A new 1.19.1 Release Candidate Viewer (RC2) is now available with fixes based on issues reported in RC0 and RC1.

As a reminder: Release Candidate viewers are optional updates that contain the latest round of bug fixes and/or soon-to-be-released new features. Please visit the test software page to download the Second Life 1.19.1 (RC2) Release Candidate viewer only if you’re interested in helping us test these optional viewers. Source code will be available for download soon.

Changes and fixes in 1.19.1 RC2: (more…)

[RESOLVED 02:50 AM PDT] - Our night ops people have found the problem and have successfully resolved it. The affected regions are coming back online. Once again thank for your patience and understanding.  Things happen but we’ll always do our best to get it fixed for you.  Cheers.

[UPDATE 01:27 AM PDT] - Our team are still working on the issue, thanks for your patience whilst we try to sort it folks.

Approximately 300 regions are not reachable by residents at the moment. We’re really sorry about this! Our technical team are working hard to resolve it as quickly as possible. It’s a total pain, I know. But we want them fixed as quickly as you, promise More news as soon as we have it.

We’ve updated the 1.19.1 Release Candidate Viewer with fixes based on issues reported in RC0.

If you’re interested in helping us test these optional viewers, please visit the test software page to download the Second Life 1.19.1 (RC1) Release Candidate viewer. Source code will be available for download soon.

Fixes since 1.19.1 RC0:

• VWR-5479: The option “Save Texture As” from File menu is not active in 1.19.1 (0) (Second Life Release Candidate)
• VWR-5087: Attach To… from inventory ignores selected postion and attaches to stored location.
• VWR-4899: Windlight Particle System - burst severely weakened
• Crash when quitting from login screen
• SVC-1764: Setting parcel media for a single agent is broken with new media functionality ( PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT broken)
• Scripted object for playing movies no longer functions under 1-19-1
• FireGL and Quadros no longer show ‘unsupported’ dialog
• Crash: ‘Error parsing skeleton XML file’
• Crash when opening the expanded media control
• VWR-4959: WindLight: “Sculpted Prim” preview makes a huge distorted mess of polygons
• Propagate client language setting into search URL

NOTE: We’re keeping a close eye on issues reported in the public Issue Tracker and already have an RC2 in the works.

Please continue to report any new issues in the Issue Tracker and be sure to set “Affects Version/s” to “1.19.1 Release Candidate“. Resident participation is always welcome at our weekly (Wednesdays @ 3pm PST time) inworld bug triages, too!

Hot on the heels of Second Life 1.19.0 becoming the primary download, we’re making a new Release Candidate viewer available. Second Life 1.19.1 RC0 can now be downloaded from the test software page

As a reminder: Release Candidate viewers are optional updates that contain the latest round of bug fixes and/or soon-to-be-released new features. Please try the RC viewers only if you want to participate in the bug reporting process and identify issues before they become the default viewer. You can have both a Release Candidate and the primary viewer installed side by side on your computer, so if issues are encountered when testing the RC viewer you can switch back to the production viewer.

This Release Candidate contains the following new features and changes:

• Physically accurate atmospheric rendering and lighting (previously code named WindLight)
  • Animateable day cycles
  • Vastly improved realistic water with reflections and glimmer
  • “Glow” as new object attribute
  • Avatar Impostoring, which can speed up crowded scenes tremendously
  • A new cleaned-up, easy to use Graphics Preferences tab with simple and advanced options for performance/quality settings
  • See release notes for list of additional rendering optimizations, too!
  • For more information, check out the WindLight page on the wiki

• Parcel Media - adds the ability to display Web based media on a parcel (see Jeska Linden’s blog post for more info!)
  • New API for Media Rendering
  • Enables Web content inworld
  • Added two new click actions, one for playing movies, and one for opening media
  • Embedded web browser
  • Added support for Media resizing

• Estate-Level Abuse Reporting
  • Estate owners and managers now have the ability (under World > Region/Estate) to enter an email address where abuse reports will be sent.
  • If this address is empty, abuse reports will go to Linden Lab as usual. If the address is present, the abuse reports will be sent there instead. In both cases, all abuse reports are logged by Linden Lab.

• Voice changes
  • Changed the default voice volume to be a bit higher, to better match the volume of in-world sounds
  • Changed the voice volume slider to default to the middle of its range, so voice volume can be boosted above the default

• Improved Linux Voice support
  • Better support for USB headsets and other devices
  • Better voice audio quality

Fixes include:

(more…)

We wanted to remind everyone again about the minor maintenance planned to our support system this afternoon, Tuesday, between 3.15 PM PST and 4.15 PM PST.

During this time access to Live Chat for Billing and Support issues will be unavailable. Telephones support for billing issues will also be offline.

Sorry for the loss of access but we’re hoping it will be a quick update and then the system will be back online again.

Best Wishes to you

Some minor maintenance to our support system will be taking place this coming Tuesday, 19th February 2008 between 3.15 PM PST and 4.15 PM PST.

