Second Life released the voice viewer tonight, and if the comments on their blog are indicative of how most people feel, then I think most may unhappy the Lindens are adding features and not fixing some of the problems that need fixing. Many reported having troubles, one said he could no longer get back on SL, it crashed at startup every time, others talked of it reducing performance even more since the grid has been having trouble of late anyway, and many, many people were complaining about the unified communications window, a combination of the IM window and the chat window, which sounds like it could get tricky, I figure we’ve all typed a message into the wrong window a time or two. I haven’t downloaded the client myself, I’m going to wait a bit and see if it works for most people or not.

New Features:

• In-World Voice Chat

• In-world Voice Chat is now part of the main viewer.
• You can see and manage all voice settings in Edit > Preferences > Voice Chat.
• Voice is off by default. To enable (and disable) voice, visit Edit > Preferences > Voice Chat and check/uncheck the box beside “Enable voice chat”.
• A voice set-up wizard appears during first voice use to help residents set up voice and adjust their mic volume and tuning. You should run the voice set-up wizard even if you only want the ability to hear others and do not wish to speak.
• Push-to-Talk is part of the Voice feature. Push-to-Talk is ON by default, which means Resident mics are OFF by default.
• Speech gestures for voice are included in the Library, in Gestures > Speech Gestures. These gestures need to be activated in order to work; they are off by default.
• Streaming video support for Linux client.

Changes:

• Shortcut keys for menu items in the Client & Server menus are now disabled if the menus are hidden.

• Text from objects can be muted.

Source: The Second Life Voice Viewer is Live!

It does include these bug fixes, so its not just new features:

Bug fixes:

• VWR-1797: Remove mention of “Live Help” from Crash Logger

• VWR-1732: Pressing Enter, with multiple inventory objects selected, crashes viewer
• VWR-1729: indra/lscript/lscript_compile/indra.l: avoid yyunput hack on Windows build
• VWR-1723: Possible crash in llvopartgroup
• VWR-1706: Minor quirk (and cleanup) in llfloater.cpp
• VWR-1705: indra/lscript/lscript_compile/indra.y: disable compiler warning #4065 for ’switch’ statements
• VWR-1704: indra/llui/files.lst: delete llhtmlhelp.h entry
• VWR-1698: Clean up parcel flag manipulation
• VWR-1655: Script Warnings/errors window is hard to resize, resets size after closing tabs.
• VWR-1646: Possible crash when login server is unavailable.
• VWR-1626: Patch to avoid IM window from resizing when sessions open or close
• VWR-1613: Overuse of virtual
• VWR-1612: LLRenderPass::Pushbatch and LLViewerImage::addTextureStats tuning
• VWR-1586: Mismatched delete in llviewerparcelmgr.cpp
• VWR-1578: Two quirks in IM regarding “xxxx is typing”
• VWR-1471: Inspect (Pie menu > More > More > Inspect) shows nothing on first use when “only select own objects” is enabled
• VWR-1470: Buttons (IM, Teleport, Profile, …) in friends list are disabled when opening friends list window
• VWR-1468: LoginPacketNeverReceived dialog text is incorrect
• VWR-1462: Order of right-click menu on Inventory is confusing
• VWR-1453: A few old-school changes for llviewerregion.cpp
• VWR-1434: Null pointer crash when terraforming
• VWR-1406: Unchecking “Go Away/AFK when idle” has no effect in 1.17.2.0
• VWR-1382: Some scripted objects are highlighted in red while pressing Alt with tools open
• VWR-1381: libpng12.a for MacOS X is missing in 1.17.1.0 and build fails.
• VWR-1358: Physical objects remain red if tools window is closed while holding Alt key
• VWR-1358: Physical objects remain red if tools window is closed while holding Alt key
• VWR-1353: Misleading variable names in LLTextEditor
• VWR-1344: Reverse order of popups, so that new ones appear underneath existing ones rather than on top.
• VWR-1318: Selecting Cancel while saving a snapshot to disk still triggers snapshot gesture
• VWR-1314: Multiple selection then individual deselection of attachments broken
• VWR-1294: Possibly threads not fully cleaned up at end of program
• VWR-1289: On logging in, sound volume for stream is low, despite the actual setting in the music control
• VWR-1282: Better error handling when fonts are missing
• VWR-1270: Script error window keeps reverting to a very small size
• VWR-1246: Mac: File menu > Snapshot to Disk lists wrong shortcut key
• VWR-1105: Set internal limit of particle count to max value from GUI preferences.
• VWR-1092: Disable mouse hover text on HUDs, since it always only shows the owner’s name and generally gets in the way of HUD functionality.
• VWR-727: Torn of IM windows should be minimizable (was re: VWR-233: … resizeable and minimizable)
• VWR-447: Allow minimized windows to be repositioned in client
• VWR-353: Rebake command - add a keyboard shortcut and put in tools menu
• VWR-349: Change keyboard shortcuts, because entering { [ ] } on German and some other international keyboards (AltGr 7, 8, 9, 0) triggers Rendering Features accelerators Ctrl-Alt-7, 8, 9, 0 (previously resulting in unstable viewer)
• VWR-238: Permissions of Roles and Rights in the german version are messed up.
• VWR-102: md5 slow
• SVC-371: Fix the legibility and grammar/consistency of the new llOwnerSay implementation
• SVC-193: llParticleSystem - halo of rogue particles around original particle system after 1.15 update* SVC-373: Deleting a script’s code results in a non-existent file and “missing from database” error
• Fixed preference for showing or hiding server combo box was not preserved
• Fixed residents with negative L$ balance can’t purchase items set for sale “Original” or “Copy” that are being sold for L$0
• “Copy SLURL to clipboard” is now enabled for an avatar’s current coordinates
• Macintosh viewer now correctly opens the map and selects the destination on a SLURL request
• Leading and trailing spaces are now automatically trimmed from parcel media URLs
• Corrected the spacing of the yellow “next dialog” chevron (was partially blocked by the Mute button)
• Corrected the error message shown when adding 11th Estate Manager
• Added CPU detection for Intel Core Duo/Solo and Intel Core 2 Duo
• “Set Window Size…” setting is now correctly resumed after being minimized
• Added link to Qa wiki in the viewer bug reporter menu.
• Updated text in Second Life Crash Logger with new support portal information
• Corrected an issue with UI font scaling in the bug reporter window

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