Yesterday, to the collective relief of the entire SL population, Linden Lab released Second Life 1.7.2. Immediately -- after the servers settled down, anyway -- everyone noticed the improvement in framerate. Sims that previously ran at a snail's pace with a handful of avatars now run smoothly with a couple dozen visitors.

And of course, over at Abbotts, the aviators of Abbotts Aerodrome took to the skies again. Arrekusu Muromachi is putting the finishing touches on some sleek-looking blue-and-white planes, and the recently-promoted Commander Jillian Callahan has stocked her new hangar with goodies. I had the pleasure of trying out Arrekusu's flying wing and biplane, myself. After trying a few rolls and loops, Arre and I met up with Rei Kuhr over in Balance, where Wupatki was taking a look at Mike Westerburg's brand-new orange Husky (a plane, not a dog). I didn't see it in the air, but it the model looks quite realistic. Jakal Sauvage, as well, has a new P-51 Mustang that I saw only in passing as I crashed hard into the ground, but the blurry outline on my screen looked quite convincing. I'll have to bug him later for a better look.

It was in Balance that Rei showed me the latest SL bug: out-of-position bounding boxes. Where there's a moving prim on a model, the prim moves one way, but the invisible physics bounding box moves another. That means that collisions between the object and avatars, the ground, and other objects will occur in the wrong place.

This new bug affects my Cormorant plane-sub, as well as the doors Noir SkyLife modules. I'm sure it affects others as well, but I haven't had time to check my inventory. So if you notice that your plane acts like the landing gear are in one place, but they appear in another place, it's the bug.

On another entirely unrelated note, several of Second Life's most well-known residents have glommed together to create SLOG. It's a collaborative blog about the goings-on in Second Life, and very much worth bookmarking.