1.21 RC0 is available

THIS IS THE FORUM THREAD FOR DISCUSSION OF RC0!
[NOTE: I will be reading and checking this Thread twice per day on Thursday, Friday and Tuesday. When RC1 is released, this thread will be closed. Also, due to time constraints, I will not be able to respond to other threads. Thanks in advance for all your great feedback! -Ramzi Linden]


* * *
We are releasing the first iteration of the new Viewer 1.21 Release Candidate (RC0). Help us to identify new bugs and try out the new features before it becomes an official download for Second Life!

(Participating in the Release Candidate viewers is completely optional. You may install this viewer side-by-side with the official 1.20 viewer that you normally use.)

As many scripters are keenly aware, this 1.21 viewer brings you the ability to compile scripts using Mono, as long as the region is running Server 1.24. But this 1.21 viewer could also be called "the viewer of bug fixes": There are over 155 fixes that solve bugs from previous versions of Second Life. Many of these are small but important improvements that make existing features work more smoothly (like menu shortcuts, Inventory offers, IM and Chat, Snapshots, Estate tools, etc).

There is so much to list, please check out theFull release notes:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release_Candidate/1.21
... It is well worth reading.

NOTE: Because of a number of known bugs, we have made this RC0 viewer an optional upgrade from the previous Release Candidate. You can choose to wait for RC1 before upgrading your Release Candidate. Also, some features in this viewer require you to be in a region that is running Server 1.24 -- as is being deployed to the entire grid this week.

Still, we do need your help to find crash cases and other feedback!!
Please visit the Test Viewers Page to download the 1.21 RC0 Release Candidate viewer at your convenience:
http://secondlife.com/support/downloads.php#download-Testviewers

Be sure to report new issues at jira.secondlife.com, and set the "Affects Version/s" to "1.21 Release Candidate".

* * *

Couple of questions about future RC releases [Linden please read]
3 Questions,
1: when can we start sharing Windlight settings in the viewer and having them over-ride estate settings, Whats going on with this and when is it planned for release?

2: what is happening with the new materials editor and shadowing in SL? is that the next first look and if not what is planned for the next first look viewer release and when?

3: Havok4 seems to now be stable (at least more stable then Havok1), what new goodies are we going to get on the physics front?

thanx in advance

Hi Chaos,
What you are asking about is really about the roadmap for new features. I don't have that information, unfortunately, with regards to the Release Candidate. Your question might be better posed in this forum, "Feature Suggestions":

/13/1.html

I can point you to the medium-term Viewer Roadmap published on the SL Wiki. Currently it looks like additional Phases of WindLight are unscheduled at this time:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_Roadmap

Best,
Ramzi

3 Questions about future RC releases and a Firstlook.

1: when can we start sharing Windlight settings in the viewer and having them over-ride estate settings, Whats going on with this and when is it planned for release?

2: what is happening with the new materials editor and shadowing in SL? is that the next first look and if not what is planned for the next first look viewer release and when?

3: Havok4 seems to now be stable (at least more stable then Havok1), what new goodies are we going to get on the physics front?

thanx in advance

I've been compiling Mono scripts using the Beta Client on the main grid with pretty
good success.

Now as of Server 1.24.3 and the RC client, my Mono toys no longer work and seem
inactive, and the RC Client seems incapable of restarting them.

Has something changed?

(Update)

Seems relogging into a No-Script zone turned off the active scripts, altho the scripts
were made to operate in a no script zone. After reattaching in a script area, my toys
now function correctly, even in a no-script area.

(Update update)

Relogging into a no-script area with previously active scripts (made to work in no-script zones) appears ok, must have been teething problems on my part as I'm unable to
reproduce the effect.

This version seems to be running the "DOS box" style Debug console without it having been told to do so and without the previous version version having been told to do so.

Also Output Debug Minidump was on when first run.

Maybe it's just me, but:

1. the Release Notes state:
Fixed: ATI 2600 does not do hardware skinning
On my system that option is grayed out as it was with 1.20.15, no change there.

2. also from the Release Notes:
In the 1.21 Release Candidate, we have also disabled Object-Object Occlusion and Avatar Imposters...
The option is still ticked in my graphic prefs and I see something that reminds me very much of avator imposters

3. The fps dropped by about 50%

Cheers

Hi Lanita,
on #1) the fix we implemented should gray out that option if you have an ATI graphics driver earlier than version 8.2. If you have updated drivers to 8.2 and higher, the 'custom' preference for Hardware Skinning should be available for toggling.

#2) We have only disabled those 2 options on MacBook Pros with the 8600M card-- that is a hardware combination that doesnt seem to play nice with those 2 options.

I'll update the Release Notes with more clarity.

