Second Life 1.23 (RC4) now available
by Tateru Nino 
Jun 11th 2009 at 10:00PM
Filed under: Bugs, Patches, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
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.
Incorrect Minimum System Requirements Warning - NVIDIA Video Cards
- VWR-13947: Viewer gpu_list.txt does not include some recent NVIDIA graphics cards - On systems running NVIDIA GTS 250, GTX 270 and GTX 275 graphics cards, SL may indicate that the minimum system requirements have not been met. The viewer will then set graphical display settings to a default of Low or Medium. If your system uses any of these graphics cards, click the 'Don't show me this again' check-box, then choose 'No' to continue logging into Second Life.
Experimental HUD Particles
- SVC-2396: Particles not handled properly as HUD - Because display particle systems in HUD attachments are still considered experimental, RenderHUDParticles has been set to FALSE by default. The JIRA will remain open until the known issues can be resolved.
HUD Display Issue
- VWR-13151: Improper display of HUD in RC / HUD alpha layers ordered incorrectly prior to being selected - HUDs with alpha may not display properly after relog. Right-clicking or reattaching the HUD will correct this problem. NOTE: This same issue exists in the 1.22.11 viewer.
Issues Relating to SL Window Resizing
- Resizing the viewer window from the default size to the minimum size allowed, then restoring it to near full-screen, may cause the Toolbar to disappear off the bottom of the window - The only way to resolve this issue is to exit SL and re-log.
- Resizing the viewer window to the minimum size allowed, then exiting SL and re-logging, may render parts of an avatar invisible.
- Resizing the viewer window to the minimum size allowed forces floaters to viewer edges.
Running SL on a Secondary Monitor
- Rebaking an avatar on a secondary monitor may cause parts to become invisible. Please note, however, that running Second Life on a secondary monitor is not a supported configuration.
Key Fixes:
Restore 'Groups...' to Avatar Pie Menu - 183 votes
- Fixed: VWR-13320: Newly Updated Pie Chart (and the trend of fixin' what ain't broken)
Poseball Hiding & Texture Mapping Visible Only After Zooming Camera - 54 votes
- Fixed: VWR-12987: Primitives and changes made to primitives are not visible until camera is zoomed
Changes:
- Added: Update viewer credits for 1.23
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed: VWR-12987: Primitives and changes made to primitives are not visible until camera is zoomed
- Fixed: VWR-13320: Newly Updated Pie Chart (and the trend of fixin' what ain't broken)
- Fixed: Mac crash reporter - Correct log file not sent to viewer crash browser
- Fixed: Mac crash reporter - Top Stacks information missing
Release candidate viewers access your live account on the main Second Life grid (Agni). Potentially they may cause hair-loss in pets, and should be always be kept out of reach of children. The downloads are served by Amazon's S3 service and we use and recommend the use of a download manager to keep your download times to a minimum.
Notably, while they're called release candidates, they're actually beta (and occasionally alpha) releases. The reasoning behind calling them release candidates has never been made clear.
You can download this viewer from the usual place for Windows, Mac and Linux.
 |
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. |
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jay said on 10:46PM 6-11-2009
OMG, Irony. The Ursula release and...
"Fixed: VWR-12987: Primitives and changes made to primitives are not visible until camera is zoomed "
'cause nothin' would be worse that hopping on yer doggy style secks balls and them not disappearing till ya zoom in.
Reply
Garn said on 2:13AM 6-12-2009
*laughs @ Jay* Yea sometimes I wonder.. like wth is the point of this version? I could understand if there was a showstopper included but heck there is nothing.. its almost like they gotta reach a certain # before they release it. 170ish Jira's related to 1.23 on last check and this version has 4 fixes Yay!
Reply
Ordinal Malaprop said on 3:54AM 6-12-2009
Er, actually VWR-12987 _is_ critical, given that it ruins any change in alpha for any prim, and pretty much every single animated attachment and an awful lot of animated non-attached objects use alpha changes in some way.
Reply
Eris said on 5:40AM 6-12-2009
OK maybe it's just me but the current two clients, release and release-candidate, are amongst the most stable I've ever used and at the same time the worst-performing.
They never crash but then again they never load all visible textures, they stutter constantly, a heavy load of alpha-textures brings them to their knees, the texture cache dumps 'unused' textures way too aggressively, the frame-rate is half what it used to be - all in all they're virtually unusable...but they're stable.
Reply
Jay said on 8:24AM 6-12-2009
Go back to 1.14 and you will see this isn't actually new. Each and every single iteration has slowly degraded the game rate.
I guess the Lab has a difficult job getting that slider right
EyeCandySpeed
Mind you, as far as Eye Candy goes... If you go and look in other worlds you see that now 6 years long in the tooth SL is now really looking more like 1984 CGA graphics....
ie: http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/original/1023413100-00.gif
rather than looking more 2009 technology real to life...
ie: http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/3472/screenshot00059.jpg
Eris said on 8:59AM 6-12-2009
I go even further back than 1.14 and you're right, it's not new but it does seem to be getting worse - i keep my graphics settings pretty constant, but the performance is anything but. Problems we thought were long gone have returned, but it feels like all LL are interested in is stability metrics. That's great for Lindens who don't spend any extended time inworld or who want stat's to spin, not so good for the rest of us.
The current RC is truly appalling for me - half the UI graphics don't load and it gets worse the longer you spend online, you end up with a UI full of grey blanks. There's something seriously wrong if the UI elements, which are stored locally, don't load...
As for the dated graphics, it's true but it may be the price we pay for user-generated content. Imagine the outcry if they try to make any fundamental changes that render any existing content obsolete...