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 12th, 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 Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
Viewer 2025.07
- Apple Silicon support has been merged into the 2025.07 code.
- Chrome Embedded Framework is set to be updated to the latest version of 139.
- The Mac OS version might receive the old HACD implementation for mesh uploads as a tide-over until the 2025.08 release.
- Work is in progress on viewer-side WebRTC fixes (see: [WebRTC] Rework device handling sequence so that we can handle unplugging/re-plugging devices #4593), and it is hoped these will be included 2025.07.
In Brief
Please refer to the video for the following:
- In order for PBR lighting to render anywhere close to correctly, alpha blending had to be switched from SRGB to linear colour space. This can cause some older content using Blinn-Phong, to look either more opaque or more transparent than in did pre-PBR.
- This fix – Fix the alpha gamma value when rendering legacy diffuse textures and materials #4601 – has been subject to internal discussion at LL. It appears that Geenz is considering taking the alpha / gamma parameter from Alpha gamma parameters #2668 and apply it to #4601.Alpha / Gamma issues (linear alpha blending).
- The plan is all BP content will default to gamma space blending to get around the problem of permissions on older content without introducing another ugly permissions hack.
- A fragmented discussion on LL possibly offering better Linux support in the future (and subject to priorities) and on Linux packaging in general, which ran through a good portion of the meeting.
- A discussion on alpha being inverted on PBR vs. Blinn-Phong (e.g. 1 is fully transparent on BP and fully opaque on PBR), and on whether one of the values should be flipped. Geenz indicated that no flipping would occur, due to the risk of confusing for people, given the two (PBR and Blinn-Phong) are distinct workflows.
- Appearance fixes #3492 for current Outfit Folder (COF) issues is potentially being looked at for inclusion in the 2025.08 viewer update.
- CoACD is being considered (alongside other options) as a replacement for Havok mesh decomposition.
- Again, please refer to the video for the rest of the discussion.
Next Meeting
- Friday, September 26th, 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.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 