June 2026 SL Web User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday June 3rd 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.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month at 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • At this location.
  • 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

The focus of work for the past month has been mainly on under-the-hood updates and preparing for upcoming releases. This work includes:

  • Authentication/email service upgrades.
    • Aimed at providing better security.
    • Also includes a migration to LL’s own e-mail service.
    • This work is about to go to QA for testing.
  • The refresh of the web-base land / region purchasing pages is now going through QA. This is seen as the second part of the Land Portal overhaul which started with the refresh of the Linden Homes pages.
  • Search updates:
    • Improvements being made to web search. Once this work is deployed, the team will focus on fine tuning things like search results.
    • Work on adding the ability to search by region on the web-based world map is now in progress.
  • Marketplace: work:
    • The Responsive Marketplace Homepage is due to go through QA.
    • There is a review of Marketplace listings in progress, aimed at de-listing (not deleting) items where the creator has not logged-in to SL for a considerable period and the item hasn’t generated any sales. Part of this work is also to automate the de-listing process.
    • General Marketplace background work.
  • Under-the-hood upgrades to the new user join flow.
  • The web team has been reviewing their general workflow as a whole and how work is managed (some of it with a view to automating suitable tasks, such as the MP listings clean-up mentioned above).
  • The cookie prompt constantly appearing in places like the viewer Web Search tab and which can pop-up in SL web services  where it may not be required (or actually feeds a cookie to the viewer) is acknowledged as being too aggressive, and there is a review underway to ensure it only appears when required.

Trust and Safety Town Hall / User Group

  • There have been internal discussions on LL’s Trust and Safety team should hold Town Hall meeting or start their own User Group meeting.
  • Trust and Safety is responsible for ensuring a safe and secure environment for users by enforcing community standards, addressing user reports of misconduct, and protecting user privacy. They also manage issues related to user safety and the integrity of the virtual economy.
  • A request was made for topics to discuss (presumably to help determine which would be more beneficial: a Town Hall or a regular UG meeting). The primary topic suggested concerned Marketplace / phishing scam links, including:
    • Providing a Firestorm 7.2.4 like capability to unmask URLs pasted into in Group chat / chat / IMs using square braces – see here for more).
    • More controls for Group owners to manage the use of links, etc., within their Group chats (e.g. limiting links to “safe” sites – gyazo, Flickr, and similar; the ability to specify if a Role within the Group can post links; support for whitelisting links, etc.).
    • As a part of this discussion it was noted that LL is looking:
      • To add further account security options beyond the recent e-mail verification push.
      • To broaden of MFA options (to further encourage users to protect their accounts against hacking & the risk of their accounts a) being rubbed of any L$ balance; b) being used to to drop phishing links to all groups associated with the account).
  • This discussion became quite protracted through the meeting from around 10 minutes in through to around 25 minutes, but the general consensus was that a Town Hall or regular UG meeting would be useful.

General Discussion

  • In light of recent (over the last year?) issues with the Second Life wiki going down, with a request for a monthly downloadable package of the wiki to be made available for those interested in viewing it offline.
    • It was acknowledged the wiki has in the past been badly hit with LLMs and bots data-scraping and causing it to fall over; however, it is believed that countermeasures to prevent the problem have been put in place. Those still seeing the wiki being down for extended periods should file a report via Canny.
    • Offering a downloadable version of the wiki was seen as problematic as the information within it is subject to change; however, there might be other options for making the information available (subject to priorities), and a Canny report was against requested.
    • This resulted in a general discussion on the wiki – such as perhaps having a compressed (and regularly updated) archive available for people to view; encrypting IP address for those making active edits to the wiki, etc.
  • The above led to a wider discussion on the general visibility of various SL web-based properties and their general use, including the fact that many users never even use their Second Life dashboard at secondlife.com/my, as it is not known about / is not seen as dynamic / informative enough (Something I’ve raised directly with LL numerous times).
    • There is a review in progress to see if various web pages like the dashboard could be refreshed/ updated.
  • Items raised but outside of the Web Teams responsibility:
    • A request was made for a limited sandbox area to be included in the SLB regions to allow folk to a) rez gifts, etc.; b) take part in impromptu building classes and similar.  This was seen as a good idea for future SLBs, and will be taken back to the Lab.
    • The suggestion was made that some means of identifying Lab-managed regions should be added to the viewer Legacy Search (e.g. the Places tab), so that things like “official” sandboxes appear as the first returned following a search on such, thus assuring users the destination is “safe” (as much as a sandbox can can “safe”!) for them. This was seen as something that could perhaps be implemented within the Web Search.
    • A conversation on allowing a switchable (by region holder / estate managers?) option to enable region-wide chat. This was seen as useful in welcome hubs, etc., where incoming users can often arrive, ask a question via chat and then wander out of range before getting a reply – and then miss it, leading to them thinking they are being ignored.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, July 1st, 2026.