During this time access to Live Chat for Billing and Support issues will be unavailable.  Telephones support for billing issues will also be offline.

Please accept our apologies for this  temporary disruption.

Best Regards

Second Life 1.18.6 Viewer Release Candidate (RC4) is now available for download. Please go to the test software page to download and try these pre-production viewers. (Note: This is not an update to the WindLight First Look viewer.)

The new login UI and server infrastructure is taking longer to stabilize than anticipated. In order to keep releases coming, we have decided to revert back to our old login code/system. We plan to resume work on the new login system in the future, but in order to move on as efficiently/smoothly as possible, after Second Life Viewer Release Candidate 1.18.6 RC4 there will be no production viewer based on the 1.18.6 codebase - instead, we’ll switch efforts to our 1.19.0 version of the viewer (in development now) which includes all of the other changes/fixes that were in the 1.18.6 viewer plus more. There will be an open source 1.18.6 RC4 code drop today as well.

We are releasing the RC4 update (viewer and source) even though it does not reflect an actual “release candidate” to give the community the most up-to-date and stable viewer code to experiment with, as there are many other fixes included beyond the login system.

REMINDER: Release Candidates (RC) are intended for evaluation purposes. Please try them out only if you want to participate in the bug reporting process and identify issues before these become the default viewer. You can have both a Release Candidate and a production viewer installed on your computer at the same time, so if issues are encountered when testing an RC you can switch back to the production viewer.

This update (RC4) includes the following fixes and source changes:

Known issue:

• VWR-2574: Non-default sound devices for voice can’t be used in Vista
  • This appears to be a Vista issue not a Second Life issue.

Fixes: (more…)

Friendly greetings in 2008! We’ve been continuing to better our Issue Tracker’s (what is it?) usefulness & accessibility for you. Following vibrant discussion, Rob Linden made several improvements:

1. New “Fix Pending” state - This replaces the old “Fixed Internally”, and is better because that confusing terminology was a misleading final, instead of an intermediary status. “Fix Pending” basically means,
    
   “This bug is fixed in an internal Linden Lab release but is NOT public yet… hopefully it will be, soon!”
    
   This is important because it’s good to know work was actually done and is forthcoming (instead of an uncomfortable silence).

   
    

2. A new “meta” state - Meta Issues are useful for tracking groups of related issues. They’re not inherently resolvable, but provide a “big picture” view of things to be aware of. For instance, problems with certain hardware like newer MacBook Pros, or subjective aesthetic concerns about WindLight. You can create a Meta Issue by selecting Issue Type = “Meta Issue” as shown here:

   
    
   then link related issues to it.
    

3. Ability to change issue resolution without reopening - Reopening was a wasteful pain. Now, if an issue’s status needs to be corrected, there’s a “Change resolution” link on the left which can do just that.

   

Related resources:

(more…)

Second Life 1.18.6 Viewer Release Candidate (RC2) is now available for download. Please go to the test software page to download and try these pre-production viewers.  (Note: This is not an update to the WindLight First Look viewer.)

This update (RC2) includes a check to determine the installed version of QuickTime on your system. If the latest version of QuickTime — which addresses the RTSP exploit — is not found, QuickTime is disabled in the Second Life viewer. Please see Joe Linden’s blog post for further information.

We’re continuing to investigate and fix issues related to our new login screen/authentication. Please be sure to report issues that you find and/or add comments to existing issues in the Issue Tracker.

We are also working hard at addressing age verification issues. One recent fix to (correctly) allow age verified Residents to access land requiring age verification will require a rolling restart. Stay tuned, but we are currently planning this for next week. Be sure to watch the blog!

REMINDER: Release Candidates (RC) are intended for evaluation purposes. Please try them out only if you want to participate in the bug reporting process and identify issues before these become the default viewer. You can have both a Release Candidate and a production viewer installed on your computer at the same time, so if issues are encountered when testing an RC you can switch back to the production viewer.

New features:

• VWR-1115: Added preference settings for web browser proxy
• VWR-3741: Added -loginpage option to client to specify the login page

Changes:

• Reverted bad fix for:
  • Connect button does not have focus in HTML login screen

Bug Fixes: (more…)

We’ve recovered a 463,000 inventory items that were lost and fixed 79,000 inventory folders. These belonged to a total of 143,000 Residents. They were not showing up in Residents’ inventories because they did not have a valid parent folder and many of them have been lost for quite some time. They have all been placed in the their owner’s top-level folder called “My Inventory”. If the items don’t show up and you want to thoroughly check whether they have been recovered, you can clear your Second Life Viewer cache, restart your Second Life Viewer, log back in and check your “My Inventory” folder.

In addition, on November 26th we repaired missing Library textures that a number of Residents had reported missing. These were for all the Residents that were on one of our inventory servers, where the problem had occurred. Sorry for not posting that at the time we repaired it.

We realize that these two repairs only recover some lost inventory. We continue to work hard behind the scenes to track down and begin to fix the root causes of inventory loss as I described in a previous post on our Inventory Loss Reduction Initiative.