Day: July 31, 2025

July 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary: latest releases

Posted on by Inara Pey
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, July 31st 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting.

These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At Campwich Forest.
  • 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.

Resources

Release Updates

[Video: 4:46-10:20]

Latest Releases

Version: 2025.7.560 (Android) – July 23 / 0.1.557 (iOS) – July 22.

Updates

  • Work has been devoted to overcoming some significant infrastructure issues:
    • A bug within one of the core networking libraries resulted in app update cause significant problems for users in the Alpha programme, who received the update first.
    • As a result, the library in question was been updated, but was then found to be incompatible with the version of Unity SL Mobile uses, necessitating a Unity update.
    • Most of this work has gone ahead and is working, although the network-related upgrades still need further testing (e.g. maintaining a connection to the servers when switching from a wifi connection to cellular, or vice-versa).
  • The network upgrade should result in generally better performance.
  • The Unity upgrade brings with it a new renderer, which should offer improved performance across the majority of devices, and the ability for LL to maintain compatibility with newer mobile ‘phones and OS versions.
    • [Video: 25:19-25:52] this upgrade will not directly address issues of rotations being off, textures changing after loading, etc. However, the Lab would like more bug reports sent directly from the app on these types of issue to help identify potential causes.
  • As soon as there is confidence in these updates, a new release of the app will be made.

Upcoming Camera Improvements

[Video: 10:57-14:09]

  • Reset Camera button, which will be displayed when the two-finger swipe to detach the camera from the avatar is used.
  • Rotate around current camera position when the camera is detached from the avatar.
  • Zoom in and out from the current camera position when detached from the avatar.
  • First-person (Mouselook) view.

Feedback on App Notifications

[Video: 14:38-19:53]

  • LL recently started “playing around with some app notifications” (e.g. tips and tricks, links to events, etc.).
  • A request was made to have the ability to opt-in to specific types of event notifications (e.g. only those related to SL sports events or those related to role-play events, etc).
  • Concerned was voiced (by the LL folk at the meeting about the risk of spamming people by sending out too many notifications, but this did not appear to be an issue for those attending the meeting.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following and other questions which may have had a simple “yes” or “in progress” reply.

  • [Video: 20:01-21:34] Multi-factor Authentication – Make the mobile app a factor in MFA via notification like “Are you trying to log in…?” – seen as a good idea, and something even those at the Lab would like (as all LL accounts use MFA), but it is not currently on the immediate SL Mobile roadmap, due to the complexities in building it out.
  • [Video: 22:01-23:31] Continuity of messages and notification between Mobile and Desktop (e.g. so users get a full history of messages, etc., when moving between Mobile and Desktop):
    • This is a significant project, and requires a fair amount of back-end work involving the server teams as well as the Mobile team.
    • However, it also encompasses the ability for users not to be logged-out of their Desktop session should they log-in on SL Mobile as well.
    • It is hoped that this work, which had been awaiting resources, will be picked-up in early August, with the potential for a more definitive timeline for the release of these capabilities being available at the next Mobile User Group meeting.
  • [Video: 24:21-24:52] Displaying text messages from in-world objects (e.g. via llSay; llInstantMessage, etc.): this is apparently awaiting some UI/UX work, but Pluto Linden was not available at the meeting to address the state of the work.
  • [Video: 29:09-30:55] Inventory access, new users, and future work:
    • First step is to add support for the Avatar Welcome Pack available to the Desktop and Project Zero (viewer in a browser).
    • This is seen as a placeholder to help incoming new users to be able to dress their avatars.
    • Work on inventory access in general on Mobile is described as being a long road. Planning for the next tranche of work on Mobile will be a mix of things for new users to get their bearings and “fall in love with Second Life”, and features to help existing users further augment their Second Life using Mobile.

Date of Next Meeting

LL announce a pause in the current SL AI character designer project

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

On Thursday, July 31st, Linden Lab provided an update on the AI Character Generation project which indicates it it to be paused / closed at the start of September.

The project was initially launched in December 2024 and powered by Convai, a platform for developers and creators proving an intuitive approach to designing characters with multimodal perception abilities in both virtual and real world environments (see: Linden Lab leverage Convai for AI character generation in Second Life). However, it was shortly thereafter suspended as a result of community feedback, before being re-launched to a wider audience of potential users at the end of February 2025.

The Character Designer was launched as an experimental feature to explore the potential of AI-powered characters in Second Life. Built in collaboration with our AI technology partner Convai, this tool enabled residents to create interactive, virtual characters with conversational capabilities.
From elaborate roleplay scenarios to immersive visitor greeters, your projects and feedback have been invaluable. This pause gives us time to carefully evaluate everything we’ve learned and determine how best to evolve this technology in a way that aligns with the broader future of Second Life.
This is not the end of AI in Second Life; rather, it is a thoughtful pause as we refine our strategy and continue exploring new opportunities for innovation.

– Linden Lab blog post

The “pause” is set to come into effect from Monday, September 1st, 2025, with the Lab further noting that as of that date:

  • It will no longer be possible to create, deploy, or run AI Characters using the Character Designer interface.
  • Characters created through the Designer will no longer function or appear in-world.
  • Previously created characters and their memory will not be retained post-pause.
  • Any alt accounts created specifically for testing the Character Generator will remain valid Second Life accounts, and can be logged into just like any other alt account.

Community support for the project will continue through the following channels:

  • A dedicated forum thread for on-going Q&A and feedback.
  • Second Life Discord for real-time responses from staff and developers.
  • Support Portal for any account-specific issues.

In addition, those who have used the Character Generator are encouraged to record their work during the wind-down period and share video through the forum thread or suitable platforms.

The sunsetting of this project does not mean the end of further possible projects and experiments in the use of AI technologies, with the blog post also stating:

 This is not the end of AI features in Second Life—we’re using this moment to regroup and plan for future development … We are actively and cautiously experimenting with other AI technologies to enhance Second Life’s creative potential, performance, and immersion. The insights from this project are already helping to inform future efforts.

For further information, please refer to the official blog post, which includes a short-term FAQ.