An Everbloom island in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Everbloom, June 2026 – click any image for full size

I came across the setting of Everbloom whilst nosing through the Destination Guide to see what caught my eye. The work of Carolina Jackman (CarolinaSchnuti), it occupies Homestead region which, at the time of my visit, was very rural in nature and dressed for summer, making for a suitably seasonal visit.

A place to breathe.
Let your soul unwind as the evening sun bathes the terrace in warm golden light. Surrounded by blooming gardens, gentle sounds of nature, and peaceful animals, you’ll find the kind of tranquillity that is so often lost in everyday life.
Sometimes happiness needs nothing more than a croissant, a quiet moment, and the perfect view.

– Everbloom About Land description

Everbloom, June 2026

Then Landing Point for the setting lies on the region’s east side, where a bay cuts a shallow V-shape into the landscape. Across the region and on its west side, the smaller of two beaches steps into the land, working with the Landing Point bay to give the impression of a thick neck of land joining the two larger and more circular half-isles to the south and north.

Adding to this idea of a neck of land between the two half-isles is a raised boardwalk strung across the grassland like a necklace. It almost reaches the sands of the little beach when it veers south around the edge of a large pond and provides access to the buildings sitting on this half of the island.

Everbloom, June 2026

These buildings comprise a little farmhouse and barns huddled close to the swinging arms of a windmill. They sit on the lowland meadows, overlooked by what at first appears to be a large house but which is in fact fact a café-bakery with a small residence on it upper floor and a garden market sitting on its broad terrace. It is reached via a wide stairway just of the end of the broadwalk, at the foot of which is a little cupboard of wearable hobby horses for those wishing a slightly different means of trotting around the landscape.

To the north, the land is a little higher and crowned by a single-storey villa. This can be reached quite freely as one explores, but a series of wooden stairways climb the gentle slope up to it, a spur of the boardwalk pointing the way towards them.

Everbloom, June 2026

The villa is furnished as a house, but appears open to visitors. A terrace to one side of the villa looks out over another gentle slope running down to the setting’s larger beach as it sweeps around the north-west coastline of the island.

Outside of the boardwalk and steps mentioned above, there are no man-made paths through the setting: people can simply and comfortably wander as they please, allowing mood and feet carry them through the landscape to see what they might find, be it somewhere to relax on the beaches or enjoying refreshments at the café-bakery or sitting at one of the many other places on the ground or suspended from tree branches in the form of swings.

Everbloom, June 2026

Additional life is brought to the setting through the presence of heron and flamingos. However, rather than simply strutting around the waters or watching for fish from the shore as is so often the case in region designs, Carolina has opted to add a dynamic edge to her birds by having groups of both taking to the air as if startled, causing some already airborne seagulls no small surprise as well. When exploring the island, these little vignettes give the feeling that simply in exploring, a visitor has surprised the birds, causing them to hurriedly take to the air.

And talking of taking to the air, visitors can also do so during a visit, courtesy of a bubble rezzer just a short walk north from the Landing Point. Click to rez a bubble, sit in it and off you go, PAGE UP / DOWN to climb and down and your movement keys to steer yourself and move forwards / backwards.

Very much living up to its About Land description, Everbloom makes for an engaging, picturesque visit.

Everbloom, June 2026

SLurl Details

Second Life Hair Fair 2026

Posted on by Inara Pey
Via Hair Fair

The 2026 Second Life Hair Fair opened on Saturday, May 30th and runs through until Sunday, June 14th, 2026. As with previous years, it is being run to raise money for Wigs for Kids, with every purchase seeing a percentage donated to the cause while the Bandana booths and Donation kiosks donating 100% of all proceeds received.

As with recent years, the event takes place across six regions, appropriately called Blonde, Brunette, Foils, Noirette, Redhead and Streaks,  all laid out in a loop around a central boulevard. So, no matter where you arrive or whether you head left or right, you can easily pass through all of the regions and pass all of the stores. The landing zones for the regions are located at either end of the the loop (Blonde & Streaks; Foils & Niorette), and towards the middle of the boulevard for Brunette and Redhead.

If walking isn’t your thing, signs along the boulevard allow you to rez and ride a “prim bus”: just click to rez, sit to ride and hop off when you see something of interest.

Hair Fair 2026
As is usual for Hair Fair, the shopping regions are lightly decorated in order to minimise viewer-side lag that might otherwise be created by having a significant amount of extra object and texture rendering. The list of participating merchants can be found on the Hair Fair website, while for those who may not find something they wish to purchase, donation kiosks are available to help support Wigs for Kids, or there are the Bandana Booths mentioned above.