(at least in the 1.21 beta viewer...)
Some of the new sculptmap sizes cannot be uploaded losslessly even though they are the same number of pixels/data size as the old 64x64 maps. Example is 8x512. This compromises the utility of the new map sizes. My guess it would be easy to change the criterion for allowing lossless to look at total pxels rather than longest dimension, to solve this. There may be confounding issues.

I'll make a jira....already there http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8725

Crash City

I have downloaded the new release client and major major problem, im only downloading like 21mb of the entire thing then when I goto install it fails to install like 4 or 5 of the files and I goto log in and its extreme lag. Being forced back to the regular client until this is fixed.

I read on the release notes that you can reverse sculpted textures to fix insideoutness? But I don't see this feature anywhere I do see Stitching Type, which I don't remember if that was there before or not haha

OK .. I downloaded the new client and now my shapes dont work and when i try too create a new one i get this error that it cant be found in the SL database? I mean whats going on you cant modify your own shapes no more ?

I was excited to test the new viewer and its many bug fixes. It was very disappointing to see that many of them are very poor solutions, I would not called them fixes at all.

Take for example the inability to give more than one inventory item at a time. The bug used to be that if you select more than one item from the inventory and drag it into a profile or an avatar, it would only transfer the last item selected, as opposed to transfer all the items as one would expect. Instead of enabling the transfer of multiple items as the JIRA issue suggest, the "fix" implemented is to disallow even to attempt the drag of multiple inventory items. Granted, this is better than silently fail, but its not a fix.

Another example is buggy CTRL-N (always shows beacons). This is a feature used a lot by scripted and builders in general, and its also useful when you want to find quickly that noisy object. The bug was that when you select sunset mode (CTRL-SHIFT-N) the beacons would be turned on as well. The "fix" implemented was to remove CTRL-N shortcut altogether! So no more trying to find that object making unwanted sounds or particles with a quick ctrl-n, find the offending object, ctrl-n hide beacons again, take appropriate action.

Camera movements using ALT zoom got badly broken as well. Chat changes that are listed as improvements (like individual transparencies around each chat line) and different default color for object chat make the public chat very difficult to read in a chatty environment like a club, etc.

IMHO this viewer is another step backwards with regards to UI and usability for people who actually use Second Life viewer on a daily basis.

***
Fixed: VWR-5457: Setting Abuse Email Address in Region Estate dialog, then hitting apply will clear the email address you put in
***

Now that field is showing "Feature unsupported", that's not what I would call "fixed".



Also, the Logitech G15 LCD keyboard is not supported anymore (VWR-8553).

just tried it .. the terraform tools look cool .. but
in one hour already crashed 4 times...
crash on TP.. crash on walk... crash on search .. and plain old sudden crash
so .. sad to say back to basics.

Many things went wrong yesterday and there was no notice to show that LL is aware of the issues.

Builders were reporting refusal of prims to accept textures, reversion of permissions, snap-back of moved prims, and failure of rezzed prims to take up their correct rotations upon rezzing. People who normally do not crash were crashing repeatedly. Ghosting of avatars and prims -- ghosts visible to some residents and not others -- was also happening a lot. I am not just whining about things happening to me, I am reporting what I learned from group IMs and what I observed as an admin in 3 sandboxes in different regions.

This morning --- and it is not yet outage time! -- I could not log in until after multiple attempts I was shunted to Help Island Public. There I found dozens of other people who were stuck there due to inability to get into their home region or desired region.

Please when these things are going on, post something in the grid notices so that we know you are aware of the issue and working on it...not blithely doing something that is making it worse and worse. Or if you need to be doing something that is making it worse, please tell us that too.

Additionally, I note that the time stamp on this post is wrong. It says 11:50 AM. It is 7:50 AM Eastern time in the USA, and 4:50 AM SL time.

Thank you very much for the clarification. But what does that mean for Macs? Am I correct if I assume this is a Windows-only feature?

Cheers,
Lanita

I just downloaded the RC for my Mac and cannot even get it to run. I suppose it does not mean much for Mac Users...

Ok. What's up with 1.21? I am crashing left and right. Performance seems slower too. I have crashed twice trying to return an object from the edit menu. And have also randomly crashed several times for no apparent reason at all!

I see that IPS has been replaced with ESP in the stats window. Unfortunately it reads 0. =/

Can anyone explain the difference between "instructions per second" and "events per second"?

Also with it reading 0 how can we measure the changes Mono might make?

Right now i will have to log into the normal client, record the average IPS
> log into the 1.21 or the beta client and Mono-ize one region.
>log back into the normal client and see how much IPS has changed?

I must be missing something

Same here..crash at launch :/

I'm noticing some of my gestures aren't playing in this viewer.

Not sure what kind of systems you are running, but I remember reading that 1.21 is currently not compatible with PowerPC macs.

Is your Mac a PowerPC by any chance?