The RC Second Life Quick Graphics Viewer version 3.8.5.305528 is available here. This viewer has this name because it lets us save our graphics settings. We can have a setting for shopping and another for taking pictures and quickly change between them without opening preferences. Handy.

basement

This viewer also has the new Avatar Render Complexity feature, the one that makes over blinged avatars rez as jelly babies. Now that the viewer is in RC we have a number of users testing the viewer. It is currently my main viewer. I am enjoying it.

The amazing Whirly Fizzle has found some bugs in the viewer. There is a thread in the forum where the issues are/can be discussed: Second Life 3.8.5 (305528) Sep 30 2015 07:39:20 (Second Life Release).

• BUG-9962 – Avatars often permanently stuck as jelly babies even when Max complexity = No Limit
• BUG-10401 – Blocked avatars are always fully rendered when imposters are disabled & other odd new be…
• BUG-10398 – Graphics preset changes to None each time the Advanced Graphics floater is opened, even …
• BUG-10330 – Some avatars remain invisible until imposters are disabled.

None of these bugs are deal breakers for me, but I don’t hang in highly populated areas (35+ avatars). I have to go looking for those places to test the viewer. In that hunt for populated places I have noticed that the new user landing areas fill up, 40 users. they aren’t all new users, the majority of people there are. But, there are a small number of advertising bots there too. Also, some older avatars. I understand why I’m there but I have yet to figure out what other long time users are doing there.

I believe the Complexity feature will be a major shaper of SL going forward. I expect that if this feature works well in SL and encourages more optimized building then we will see something similar in Sansar. It is a tech that empowers the users by giving them solid information on which to base decisions without limiting our freedom.