RC 1.23.1 - first impressions

I loaded 1.23.0, used it for about half an hour, then went back to the official 1.22 Release. Since I'm only a rudimentary editor of things, the changes in pie menus didn't bother me, but the broken text in the bottom line of Chat did... more importantly, 23.0 did not recognize my age verification any better than it for did anyone else who's posted here about it.

That last issue is significant to me. I *am* an adult, older than most people I've met in SL who divulge their RL ages. I resent a crew of geeks (i.e., Lindens) whose average age is probably half of mine, or less, telling me what I may or may not look for and find, much less do, when I pay them handsomely for the privilege. Nevertheless, "rules is rules"...

Good news: RC 1.23.1 recognizes my age verification.
Hint to other users: Not only do you have to set that in Prefs/General, you *also* have to check boxes in the Search main page in order to bypass LL's list of no-no words.

Bad News: The chat text is still broken along its bottom line, in an odd sort of wave pattern along the bottom edge. Also, the bold text in Contacts indicating who is online is now a different font, which, when bolded, is too dense - i.e., it looks blurry. Aesthetics, I know, but still...

First Impression? WOOOOT! Shadows, Excellent.
Second Impression? WTF have they done to the pie menu's?

I don't understand the current trend of messing with things that are not broke, but this RC needs to go back to the trash can it came from. Too many changes nobody asked for. Can't get rid of that stupid search window in upper right now, like the meters better, who's dumb idea was this. Doesnt seem to remember preferences, Pie menu is changed... going to force it down our throats?

So whats going on LL?
The whole age thing is becoming a disaster. I see your mainland owners with adult content preparing to bail enmasse. Wonder what that will cost this next qt bottom line? Add to that list the people who use those services and the borked age verification - Hey, maybe SL will run smoother if only 15K online.

The SL Economy is in the toilet - Sales are down to a trickle for most vendors I know, performance has issues...

And LL is borking up the client again....

Kind of like redesigning the titanic as she is sinking, best to leave things alone, fix some bugs... and see what happens.

I know I have about reached my limit though... truly getting to be more work just to use SL than its worth.

Put the client back to 1.22 and start over!!!

Follow up to my first post:

Anyone else notice that textures that have rezzed while you're facing them (or your camera is) de-rezz when you turn away, and have to reload when you face them again?

Not all... but various random graphics, and some (furry) avatar textures. It's as if the viewer decides to "forget" them because you're not facing that way. Never seen that with previous RCs, or the three Releases since I first logged in.

I'm seeing that too, it's like the cache isn't being used anymore.

Things I dislike about 1.23 RC1:

1. Attachment pie menu: kind of annoying how what once took one click now takes two. much has been said on this topic, I don't need to reiterate, just vote please.
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-12946

this pie menu also applies to HUDs which makes little sense. For many people this does not improve the experience, it makes it more tedious. Fear of accidental nudity? do it once and you'll learn how not let that happen ever again and you'll have something funny to tell at parties. then again SL is not for everyone

2. Edit window: Less/More button is gone. I miss you. please come back. It was really nice to click you instead of moving the window out of the way when it blocked my cursor from selecting an object. and the prim count line has moved and looks smaller. why? hey why not!!?! Hey why not just put the Menu bar at the bottom and the buttons at the top?!!? Just because!! woohoo!! hahahaa it took years to get Release Keys moved to a menu, so let's not make this a big deal and just put it back before some one gets even more RSI.

3. Inventory Window: icons are slow to load, i see grey squares until icons load each time i open the window. also saw this on the land window, the preferences window. button icons not caching? never seen that before.

4. Communicate window: Bold font on the friends online list is extremely BOLD now, almost painful to look at. does it have to be so bold? have you seen how bold the bold is on the bold font of the friends list... i think you get my point. we don't really need the text to pop out and stab us in the eyes, just make it a little more readable.

5. Camera View Angle. I find this new control completely useless. Zoom In with ctrl-0, Zoom out with ctrl-8 or using a mouse scroll wheel are a MUCH better methods that perform this function.

