The following notes were taken from:
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Table of Contents |
Please note that this is not a full transcript of either meeting but a summary of key topics.
Meeting Purpose
- The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work.
- This meeting is generally held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis and is held in a mix of Voice and text chat.
- 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 and is generally text chat only.
- Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.
Official Viewer Status
- Default viewer 2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – December 2 – No Change.
- Notable addition: new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for mesh uploads.
- Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha version 7.2.3.19911032641, December 5 – No Change.
- Second Life Project Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12 – No Change.
Upcoming Viewers
Viewer 2026.01 – One-click Installer / Updater
Viewer 2026.01 is in progress. This will include:
- Improved bugsplat support (we want better reporting for freezes, and just generally better crash reporting). This work builds on the successes of 2025 in detailing with viewer crashes and reducing overall causes for crashes.
- A new one-click installer, which in brief:
- Will be powered by a new dependency called velopack, and will allow a single-click installation of the viewer (with a brief pop-up message), with the viewer launching once the install process is complete.
- Will default to installing under Apps/Local on windows; will remain as a drag-and-drop process on Mac OS, while Linux is currently TBD. It will still be possible to install the viewer to a custom location, initially via a command line argument.
- Will not change the install location of config files, or anything that counts as user data.
- Development work on this did hit a delay, which has now been cleared, the hope remaining to get an Alpha (previously known as Project) viewer out with the update code in place sooner rather than later.
- As an added benefit to the switch to velopack for TPVs, LL will be providing a solution to add auto-update functionality to TPV projects, if TPVs wish to leverage it. More information on this is due to be made available in the next week or so.
Viewer 2026.02 – “Flat” UI, Font Changes
- This viewer is to be part of the Lab’s “first impressions” push to make SL resonate more with incoming new users and hopefully encourage them to keep logging in.
- This first impression work is on multiple fronts, and for the 2026.02 viewer will be a switch to the “flat” UI seen in the Project Zero (viewer in a browser) version which comprises things like a font change, a colour scheme change, and generally giving the viewer a more “modern” look and feel.
- The font update:
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- Should not impact people’s use of unicode.
- Will require XUI updates which will likely require updates for TPVs using their own custom XUI – TPVs are advised to keep an eye on Discord and Github for more information on these changes as they develop, and to particularly track this github issue.
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General Viewer Notes
- Linux support will likely ship as a part of the in-progress SLua beta viewer.
- The viewer development roadmap is still being worked on in terms of fixes and updates and actioning feature requests, the focus being to work these into the viewer without disrupting major initiatives the Lab is looking to develop (such as the “first impressions” drive).
- 2026.02 might include some screen space reflections (SSR) updates to help improve the appearance of Linden Water under PDR/HDR.
- The avatar appearance fixes contributed by Kitty Barnett and intended to make the current outfit folder more reliable when changing outfits, messing with outfits, etc., may get to see the light of day in viewer 2026.03 – but this had yet to be confirmed.
Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment – Initial Announcement (OSD Meeting)
- The Lab is currently looking at a March deployment of WebRTC voice across the grid.
- The schedule is not firmly set as yet, but will follow the usual server-side deployment routine: first to one (or more) simulator RC channels, then to all simulator RC channels (if not all rolled at once), and then a week after this, deployment to the Main simulator channel.
- The important point in this is that once grid-wide, WebRTC will completely supplant Vivox Voice, and those who use Voice by who are not running a WebRTC voice capable viewer (which generally means anyone not on a non-PBR supporting viewer) will be unable to use Voice.
- This does not mean that the Vivox service will be immediately shut-down. It will remain an option for the Lab to re-enable until such time as LL is confident in the WebRTC service and no surprises have come to light.
- There is one remaining WebRTC critical issue in the viewer that makes the experience not great for a small body of users:
- People with certain network characteristics may see a dropout because the WebRTC provider is not properly handling renegotiation.
- LL has a fix which should be deployed with viewer 2026.01. However, TPVs wishing to merge it now can do so via Pull Request 5126.
- In the meantime, the beta for WebRTC has expanded – see this official blog post for details.
- Roxie Linden also indicated that LL is experimenting with speech-to-text using WebRTC, but does not as yet have anything available for public demonstrations.
- The issue of Linux builds not using Pulseaudio but with the WebRTC code crashing on start-up was reiterated at the meeting. Whilst this might not be a widespread issue, the feeling was that it should be looked at; however, if the pool of impacted users is liable to be very small, it will not be seen as a reason to block / delay WebRTC deployment as a whole and any fix is liable to be prioritised in terms of resources / impact of the issue, post-deployment.
General Discussion – Both Meetings
- Avatar support related:
- Shape key support and / or custom bone hierarchies – seen as complex area of work, and not being looked at.
- While the current avatar does technically use shape keys, it is very different to how modern blend shapes are used.
- SL’s internal format also doesn’t store bones.
- Questions were raised on the status of game_control. This is more a subject for the Simulator User Group meetings, where Leviathan Linden indicated he was trying to resume work on the code. However, it was also indicated during this meeting that Leviathan had again been “borrowed” to work on other code.
- Despite rumour to the contrary, Puppetry is not currently set for revival or on the current 2026 roadmap.
- Geenz noted that while work on things like new tools, updates to the GLTF uploader, etc., are not “done”, the focus for the time being in more on dealing with technical debt together with the aforementioned “first impressions” initiative, etc.
- Questions were asked on auto / planar-aligning PBR materials – see: Aligning Faces when using PBR and Planar face alignment with PBR GLTF materials. This is something the Lab has yet to resolve, and has offered a contribution bounty for any developer who is able to provide a solution. Geenz also indicated he would try to get bugs like this better prioritised.
- A general discussion on ideas for improvements to chat, including: ability to have a “last unread” indicator in chat when logging-on; having the chat rings on the mini-Map on by default, some idea about a special chat tab that would allow region-wide chat (presumably at the region owner’s discretion to enable), ability to correct text in chat / IM after sending(!), etc.
- The You Tube embedding issues was again raised (see here for more), with a possible (if hacky) workaround. LL are looking to You tube to address the problem, as they created it.
- There was a general discussion on the complexities of Land Impact, particularly – but not restricted to – mesh objects. In short, LI is a complicated subject, and not easily addressed; hence why the Lab backed away from the subject recently. This also strayed into the equally complicated realm of LOD generation.
- On the subject of LOD generation, it was suggested that the Lab should look to implement a LOD generator and then inform creators LODs have to be generated to fit a defined set of criteria – or defaults will be forced.
- A discussion on the choice of VHACD over HACD as a replacement for Havok in mesh decomposition. The latter is seen as more mature, but LL opted for VHACD is a “middle ground” solution as it is more regularly maintained, it is also apparently more reliable when dealing with the “weirder meshes” some SL creators produce, when compared to something like CoACD. However, Geenz indicated it would be “nice” to have “swappable” convex decomposition solutions at runtime.
- A further request for Error creating thumbnail” message on SL wiki, breaking images to be addressed.
Next Meetings
- CCUG: 13:00 SLT, Thursday, January 29th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.
- OSUG: 13:00 SLT, Friday, January 30th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 