Linden Lab has released a new Second Life viewer release candidate, specifically, 1.18.4(RC2). This fixes a number of issues with since the last release. There's a list of those changes below the fold.

The viewer is available from the optional downloads page as usual, and we suspect that this one might just be a little more plausible as a release candidate than the last one.

According to the official blog there's a rolling restart underway. Details are sketchy, but when they're this poorly announced they usually mean it's an exploit fix and we won't get a lot of additional details, although it is also setting up for the new search, fixing sale auction IDs and (most interesting) allowing inventory databases to switched in and out without booting everyone.

The restart is running North to South, so jump North if you get caught by it. It started at 2:17pm and will run until about 6pm.

There's a new release candidate available on the optional downloads page. It's one with known problems and it isn't actually a candidate for release. The previous release candidate turned out to have some pretty severe problems, and it seems some people just won't quit using it anyway. So this release is a roundup of fixes for the folks out there who are eating bees.

So, we get the impression that, esssentially, bee-eaters this release is for you. Not eating bees? Give it a miss, and wait for the next release candidate, which might actually be a release candidate.

There will be downtime on Wednesday between 6am and 11am for asset server upgrades. Everyone hide and hang on to your inventory, this can be a bumpy ride as our very own Moo knows only too well.

Expect both the main and beta SL grids to be down for at least 5 hours (as per the blog) and for some "lucky" proportion of us a "your inventory is being moved to a faster database" message - and if you really are lucky, it will all get there too!

[UPDATE] This downtime has been postponed. The Great Old One's plans to take over Second Life this Hallowe'en have been thwarted!

Sidewinder Linden reports that the beta grid (Aditi) has been updated with a new version of the Havok 4.6 code, fixing a dozen issues. We're told this will take about 24 hours.

We're also cautioned that the beta grid database will be refreshed from the main grid. Make offline copies of any scripts you have in beta, because everything in your beta inventory will be replaced by early next week.

For my sins I read an RSS of the JIRA. Often this is dull, sometimes fascinating, frequently tends to flame wars, but...

Every now and again you get pure gold. Ever wondered how long it takes a bug fix to propagate? Well, we have a putative number now:

In response to a bug about sculpties, Qarl Linden says: "i'll fix it asap - but it'll be about a month or so before it appears in an RC client..." Of course it will take a bit longer than that to reach the main client, but a month from a fix to an RC release.

Linden Lab and Vivox are taking the voice system down for maintenance tomorrow morning (Wednesday, 24 October) between 2AM and 3AM SLT (US Pacific) for unspecified improvements.

Could this have anything to do with the projected influx of CSI:NY fans tomorrow? It would be too coincidental to suggest otherwise. Apparently Linden Lab has been robustifying a number of subsystems, particularly the user-registration system.

Linden Lab's user-experience designer, Benjamin Linden (aka Ben Glenn), has just announced the release of a visual viewer update preview. A part of the aim is to modernize the look of the Second Life viewer by reskinning it. [Click on the image to the right for a larger version]

The listed goals are:

• Improve visual appearance with modern UI graphics and icons.
• Improve discoverability through expanded use of iconography.
• Improve approachability with a lighter, friendlier color scheme.
• Improve legibility by using dark text on light backgrounds.
• Document technical limitations of current skinning capabilities.

There are a number of those technical limitations lurking in the viewer source that need to be addressed. You can download and try out the preview package (for viewer version 1.18.3(5) only at the present time) from Amazon S3.

More project details are available on the Viewer Visual Update page on the Second Life Wiki, and discussion and feedback are invited.

Sidewinder Linden has updated us on the status of the Havok 4.6 physics test on the Second Life Beta Grid (Aditi). Included is the news that Aditi has been updated today with a fresh code drop.

We've listed the changes below the fold, linked to their JIRA entries, where possible. The public JIRA has been having some difficulties this evening, however, so be prepared to be patient.

Today's release candidate doesn't seem to be winning a lot of hearts and minds out there today. The public JIRA issue tracker is accumulating problem reports, many of which seem - just darn peculiar.

Aside from crashes, virtually all of them seem to be related to the user-interface, and new ways in which it behaves (or misbehaves). On the Second Life development mailing list of late, there has increasing discussion of scrapping the existing user-interface code (which is tangled up in, well, everything) and changing to something more modular and discrete.

At present, as the complaints go, the user-interface code and some of the back-end code have become such an organic tangle that it is difficult to change one without affecting the other, and that some theoretically simple user-facing changes have become monstrously involved.

That appears to be the sort of thing we are seeing here. Changes that should be quite straightforward causing an extensive tangle of dependencies and concomitant unexpected issues.

Over on the official blog is a long, and rather confusing, post about the new release candidate and the new search it is starting to build up.

Search is well and truly borked of course, and this new system should give a better set of search results.

However, when it talks about new checkboxes it doesn't mean in preferences or in search - they're scattered around - there's one in the Edit>General tab, there's one in your profile, one in groups, and probably more. These will lead to things being included in the search tool, and, according to the pictures on the blog a much nicer set of search results to come (once it's all been ironed out and implemented).

There is also a new lag-meter. It flicks rather randomly - my client seems to drop into the amber when I'm sitting still in a skybox with nothing else running - ping times across the Atlantic to the West Coast obviously flick into danger warning territory, but it's a nice touch if in need of some fine tuning.

Builders will also note the new layout of both the general tab and the top part of the edit window... bit sure why it's been looked at, but I think this bit will grow on me.

Tomorrow (Thursday October 18) Linden Lab is staging a rolling restart some time in the AM hours SLT (US Pacific time), but quite likely crossing over into the afternoon, as the full restart takes around 5 hours or so.

We're told that the restart fixes viewer metrics gathering (but aren't told what about viewer metrics gathering is broken), and the behavior of "standby" simulators (we're not sure what one is, or quite what it was doing wrong).

We've also not been told whether this is an old-style (North-to-South) restart, or a new recipe (all over the place) restart. Either way, [Tateru screws up! Sorry, folks. It's a traditional North-to-South rolling restart. Mea culpa]. Here's hoping it doesn't mess with your plans in Second Life too badly.

Every MMO/NGO/VW has bugs. Every patch, every update for every one of them brings a slew of fresh bugs, glitches, imbalances and lost property. Dealing with those bugs, glitches and whatnot can be a pain in the ass quite frankly, but in Second Life, we're not just dealing with peoples' fun. We're also dealing with their revenue.

While Ginsu Linden made quite an effort to make everyone understand that Linden Lab understands the position that it is in, relative to the users, it's obvious enough from reading the comments that many of the users themselves either do not understand Linden Lab's position, or do not think Linden Lab understands it. Pick one.

Following on my reviews of the Nicholaz editions, I'm happy to announce that the -s version has been released on all platforms.

I've not tried it yet, but you can find the Mac version here and windows and Linux versions via Nicholaz' blog. Nicholaz himself regards this as a milestone version, and warns there may not be any new versions for a while, as trivial things like his RL job exert their influence over him!

Tomorrow morning, Wednesday 10 October at 9AM SLT (US Pacific), there will be a rolling restart across the Second Life grid to deploy new code. This will be a traditional north-to-south rolling update, and not one of them new-fangled ones that leaves shoals of dead and disconnected simulators in its wake.

The goal of the update is to deploy code to gather information about teleport failures, presumably both rates of incidence and information as to types of causes. With luck, this information will ultimately lead to more reliable teleports.