Hi everyone,

This is a belated set of release notes for our 0.8.18 viewer, compared to our previous live release 0.7.27. Read on for the full list of changes we've incorporated into this release.

Changes:

• Search: We've added a new 'Search' facility in the top-right of the main UI, which allows you to search for avatars/regions/shop items and more quickly and easily.
• Performance: Scripted network messages will now no-longer induce framerate hickups in certain scenarios.
• Scripting: Scripted objects are now rate-limited to an average of 10 msgs per second per script per rolling 7 seconds. Scripts exceeding this limit will be throttled and an error displayed (on creator).
• Browser Surface: The browser surface now allows you to specify an 'Owner' when using it in networked browsing mode. This can be used to 'follow' a leader's browsing when using the browser surface.
• New Component: 'Light Proxy Updater' allows you to update a light probe proxy volume manually on a specified schedule. 
• New Component: 'Reflection Probe Updater' allows you to update a real-time Reflection Probe manually on a specified schedule.
• Scripting: SQuaternion now has a nicer string representation when typecast to a string.
• Performance: Performance hickups while loading avatars have been massively reduced compared to 0.7.27.
• Bug: Tooltips will no longer persist from the Search bar and Explore window longer than they should.
• Third Party Extensions: Improvement to Fog Volume 3 compatibility (note: further work required here.). Updates internal version to 3.2.
• Third Party Extensions: Vegetation Studio has been provisionally added to whitelist - version 4.1.
• Scripting: Adds new SGameObject.GlobalID and .LocalID properties for fetching a persistent/instance ID. Scenes using this feature need to be uploaded with editor pack 10.7 Patch 10 or newer for stable persistent IDs.
• Bug: Fixes a bug in our distance checking virtual camera which was causing unwanted bounciness.
• Virtual Goods: Adds new 'Customisation Level' property which allows creators to specify how much they want to allow users to be able to edit their content from within the viewer in upcoming releases. Previous 'Restrict Customisation' feature will be interpreted as 'None', default is 'Basic' allowing limited tailoring/customisation of items. More options coming soon.
• Physics: Modular Buoyancy component now respects Water Zones
• Bug: Clothing using the Sine Wave tessellation shaders will disable tessellation on older hardware where it is unlikely to work correctly (notably Intel chipsets).
• Vehicles: Improvements to Modular Vehicle script, see forums for full details.
• Scripting: Initial implementation of C# scripting. Not currently availible to creators.
• Environment Zones: Environment zones now have the ability to replace the players character shaders when entering (and restoring correctly upon exit.)
• Scripting: Adds a Unregister function to SShared class's broadcasts
• Quests: You can now create 'Temporary' quests, which do not persist any data. (They will reset upon re-entering a region.)
• Quests: Added a 'Reset' button to quests, visible in the Quests panel 
• Quests: If a user exits the client mid-way during a short conversation step, this will no longer cause issues upon relogging.
• VR: Tweaks for support for Oculus Touch - many more tweaks coming soon.
• Animation Zones: Animation Zones behave better and will overwrite the correct animations when entering and exiting. Further work is required here to allow you to replace the controllers wholesale.
• WebGL: Fixes a crash in WebGL