The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
This list reflects those viewers available via the first four links in the LL Viewer Resources section, below.
Default viewer 26.3 – 26.3.0.31203661088, August 10, promoted August 17 – quality of life improvements; performance improvements; bug fixes – No Change.
Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.3.0.32302693173, August 21 – No Change.
Second Life Chat Modernisation viewer 26.3.0.33643480083, September 4 – NEW.
Recent conversations follow you seamlessly: a direct message you receive on SL Mobile can also be available when you return to desktop (requires latest Alpha of SL Mobile for Mobile support), and vice versa; Recent direct message history will be available on logging-in; existing desktop chat logs are preserved – previously saved local history isn’t being replaced or removed; conversation history feels continuous: on desktop, your existing local history and newer message history are brought together into a single conversation.
Viewer Notes
The 26.4 viewer – Lua Editor and Linux support – is being prepared for beta / RC release during week #37 (commencing Monday, September 7, 2026).
the Chat Modernisation viewer (see above) looks like it will be classed as the 26.5 release once it gets that far, and might be the viewer release to include the game_control work – but this is still TBC.
Geenz Linden is looking at further viewer PRs, but the context (whether they are for the Graphic Care Package (GCP) viewer or something else – wasn’t made clear).
Geenz is also looking to get the work on vcpkg (under-the-hood viewer packaging to replace the current Autobuild process used to build the viewer) moving again.
General Discussion
Callum linden is working on CEF – and part of this is keeping it outside of the viewer executable (Windows currently, and he plans to move on to MacOS and Linux as well).
General discussions on making internal building of the official viewer more visible / available to TPVs for code checking on things like backports, etc. This might see nightly builds of in-development viewers and upping alpha / Project Viewers to weekly builds.
A discussion on one user’s issues with chat logs from the official viewer and Firestorm (shared folder between the two). This led to a broader discussion on viewer installation, using SL on shared computers, etc. Please see the video for more on this.
MoonWillow, September 2026 – click any image for full size
Occupying roughly one-third of a Full private region is MoonWillow, a completely delightful realm designed by Mille Bliss to present a place of enchantment and mystery, packed with opportunities for exploration and photography.
This is a place I very much fell in love with whilst exploring, although I would note that I’m not sure the selected Shared Environment shows it to its best advantage, being a tad on the dark side of things. This being the case, please note that some of the photos later in this piece use one of my personal Day EEP settings.
MoonWillow, September 2026
This is a setting with a west-east orientation as it runs along the southern side of the host region, with the landing Point located on a small island at the west end of things.
Welcome, traveller, to MoonWillow, a lush, mythical realm nestled deep within the folds of time, where magic lingers like mist in the morning air. Here, every leaf has a story, every shadow hides a spell, and every step draws you deeper.
– MoonWillow Destination Guide entry
A large map of the setting is located at the landing point and highlights many of the locations awaiting exploration. Many – but not all; some are marked by symbols which the map legend defines as What Could This Mean?, together with And This? – both of which pique a sense of intrigue and a desire to discover.
Touching the map will deliver a wearable HUD version – which is nice. Unfortunately, there is no way to minimise it, so if a copy is taken for reference, it has to be constantly added / removed – and odd clicks on it will cause to it to offer a Landing Point landmark, which can get a tad irritating.
MoonWillow, September 2026
Getting across the waters here should – according to the map – be a case of taking the local ferry. However, printed signs at the quays and piers apologise for the fact that the ferry is currently broken. Instead, visitors are asked to cross the waters by means of the magical lily pads which have been set out to keep feet dry!
Across the water sits a little shoreline hamlet, its waterfront taken up by the local apothecary, tavern and teahouse as well as the local market. Behind and above these, perched on the cliffs and rocky buttresses are little houses (open to the public) whilst across the mouth of a fast flowing stream there rises the tall finger of a wizard’s tower.
MoonWillow, September 2026
Reaching the latter is by means of another lily pad crossing, whilst a walk on the beach facing the tower provides one of the routes of entry to the setting’s eye-catching lagoon.
However, from the village there are in fact multiple routes of exploration climbing up into the hills behind it, some of which pass directly by the little houses perched higher up, others of which are more circuitous in nature – which you take is entirely up to you.
MoonWillow, September 2026
The attractive element with all these paths and routes is that most of them intersect one with another, so whatever turn you take, you’re going to arrive somewhere or easily circle back to somewhere you might otherwise have missed.
