RC9 - My 10 cent...

It is an improvement - although its very difficult to quantify, as changes from version to version can be hard to pinpoint without a direct comparison; and its hard to know whats caused by the server version and whats caused by the viewer but that said:

RC9 seems to render faste and render better, especially noticable at distances and 'next sim' rendering.
I still think the illumination of objects at sunrise and sunset is too harsh - seems a tad better though - hard to say.

Fly and long-range camera movements seems better - RC8 was very slow for me.

I don't think I'll ever get used to having grey 'placeholders' (or whatever you call it) for objects being rendered - I much prefer to have them invisible until properly rendered (or downloaded or whichever term you use).

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Sigh - if only you could make handover from sim to sim (processor to processor) more seamless, it would be a HUGE improvement...

Very much my experience so far too, rendering was definitely quicker. I also felt fps was higher, although I've been having slower than normal framerates in all viewers for the last couple of days, so it might be something else that's cleared up rather than the viewer, possibly the rolling restart giving better peformance from the sims I was in?

The first log-in bug on Vista also seems to be cleared up or at least my only log-in so far worked.

OMG are you serious? The first log in bug on Vista is is cleared? Now I'm totally psyched about going home and logging in and updating my RC. The Vista bug was my biggest peeve. Well that and the fact that this RC crashes if my pc goes to screensaver for password protection which is a must in my house. If I turn my back on my laptop for a mere minute, the kid will jump on it, and I'd rather prevent it than keel him over and over and over.