A visit to rugged Ofrenda Nocturna in Second Life

Ofrenda Nocturna, September 2025 – click any image for full size

Occupying a Full private region, Ofrenda Nocturna is setting primarily designed by Pris (Pieris) and the home of club Afterneath. It’s a rugged setting, the inclusion of Afterneath adding a sense of mystery to itself, for reasons I’ll come to.

Ofrenda is a rugged, natural spot with much interest for photographers and dreamers. Relax, immerse yourself, and indulge your senses. Find those surprises and don’t get lost. This is an adult destination, with something for everyone, so be ready to explore!

– Ofrenda Nocturna About Land description

Ofrenda Nocturna, September 2025

The main Landing Point lies to the east of the region aboard a ferry boat. This has managed to dock at the end of a pier forming a part of a small harbour which is perhaps not the easiest place to test navigation skills, given the number of rocks raising warning heads above the waves and the carcass of a motorboat that didn’t quite make it to the little harbour’s workshop, to say nothing of the warning buoys and local lighthouse.

Alighting from the ferry with bring you to the shore by way of the pier and a rather interesting location for a gentleman’s barber. A scramble over rocks and sand is then required to reach solid land. Here a path made from loose-laid stones skirts around a mini Stonehenge, offer a choice of routes.

Ofrenda Nocturna, September 2025

A turn to the left takes visitors around to where a gypsy caravan offers the treat of “topless Tarot”(!); something which prompts me to note that this is an Adult-rated region, and there are some RLV trapping elements around – so those using RLV/a-enabled viewers – be warned 🙂 .

Close by this caravan, tucked into the south-east of the setting is a grassy headland and a barn. The latter is home to a horse rezzer for those who fancy seeing the region via horseback. A more overgrown field lies above this barn and slightly more to the west, a trio of places to sit and pass the time scattered over its back, one of them alongside the stones of the henge.

Ofrenda Nocturna, September 2025

Follow the path around to the right of said henge, and it will give the choice of crossing either of the region’s two streams. To the right, an arched wooden bridge provides access to a further choice of routes.

One of these runs alongside the larger of the two streams, passing behind the local camp site and up towards the stream’s rugged source. The second path runs more or less north from the bridge and provides the most direct route to the campsite / trailer park, both of which overlook a couple of linked inlets cutting into the region.

Ofrenda Nocturna, September 2025

The remaining path, helpfully highlighted by a “This Way” sign offers the way to three more of the region’s interesting settings: a hideaway tucked into a hollow of the rising land and complete with a hot tub and another adult-themed element. This is reached via steps hewn into the rock, some of which also descend into one of the region’s caverns.  A separate path winds up and over the hideaway to a rocky path leading up to the ruins of an old abbey and chapel occupying the north-eastern headland.

The path on the far side of the second bridge offers a choice of routes: one to the region’s second large cavern – and the surprise waiting within; and a path up to the cobblestone paved plateau forming an open-air event space. A gravel path leading off of this event space offers access to the aforementioned Afterneath, and via the span of a stone bridge, to a large Zen garden hugging the very western edge of the region.

Ofrenda Nocturna, September 2025

Sitting within its own parcel and EEP environment, Afterneath sits under the Zen garden within the region’s largest cavern. Two searchlights mark the way down and into the atmospheric club.

Once a month, Afterneath opens fully, unleashing a night that is seduction. This isn’t the kind of party where you stand against the wall and sip something safe. This is where the rhythm takes you under, where sweat and smoke blur together, and where strangers become something more beneath the strobe and shadow.

– Heidi Volare, describing Afterneath

Ofrenda Nocturna, September 2025

Rich in detail and with a stormy sky (which may not be obvious from my images here, as some odd rendering artefacts encouraged me to substitute an environment setting over the local EEP)and sprinkled with sculptures, Ofrenda Nocturna makes for an interesting visit and place to explore.

