’t know if you have realised this, but Windlight and the RC are TEST versions. Don’t use these unless you understand that your mileage may vary with experimental pre-releases.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:46 PM
This is one extra reason why I should keep my account on basic.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:46 PM
Heh the Nicholaz Edition of windlight still works
Download it here:
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/
thank god because I dont want to go back to that crappy regular client.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:47 PM
Lmao. Silly mistake.. LL devs always surprise me.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:47 PM
Nag nag nag.
Tech problems happen.
Hope Windlight will be back soon.
It’s lovely
December 29th, 2007 at 12:47 PM
I had read some time ago that SL had great plans to upgrade the level of its graphics to rival Oblivon and other top notch virtual worlds - and saw Windlight as the first tangible evidence that was coming about. I too would have liked to have seen this before I spent some time wasted trying to avoid the old client:) - but I honestly believe LL knows this is the future of SL and wants it working - so I am prepared to be patient. Tis the season for forgiving and letting go
December 29th, 2007 at 12:48 PM
Who cares? It is an ALPHA. It is rendering great without atmospheric shaders enabled. It crashes like mad. Most of the ATI universe cannot use atmospheric shaders, anyway. So what? Let them make it run for beta, I do not mind using the main viewer with its laggy framerates for a while.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:49 PM
Reply to Phil Priestman’s comment (#7) - sorry, but I side with LL there. Windlight is a First Look release. They have no obligation to make it bug-free, because the very purpose is to garner the community’s help in finding bugs and imperfections from all the different combinations of hardware and software and human beings that are out there. If you’re expecting the First Look to be close to perfect, I think you’re holding it to be something it’s not.
As an aside: The release candidate should, by contrast to the First Look, be rather bug-free (as a proper “release candidate”). I’m a little surprised that people aren’t complaining about that more, but of course, the RC is not the eye candy…
December 29th, 2007 at 12:49 PM
i wouldnt care to use the main viewer also if it would work
December 29th, 2007 at 12:51 PM
I change my password now.
German users better consider that too.
Lindens should notice us of this severe security risc.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:52 PM
Go for Nicholaz - no windlight means stoneage
but right now i get plenty “request was stale” and so on erroro…
grid seems to crash anyway…
grr
Ralf Haifisch
http://www.funkysharknation.biz
December 29th, 2007 at 12:54 PM
I see it aint me. It keeps telling me my firewall wont allow it and it had before always in the past so..
INFORM US BEFORE YOU TRY SOMETHING, OR ATLEAST TRY TO MAKE IT BETTER NOT RUSH.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:54 PM
You *do* realize that the entry on massively.com was not written by a Linden Lab employee? So why do you blame Linden Lab for “running to a 3rd party site”?
December 29th, 2007 at 12:55 PM
Reply to Doris Haller, #49: I don’t think the problem was ever actually exploited. It sounds like the client was trying to request the login *form* from that server, and was never getting to the point where it could actually send any data (presumably because the form never loaded).
December 29th, 2007 at 12:56 PM
@45
Windlight the “future of SL”? Wah, let them make it work with all the still manufactured and standard ATI cards first, then we can think of aynthing like “future of SL”.
But hey, the main client does not even work properly, so what is the “past of SL”, then?
December 29th, 2007 at 1:00 PM
May I ask if there is a timeframe when the windlight viewer will be back up & running? What were the issues?
Personally, I have found the windlight viewer to be a lot more stable then the main viewer. My reasoning is the fact that both my husband & I run sl at the same time on our network. Laptop & home pc. With the laptop we have found less system crashes & a lot less jerky motion in movement & actions (less lag as well). All I can say is that I hope this continues when the finished product is finally released (Hopefully with my skirts showing on my body & no crashes when jumping from low to ultra in the graphics).
P.S. - Please please please please hurry!
December 29th, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Yay! I don’t mind using the “old” viewer for a few hours. S’long as it’s all stable in the end, it’s no biggie
December 29th, 2007 at 1:01 PM
Just a quick note folks, if you don’t want to use the main viewer, OnRez and Nicholaz clients can still log in, Nicholaz uses the main viewers files with a few addittion. And OnRez is an entirely separate client for download.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:01 PM
Thanks Celierra, I changed it anyway.
And I am concerned that it seems so easy to modify the SL viewer to steal your password.
In this case, it looks as if it was pure luck that the page where the login was redirected was not operating.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:08 PM
#11 - SL IS NOT a FREE SERVICE… people pay through the nose to participate on the platform, and have a right to complain when things don’t go well.
