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.

Well, I lucked out a bit and peeked in on the state of the OnRez viewer about a minute after it went live. It takes about as long to download as the regular viewer (about a minute and a half) being similarly sized (not like LoTRO's 900MB update today).

First impressions? Nothing is where my fingers expect it to be, and my visible view of the world is a bit reduced. Second impressions? I rather like it. The location bar (and embedded browser) can be hidden or revealed at the touch of a button (though the much larger new Linden Dollar balance display remains onscreen at all times).

Many of you who have used the latest release candidate, 1.18.4(0) have probably noticed that the tooltip popup on the map that shows you the number of people in a sim/region.. well, doesn't actually show you the number. Instead it relentlessly reports zero for every sim except the one you are in, where it reports one (that's you).

How did this happen? Well, when you modify or refactor code, there's two important requirements. First, you have to know how to code. Second, you have to understand what is going on. Lacking the first is less dangerous. You can go safely stick pencils up your nose. Lacking the second, however, means you risk sticking pencils up everyone else's nose. This bug was relatively harmless, if irritating.

In a few days we're going to have people using the new OnRez Second Life viewer. Maybe a lot of people. Maybe a whole lot of people. The OnRez viewer differs from Linden Lab's version most obviously in that the user-interface has been completely reworked to make it easier and less overwhelming on new users.

That's got to be a good thing, right? Well, not necessarily. It brings some challenges of its own.

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.

We already knew that, if you live in the USA or Canada, or surf the internet desperately, 24th October (a fortnight today) will see SL feature in CSI:NY.

What has just come to light is that ESC will be launching a new, commercially licensed, viewer for SL at the same time. Details are currently rather sketchy, but there will be an option to sign up from the CSI:NY site, and it will be available to residents. The interface will, according to the press release, more closely resemble a browser than the current client (one has to ask which browser, Sidebars? Customisable folders on a book marks bar? Widgets?) which is probably a good thing, because the current viewer is not the most elegant piece of UI design. To quote: It also combines Second Life features, such as teleporting, with sophisticated OnRez services for virtual shopping and searching. Perhaps less desirable in the general run of things to most residents?

Update: The viewer will apparently be available from here.

A new viewer (version 1.18.3(5) apparently) is available as the official viewer release now, although there are a number of known problems with the operation of the viewer software.

There are 66 listed bug fixes in this release. A full list of the known issues, changes and fixes is included after the fold.

Linden Lab's Rob Linden has encouraged Second Life developers to bring forward issues with the proposed changes to login arrangements. Particularly he has invited a formal, group critique on the proposal "incorporating the salient points ... expanding on some of the earlier points ... and providing a list of questions that you'd most like addressed."

That critique is forming up on the Second Life wiki now. From monitoring the chatter on the development mailing list, I've yet to see anyone who is in favour of the proposed changes - and most tellingly most people seem to see the move as introducing an added level of security risk over and above what is present with the existing scheme.

Sabin Linden informs us that the login process for the viewer is going to change to address anti-fraud and other security issues. Essentially, you're not going to be logging in through the viewer anymore.

Instead, logins will be processed through the Second Life website, and the browser launched from there with a custom, secure token included in a secondlife:/// link. The token is valid for five minutes.

While the solution has been tested internally to function fine with Windows and Mac viewers, the Linux viewer solution still needs work.

After a bit of hurried discussion on the Second Life Developers mailing list, Linden Lab have rushed out an optional viewer update for people using some older hardware (most notably some AMD processors).

A recent patch introduced SSE/SSE2 instructions into a part of the viewer, which should speed up certain operations and calculations on processors that support it. Less fortunately, some global class instances in that module of the code are created before the CPU detection code could determine if the SSE class instructions were supported, causing an immediate crash for certain classes of hardware that didn't support them. Resident Angus Boyd was the first to report this issue.

This viewer fixes that issue, and allows the Second Life to start properly again on the affected class of hardware.

[UPDATE: Word is that this fix doesn't fix the issue. Wait for tomorrow's update instead.]

Tomorrow's update to 1.18.0 has been called off abruptly. Basically, Linden Lab's just not happy with a number of things about it. Let's say that it's got 'issues' and leave it at that. Joshua Linden suggests that those 'issues' will take several weeks to sort out. By several, we'd guess two or three.

Now with 1.18.0 off the table that makes the other bug-fixes more critical. The rolling restart is back on the table, and you can get fixes right now for your crashes-when-I-try-to-edit-something bug. As for the rolling restart, with it so close to 1.18.0, it didn't get the attention it deserved, and probably won't be coming out until Wednesday or Thursday.

The downtime for the support portal is still on, however.

The last couple of days have seen some concerns start to develop on the Second Life IRC channel and developers' mailing list about some of the conditions surrounding licensing and the Terms of Service as they apply to the open source code.

One key item is about the Terms of Service granting Linden Lab editorial control that may cause unavoidable breach of third-party contracts. A second is about the terms of redistribution of the small package of included, static content.

The cat is out of the bag. The genie is out of the bottle. Humpty Dumpty is a pile of calcium carbonate and long-chain proteins at the base of the wall, and the King's Horses and Men are standing around, looking uncomfortable. The Second Life viewer is now Free Software.

As we have seen time and again, in Second Life and out in First Life, how we feel about something, and the implications of it are sometimes more important than the fact of it -- at least, if we take action based on those feelings.

Is the release of the viewer source code for anyone skilled enough to modify or contribute to a bane? Is it a boon? Is it some other thing that may or may not begin with the letter 'B'?

Well the first of my 2007 predictions hit the turf a little earlier than planned. The source code for the Second Life Viewer has been released to the public, under the GPLv2 Free Software license. There's a section of the website set aside for it, including links to a wiki with building instructions. This is the wiki that was previously announced with the volunteer portal on it. More on that later.

If you are technically minded, and familiar with building alien source trees, you can sit down and make the client do what you want it to do that it doesn't, sufficing only that the servers permit it. Plans are afoot to offer bounties for features and improvements, though no bounties are on offer yet.

Smart money says that the client will see more than 500 downloads before midnight.

Update: Residents have access to a new bug/issues tracking project within JIRA at https://jira.secondlife.com/

The next release of the Second Life viewer/grid software is scheduled for Wednesday December 13, in the usual 7am - Noon SLT (Second Life Time) timeslot. You can try it out by getting the viewer from the usual place (noting, that Linden Lab forgot to update the Beta Grid release notes there). Short of emergency fixes, it's likely that this is the last major update for 2006.

As with every update for most of 2006, this one is comprised almost entirely of bug-fixes, with a very few alterations or enhancements. Interested residents should get in there and hammer it. I don't recall ever logging on to the beta grid and not finding four or five things to bug report in the first ten minutes.

If nothing else, it's a chance to find out if Linden Lab accidentally broke your stuff, and a chance to let them know in time to unbreak it before it all hits the Main Grid, with a soggy thump. Some of you don't want to do Linden Lab any favors, but think about doing yourselves one.

Try it. If it breaks your stuff, eats your data, causes hairloss and albinism in pets and the elderly, now is a good time to raise your voice and say 'WTF?' -- because if you wait until Monday, that might just be too late.