SLurl Details

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #39

Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, September 28th, 2025

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 2025.06 7.2.1.17108480561 – August 29 – No change.
  • Second Life Beta viewer 2025.07 7.2.2.17774206511 – Apple Silicon Support – September 26 –  NEW.
    • This viewer now ships as a “Universal Binary” that contains both the Intel and Apple Silicon versions of the viewer. It should give performance gains on the Apple Silicon version in particular.
    • Also includes various WebRTC improvements and bug and crash fixes.
    • Known issues:
      • This version does not support convex decomposition for physics meshes with Apple Silicon. This will be hopefully be corrected in a future update or release, possibly with the help of a code contribution.
      • Navigation buttons in the in-viewer browser are no longer present for marketplace and search – these will be restored in a future update.
      • Apple Silicon does not support pathfinding tools.
      • Subtle rendering differences might be noticed on certain configurations and EEP environments.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Black Dragon for Windows –  5.4.4 September 25 – release notes.

V1-style

  • No updates.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 week #39: SL Open Source User Group meeting summary

Another Song of Freedom, July 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from my chat transcript + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Open Source User Group (OSUG) held on Friday, September 26th, 2025. My thanks to Pantera as always for providing it.

Meeting Purpose

  • The OSUG meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meetings. It is 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.
  • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are generally conducted in 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 2025.06 7.2.1.17108480561 – August 29 – No Change.
    • Inventory Favourites System, plus assorted new features.
    • Improvements to avatar system; camera and movement; chat; voice; content creation tools.
    • Mesh uploader updates.
    • Text & UI polish.
    • Fixes for Environment and Rendering; stability and crashes; UI.
    • System improvements.
  • Second Life Beta viewer 2025.07 7.2.2.17774206511 – Apple Silicon Support – September 26 –  NEW.
    • This viewer now ships as a “Universal Binary” that contains both the Intel and Apple Silicon versions of the viewer. It should give performance gains on the Apple Silicon version in particular.
    • Also includes various WebRTC improvements and bug and crash fixes.
    • Known issues:
      • This version does not support convex decomposition for physics meshes with Apple Silicon. This will be hopefully be corrected in a future update or release, possibly with the help of a code contribution.
      • Navigation buttons in the in-viewer browser are no longer present for marketplace and search – these will be restored in a future update.
      • Apple Silicon does not support pathfinding tools.
      • Subtle rendering differences might be noticed on certain configurations and EEP environments.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

Viewer 2025.07

  • At the time of the meeting, the 2025.07 viewer was pending release.
  • The first part of the meeting involved discussions on potential routes to provide convex decomposition for physics meshes for this viewer version via open-source options, on both a short-term temporary basis and long-term solution.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • Appearance fixes: this is being considered for the 2025.08 viewer update, and Geenz has requested feedback / discussion on via Discord.
  • [Video: 13:12-19:52] A request was made to change the LOD default as a part of the work to provide convex decomposition on this viewer. This was denied, the focus being on providing a “feature complete” version of the viewer for Apple Silicon.
    • However, this led to a discussion on how best to handle LODs and auto LODs.
  • [Video: 20:20-End] A broad discussion on dressing avatars, including:
    • Baking clothing meshes (sort-of a-la BOM) / using mesh proxies fore clothing / layering clothing, and potential for improvement performance as a result.
    • Providing a scripted means to dress avatars according to the requirements of an Experience (e.g. if someone just a mech combat experience, scripts in the experience dress their avatar accordingly).
    • “Discouraging” overly-complex avatars.
    • This discussion encapsulated general ideas, feedback, etc., and also touched on things like VRAM use, etc.
    • The latter part of the discussion strayed into texture resolution + texture compression, licensing and libraries, etc.

Next Meeting

† 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.

Under the waves at Buddha Garden in Second Life

Buddha Garden, September 2025 – click any image for full size

In February 2025, I visited the always enticing Buddha Garden, designed by Gian (GianArt Clip), with the support of Viola Blackwood (see More time within a Buddha Garden in Second Life). This is a truly beautiful setting utilising the Land Capacity bonus available to Full private regions to present a place that is largely public in nature, with some private residences available for rent as well.

Given the sheer beauty of the region and the creative talent poured into it, I actually hadn’t expected it to be changing again in the short-to-medium term, so I was surprised to receive a message from Gian indicating further changes have been made, and inviting me to pop along to take a look. Understandably curious (and admittedly a little worried that the designed I’ve visited in February had vanished), I jumped across to have a look.