That said, I understand when stuff breaks. That we have a 3D world to spend days in is a miracle at all.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:08 PM
my lord LL. the main cilent sucks it keeps puting my system into a blue screen of death (memory flush) but the others dont. gee you suck!
December 29th, 2007 at 1:09 PM
Well guess what? here’s a thank you.
Why? you’re giving me some free time to spend, for two reasons:
1. the main client causes BSoD’s on my machine, where in the past it did not. Yes, I even reinstalled windows to troubleshoot that, it’s NOT my problem, it’s in your viewer.
2. Windlight will run fine, aside from random screen corruption and crashes and severe loss in performance. but hey, it runs.
Since Windlight is now no longer available for whenever you decide to put it back in this century, I will be spending my time elsewhere till you either fix the main client or windlight.
Thanks!
December 29th, 2007 at 1:11 PM
Sollie Villota, reading comprehension not your strong suit? SEVERAL people have stated tat the ‘main viewer’ crashes for them, but windlight works. For me, I take a 5-10 FPS hit AND the main viewer crashes ever 30-60 mins. Yeah, I REALLY want to go back to that POS when windlight was working faster and far more stable for me.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:13 PM
@ 61
Try the nicholaz viewer.
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/
December 29th, 2007 at 1:13 PM
/me chuckles…
Wasn’t exactly this kind of potential for obtaining user details amongst the comments in SLDev before the html login system was implemented? Ah well. Am sure no one there will be saying “I told yah so”.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:13 PM
This one works better for me then the main client. So heres the OnRez client for SL.
http://viewer.onrez.com/
Also nicholaz
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/
Which seems to fix alot of the problems in the main client, for me at least, and some of my friends.
These can still log in and work. ^^
December 29th, 2007 at 1:17 PM
The main client does not work well for me at all! It freezes up every single time someone pops up on my friends list, and it crashes constantly. Windlight works MUCH better for me, and of course, now I can’t even use it. That is why so many are complaining! If you are going to make us use the “standard” viewer, at least fix it so it works!!!
BRING BACK WINDLIGHT ASAP!
December 29th, 2007 at 1:19 PM
I’m on a older version of windligh
t and I can log in buahaha.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:23 PM
Release Candidate —- bug free???
We’re not talking about a Beta bug here.
The German viewer was set up for logins to sdfsfsfds.com
“sdfsfsfds” would appear to be a LL dev’s “whatever” when they wrote the code.
Note to LL devs: Find out what your domain name is and try to use it more.
Sorreeee!! 
Nobody actually checked the language logins (or at least the German one was omitted from the structured checklist) before the thing was put up for download.
Hello? I’m a dev. The stuff I put out for user testing is in the hopes of finding ‘bugs’ like “If the user is facing East and it’s a Wednesday in a month with an “R” in it, and they left-click somewhere exotic ….
How exactly do we get to a situation where other languages login the the right place and all of a sudden the German version tries to login to somewhere random?
So anyway:
Either someone coincidentally decided to register sdfsfsfds.com behind a double layer of anonymity (And why shouldn’t they? After all it’s a really catchy and intuitive sort of domain name)
or
Someone noticed the fact and decided to register the domain, in the hope of gaining
a) eyeballs, or
b) account details
Perhaps in this case it was eyeballs, “because they could”. It might as easily have been a black hat.
But jaysus… LL…. Puhlease….
There’s something “really creative” about the structure of the LL code for language versions. e.g. I remember an issue some time back where the German release borked Group messaging.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:26 PM
Bless you, #42! I didn’t know Nicholaz had done an EC version, so I was suffering with the sucktastic ‘communicator’ interface over 1/4 my screen for the speed and stability benefits of Windlight.
Now I have both! Thanks Nicholaz!
December 29th, 2007 at 1:26 PM
If you use the Nicholaz’s “Eye Candy” version of the Windlight client, you can still log in. (It’s entirely possible that Nich’s client fixes the bug in question, too, he can be good about that kind of thing.)
December 29th, 2007 at 1:32 PM
Please for the love of Pete and Pete warn us next time? This is just like the rolling restarts that you tossed on us a few weeks ago. We understand that you want to fix the problems as soon as possible, but it wouldn’t take but five minutes to get some one from public relations on the horn (you really need more of them so that the programmers won’t have to come under fire and can do their jobs uninterrupted) to tell us things before they happen so you will end up with less irate residents.
No one likes crashing only to try and log back into an updater that does not work, with the only communications from Linden being a blog post that came -AFTER- the fact.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:35 PM
Anyone got a download mirror for the latest WindLight. I’d like to give the Nicolaz Edition a try.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:36 PM
Given that we’re talking about test versions of the viewer, can’t complain too much if they take it down. I have the main viewer, the release candidate, Windlight and the Beta grid viewer installed, plus Nickolaz, so not a big problem here to run a different one.