There are locations within the setting the eyes and feet are naturally drawn to – the lagoon within its circle of stone, the castle up on the hilltops, the village itself. However, do be careful when heading for just these, as there are caverns, a cave hinting an magic rituals, a hidden waterside place to sit, tree and rock sheltered avenues and climbs and a magical stone circle all waiting discovery.
MoonWillow, September 2026
Travel far enough to the east and you might find the many-bridged path leading around falls and water to where an old mine provides passage through the intervening mountains and cliffs to the rest of the region (or you might come across it by way of the cavern tunnel!).
Called Nymunarby, this is the work of Lotte (Lotte Warwillow) and presents a mist-shrouded setting very different to MoonWillow, complete with its own mysteries. Largly open ground backed by crags and rocky hills (some of which have a path winding up them (and a cavern under), this is a place of ancient standing stones, ruins and a Viking outpost – although follow the path to where a boardwalk leading out over the waters of a small lake and you might find yourself humming the opening Sunrise fanfare of Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Nymunarby, August 2026
There is not a lot more I can say about Nymunarby; but it does form an interesting adjunct to a visit to MoonWillow for those who wish to discover it as well.
As to the latter, I thoroughly enjoyed exploring its many parts and paths; Group membership will bring rezzing rights if you wish to rez props for photographs, but as ever: do please remember to pick bits up afterwards!
92 region have been added to Zindra (the Adult continent).
Some parcels within these new regions have been allocated to former Gaeta 1 residents who expressed a wish to relocate the Zindra following the original announcement of the (now cancelled) closure of Gaeta 1.
The remaining regions will start to be released to the community commencing on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, from 12:00 noon SLT.
However, parcels will not be offered through the Mainland land auction service.
Instead, parcels will be released in batches over a period of time, with users given the opportunity to enter draws to purchase them.
Left: Zindra as it appeared in 2012 (and much of its life); Right; as it is with the additional 92 regions
How the Draw System Will Work
As per Mainland requirements, those interested in obtaining land in Zindra must have a Plus, Premium or Premium Plus Second Life subscription.
Note that adding a new Mainland parcel may increase your monthly tier depending on your current land holdings. If you have questions about how a parcel may affect your tier, the Land Operations team can help address them.
Parcel will be released in batches. For each batch:
Parcels will be of varying sizes, all aligning with Mainland tier levels.
Available parcels will have a kiosk placed on them as each batch is opened for a draw.
Interested parties can enter the draw for a specific parcel by clicking the Click To Enter button on the kiosk – only one entry per account will be allowed for each parcel.
Kiosks will be available for a time-limited period: 72 hours in the case of the first draw.
Please follow this thread for all release notices and to have general questions addressed.
Notification and acceptance of parcels:
Once the availability period has expired, the draw will take place at Linden Lab.
The successful entrant will be informed, and will then have 72 hours to visit the parcel and claim it via the About Land floater and making a payment of L$1 per square metre.
Those successfully obtaining a parcel in any particularly draw will be ineligible to participate in future draws in this release programme.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday September 2, 2026. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Web Services Updates
Responsive marketplace homepage:
LL is fixing small bugs but looking to start the next step in making marketplace responsive and cleaner.
Note that this work does more include significant changes to the homepage (e.g. how feature listings are highlighted, etc., as has been requested); it is purely about making the homepage load faster in the viewer, etc.
It was noted that this has resulted in the Best Selling element of the homepage being replaced by Trending Now – which is seen to have minimal relevance to creators / users, given it is based on a mix of things like search results rather than actual purchases.
The above led to a request for users to be able to select best selling over different time spans (e.g. the last week, month, quarter, etc.) to again remove bias.
Marketplace search clean up ran successfully and hopefully we’ll see improvements in search results and speeds as part of this rolling update – see here and here for more on this.
Marketplace internal refactoring and clean up – much of this should be unseen but result in fewer errors, less reporting errors, more performant search results and page loads.
Lindex sell survey – LL is trying to get a better understanding of how Linden dollars flow in the economy as they enter and leave
– Event Duplicate improvements (also see the questions asked of merchants, below).
Kermit Linde also reminded people of those with regions leased directed from LL of the L$ Payments for Land beta programme (at the time of writing, last updated, August 3, 2026).
