There are two subsections below, What's New, and Known Issues. The former section includes a description of the new features in Director 8.5.1, as well as a list of fixed bugs. The latter section contains information about known issues that exist in this version of Director.

The focus of this release is on anti-aliasing for 3D sprites, OS X Shockwave support and Windows XP authoring and playback support. We have also fixed key bugs from prior releases.

A few key notes:

Anti-Aliasing
Full-scene anti-aliasing has been added for Director 8.5.1. Enabling anti-aliasing will result in a noticeable slow down in framerate. This feature was implemented mainly for usage in merchandise demos and other e-commerce type pieces. Anti-aliasing is supported in Direct X 5.2, Direct X 7 and Software rendering modes only. It is a sprite level control which can be accessed as follows:

Although some recent hardware acceleration cards support anti-aliasing in hardware, Shockwave3D does not yet allow authors to enable it. The current feature is designed to work consistently across the widest possible range of hardware. Users who own cards which do support anti-aliasing in hardware can still turn this feature on/off through their card's control panel.

Unfortunately, the implementation of anti-aliasing we chose does not work with OpenGL. Therefore anti-aliasing is only available in Software rendering mode on Macintosh.

Please note that this feature requires more memory (VRAM/RAM) than conventional 3D rendering, and a slowdown in performance is expected. For that reason, it is recommended that anti-aliasing be turned off while there is movement in the scene, e.g. models or cameras in motion. If nothing moves between one frame and the next, a delay in rendering should not be noticeable.

Note: Before using any AA lingo ensure that the movie is running in 8.5.1

Below is an example of Lingo code for anti-Aliasing:

-- switch anti-aliasing on/off depending on whether the 3D scene is being redrawn
-- user presses on UI control buttons to rotate, pan, dolly around the promotion piece
-- attach below to the UI control buttons. X is the 3D sprite channel number.

on mouseDown
  --Verify that 8.5.1 is being used, as 8.5.0 does not support anti-aliasing
  if (the environment).productVersion = "8.5.1" then 
       -- user is pressing on UI controls to move promo piece, so turn off anti-aliasing
      sprite(x).antialiasingEnabled = 0
   end if
 end
on mouseUp
 --Verify that 8.5.1 is being used, as 8.5.0 does not support anti-aliasing
   if (the environment).productVersion = "8.5.1" then       
      -- user is NOT pressing on UI controls to move promo piece, so turn on anti-aliasing
      sprite(x).antialiasingEnabled = 1
   end if
 end

sprite(1).suspendUpdates = true
-- stops animation updates - damage updates will still occur (e.g., dragging
windows over the sprite will cause updates) 
sprite(1).suspendUpdates = false
-- restores animation updates

Mac OS X Shockwave support has been added, however Authoring and Projectors are not supported, even as a Classic application.

Several major cast issues involving the loss of data, duplication, and deletion of cast members have been fixed.

XP will no longer report itself as Windows 2000 when querying the environment.

In Director 8.5.1 Japanese, the Inline IME preference is now saved between sessions on Windows platforms.

Havok Xtra: deleting a rigid body within a collision callback no longer causes a crash. A number of bugs were fixed involving dashpots and the movement of fixed rigid bodies.

Installation
You cannot install Director as a restricted user on Windows.

You cannot install Shockwave as a restricted user on Windows, or on OS X.

The patch will only work on a default Director 8.5 installation. If you have altered any of the default files, the update will fail. Save your modified files in another folder if you want to preserve them, before re-installing Director 8.5. You may then run the updater and copy back the modified files.

The patch looks for files named Director 8.5. If you have several files with this name on your hard disk, you may have to manually select the correct one by pressing the "Folder" button in the updater. This situation may occur on the Mac if you use a tool like Quickkeys, which names its files after the program it was recorded for.

After running the 8.5.1 patch installer on the Mac, there will be some Director application files in the Trash folder. These may be deleted after the patch installer finished installing the necessary file.

After patching Director 8.5 on a system with an unpatched Director 8.0 or 8.5.0 installed, some icons will still be the old 8.5 icons.

Many of the new Director Icons will not show up on Windows 98. To workaround this issue, delete a file called 'ShellIconCache'. For further instructions go to http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q132/6/68.asp.

When scrolling in the browser on OS X, a 3D sprite in OpenGL will not update it's location in the browser until scroll bar is released.

As there is not a carbonized version of the Real player, there is no Real asset support in Shockwave on OS X.

When muting by way of the context menu, the checkmark does not reflect sound state.

You cannot establish a peer-to-peer connection between two Shockwave movies on the same page using the Multiuser Xtra.

anti-aliasing may fail for the software renderer, as it relies on normal system memory in order to emulate video ram. The memory partition for projectors was increased by an additional 4 MB and now ranges from 8 MB to 16 MB for standard projectors. It should be pointed out that it is always possible to run out of memory under the Mac OS 9.x or below, depending on the size of the 3D scene and the number and complexity of the assets used in the 3D world. Authors may have to manually adjust the memory partition size for their projectors if they are going to use large or complex scenes with anti-aliasing.

Manipulating Director files located in a zipped folder may cause odd behavior on Windows XP.

On Windows XP Home edition, streaming media such as sound or QuickTime will not stop playing or streaming when switching between users.

You cannot download Xtras as a restricted user on XP.

New icons have been created for Windows XP. These new icons have been optimized for Windows XP, but they will appear on other Windows platforms.