Back in Black

Is this the end of Casper?

Long ago, the SL client would fill in gaps in the information about avatar shapes while waiting for the asset server to deliver them with the information about the very first avatar, named "Ruth". It's a definite surprise to rez as a slender woman of medium height... especially for men.

So, recently the SL client was changed. Until all the info is available to render an avatar, it will appear as a cloud--if moving, it will look like a contrail. That cloud has come to be called "Casper", after the Harvey Comics friendly ghost character.

A few days ago as I type, a new Release Candidate client came out. Today I fired it up and wandered about. I was surprised to see a pitch black avatar, as if carved from onyx, standing before me. I zoomed in to look more closely, and suddenly the figure changed into that of a lovely woman in a dress that appeared to be of the 19th century with an astonishingly wide bustle an apparently 19th century dress with an astonishingly wide bustle. [Sorry about the dangling modifier. I wonder what the 19th century would look like if it had an astonishingly wide bustle?]

A little later I noticed the phenomenon again. Does this mean that Casper is a short-lived phenomenon in SL? (I didn't see any mention of this behavior in the Massively article on the new RC client. OTOH, that may just mean I didn't look closely... [pause] ...no, still didn't see it.) What will this new version of the not-yet-downloaded avatar be called, I wonder?

UPDATE: I got a chance to look at the whole process this morning, and it goes in stages: first Casper, then the black figure, then textures and attachments appear. There for a while I was seeing attachments with no body, in the fashion of the Invisible Man, and perhaps this is a change to avoid that.