Day: March 14, 2025

Lab officially announces Lua Alpha testing

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

On Friday, March 14th, Linden Lab officially announced the Second Life Lua Alpha, with testing now available on Aditi, the Beta grid.

Now officially referred to as SLua (SL Lua), this is a project to replace Mono as the back-end scripting language, utilising a version of the Roblox-derived Luau scripting language, which Linden Lab has been working on developing for some time now (as noted within updates in this blog, such as my Simulator User Group summaries), and this Alpha project is to allow early testing of the capability.

Note: this is the server-side scripting implementation of Luau, not the in-viewer support for Lua. This latter work is still in development, and will be subject to future updates from the Lab.

General Notes on Testing

  • The Aditi regions running Luau support are: [Luau Yardang], [Luau Tombolo], [Luau Mesa] and [Luau Tideland].
    • These support both native Lua scripting and compiling LSL to Luau VM.
    • Make sure your Viewer shows the Beta Grid in your login options. To do this:
      • Go to Preferences → Advanced and select Show Grid Selection at Login.
      • Then re-log, selecting Second Life Beta Test Grid from the drop-down under Last Location in the splash screen. Note you might need to log in twice the first time so your inventory can properly sync.
  • A Luau-capable viewer is required – download the latest from the Second Life Alternate Viewers page.
    • This viewer will work on any region in SL, but will only compile scripts to Luau on the Aditi regions noted above.
  • Additional general notes:
    • SLua scripting is in early development. Memory and performance characteristics, and API specifics may change! Regions will crash and it’s possible you may lose content if you don’t save often into inventory when working on the beta grid. Error reporting when compiling scripts from LSL to Luau is “quite spartan at the moment”, but will be improved “in the next update or two”.
    • If objects with compiled Luau script assets are rezzed in a non-Luau region, they won’t work.

Luau Resources

SLua Contest

To help promote SLua testing, Linden Lab is, from Monday, March 17th, 2025, running a creator contest to demonstrate the potential and capabilities of the language. with L$170,000 in prizes. For details, please refer to the official blog post for full details. Awards will be determined by committee in April, and winners as well as runners up will be highlighted on official Second Life news sites and social media.

Using Firestorm in your browser for Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
As of Friday, March 14th, 2025, Firestorm is available as a viewer-in-a-browser option via Linden Lab
On Friday, March 14th, Linden Lab, in conjunction with the Firestorm viewer team, launched Firestorm Zero, an expansion of the Lab’s viewer-in-your-browser Project Zero which, as the name suggests, features the release version of the Firestorm viewer.

I provided an initial overview of the offering, together with notes on the overall status of Project Zero in Project Zero Update: Firestorm in your browser as well.
Table of Contents

Update: all available passes are sold out!

In this article, I hope to provide a brief re-cap on the work, and provide an hands-on to getting started and using Firestorm Zero.

Key Points To Note

  • Firestorm Zero is a means to access Second Life by means of the Firestorm viewer being streamed to your computer from an Amazon GameLift servers, and your inputs transmitted back to the server.
  • The service currently operates at a fixed 1080p screen resolution, and should generally provide a Second Life experience at least as good as any mid-range gaming PC, direct to your computer, no matter how old the latter might be.
  • As the service is being streamed to your computer, not all of Firestorm’s setting and options may be saved between sessions – see below for more on this.
  • Firestorm Zero is provided on a pay-to-play basis, using passes costing L$250 for up to five hours use of the service. See below on how to obtain passes.
    • Please note that this is an initial price, and may change – again, please refer to Project Zero Update: Firestorm in your browser as well for general information on the cost of streaming.
    • Payment is for using Firestorm Zero only, the official viewer Project Zero access at zero.secondlife.com is still free, but with limited access to existing users.
    • There are a limited number of passes available.
  • The Firestorm viewer version is 7.1.11.

Purchasing a Firestorm Zero Pass and Accessing the Service

Purchasing a Firestorm Zero Pass

  • Go to your Second Life dashboard.
  • In the left-side menu column, click on Account → Purchase Streaming Hours.
  • Click the Purchase 5 Hours for L$250.
Purchasing hours for using Firestorm in your browser
  • Once you have purchased your hours, continue below.

Accessing the Service

  • On purchasing a pass, go to the the Firestorm Zero webpage – note that this may be referenced a “Second Life” in your browser tab, because it is Linden Lab providing the service, it does not mean you are about to be logged into the Official viewer.
  • If you are logging-in for the first time:
    • Log-in with your log-in credentials using the Second Life web log-in request.
    • If you have Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enabled (see: Second Life Multi-Factor Authentication: the what and how), you will additionally be asked to supply a Token.  Be sure to accept cookies to save you Token information.
As Firestorm Zero is provided via Linden Lab, you may be requested to log-in to the Second Life web services and, if you use MFA, to provide a Token
  • The warning that Project Zero is experimental will be displayed. click the Play button to proceed.
  • The viewer will load and launch, delivering you in-world.

Settings and Options: Available and Limitations

As Firestorm Zero is streamed to your viewer, not all of Firestorm setting / options for saving settings within the viewer may work / be available. The following is a list of features I’ve been able to test; note that there are other Preferences that may also disabled within Firestorm Zero when compared to the locally-installed versions of the viewer. Also, these are obviously at the time of writing, and subject to future changes.

Option Firestorm Zero
Retain Preferences between sessions Yes
Set and retain Graphics Presets Yes
Set and retain Camera Presets Yes
Customise Toolbar buttons Yes
Set and retain Camera Presets¹ Yes
Retain toolbar button size and alignment between sessions No
Access Advanced Menu No
Access Developer Menu No
Upload textures, sounds, models, etc. No
Retain IM histories Yes
Retain Local Chat history No
Back-up and Restore Settings No
Enable RLVa & retain Yes
Space Navigator Support No
Save Snapshots to Disk² No
  1. I personally had issues with accessing Firestorm Zero after setting custom camera presets, and have reported this as a potential issue. Your mileage may vary.
  2. As alternatives – use the options to save snapshots to e-mail or save to Flickr.

Support And Feedback

Firestorm Zero is a collaborative effort between Linden Lab and the Firestorm viewer team.

  • Linden lab is responsible for the overall provisioning of the service: purchasing passes, accessing Firestorm Zero, providing capabilities such as viewer Preferences and settings being retained between sessions, etc.
    • Issues relating to any of the above can be reported through the Firestorm Zero category of the Second Life Feedback Portal.
  • The Firestorm team retain responsibility for general support within the viewer itself.
    • Issues relating to using the viewer itself should, in the first instance, be raised through the usual Firestorm support channels.

Related Links