SecondLifeTime Premium and SecondLifeTime Premium Plus Membership Auction

Linden Lab has donated one SecondLifeTime Premium membership and one SecondLifeTime Premium Plus membership to Hair Fair 2026. These memberships are just that: lifetime access to all the benefits of the Premium or Premium Plus subscription tier for life – without any recurring subscription fees!

These two membership options are being auctioned across the duration of the 2026 Hair Fair event. To bid:

  • Visit the auction boards at the Fair.
  • The minimum bid increment is L$100.
  • Make sure you read the auction notes in full and select the correct board.
  • 100% of the proceeds of the auction will go to Wigs for Kids.
Hair Fair 2026 – SecondLifeTime Auctions

About Wigs for Kids

For more than forty years Wigs for Kids has been providing hair replacement systems and support for children who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy, radiation therapy, Alopecia, Trichotillomania, burns and other medical issues at no cost to children or their families. The effects of hair loss go deeper than just a change in a child’s outward appearance. Hair loss can erode a child’s self-confidence and limit them from experiencing life the way children should. With an injured self-image, a child’s attitude toward treatment and their physical response to it can be negatively affected also.

Wigs for Kids helps children suffering with hair loss look themselves and live their lives. Families are never charged for the hair replacements provided for their children; Wigs for Kids rely completely on both the donation of hair and / or money to help meet their goals.

Read more about Wigs for Kids mission, and discover how hair can be donated.

URLs and SURLs

Firestorm 7.2.4 release overview

Posted on by Inara Pey
On Monday, June 1st 2026 (SLT), Firestorm released version 7.2.4.80712 of their viewer.

This release brings Firestorm into line with most of the recent releases of the official Second Life viewer (SLV) up to and including release 26.1.0, with additional cherry-picked updates from upstream.

Note that the following is not a complete review of the 7.2.4 release and all the changes made therein; it focuses on the more visible and user-facing updates. Those requiring a list of all changes and updates, including all bug fixes, etc, should refer to the Firestorm 7.2.4 release changelog, which also provides all proper credits for the work.
Table of Contents

General Notes

Installation

  • Only download Firestorm from the Firestorm website. Do not utilise any other third-party site purporting to offer the Firestorm viewer, and remember Firestorm will never ask for log-in credentials in order to download a release version of their viewer.
  • There is no need to perform a clean install with this release if you do not wish to.
  • Do, however, make sure you back-up all your settings safely so you can restore them after installing 7.2.4.

Linden Lab Updates

This release brings Firestorm to full parity with the following recent official viewer releases from Linden Lab.

Viewer 26.1.0 – Stability and Legacy Search

Version and release notes:  26.1.0.22641522367 – March 2026.

  • The ability to hide transparent reflection probes via Build Menu → Options → Highlight Transparent Probes or pressing ALT-SHIFT-T.
  • Quality of Life improvements:
    • Gestures (Comm Menu → Gestures or CTRL-G): now includes a sortable “Status” column. Click the leftmost column to move all active gestures to the top of the list.
New Gestures ordering column will re-order gestures for either active to top or inactive to top (requires Firestorm’s Show Active Only at the bottom of the floater to be disabled)
    • Camera controls have multiple improvements, including better aspect-ratio handling and a shortcut for panning the camera downward.
    • Improved outfit list performance, especially for larger wardrobes.
    • Restored support for avatar cloth: Developer Menu → Rendering → Render Animated Avatar System Cloth.
  • Bug fixes.
  • Elements already offered by Firestorm:
    • Re-implementation of Legacy Search, added to the World menu (Firestorm has been utilising a Legacy Search capability, however please read Search-Related Updates / Improvements, below).
    • Ability to search the Resident Chooser using Agent ID (agent key).
    • Ability to save Snapshot to Inventory at 1024×1024 as a selectable resolution.

Viewer 26.1.1 – Special Note

  • The Second Life viewer release 26.1.1.23806384790 (April 2026) implemented a new one-click installer feature for the official viewer.
  • Firestorm is not implementing this feature, so nothing from this release is relevant to Firestorm users.