6. my favorite camera controls are gone. transition time and smoothing. i will miss you two. dearly. follow distance only seemed to work while flying before, now that it actually works while walking a numeric value would be nice.

7. some textures are slow to load, especially trees and other alphas, textures go grey again and have to reload if they come into view again after fully rezzing. Same problem Lalo and Feral have reported.

8. Alpha textures are not layered properly, hair and eyelashes don't look right together. yesterday my avatar had some interesting "alpha holes" in the torso after changing a shirt, i rebaked textures which then turned my avatar solid black. so i relogged thinking that would solve my problem. Nope! i was ruthed/cloud for an audience of 50 while performing a live concert because the viewer wouldn't let me edit appearance. thanks! lol! Sometimes I think I can see right through myself...

9. had some trouble copying and pasting slurls from the main map. one button does this function and it failed.

10. Statistics window font is larger than rest of the UI fonts, too large.

11. That new default Profile/Landmark pic texture, the question mark texture that pops up before profile and landmark pics load. ick. I'd rather see nothing at all. lol

12. Web tab on Profile Window still has silver skin scroll bars while using dark skin for the UI. STILL. Ever since that horrible skin was introduced it has left its icky grey-blue stain on the dark skin, hiding in the corners of the beautiful and exotic dark skinned viewer, bits and pieces of it that should have been cleansed but were forgotten about over the cycles... I know, i'm really nitpicking now but I seriously can't stand that color. In fact i wish the forum page was darker because its starting to remind me of that skin.... Seriously though can the dark skin be consistent please? thx.

Things I actually like about 1.23 RC1:

1. Statistics window sticks!! yay! finally! it remembers where i put it after relogging. joy. oh but that font is still to big. dang it. :-\

2. SL Voice does not crash. good work to who ever is responsible for all that! I cannot make this claim regarding 1.22 so this is a time for celebration. yay!

3. Set Default Permissions for uploads is very nice. thank you very much for that.

4. View>Banlines is cool, will be nice for machinima and photography.

5. World>Stop Animating My Avatar... thanks for clearing that up!! was it really that confusing before? lol

In spite of the flaws 1.23 seems like a stable viewer with fewer crashes especially with SL voice. If it weren't for all the stuff that was changed for no good reason, like fonts and camera controls and textures and pie menus, this would be a great RC. as for shadows,it worked on windows but not OSX. my Macbook Pro didn't much care for setting FBO to true. It would much rather freeze up than try to produce any kind of realistic shadow effects. kristenlee's shadow viewer worked much better.

/me goes back to 1.22... waits for 1.23 RC2

It would be nice if that actually worked, of course.

It does work. The problem is that it's not a complete solution to the animation problem.

The catch... if you have given permission to a dance ball or other similar object to animate your avatar, it doesn't just do it once; it does it REPEATEDLY every time the dance changes. That's why using the menu item sometimes stops you for only a few seconds; the current dance stops running but as soon as the dance machine sends you a new one you're moving again. Scripted "stop all animations" gadgets in-world have the same problem. The only solutions are to leave the sim you're in and THEN stop animation, or relog.

They also fixed another non-sticking problem. For a few versions now (ever since 1.19.1, the first Windlight viewer), if you minimize a window, move the minimized window, restore the window, and then minimize again, it goes back to a default position rather than where you moved it. (See VWR-5530 on the Jira.) It's finally fixed in 1.23.

Perhaps that's what they want.
Maybe they see the cost on the next quarter's bottom line a one-time business expense. I think they're mistaken, and not because of the sex businesses but because of all the other people who are just a little too kinky for their comfort.

It stops the animation on your screen. You're still dancing on everyone else's. Doesn't matter if you're in the same sim or not... until you stop the animation in-world, not just in the client, you keep running it for everyone else.

Wow! What a great feature. Sure glad thats all sorted out now.

BTW. Argent is correct, it does nothing to animations inworld, only on the client, which is to say, it really does nothing, unless all you care about is how you appear to you.