Buddha Garden, September 2025

My fears were totally unfounded: the majority of the region remains very much as it appeared back in February, its beauty intact. What has changed is hidden by the waters sitting to the south-east of the setting, specifically those separating Frog Island (the flat-topped island of private residences I mentioned in my February article) from the main bulk of the region. It is here, under the waves, that Gian has added a marvellous set of of what I’ll call drowned gardens, including an Ancient Dragon Theatre.

A direct SLurl is offered above as finding your way to these new features from the region’s main Landing Point is perhaps not obvious (perhaps intentionally). Should you wish to try, take the steps down from the main Landing Point building and then make a left turn, following the coast and trail under the stone archway guarded by two tall carved figures of Buddha. From here, cross the field of Sakura blossoms and go over the bridge beyond, before following the coast along the south side of the region as it passes between open water on one side and waterfalls on the other.

Buddha Garden, September 2025

Here the path passes over a shoulder of rock where more water drops into a bathing pool, before dropping down to a golden meadow watched over by a golden Buddha. A little stone bridge on the far side of this meadow offers the public way forward, but if you walk out into the waters before the bridge, you’ll find yourself slipping underwater and coming across the submerged path linking the two undersea elements, marked by tall fronds of seaweed and passing giant turtles and glowing jellyfish.

The first of these, the “drowned gardens”, are reached either by the direct SLurl given above or by turning left on reaching the submerged path – two more Buddha figures with pulsing orange eyes mark the steps leading down to the gardens in the case of the latter.

Buddha Garden, September 2025

Sitting within a natural amphitheatre, the drowned gardens are enclosed by ancient walls. Patrolled by fish of all sizes, including a large marlin, together with mantra rays and giant turtles, they feature a large shrine to Buddha, guarded by dragons and offering a place of meditation before it. Also within the gardens, seahorses dance amidst the brightly coloured seaweed and kelp growths clinging to the aged walls and the rocks of the seabed. It’s a small but tranquil setting.

The Ancient Dragon Theatre, meanwhile lies west and south of the drowned gardens, at the far end of the underwater trail. For those who teleport directly to the garden, the steps  up to the trail can be found beyond the stone gateway directly behind the Landing Point.

Buddha Garden, September 2025

Following the trail brings you close to the water’s surface before dipping down to reveal a narrow cleft in the rock. Here, fish once again swim and dance and bright strands of kelp mark the way down into the cleft to its “carpet” of coral. However, the most eye-catching aspects of the cleft are two vividly coloured and ornate Chinese celestial dragons. Standing atop of carved columns, they guard the way forward, their expressions as fierce as the the bladed weapons they hold.

Beyond these dragons the cleft broadens, coral giving way to a floor carpeted with fungal undergrowth rich in colour as it points the way between two more wardens, this time great wingless dragons. Passing these bring you finally to the Dragon Theatre, where its host is holding court amidst a circle of stone-carved Buddha figures. The theatre itself is almost completely obscured by the surrounding rock until one enters it, the central opening above the stage and its occupant allowing sunlight and moonlight take their turns illuminating the scene within.

Buddha Garden, September 2025

Mystical and attractive, these underwater elements are a fitting addition to what was already a must-see destination, further elevating its status.

SLurl Details

September 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary

Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, September 25th 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

Current Releases

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

Forthcoming Updates

[Video: 2:50-17:55]

  • A new Alpha build is currently available for Android, and is just waiting to be cleared by Apple (if not already available by the time the post is published).
  • This alpha is viewed as being “close” to being ready for a beta release “Soon™”, and includes all current work on the Mobile product, several aspects of which are outlined below.