Upstream Fixes included with 7.2.4

  • WebRTC:
    • Fixed WebRTC connection’s task outliving the connection (LLVoiceWebRTCConnection) – Github issue.
    • Fixed WebRTC voice being muted after quickly toggling the Speak button – Github issue.
    • Fixed incoming WebRTC voice audio being disrupted after editing audio settings – Github issue.
    • Fixed voice-disabled parcel does not immediately transmit audio after joining a p2p call – Github issue.
    • Fixed P2P text chat timeout on WebRTC regions and delay voice renegotiation on disconnect – Github issue.
  • General fixes:
    • Fixed “Quick Jump” sometimes being enabled when it shouldn’t be (due to race conditions with AGENT_CONTROL_FINISH_ANIM when chaining jumps). This corrects a issue for the Ponygirl community, where use of Quick Jump is usually banned; see FIRE-34049.
    • Fixed alpha debug overlay blend and mask conflict – see FIRE-36474.
    • Fixed PBR materials with alpha mode BLEND and alpha value of 0 are not highlighted – see FIRE-36363.
    • Fixed the default save location on Mac is the Resources file of the current viewer – see FIRE-36609.

New Features for 7.2.4

Avatar Alignment and Facing Tools

To facilitate better alignment for facing other avatars for things like hugs and kisses – or simply as a courtesy when chatting – or for fine-tuning facing a specific direction, Firestorm 7.2.4 implements new tools and avatar alignment / facing options.

  • Avatar Alignment Compass:
    • Accessed via a new toolbar button.
    • Provides options for turning your avatar and facing specific directions (per the diagram below).
The Avatar Compass for aligning your avatar to a given point (or nearest avatar), and the toolbar button used to access the Compass
  • Face Nearest Avatar toolbar button

    Face Nearest Avatar: a new toolbar button which will turn your avatar to face the nearest avatar to you within 20 metres. This is supported by the following Face Towards Avatar option found on the following menus / floaters (avatars must be within 20 metres):

    • Context / Pie menus: when right-clicking on a nearby avatar.
    • People floater: when right-clicking on the name of an avatar.
    • Radar avatar list: when right-clicking on the name of an avatar.
    • Minimap or Radar minimap: when right-clicking on the green dot for that avatar.
  • General Notes when trying to align your avatar with another for hugs, etc:
    • One person right-clicks on the other avatar and selects Face Towards Avatar.
    • The other person does the same to get both avatars initially aligned.
    • The first person right-clicks on the other avatar again and selects Face Towards Avatar to fine-tune alignment.

Region-Based Group Activation

  • Allows you to set a Group to become automatically active when entering a region.
  • Accessed via the Groups panel (Comm Menu → Groups or CTRL-SHIFT-G).
  • To set a Group to become active for a region whilst physically within the region:
    1. Open the Groups panel in your viewer and click on the Group Titles button to display the Group Tiles floater.
    2. Click on the required Group name in the Group Tiles floater to highlight it.
    3. Click the This Region button.
  • To set a Group to become active in a region when not in said region:
    1. Follow steps 1 and 2 above.
    2. Click on the Type Region button.
    3. Enter the exact region name in the pop-up prompt, and click OK to apply.
Setting a Group to become active on entering a region. 1) From the Groups panel (CTRL-SHIFT-G), click Group Titles to open the Groups floater. s) In the Groups floater click a Group name to highlight it. 3) If you are within the region in which the Group is to be active, click This Region; if you are elsewhere in SL, click Type Region and enter the region name at the prompt, then click OK
  • To remove Group selection when visiting a region:
    • Open the Groups panel in your viewer and click on the Group Titles button to display the Group Tiles floater.
    • Click on the required Group name in the Group Titles floater to highlight it.
    • Click the Clear Region button.

Added Protection: Disable URL Masking

  • Preferences → Firestorm → Protection → Disable square-bracket links in chat (URL stays visible).
  • When enabled, square-bracket links sent in chat, IM, group notices and object text from other Residents are not collapsed into a single labelled link – the actual URL is shown and linked.
  • This helps reduce phishing where the visible label hides a different destination.
  • Built-in viewer text (notifications, preferences, etc.) is not affected

