Second Life 1.8.3 release planned for Wednesday, February 8, 2006

In an effort to improve Second Life, we plan to release version 1.8.3 on Wednesday, February 8, 2006. The grid will be unavailable from 7am to 12pm PT/SLT for the update. A new viewer will be required.

I wanted to let everyone know that there will be planned downtime this week, but I can't post release notes until I return to the office on Monday. Many people have asked for at least 48 hours warning before releases, so even though this post is incomplete at least it provides some notice!

I promise to update this as soon as I am able.

The 1.8.3 release (scheduled for Wednesday February 8, 2006 from 7am to 12pm PT/SLT), contains the following fixes and features:

* Improved ability to buy land and currency inside the Second Life client
* Improvements to the look of water which will also reduce load on systems where it is enabled
* Issue with avatar hip movement being wrong for uploaded animations has been resolved
* Can only zoom in on a HUD if you are in Edit mode
* Text in llDialog window no longer truncated
* llDialog boxes no longer display "Script Dialog:" and extra line of text
* "Apply to Selection" button now gives an error for non-terraformable regions
* Parcel pass expiration affects only intended user
* Collision image should no longer be displayed using the default base texture and should always be loaded
* Resolved an issue where a updates to a complex object would sometimes cause linked prim to disappear