Avatar and Character improvements

  • Load times: a “significant” reduction in the amount of memory required to load an avatar, allowing Mobile to both load more avatars in a scene, and do so more reliably.
    • Performance in environments with large numbers of avatars should also now be improved.
    • There are still some shape changes to be completed to allow all avatars to render correctly, but this work is progressing.
  • Network connection stability:
    • As reported in the August update, because of its dynamic nature, SL Mobile requires a constants data stream, and so is far more susceptible to signal interruptions / conflicts with other apps for bandwidth use, etc.
    • Work has therefore been put into making the app more robust in how it maintains network connectivity and continues to function through such interruptions, doing all that is required of it.
    • These improvements also feed into the avatar system as well, further helping with the speed and reliability of avatar loading.
  • Under-the-hood work: general optimisations such as re-targeting download orders (e.g. increasing the download priority of avatar clothing downloads to again improve avatar downloading and rendering).
    • This under-the-hood work also includes refining code related to the loading and unloading of in-scene objects, so when moving around the world, content should load / unload more effectively, with more content in general loading.

EEP Rendering

  • A first pass at implementing EEP environment settings.
  • This is a direct port of the sky shaders used in the viewer, so that scenes should render a lot closer to how they appear on the Desktop viewer.
  • The work includes all of the lighting data, fog / haze data, etc., as well as the sky shaders.
  • Further work is required on lighting due to differences in how the Unity engine and the SL engine respectively handle lighting.

Transparency Rendering

  • Due to the need for order-independent transparency, coupled with limitations within the GPUs used on most mobile devices, SL Mobile has been unable to render “true” transparency, and has had to rely on dithering to approximate transparency.
  • One means to get around this is to use temporal anti-aliasing, which LL has been waiting on through an update to the version on Unity they use with Mobile.
  • The work on this upgrade was recently completed, allowing said temporal anti-aliasing to be utilising within the app, providing better transparency rendering without any loss of performance.
  • Until this work is fully dialled-in, there might be some light ghosting visible when panning around transparent surfaces.

Lighting / Point Lighting

  • There is a “slight incongruity” between how Unity handles point lighting (lighting placed around a scene) compared to how Second Life handles the same (the Unity rendering path prefers quadratic lights – bright up close, dim at a distance; SL is more medium-bright when close, medium-dark when further away). This resulting in point lighting in Mobile to look different to the same lighting seen in the viewer.
    • To try to address this, the lighting calculations used for such point lights has been tweaked within SL Mobile so that such lights will be rendered more closely to how they are within the viewer.
  • As a general note, updates to directional lighting may allow shadows to be re-enabled in the Mobile app, although shadow rendering is expensive, and further work in this area is required.

General Improvements

  • Multi-threading for object and content loading has been improved, which see see more effective use of the CPU cores within a mobile device.
  • Streaming audio has been completely rebuilt to avoid using a now-deprecated library within the current beta streaming audio build.
  • Improvements made to loading the world following a rapid log-out / log back in.
  • General improvements and minor adjustments to the UI. Perhaps the most noticeable of these is the temporary return of the sign-out option as a button in the menu (pending further updates down the road which will likely see it return to a drop-down option once again).
  • Improvements to how spinning objects and target_omega are handled.

Q&A Session

[Video 18:14-End]

  • Switching to another app when using the SL Mobile app and then switching back to SL Mobile can seem to take time.
    • This is partially out of LL’s hands: apps not in current use can be “moved” from active memory to free-space for other apps. Changing focus can also result in the web page used to assist in rendering the UI being suspended.
    • Both of these factors can result in a delay in resuming a session as the focus is returned to SL Mobile.
    • Consideration may be given to adding a pop-up message about possible delays when switching away from SL Mobile to another app, with a possible more in-depth examination as to what might be done to be carried out at some point in the future.
  • Inventory access: outfit sub-folder support, etc: Inventory is something being worked on, but the work is such that no major announcements as to what is being done / what to expect could be made at this meeting.
  • Message caching (e.g. people can receive messages whilst on SL Mobile, but also still see them when logged in via the Desktop viewer): there has been some movement on this, and work is continuing, although complex. Further updates in due course.
  •  Could the current SL networking calls be used with SL Mobile to save tampering with the SL infrastructure?
    • No,  because SL mobile uses different protocols in order to handle:
      • Swapping between the device’s wifi and cellular connections on the fly.
      • Disruptive connections which could otherwise result in high packet loss – something UDP would have difficulty in managing.
    • The protocols used by SL Mobile also reduce the bandwidth the app uses when compared to Desktop (e.g. transmitting the scene state to SL Mobile uses 97% less bandwidth than the viewer).
  • Does SL Mobile run better in landscape mode or portrait? There shouldn’t be any difference.