Other Notable Updates / Improvements

Preferences Updates

  • Group IM Tabs by Conversation Type: it is now possible to order the appearance IM tabs in your Conversations floater by type.
    • Go to Preferences → Chat → Chat Windows.
    • Check Order IMs by Type and then select your preferred IM order from the drop-down, where:
      • Groups, Conferences, IMs will display all Group IM tabs first, then any Conference session IMs then any person-to-person IMs.
      • Groups, IMs, Conferences will display all Group IM tabs first, then any person-to-person IMs then any Conference session IMs.
      • And so on through the displayed drop-down list.
    • Once set, any incoming IMs will be appended to the relevant group of tab (so any new Group IM will appear at the end of the grouping of that type of IM), rather than just appearing at the end of the list of open IM sessions.
    • Alternatively, you can check Add New IMs First ad have new IM tab open at the top of their respective grouping.
    • Once set, the ordering will persist across log-ins until changed. 
New Preferences options and drop-down for ordering the appearance of IM tabs in the Conversations floater
  • Updated options for de-selecting chat: you can now opt to de-select chat in third-person viewer and / or when in Mouselook after sending a message –  Preferences → Chat → Typing → Deselect Chat after Sending Message + sub-options.
  • Sounds & Media:
    • The “Buttons” sliders in Preferences → Sounds & Media → Sounds and the volume control drop-down (top right of the screen) have been renamed to “Interface” for clarity.
    • Preferences → Sounds & Media → UI Sounds has been refactored from 3 individual panels (UI Sounds 1, 2, 3) into a single scrolling list of UI sound options. Also added to the panel is:
      • The ability to double-click on a sound entry to hear a preview of the sound.
      • The ability to right click a sound entry and Copy sound UUID
    • A new option to play a sound when someone uses nearby chat: Preferences → Sound & Media → UI Sounds → New Nearby Chat Message.
  • Viewer colours and Opacity: new option to set semi-transparent menu backgrounds:
    • Preferences → Colors → Miscellaneous → Menus Background Opacity.
    • This controls the opacity of context menus and top menu bar background where 0.0 = fully transparent and 1.0 = fully opaque.
  • Time format updates:
    • New Time Format drop-down in Preferences →  General →Time Format to change the appearance of chat timestamps between 12-hour and 24-hour formats.
    • This option includes a link to User Interface → Top Bars → Time Format to direct those wanting to change the the format of the time ( 12-hour or 24-hour) displayed in the the viewer window’s clock display (top right corner of the viewer).
    • Preferences → User Interface → Top Bars → “Time Format” has been renamed to “Clock Format” to better indicate it refers to setting the clock’s time format.
Time / Clock Preferences options: Left – the new option for setting the format for time stamps in local chat, etc, together with a link to: right – the renamed option for setting for format of the clock in the top right of the viewer window.

Search-Related Updates / Improvements

  • LL and Firestorm Legacy Search:
    • Linden Lab’s implementation of Legacy Search is used by default in Firestorm 7.2.4.
    • To continue to use the Firestorm Legacy Search implementation:
      1. Open the viewer’s Debug Settings floater (Advanced Menu → Debug Settings).
      2. Enter FSUseFSLegacySearch into the floater’s search filter.
      3. Enable the TRUE radio button.
      4. Close the Debug Settings floater.
      5. Close and re-open the Search floater if required. On re-opening Search, the Firestorm Legacy Search floater should be displayed.
    • To switch back to used the LL Legacy Search floater, repat the steps above, but set FSUseFSLegacySearch to FALSE.
    • The following have been added / ported to the LL Legacy Search implementation to offer matching functionality with the Firestorm Legacy Search:
      • An Open Profile button has been added to the People / Group searches.
      • Ability to search via Agent ID in People Searches.
    • There are multiple additional fixes and improvements to Legacy Search – see Legacy Search in the changelog.
Firestorm 7.2.4 uses the LL implementation of Legacy Search (left), with some additional refinements – such as an Open Profile button for People searches (ringed). The Firestorm Legacy Search, with numerous improvements and clean-up, can be used via the FSUseFSLegacySearch debug setting
  • Area Search: Copy functionality added to Area Search results using keyboard shortcuts to copy selected rows from the Area Search results list to the system clipboard in tab-separated format.
    • CTRL-C: copies selected rows to the clipboard.
    • CTRL-A: select all items in results list.
    • Copied information is in tab-separated format for easy pasting into spreadsheets, can paste directly in Excel/Google Sheets, and includes header row with column names.
  • Gesture floater: a Search field has been added to the Gestures floater (Comm Menu → Gestures or CTRL-G).
  • World Map Region Search: region maturity rating (G, M, A) has been added to the names of regions returned in a search.

Firestorm Animation Override and Avatar Poser

Multiple update to the above, for details please refer to the following changelog entries:

Building and Scripting

Contact Sets Updates / Improvements

  • Drag and drop capability:  enables dragging-and-dropping name into a Contact Set from the Friends list and calling cards. See FIRE-31146.
  • Names can now be moved between Contact Sets.
    • Contact Sets → Move This Avatar to Another Contact Set.
    • See FIRE-34543.
  • Search/filter field has been added to Contact Sets.
    • Contact Sets → Filter people bar.
    • People → Contact Sets → Filter people bar
    • See FIRE-17568.
  • People in your Contact Sets can now be highlighted as such in your Friends list.
    • Contact Sets → Configure selected Contact Set → Custom Colors → Color friends list entry based on their Contact Set.
    • See FIRE-32748.
  • Sort Contact Sets by people’s On-line status:
    • Contact Sets → Configure Selected Contact Set → Sort by Online Status.
    • See FIRE-21531.
  • Set custom Autoresponse messages to Contact Sets.
    •  Contact Sets → Configure selected Contact Set →select one of:
      • Use custom Busy-mode Autoresponse for This Set.
      • Use custom Autoresponse-mode message for This Set.
      • Use custom Non-friends Autoresponse for This Set.
    • See FIRE-17006.
  • It is now possible to bulk apply Set Alias in Contact Sets. See FIRE-31777.
  • Contact Sets are now supported in the Avatar Picker. See FIRE-34809.
  • If an avatar is in one or more of your Contact Sets, you will see those Contact Sets listed below their Groups list when viewing their Profile. See FIRE-32401.
  • Quality of Life Contact Sets improvements and fixes.

