Dazzle returns to SeoncdLife. Sort of.

Back in November I wrote about the technology preview that came out of Linden Lab’s Dazzle project. Today Torley Linden announced that Dazzle was back, but this time in a First Look client. Color me a lovely WindLight-esque shade of Tickled Pink. Not.

They also have some server updates and rolling restarts coming, but it’s not for the current Release Candidate. Updated Thursday, 21 February at 8:00 pm: The rollout schedule for the new code has been changed. Rather than updating this new post to reflect the new schedule see this post for the updated schedule.

First things first. When I last write Dazzle was an add-on that you could add to the then-current SecondLife client, but you couldn’t use it with the WindLight First Look client that was available. Of course the regular SL client got updated and Dazzle wouldn’t work with it anymore, but now LL has brought out a brand new First Look client for Dazzle. It’s based on the 1.19 code base, just like the current Release Candidates and WindLight, but it unfortunately doesn’t work with the current WindLight client.

Overall Dazzle is getting a negative review from those who tested it. It’s bright to the point of comparing it to the difference between a room with fluorescent lighting (Dazzle) and a room with cozy candle light (the current client).

What do I think of it? I only have the screenshots Torley posted on the blog entry because I won’t download a separate First Look for Dazzle. Why not? I already have a set of icons (2 each, one regular and one to log in automatically, bypassing the very first screen) for the regular client, Release Candidate and WindLight. That’s three sets of icons on my desktop, and I’m sorry but I have no interest in adding a fourth set of icons to run basically the same program, especially since I prefer to run WindLight unless it’s being crash happy (like it was being earlier today), and when that happens I switch to the RC. I keep icons for the regular client in case both the RC and WL clients decide they want to abuse the poor pooch (sexually or otherwise).

Speaking of abusing the pooch…

The SL Blog has some other, not so great news for us. Starting tonight and continuing over the next few days LL will be updating their servers with the new 1.19.1 version code. It will require rolling restarts, but this time they’re spreading them out instead of throwing them all into one day. According to the blog post the updates will follow this schedule:

• Tuesday PM: Update “central” systems
• Wednesday AM: Rolling restart of ~150 regions
• Thursday AM: Rolling restart of ~1500 regions
• Thursday PM: Rolling restart of the rest of the grid

Of course this is subject to change so check the blog listing for the latest information.They have said it won’t require a software update on our end when the restarts are finished. Joshua Linden has publicly said that there will probably be a fourth Release Candidate (1.19.0 RC3) coming out “shortly”, and they expect it to be the last Release Candidate before they upgrade everyone to version 1.19 of their client software.

This week’s updrage plans look good, or at least better than prior server updates, buy why do I still see a bad moon on the rise? I don’t seem to be the only one, either, from the blog comments.