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Second Life 1.21(RC2) available. SLS-1.24.5 rolled out

Tateru Nino
Updated ·4 min read

Linden Lab have been working very hard to attempt to bug-fix and stabilize the SLS-1.24 Mono-enabled Second Life simulator server software (try saying that three times, fast). Since Monday, the 8th of September, we've counted no less than 19 distinct versions of 1.24.5 that got far enough along to test.

Right now, the top candidate (and the version that has been rolling out onto the Second Life grid) is build 96115. A test rollout of build 96378 was attempted, but was somewhat crashier than 96115, so it was replaced with the slightly earlier build. There are several later builds already being tested and assessed as candidates for the next rollout, the latest being build 96505. There's quite a list of fixes, almost (but not entirely all scripting related). Notes for builds up to 96378 are available, however it isn't yet clear what any more recent builds might contain.

While all this is going on, the viewer team has managed to crank out a new release-candidate (1.21-RC2), which runs on the Mac PPC, and for those of you who were having that nasty crash-or-freeze-every-minute-or-six problem, or issues with sculpt textures, there's a fix for those too.

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The repeated freezing (or crashing, if you left the watchdog timers enabled) are related to prim data that has become corrupt in the server databases. Invalid prim data was being sent to the viewer, and the code that was supposed to replace invalid data with some sensible alternative value, apparently failed, causing the viewer to stop running when the data for any corrupted prim was loaded.

For some of us, that was all the time. For others, hardly ever. A lot depended on whether we had one within drawable distance of places we were commonly standing.

Changes:

  • Fixed: Friendship offer text not coming through

    • NOTE: We have removed the following feature until complete: "Improve Friendship Offers by adding editable text field, allowing friendship requestor to clarify request"

  • Turn OFF Thread monitoring (Watchdog) during the Release Candidate cycle

    • This was listed as "Temporary Changes" in the release notes of RC0. These extra debugging checks (for viewer freezes) have now been removed.

Bug Fixes from the Public Nightly viewers:

  • Fixed: VWR-8606: 1.21 Top Scripts menu Columns are inconsistent

  • Fixed: VWR-8605: 1.21 Top Scripts menu Show Beacon does not work.

  • Fixed: VWR-8890: Reproducible viewer freeze at specific location (object with bogus volume params)

  • Fixed: VWR-5785: Large sculpts don't load correctly until selected

  • Fixed: VWR-8725: Lossless Uploading Size Limits need to be Changed for New Oblong Sculpts

  • Fixed: VWR-8853: Mirror and Inside-out choices for sculpties are missing when you use the Silver skin

  • Fixed: Profile > Web tab improvements are missing in the Silver skin

Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed: VWR-8801: the RC wont run on PPC

  • Fixed: Version Upgrade notification is not displayed on startup splash screen for 1.21 RC1

  • Fixed: Push To Talk Mode (PTTCurrentlyEnabled) setting can not be overridden

Crash Fixes:

  • Partial Fix: Trying to interact with a 'Timed-out' viewer causes crash

  • Fixed: crash in LLVOAvatar::setVisibilityRank

  • Fixed: crash when resizing window to minimum size (not minimizing)

Localization Fixes:

  • Fixed: Add translations for new strings in German, Japanese, and Korean

  • Fixed: 4 ungrammatical options in the Tools menu in German

  • Fixed: An overlapping word "Chat" on the first button of the toolbar in Spanish, French, Chinese

1.21(RC2) contains four known issues that Linden Lab classes as serious and one minor, as of the time of release. If you're not prepared to deal with at least those, you should avoid using this release candidate.

Release candidate viewers access your live account on the main Second Life grid (Agni). Potentially they may cause hair-loss in pets, and should be always be kept out of reach of children. The downloads are served by Amazon's S3 service and we use and recommend the use of a download manager to keep your download times to a minimum.

Notably, while they're called release candidates, they're actually beta (and occasionally alpha) releases. The reasoning behind calling them release candidates has never been made clear.

You can download this viewer from the usual place for Windows, Mac and Linux.