And the Rest

For information on RLVa updates, OpemSim updates, skinning & translations, performance and stability updates, viewer build Improvement and Fixes in the changelog for details.

Feedback

I’ve been using the various beta release of this version of Firestorm – and most notably 80712 since it was made available and have found it as stable and reliable as the previous release version. While I’m not aware of specific performance boosts (and so this could be purely subjective). this version does appear to load my home location in SL a lot more smoothly than 7.2.2.80036. Of the new / updated features, I like the Firestorm implementation of LL’s Legacy Search – if only because I no longer have to click over the the People tab (my usual Search option) when opening the floater. The avatar alignment / facing addition is rather neat and the region-based Group activity is handy for making sure rezzing rights are maintained when hopping around regular haunts where I have said rights.

As to the rest, I leave it to you.

2026 SL viewer release summaries week #22

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, May 31st, 2026

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy.
  • This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Outside of the Official viewer, and as a rule, alpha / beta / nightly or release candidate viewer builds are not included; although on occasions, exceptions might be made.

Official LL Viewers

  • Default viewer  – One-Click Installer = 26.1.1.23806384790 – April 10 – No change.
  • Second Life Release Candidate (RC) viewer: Flat UI – 26.2.0.25386466510, May 14 -“flat” UI and font update – NEW.
  • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 6.1.0.23768336784, April 29 – No change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer Stable: 1.32.4.31; Experimental 1.32.5.1:  May 30 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Space Sunday: New Glenn – a Major Malfunction

Posted on by Inara Pey
The moment of total destruction: the complete New Glenn rocket “stack” is destroyed as 1,200 tonnes of propellant in the first stage tanks explode, send a mushroom fire cloud int the sky over the Florida Space Coast. Via: AP News

On Thursday, May 28th, 2026 the evening skies over Florida’s space coast were lit up by a massive explosion. Believed to be in the one kiloton of TNT range, visible from dozens of miles away and heard in Orlando, 90 kilometres from the coast, the detonation was that of a Blue Origin New Glenn launch vehicle. Not only did it vaporise parts of the rocket, it also dealt a significant blow to the company.

The New Glenn in question was a new vehicle, comprising a main engine system of 7 uprated BE-4 engines (currently the most powerful rocket motors in the world, rated at 2,844.5 kN of thrust each 100 kN more than the SpaceX Raptor 3) a new booster first stage called No, It’s Necessary (a reference to Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar) and an upper stage and fairings, both without propellants or payload. It was undergoing a static fire test at Launch Complex 36 (LC-36), Canaveral Space Force Station, ahead of a planned launch scheduled for early June, New Glenn having been cleared to resume flights after being ground following the NG-3 mission in April, in which the rocket’s upper stage malfunctioned.

A static fire test is a routine in which a rocket is loaded with propellants, goes through a launch countdown and then very briefly fires its engines before shutting them down again. The intention is for the propellant systems and engines to “clear their throats” (so to speak), ready for the upcoming launch. To this end, the rocket was loaded with some 1,200 tonnes of liquid oxygen and liquid methane.

The vehicle explosion could be seen up and down Florida’s space coast, as was heard 90 km away in Orlando, Florida. Credit: various

The exact cause of the explosion has obviously yet to be determined. The first signs of trouble came as the static fire countdown reached its end. The water deluge sound suppression system was active, smothering the launch pad in hundreds of thousands of litres of water to prevent the acoustic vibrations generated by the seven BE-4 engines being deflected from the launch pad up onto the vehicle and damaging it. As a result, it is very difficult to see from the available video footage as to what happened next: whether the engines fired as expected with an explosion following, or whether the complete engine unit at the base of the rocket detonated on ignition.

What is clear is there was a destructive event at the base of the rocket giving rise to an initial fireball rolling flames up the sides of the vehicle. There was then a second explosion towards the top of the vehicle, roughly at, or just below, the bottom end of the upper stage – possibly an initial explosion of the liquid methane tank. However, both of these explosions were rapidly dwarfed by the vehicle’s entire first stage exploding, likely as a result of the liquid oxygen tank rupturing. This generated a mushroom fireball which rose into the evening sky with debris from the rocket being hurled up and outwards over considerable distances (so far in fact, that parts of the vehicle ended up scattered over the local beaches, caused fires in the coastal scrubland and came down off-shore, prompting several public safety warnings telling the public not to touch or move any debris they might find as it could be toxic).

