SecondLife gets yet another Release Candidate and Crystal Gadgets gets a new site

I’m getting the idea that SecondLife doesn’t quite understand the concept behind Release Candidates, because the other day they released RC11 for SecondLife 1.20. From what I’m hearing, both from Peng and form others, the idea is to get a version of software close to being ready, meaning most of the bugs are fixed, and then you release a Release Candidate to make sure you’ve caught the most important bugs. Eleven release candidates? C’mon, LindenLabs! Either release SL 1.20 or put it back into beta. Please.

It is an optional update, and if you want the most stability you should use the official viewer. (Yeah, I know, the RCs can be more stable than the official releases.) I haven’t had a chance to see if they’ve managed to finally fix bug VWR-2778 System skirt textures turn invisible on wearing, but hopefully those of us who like skirts can finally go back to wearing non-prim skirts again.

The devs have finally listened to users who hate the new Dazzle look of the current round of Release Candidates and are working on what they’re calling the skinning project.The announcement for this RC says they wanted to concentrate on stability before addressing skinning, but I really wish they had gotten it stable, put out 1.20, and then let skinning be 1.21 or something. As always you can get the new RC on the testing viewers download page, and you can get more information on this release from the announcement on the SL blog.

In better news, Crystal Gadgets has launched a brand new website with product information, an RSS feed to get updates through, and a comment system that’s integrated with the in-world store so you don’t have to worry about passwords or Captcha requirements.I love what they’ve done with their store, and they have some of the best gadgets available in SL. Several of their gadgets are free and their Free Radar HUD is so handy I recommend it to all of my avatar friends.

UPDATED 9:39 am: I’m afraid the Crystal Gadgets website’s store doesn’t actually sell you the items, instead it launches a SLURL to their store. Also I found that when I clicked their in store sign to log in it opened up the wrong browser rather than opening in the browser that had been open before I launched SL. Granted, that may be a SL issue rather than a Crystal Gadgets issue, but I’ve let the CG owner know about it.

Also the skirt issue seems fixed!!!! Although turning still seems to want to continue after I release my turn keys.In fact it keeps turning so much it’s becoming a real pain in my simulated bottom.

/me fires up Walking on Sunshine and does her Dance of Joy for the ability to wear skirts again