However, the issue of communicating this problem is, IMO, a serious, ongoing thing that needs to be resolved internally. You need to be able to display messages upon startup/login in the viewer itself, plus blog post on the official site, a 3rd party web site ought to be 3rd in line in the chain of updates.
It’s a security issue, I get that, it probably had to be taken down for safety sake, though it’d be nice if you could have only disabled the affected German client if that’s the extent of the problem as the article on Massively states (and why wasn’t it mentioned in this blog?)
Yes, the blog poster is probably the weekend support IT staff and not a marketing person (so give em a break guys), but guidelines should be put into place to insure that the necessary communications get out.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:40 PM
Okay- I’ve been a beta tester in the past for AOL and Windows (vista). I’m not the expert here, but I think this how it needs to be:
1. SL comes out with 2 verisons: A. SL for low graphic B. Windlight for people with cool PCs and high graphic
2. SL makes the programs and lets the SL teams work on it for a month or so.
3. SL gathers together some Beta testers. These testers will have a task each week to report any problems ie. Lines in the sky OR “You do not have the proper Quicktime installed. ”
4. SL then fixes all problems after letting Beta testers test for 1-2 months.
5. SL releases new verison and starts on step 1 again.
—- Note that it takes 3-4 months for new versions to come out there-in not having everyone download a new one everyweek. —-
As for crashing or lag … well thats just a matter of servers. If SL would get it together maybe someone like Google or Yahoo will buy SL over and give them big Servers.
>>> That’s my two cents on this problem and I’m stickn’ with it <<<
December 29th, 2007 at 1:45 PM
your timing as usual with the servis problems is brilliant. holiday weekend. people home and want to be online. and so the dissillusionment with LL grows..
December 29th, 2007 at 1:48 PM
“sdfsfsfds.com”?? And that got shipped?
Let’s hope that a capable CTO is brought in soon. Someone that will toss the Tao of Linden out the door for the engineering department, and who will enforce a bit more of basic process, scheduling of priorities and releases, and who will not be afraid to communicate with the residents without having to be goaded into it. (and Cory should be brought back as technical contributor).
Seriously, you can look at the ongoing problems, and trace a lot of them back to a lack of experienced management. This is the ongoing angst that a lot of us residents have — we dont have a viable alternative to SL yet, but the things that LL does make us wince on a daily basis.
And to answer the inevitable ‘why whine’ posts:
* The point of talking about the problems is to get the attention of the Board of Directors, and hope they take action
* The other point is to document things, so that LL and future competitors have some heartfelt feedback on what doesn’t work. If all we post are pats on the back, then we will be partially to blame for not trying to influence needed progress.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Oh, *quit* the whining. Windlight is a FirstLook viewer, not the main one. I haven’t run the main client in a month, but at least I understand it’s the main client. And, yes, both run peachy on my (gasp) year-old laptop hardware.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:52 PM
I’ve updated the main client, and tried to run it. It crashes after a few minutes of normal in-world activity. I’ve filed a support ticket.
Gee, thanks, Lindens. (And for what it’s worth, I’m a premium member and land-owner, so SL is far from free for me.)
December 29th, 2007 at 1:52 PM
“your timing as usual with the servis problems is brilliant. holiday weekend. people home and want to be online. and so the dissillusionment with LL grows..”
Yes, those bad Lindens just wait for the weekend to screw everything up and mess up your experience…….it’s a conspiracy, a conspiracy I tell you……
Give us a break with comments like this.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:01 PM
Re comment 79, it’s common practice in the web software biz to avoid deploying updates just before a weekend, especially a holiday weekend, for precisely this reason. So, yes, I do blame the Lindens for this mess.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:06 PM
@Syler Zhora
Only issue with classing WL as a ‘high end’ graphics solution is that (in theory) with all the sliders turned down it should be better on low-end systems too. WL isn’t just about prettier skys (though that is the most obvious part) but a general (and much-needed) overhaul of the clunky old graphics subsystem. (YMMV, of course, but responses here indicate that WL-pre-alpha is considerably more stable than the old system at least for some people - which is what one would hope).
@all
As mentioned more than once above - this is a FIRST LOOK VIEWER (AKA pre-Alpha). Anyone relying on it for production purposes is not being too brite!
I agree, though that the delay between the take-down and the blog notification was far too long. Maybe the Lindens have to use the SL-web-login interface to get to the blog these days!!