The loss of a launch vehicle is obviously not an insignificant event – and fortunately, there was no loss of life. However, for Blue Origin, vehicle loss is somewhat secondary to the devastation wrought on LC-36.

This facility, leased from (at the time) the USAF in 2015, was completely rebuilt by Blue Origin at a cost of US $1 billion to be the only launch facility capable of handing New Glenn (a second launch facility planned for Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, has yet to break ground). With this explosion, much of LC-36 has been either completely destroyed or suffered significant damage, and until it is rebuilt New Glenn will not fly, no matter how quickly the cause of the explosion is identified and rectified (assuming it lies within the rocket).

Nor is this simply a matter of clearing the site and starting reconstruction. Rockets are nasty vehicles filled with things that can put a person in hospital – or worse – if not handled correctly. So before any reconstruction can begin, there will need to be a in-situ investigation across the site to clean it of any harmful materials whilst also looking for any clues as to what might have caused the explosion and recovering any surviving parts of the vehicle which might yield their own clues as to a possible cause. Such an investigation + clean-up is a non-trivial matter.

For example, in 2016, a SpaceX Falcon 9 exploded on LC-40 at Canaveral during a static fire test, completely destroying itself and its payload. It took over a year to get the pad back into operational order – the first 4+ months of which involved just such an investigation and clean-up. And that event was much smaller than the New Glenn explosion, with the pad and its infrastructure subjected to far less overall destruction.

Aftermath of destruction at LC-36: 1) the destroyed transporter-erector (TE); 2) the collapsed launch pad footing + elements of the water deluge system and the hydraulic actuators; 3) the collapsed 183-metre tall lightning conductor tower; 4 & 5) water deluge system feed pipes and other infrastructure stuck by the falling tower; 6) major damage or the corner support upright of the second, larger lightning tower (possibly requiring its demolition); 7) propellant tank farm – potential damage unknown; 8) water tower for deluge system, apparently undamaged; 9) (inset) a view of LC-36 as it looked sans the TE, before the explosion. Credit: Asher B.

By contrast and as shown above, the New Glenn explosion has completely wiped out the launch pad and its immediate infrastructure, brought down one of the two 183-metre tall lightning conductor towers and severely damaged the other, and utterly destroyed the transporter erector. The latter was the 1,800 tonne vehicle / platform used to move New Glenn rockets horizontally out of the vehicle and payload integration building a short distance from the launch pad and then, with the assistance of hydraulic actuators at the pad, raise itself, the rocket and the launch platform to a vertical position, and then act as the launch tower for the rocket.

In addition, it appears that the vehicle and payload integration facility close to the pad has suffered significant structural damage. Some reports state this damage extends to equipment and systems inside the building, including the twice-flown New Glenn first stage, Never Tell Me the Odds. However, this latter point was without formal confirmation at the time  of writing.

Given all of this, rebuilding and recommission LC-36 is liable to be a lengthy process. Frankly, if all of the statements on the extent of additional damage are correct, it’s hard to see the complex resuming launch operations before the end of 2027 at the earliest.

A wide view of Launch Complex 36, showing the (undamaged) pad and infrastructure to the right, and the vehicle and payload integration facility built by Blue Origin to the lower left. Reports indicate that the latter may have suffered extensive structural and internal damage. Credit: Blue Origin

Impacts

If LC-36 is out of commission for more than a year, then the overall impact is enormous for both Blue Origin and potentially for NASA’s Artemis programme. As it is, it has already put paid (for now, at least) to a pair of vital precursor missions related to Artemis Blue Origin was due to fly later in 2026 and early 2027.

These are the Blue Moon MK1 Pathfinder missions. They were both intended to deliver science payloads to the Moon – in the case of the second, NASA’s VIPER automated rover (which is the unluckiest lucky rover NASA has built, having lost its ride, was then practically cancelled, then resurrected and now is once more without a launch vehicle for the foreseeable future, and so could face cancellation again). More particularly, both missions would have allowed Blue Origin to check-out systems critical to both the Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander and its “big brother”, the Blue Moon MK2 crew lander (called the Human Landing System (HLS) by NASA).

Blue Moon MK1 and Blue Moon MK2 are set to be cornerstones of the Artemis programme, and by testing the systems common to both – the BE-7 engine system, the cryogenic fluid power and propulsion systems, avionics, continuous downlink communications, and precision landing system with an accuracy within 100 metres – during the Pathfinder mission, Blue Origin hoped validate their use aboard both landers and specifically move development the MK2 HLS vehicle significantly forward.

