This is a big update (and not just by download size). Alpha 9 brings a host of improvements:

• Player-selectable avatars:
  Until today, you always played as ‘Aria’, the hooded wizard (the one you also faced off in the Shield tutorial and one of the Solo Duels). Now, you can choose between five different Avatars, Aria among them (the others being: Zediuk, Fionna, Kas’Danel and Artemis. Let’s see if you can match the names correctly to the Avatras). Note that we need to tweak the individual avatar joint bending routines. We are currently using a general reverse-kinetic routine that works for all skeletons, but since all Avatars have slightly different skeletons, the currently might look strange for certain movements or if your height doesn’t fit that of our testers.
• Solo Level multi-avatar support
  All the Solo levels (but not the networked) now support the new multi-avatar system. This only applies to those levels that originally supported an avatar, e.g. channeling and invisibility tutorials, and the Shokkrange. Other solo levels (e.g. thsi missile or shield tutorial) remain avatar-less
• Avatar Chamber with Vanity-inducing Mirrors
  You need a way to change into the other avatars, and we built a brand new special room just for that purpose. We then added functioning mirrors (!) to this room, so you can spend hours there, gazing into the mirror, admiring yourself. This new chanmber is accessible from the “home” room.
• Three new audio tracks
  The network level ‘Breach’, and solo levels “Invisibility tutorial” and “Avatar Chamber” all have received brand new audio tracks
• More vanity in the Library
  The Solo Library has received a mirror. It’s been delivered, but still requires correct placement. It’s currently stowed behind the leather comfy chair.
• Mac Parity
  This release brings full Mac parity to all visual effects. Please note that the OSX implementation of VR still lags in performance behind Windows by a significant margin (30%-50%). On full settings we get stutters using a Vive Pro an an AMD Vega 64 – which does not happen in Windows on the same machine (using BootCamp). This needs to be looked at by Apple, there is nothing we can do.
• Other changes
  We continue to tweak the visual f/x. Ambent Occlusion and Anti-Aliasing still aren’t where we want them to be, but it’s getting much better.