December 29th, 2007 at 2:09 PM
@74
“Okay- I’ve been a beta tester in the past for AOL and Windows (vista).”
Windlight isn´t even beta. The RC is beta. The main viewer is a better beta. We ALL are beta and alpha testers for LL. The most significant difference to MS and AOL is: We pay for it.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
Re: comment #80
I think I may have missed something then, because I see the last release for Windlight according to the blog was Friday, December 21st, 2007, which was quite some time ago. Don’t know when the last release candidate update was.
So unless I’m mistaken, and I very well might be, your premise on deploying updates just before a holiday weekend is a bit bogus unless you count this as an 8 day holiday weekend.
Also, we’re talking about test versions of software, not the main viewer, people are crying and complaining about test software not working? Using test software is always a risk, no one forced anyone to download and use it. And comments about letting bugs through and such are null and void, cause it’s test software and it’s gonna have bugs.
Now if this were the main viewer, *that* would be a different story.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
“#11
Frederick Shafer Says:
December 29th, 2007 at 12:13 PM PST
Quit your bitching and move on! Its a free service, they DONT have to do anything for you. Dont like it? Go elsewhere!!!”
heh well actually, we do pay for SL
you may not, but the rest of us do 
December 29th, 2007 at 2:17 PM
When does Windlight come back again?
December 29th, 2007 at 2:21 PM
Btw…
continue using Windlight using Nicholaz with the old style login.
@Lindens: we accept you try to bind your viewer on your grid with the weblogin. but for higher security, stay with the old procedure.
cheers
Ralf Haifisch
german translations on http://www.slinfo.de
December 29th, 2007 at 2:23 PM
Hmm, I can’t seem to get the Nicholaz version to work. I’ve put it in my Windlight folder, and it keeps crashing. Doesn’t even load up a start-up screen. Any ideas as to what I’m doing wrong here??
December 29th, 2007 at 2:24 PM
exactly how did that domain get into that xml file anyway? looks like LL needs to run polygraphs across the board to identify criminals operating within their staff.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:24 PM
@85 …
Meanwhile, other tech monkeys will be suggesting they include some patch or other to make this more than just a login URL update release. This will further stress tech monkey 1. Who will about now have a break for coffee (or green tea depending), then get back to the screen and wonder if s/he already checked that language file or not… And will then re-check it anyway.
Well assuming LL have found out just about now how much it will cost to get the sdfsfds domain on to Linden books. I’d guess a tech monkey is now checking all the login pages urls for all the languages before they bundle up a new mandatory RC and WindLight viewer for us to play with. Tech monkey will of course now be paranoid and double checking every one
Something like that…
December 29th, 2007 at 2:25 PM
Point is, we’ve been with the without then with the superior Windlight viewer for 6, 7 months. At this rate, my great grandchildren might see a “regular client” that features the windlight improvements.
I do not want to see another 5 month stretch where Windlight dispears onto some backburner at Linden Labs. This technology needs to be brought into the main SL community as quickly as possible. The FIRST thing people notice when they log into Second Life is *what it looks like*. Everything else comes second at best. Before anyone signs up for SL they will see screenshots, again *what it looks like* is crucial.
The improvement from the regular SL client water rendering to the Windlight water… I tell ya, the Windlight water looks as good or better than anything I’ve seen in ANY computer game. This should be in the regular client asap, even if the atmospherics need to be delayed due to bugs.
And, #11, yeah, me too, another paying customer, so keep yer fanboi opinions to yourself while they are flawed with ignorant assumptions.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:29 PM
HEY LL
PLEASE SEND OUT AN INWORLD MESSAGE WARNING PEOPLE NOT TO LOG OUT. THIS IS INSANE!
December 29th, 2007 at 2:34 PM
Nicholaz Beresford is a GAWD! My windlight works just fine! Wootage! Hey LL - why haven’t you hired this guy yet?
December 29th, 2007 at 2:36 PM
Unfortunately, windlight is the only viewer that works with vista on my machine. Please hurry up, I’m going through withdrawal. Could you please explain why this had to be disabled instead of being fixed and made into a mandatory upgrade?
December 29th, 2007 at 2:36 PM
@ 90
“The FIRST thing people notice when they log into Second Life is *what it looks like*.”
Wrong. The first thing they use are the arrow keys for movement. What a shame if they cannot because they are not rich enough for the latest of latest in computer technologies and graphic cards and atmospheric shaders. Or if they are rich enough, but invested into ATI hardware. And even if they are rich: The difference to something like Oblivion running on a minimum of 40 fps to SL (crawling on a maximum of 25) will be devastating. What a shame.
