Hi everyone - we've released the 7b5 viewer to the live servers today, there will be a followup release in the next day or two with a few additional fixes included. Read on for the full release notes since the last live release (2018.4), we'll update this post at the bottom with the release notes from the followup release when it is out.

The following changes are available in version 2018.7b5, changes listed since 2018.4 (4b22)

• Tattoo Layers: Fixed an issue where tattoo layers would render white on MacOS
• Loading: Resource loading has additional multithreading and should block the client less during intensive loads
• WebGL: Fixed issues where we were attempting to use multithreaded code in WebGL
• Window Size: Default window size will be slightly less than screen size to accomodate window positioning under Windows.
• Shop: Skin deletion issues on male items in the shop have been resolved
• Shader Fallbacks: We have changed the fallbacks on a number of core shaders (clothing, skin) to speed up asset loading and reducing filesizes
• Volumetric Light Renderer: We now compute the 3D Perlin for noise effects during scene loading
• Scripting: Added .Pause method to SEmbeddedVideo class
• Scripting: Added null-callback variants to UpdateInfo in SPersistence class
• Scripting: You can now retrieve currently playing track names from SSceneBackgroundMusic
• Scripting: Namespace fixed in SEconomy
• Scripting: Adds SFurniture for scriptable customisable furniture
• Furniture Placement: Improves furniture placement in room editor
• Screen Shadows: Fixes a minor error when using high quality shadows
• Vivox: Added voice particles to users using voice chat over Vivox
• Vivox: Refined lip-sync on characters
• Vivox: Fixed a small memory leak
• White Label: Extra options for disabling UI parts & chat channels
• Avatars: Fixed an issue where Length and Size sliders could not be reliably used in conjunction
• Jumping: Jumping is now considered 'network important' and will look better if someone is jumping around like a hyperactive rabbit
• Gold: Says thankyou when you buy gold (buy gold! ;))
• Anti-Aliasing: We now prefer a higher quality FXAA over TAA, it's more reliable in a wider range of circumstances.
• Streamed Textures: Fixed an issue where streamed textures would not work in Mac & Linux
• Skins: Wearing a skin with an empty material will no longer break avatar rendering
• Region URLs: Region URLs are now set from within the client instead of the editor pack, home regions can now have URLs
• Grabbables: Added grabbables component
• Combination Activator: Added combination activator component
• Scripting: Added .Time property to SEmbeddedVideo
• Scene Object Databases: These are better preserved and global IDs are now more reliable.
• VR: Our IK no longer drives the avatar when controllers are in unrealistic positions inside the body
• VR: You cannot click on yourself in VR
• VR: Better body simulation for avatars
• VR: Improvements to walking in VR
• Scripting: Adds RegisterFunction and CallFunction to SBrowserSurface (note this is slightly sandboxed, all functions must be prefixed with the keyword 'sinespace__')
• Graphics: Fixed the hall-of-mirrors effect when switching off Quality Lighting on machines running Shader Model 4 or higher.
• Performance: Monster performance boost on older computers (upwards of 300%!) when all settings are disabled. Best results are on machines approximately 3 to 7 years old and laptops.
• Groups: Added support for groups
• Cloth Physics: Fixed a series of nasty bugs with cloth physics
• Scripting: Added additional error checking and asserts giving better error messages
• Cache: We now support pre-populating a viewer with a preloaded cache as part of the installer (such as the welcome center). Not yet in use on the live grid. [soon]
• Clothing: Fixed a large number of issues relating to clothing, particularly with associated cloth physics.
• Clothing: Fixed clothing deletion related bugs
• Clothing: Implements tags properly on items using LODs
• Clothing: Fixed an issue where deletion would not occur when switching outfits
• Clothing: Fixed an issue where manually weighted clothing would not behave with deletion
• Clothing: Added support for tucking/deletion within the outfit window
• Clothing: Added new 'fast deletion' pass
• Chat/XMPP: We will now automatically reconnect to the chat server during disconnections
• Sliders: Added a collection of new racial feature sliders to our avatars
• Sliders: Added new 'random' button to the face slider section
• Sliders: Added a whole bunch of extra sliders
• Sliders: Added 'reset' button to character sliders
• Login Button: The login button is now longer 'sticky' when trying to change login location
• Avatars: Fixed an issue where female fingers would look broken
• Scripting: Fixed an issue where negative numbers would misbehave in JSON parsing
• Clothing: Adds new robust method for calculating clothing intersects
• Avatar IK: We now more accurately guess elbow and knee positions
• Gestures: You can now stop gestures mid-way (hurray!)
• Gestures: 2 person gestures are more robust
• Gestures: When initiating a 2 person gesture, only one user can now accept (the invitation will vanish as soon as the first player accepts)
• White Label: Grid owners can now manage regions in their grid from within the viewer
• Shop: Fixed an issue where if you bought an item with patterns before the first pattern had loaded, the item would be permanently gray (it will now be the first pattern available)
• WebGL: Better fallback in default hair shaders
• Gray Label: We now tag transactions made on a foreign grid linked to another grid.
• Browser: Synchronised with latest chromium, better performance (and less crashes on MacOS)
• Localisation: UI has now been prepared for localisation, future releases will be available in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese; starting with French & Japanese.
• Trees: Fixed an issue where trees in the distance would frequently appear black
• Realtime Reflection Probes: Fixes an issue where these would not correctly work
• Scripting: Fixes an issue with DateTime parsing in JSON strings
• WebGL: Fixes clothing artefacts for some textures in WebGL
• UI: Refinements to 'fast login' UI used in WebGL
• UI: Refinements to 'download' window used for white/gray label grids