Blue Origin’s 8-metre tall Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander (foreground) and the 16-metre tall Blue Moon MK2 HLS share multiple common systems, which could have been tested on the two Blue Moon MK1 Pathfinder flights had the explosion at LC-36 not occurred. Credit: Blue Origin

A further mission now impacted by the New Glenn explosion – and somewhat linked to the Pathfinder missions – is that of Artemis 3.

Due to take place at the end of 2027, this is intended to provide NASA astronauts with the opportunity to test one or other (or preferably both) of the HLS systems being developed (the other being SpaceX’s Starship-derived vehicle) and evaluate their use and general fitness for purpose. Taken together, the Pathfinder missions (if successful) with their testing of the systems mentioned above, combined with a hands-on test of the actual Blue Moon MK2 HLS would likely provide NASA with a degree of confidence in the Blue Origin lander, possibly to the extend of selecting it over the SpaceX HLS for Artemis 4, the first mission to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon.

Clearly, with things now being what they are, neither of the Pathfinder missions will likely to take place within the next year (at least), and Blue Origin are unlikely to be able to participate in Artemis 3. The first of these points means that Blue Origin lose a possible advantage they hold over SpaceX when it comes to vehicle selection for Artemis 4. In terms of the latter, NASA face something of a quandary: do they keep things as is, and hope Blue Origin can somehow meet the current Artemis 3 schedule? Or they seek to push Artemis 3 back to 2028 in order to ensure they can properly evaluate both HLS vehicles from the relatively safe location of Earth orbit, or do they go ahead with testing only the SpaceX vehicle and introduce the Blue Origin vehicle without any on-orbit with Artemis 5 or Artemis 6?

The answer to these questions is far from clear – although one would hope common sense would lean NASA (political pressure allowing) towards delaying Artemis 3 until 2028 to give Blue Origin the opportunity to partake in the mission. Indeed, given doubts the agency has voiced about SpaceX’s overall ability to have a HLS system ready for Artemis 3 (which led to Artemis 3 being moved from mid- to late-2027), moving the mission back to 2028 might be seen beneficial overall. However, such a delay will impact on Artemis 4, and any attempt to slip this back into 2029 could meet with significant political resistance.

There is one other potential – but significant, if it happens – impact that might be felt with the loss of the NG-4 vehicle, and it lies not with Blue Origin or NASA, but with United Launch Alliance (ULA).

ULA uses two 2,460 kN “standard” BE-4 engines on the Vulcan-Centaur rocket’s first stage. As such, if the cause of the the loss of the NG-4 vehicle is found lie within the BE-4 (and not restricted to the uprated 2,844.5 kN version), the FAA could order a grounding of the ULA vehicle until such time that Blue origin has rectified whatever the issue might be. Time will very much tell on that.

A (Very) Small Consolation?

An info graphic on the in-development New Glenn 9×4, including a scale comparison with SpaceX Starship, the Saturn V and the Blue Moon 7×2. Credit: Graphic News

There is however, one potentially small consolation for Blue Origin after all this.

In November 2025, the company announced it was to develop a very significant upgrade to New Glenn: the 9×4, which it was planning to test fly some time in 2027 (a rather ambitious time frame even considering the commonality of hardware and software between it and the current New Glenn).

This new version of New Glenn (called the 9×4 on account that it will use 9 BE-7 engines on the first stage and 4 BE-3Us on the upper stage)is truly massive, as per the graphic to the right. What is particularly significant about this vehicle is the fact Blue Origin plan to have it capable  of delivering 14 tonnes of payload directly to geostationary orbit (GEO) or 20 tonnes to the Moon, both with the first stage reusable – capabilities beyond the reach of SpaceX’s Starship without it being “refuelled” in low Earth orbit.

And why is this a potential consolation for Blue Origin? Well, New Glenn 9×4 itself actually isn’t; it’s what comes with it that is.

In order to operate the new giant, the company needs to significantly upgrade LC-36 in several key areas – such as the pad itself and the infrastructure within / under it to deal with things like the vehicle’s increased mass, the significantly greater output from its engines at lift-off, the need for an enhanced deluge system to deal with higher acoustical issues, etc. This work would have had to be undertaken whilst the complex remained able to launch New Glenn 7×2 (with some 7 further flights originally planned for 2026, and another 4 in early 2027).

As a result of this incident, LC-36 can now be rebuilt from the ground up to fully support both 7×2 and 9×4 launches without having to juggle construction needs around launch schedules. True, it’s not that much of a consolation in the scheme of things; but at this point in time, I’m betting Blue Origin will take what small measures of comfort it can get.