Event listings are now limited to one event at one time at one parcel, in the hopes to prevent repeated event spamming (e.g. people using multiple accounts to spam the event listings with the same event, etc.). LL is also updating error handling around this so it’s clearer to users.
Work to add regions to search on maps.secondlife.com is in progress. There is some internal debate over region maturity ratings and exposing them via the web maps which still has to be addressed, given the web maps can be used without necessarily being logged-in to the SL website.
Outside of Paid Listing Enhancements and classifieds, how do you promote your products? Blogs? In world events? Advertising?
Responses included: Facebook; advertising at suitably-themed events; Discord channels; word-of-mouth; blogger reviews, dedicated store blog / websites; Flickr and similar.
If you are a merchant, what do you do to attract new customers? Do you consider new customers establish residents who just don’t buy from you, or new residents?
Both.
What would make it easier for a new resident to engage in the economy? Adding payment methods? Visibility? Maturity Ratings?
The above question led to a discussion on barrier to entry to the economy (e.g. linking accounts to a payment method – which many long-time users see as a barrier new users are wary of) versus the fact that many new users are coming into SL having seen “influencer” / creator videos on SL and so are aware and prepared to spend money on looks, etc., from the get-go.
As a purely personal opinion – assuming LL read these summaries:
I would suggest that asking such questions at WUG meetings is of limited value, as they are addressing a very closed group of regular attendees, so even as a straw poll, the meetings are of limited value in terms of representation.
If feedback is being requested of creators, better to ask through broader channels as – such as the official blogs – as formal surveys.
This would allow the community to directly pass the word to those wishing to respond through the forums, via bloggers raising their own posts on the subject, by users posting to social media, etc., with links to the survey, etc.
General Discussion
In terms of attracting new users, it was suggested the the change from “Join Us” to “Sign Up” on the various join buttons on various SL web properties could actually be putting potential users off on the grounds that “Sign Up” can sound more like a business-like / long-term commitment, where “Join Us” sounds warmer, friendlier and less of a major commitment.
This resulted in a conversation about apparent in terminology across various web properties, with some using “Sign Up”, some “Join Us” and some “Sign In”.
Whilst the mix of “Sign Up” and “Join Us” does suggest inconsistency, there is also the matter of target audience. For example: the Marketplace is primarily intended for existing SL user, so “Sign In” makes more sense than either “Sign Up” or “Join Us” if the user happened to be logged out of their SL account when they open the Marketplace.
A discussion on getting new users started – specifically centred on the Avatar Welcome pack, its limitations (and the reasons for them), lack of content support, attempts to address this by various creators / groups, etc., – again, please refer to the video.
A further question for creators was asked: which three avatar bodies would they like to be able to see added as a “works with” option in MP searches. The responses were:
Female: Reborn, Legacy (TMB), Maitreya.
Male: Legacy (TMB), Bellezza, Signature.
The above led to concerns over favouritism being shown towards specific brands, with the suggestion made that if a brand is to be listed as “works with” as a search option, then that brand must be sold on the MP (so the bodies would have to be listed).
Store blocking was raised: the ability to completely block MP stores and listings from a user’s Marketplace experience (e.g. to eliminate the multiple stores listing poorly-made, unoptimized AI generated content) from filling up search results, etc.
This led to a general discussion on AI generated content and managing it (e.g. if regulatory moves to watermark AIG content become law, whether such content can be auto-screened from SL, etc.).
Requests were made to separate star ratings from leaving reviews on the MP, and to provide Merchants with an image gallery capability for use in their stores.
Sitting within a Full private region, Yamato is a place I first visited in July 2026 and then returned to both in August and at the start of September 2026 whilst debating writing about it.
My dithering over blogging came down to a couple of things: access is somewhat restricted (visitors must have payment information registered with LL) – and I’ve taken a certain amount of flak in the past for Covering regions with restricted access. The other was because in July and August my visits left me feeling the region still might be undergoing build-out – a feeling which appears to have been correct and several details appear to have changed between my first and most recent visits.
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
The region has been designed by Somnous Corvinus and Len Teardrop on behalf of region holder Valefuth Delrove. It presents a Japanese-themed, mix-use setting, as indicated within its simple and direct Destination Guide entry:
Yamato, a quiet costal town, is a residential and social destination inspired by rural Japan during the 2000s.