Rock solid reliability is what a social virtual network demands in first place. Not eye candy.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:37 PM
I don’t understand for the life of me how everyone is getting the Nicholaz viewer to work in Windlight. I’ve put it in the Windlight folder, made the shortcut, and every single time it crashed before even bringing up the start-up screen. Unless anyone has an answer, I guess I’m stuck with a lot of crashes and freezing up on the regular viewer :-\
December 29th, 2007 at 2:38 PM
“Light winds slow last Sydney Hobart boats”
Oops - reading headlines off wrong feed, had me all excited for a moment!
December 29th, 2007 at 2:39 PM
you know, ehem, my ice skates look bad in regular viewer.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:50 PM
So….I tried to log in using Windlight, it tells me I need to download a new viewer but leads to a broken page with no download, search around trying to find a new version of the Windlight Candidate, find a release candidate instead, download that, and now THAT doesn’t work because of the German security breach. How they managed to release even a TEST or BETA version of a viewer that sends login information to a domain that Linden doesn’t even OWN is beyond me - hardly strikes confidence in their attention to security. And why I am finding all of this out from Massively is astonishing - when all we get here is a tiny peep from Linden simply saying “hey, it’s down, keep ya posted!”. Yes, Windlight is a test release. Yes, it’s beautiful and more stable. Yes, expect bugs - but not bugs where user’s login information can shoot off to some random URL somewhere, and not the biggest bug of all which is poor communication in times of crisis (not sure why I say “in times of crisis” other than the fact they communicate a lot about virtues of buggy pre-release candidate viewers).
To quote the post that started this: “We will update here as soon as we have news.”
Well - here’s an update - head over to Massively, they’re faster off the mark with news than what’s happening in your own company.
As for people who call it a free service, thousands of dollars in investments, clients work, products, and monthly fees is NOT free. We complain if we don’t get great service for a $50/month cell phone, surely we have a right to complain about $2,500/month in land tiers?
December 29th, 2007 at 2:53 PM
Windlight 1-18-6-75762 works fine…
December 29th, 2007 at 2:59 PM
Yeah, pretty depressing. I cant even log in on the main vewier. And like another commented i would have liked to know before hand when it was going to be shut down. so i could have gotten my snapshots to PS later
December 29th, 2007 at 3:07 PM
Wahhhh !
Wahhh! Wahhh! WAhhhhhh!
WAAAAAHHH!
Oh, Sorry… I just wanted to sound like everyone above me sounds.
December 29th, 2007 at 3:14 PM
#95: You did download the right Nicholaz for windlight?It’s a special version of the viewer in his experimental folder.
http://www.blueflash.cc/users/nicholaz/~experimental/
December 29th, 2007 at 3:17 PM
#102, Yeah I did. Just crashes every time. Must be my computer as I can’t find a solution.
December 29th, 2007 at 3:19 PM
I am a german user and cant login with every client. Every Week problems. That sounds not good. I hope you resolve this problem soon.
December 29th, 2007 at 3:21 PM
Just wanted to let someone know that people are currently going from group to group posting that there was some sort of security breach of information to a some server in Amsterdamn. Informing people to change all information (passwords, etc.) & not to use any other viewer but the reg. one at this time.
LET ME POINT OUT…that this is an unreliable total panic mode of freaked out lindens on SL at this time. I am NOT one to believe half of the things that get passed around in group chats (the classic “If you touch the box you will have no money” chain IM). Honestly LL, people are actually freaking out. Maybe its time we kinda knew what the issue was (even if its something tiny) so people will stop this massive group IMing of rumors.
December 29th, 2007 at 3:22 PM
Has anyone considered this may be a grievis whide open security flaw that could effect them or LL?
December 29th, 2007 at 3:23 PM
*I was saying “freaked out avies” pardon me.* Real quick..umm..is it actually safe to go onto windlight now? It’s allowing people to log in.
December 29th, 2007 at 3:25 PM
It downloads the normal viewer and runs that through Windlight now. It’s not running Windlight.. just makes you think you’re getting in. Then once in you go “Duh - this isn’t Windlight!”
December 29th, 2007 at 3:25 PM
@104
Better to not log in with the Windlight and RC alpha/beta crap and keep your log-in informations confidental than to log in and let all the world know your are Scrooge McDuck in RL and your password to your account is “Klondike”.
December 29th, 2007 at 3:27 PM
#103: Sh*t, sorry…hard to diagnose that in blog comments-could you try the forums and ask for help there?
#94: I have a two year old comp with an ATI card and Windlight runs fine for me, including all the fancy stuff.