2025 week #11: SL TPVD meeting summary

The following notes were taken from my audio recording + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Third-Party Developer meeting (TPVD) held on Friday, March 14th, 2025. My thanks to Pantera as always for providing it.

Meeting Purpose

• The TPV Developer meeting provides an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and features for, the Second Life viewer, and for Linden Lab viewer developers and third-party viewer (TPV) / open-source code contributors to discuss general viewer development. This meeting is held once a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
• Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
• The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers

• Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – NEW.
  • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
  • Water exclusion surfaces.
  • Water improvements.
• Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13858460198, March 14th, 2025 – NEW.
  • Will only work on Aditi, within the following regions: [Luau Yardang], [Luau Tombolo], [Luau Mesa] and [Luau Tideland].
  • See below for more.

Viewer Releases, Cadence and Open Source Contributions

• As previously noted in these pages, viewer releases are changing:
  • The viewer version numbering will be changed to reflect the year / month of release, so 2025.03 (March 2025) will be the next viewer in the pipe, followed by 2025.04 (April 2025).
  • The new viewer numbering may not initially be reflected in installer / viewer About floater, but it is something Signal Linden would like to see achieve – and maybe even back in the viewer’s top bar.
  • The will be a move towards a monthly release cadence, although during the TPV meeting, Signal Linden indicated it might be every other month at times.
• Overall the viewer release cadence is intended to better match the sever updates cadence, so that simulator updates with require viewer changes will not have to wait so long for those changes to appear in the release viewer.
• In line with all of the above, Geenz Linden has put forward a proposal for revamping the open source programme and making it more responsive, inviting input from TPV and open source developers. This will likely include a new Contribution Agreement.

SLua Alpha Testing

• SLua (Slew-ah, or SL Lua) is the name given to the server-side implementation of Lua as a replacement for Mono as the compiled scripting language for Second Life.
• The alpha is now available on Aditi.
• Please refer to the official blog post and (if you prefer) my blog post for more.
• At the TPVD meeting, Signal Linden indicated that LL is considering open-sourcing the SLua virtual machine, once it is ready.

In Brief

• It is likely that the open Source Developer meeting and the TPVD meeting will be merged, with one (or both) changing time (and frequency?) as a result.
• With new simulator certificates coming in, it was recommended that older viewer versions on Aditi to ensure they can still access SL on simulators running with the new certificates. These Aditi simulators are:
  • Cloud Sandbox 1-4.
  • All of the Blake Sea regions.
  • Bonifacio.
• The viewer-side implementation of Luau (as distinct from the SLua project) is described as being in a “project branch and liable to stay that way for now”, with no short-term plans for rolling it out.
• Still no firm date on when the Vivox Voice service will be switched off in favour of WebRTC.

Next Meeting

• Friday, April 11th, 2025 at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.