– Yamato Destination Guide entry
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
As a residential / public setting, Yamato is reasonably engaging. The majority of the residential units appear to be around the edge of the region – mostly, but not exclusively, along the eastern side.
That said, there is a small town on the north-west side of the region which is open to exploration but does also include rental properties. Whilst sitting in their own parcels, there are not immediately obvious to the casual explorer, so some discretion is encouraged when exploring.
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
The Landing Point sits on a small dead-end road that runs towards the middle of the region from the little town and ending at a small shrine as it awaits visitors. This middle area of the region is largely open, forming something of a small park and an open field area, a dividing wall running between them.
Alongside of the little road is what appears to be a bus stop but is in fact the access to the rental office (located in the sky) for those interested in living within the region. Those finding their way up to this platform can return to the ground by walking into the table overlooking the platform’s shrine (the teleport is Experience-enabled).
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
A path marked by a marching line of Torii gates points southwards. Following it will take visitors down to a coastal Onsen with rock pools, waterfalls and a low bamboo fence separating from open waters and a stream while runs into running into it from inland.
The rest of the park separates the Onsen and town from the east-side residences. It is also itself split by a tram track emerging from a tunnel from where it apparently runs under part of the town before looping back to it overland.
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
This tram track leaves the upper side of the park richly wooded while the lower side an open field. Whilst this might at first appear to be lacking places to sit and spent time – look around and you will find some nice touches of detail nonetheless, including a nicely tucked-away place to spend time.
Across the road from the field is the beach, the southern end of which is open to the public.
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
In terms of attractiveness, it is the small details within Yamato which draw the eyes rather than any single large-scale elements within the region. Scattered throughout the setting, these are worth looking for as they do bring Yamato to life.
In all, a quiet little setting, interesting in design and making for a pleasant exploration – and possibly a new home for those seeking somewhere to live.
The Simulator User Group meeting place at Longfellow
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 1, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting by Pantera is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks to her for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
The “Leviathan Office Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.
Simulator Deployments
No deployments this week, but all simhosts will be restarted.
The Nectarine update is due to be deployed to the BlueSteel RC channel on Wednesday, September 9, 2026 providing it encounters no issues during it time with QA.
The next update after that is codenamed Olive – details still TBD.
General Updates
Rider Linden is still working on a new version of the VSCode plugin.
He confirmed that the next update to the Lua Editor viewer (with Linux support) should see it officially become the 26.4 viewer and upped to a beta / RC version (a pre-release version of 26.4 is available on Github, but not that this will have a limited lifespan).
Leviathan Linden indicated that game_control is now “done” in terms of current development work:
Server-side support has been merged into the upcoming Nectarine simulator update.
The viewer-side code is now ready for merging into the main viewer Develop code base, although at the time of the meeting, this had yet to be done.
As a result of this, Leviathan plans to “get back to” his other workload – including a fix for the mesh face mismatch issue, the way avatars are now drifting more than should be the case when on a moving surface and the “crouch-drift misfeature” – see my notes from the last Leviathan Office hours for more on these latter issues.
Another item Leviathan Linden hopes to address is the Feature Request for llGetRegionWorldMapTile.
Monty Linden, speaking on Harold’s behalf on Lua:
There has been a Discord discussion on robustness around yielding and other concerns. As a result, Harold has posted a PR to Github, and is seeking feedback / comments.
Outside of this, work is focused on trying to find the difficult bits that are still outstanding to give a smooth ride to release, and it is planned to mov up to Luau 0.732.
There is currently no new Lua simulator available, although one is in development.
This news was followed by a general discussion on Lua issues, experiences with debugging scripts, capturing error information, etc., – please refer to the video.
Pepper Linden’s region crossing improvements should be (if not already) seeing a limited deployment to the Snack RC channel on the Main grid (Agni).
This sparked a general discussion on region crossings.
General Discussion
Please refer to the video for details on the following:
Kyle Linden threw out a request to anyone producing Lua content: if they are willing to share their work with the Marketing team, they may get featured in a Spotlight piece.
Leviathan Linden noted that whilst SVG/SVG text on a prim (see this Feature Request as an example) has been much-discussed in meetings, it is not something LL senior management is not particularly seized with.
The request was (yet again) made for larger region sizes – there are no plans for any such work to be undertaken for the foreseeable future.
A general discussion on programming languages which – outside of Lua /LSL had no major relevance on SL.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 