Date of Next Meeting

September LL Zoom call: an update on Second Life

On Thursday, September 25th, 2025 Linden Lab held a further Zoom Call with bloggers and content creators to and update on SL and respond to questions.

The following is summary of the meeting; however, as my aide mémoire audio recording of the meeting refused to play back in full post-meeting, some of the Q&A elements of meeting are absent.

Table of Contents

Note that the order of topics does not necessarily reflect the order in which they were discussed.

New Option for Premium Plus Subscriptions

  • Due to be launched in October 2025, “Premium Plus, no Stipend” is a new option being added to Premium Plus to reduce the annual cost of this subscription level whilst retaining all of the “physical” benefits.
  • This option removes the Stipend and sign-up bonus from Premium Plus, reducing the annual cost by US $105.12 (+ any applicable taxes).
  • For full details, please see: Coming Soon: new option to reduce the cost of SL Premium Plus subscriptions.

Support Update

  • Backlog of tickets for support & trust and safety now down to “normal” levels.
  • Processes for helping users / responding to issues have been streamlined, and further staff have been recruited into the support and trust and safety teams.
  • The focus now is now maintaining the faster turn-around and keeping users satisfied with responses.
  • Support may be expanded in certain areas in the future – this is currently TBA.
The support ticket backlog as of September 2025

SL Viewer Summary

  • A note on the faster release cadence and the highlighting of new features – such as Inventory Favourites with the 2025.07 viewer release.
  • A note that the next release (2025.08) is focused on native Apple Silicon support, which should see a good performance boost for Mac users on that OS, particularly those on newer hardware.
  • Viewer notes and features are covered in my SL Viewer Summaries, Content Creation UG meeting summaries and Open Source Development UG notes (formerly the TPVD developer meeting).

SL Mobile, Project Zero and the New User Experience

Mobile and Zero: Incoming Users

  • The Lab estimates it is now able to get around 10x the people to try SL on mobile / Zero than had previously been the case.
  • This is allowing LL to try small, fast experiments with new users to help them get them started, such as with the on-going current focus on helping new users to dress / customise their avatar.
  • One of these is a new “helper” island where new users can go to for help (e.g. in dressing / customising their avatars, and Project Zero (viewer-in-a-browser). Zero is already geared for this.
  • The aim is to fully on-board new users ASAP to get them engaged.

Retention and Experiments

  • Despite the rise in initial engagement with new users trying SL via Mobile and Project Zero, overall retention of those users is still proving hard – the current figure is only around 7% of those coming into SL are actively being retained.
  • Some of the experiments mentioned in the meeting have involved dropping new users into established locations and hubs, rather than welcome hubs.
  • It was noted by meeting attendees that some of these experiments have not always gone well.
    • One cited example was the use of Ahern, which has become a hang-out for established users, many of whom have been witnessed as harassing and being abusive towards incoming new users.
    • Part of the problem here is that mentors were not aware of these switches / experiments, and so could not attend to provide support.
    • The use of Ahern in particular has now ceased as a result of this feedback.
    • It was further noted that LL are planning to involve mentors in future experiments.
  • The observation was made that established users who are already invested in the platform (as those at Ahern causing trouble appeared to be) and who spend time denigrating / insulting / trolling new users to the point of driving them away is somewhat self-defeating, in that it potentially damages SL’s ability to grow / remain viable as a product through the acquisition of new, engaged users.

User / Community Involvement

  • The question was asked if LL could offer incentives to those users (e.g. club owners) and communities able to demonstrate a track record of being able to attract new users and convert them into retained users.
  • It was pointed out that there is the Second Life Creator Partnership Programme, which includes the potential for incentives to communities, etc, and which includes things like Community Gateways.
  • Brad Oberwager offered a challenge – those who can develop and demonstrate a means of converting new users to retained users through their own means should contact the Lab to discuss ideas and possible incentives.