Day: March 3, 2026

2026 week #10: SUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
A view of Isola Sirena, Second Life - the main island summit village
Isola Sirena, January 2026 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 3ed, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. They were taken from the video recording by Pantera, embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks to Pantera for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
  • The “SUG Leviathan Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
  • Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator Deployments

  • No deployments are planned for the week, channels will be restarted.
  • It had been planned to slot the initial deployment of WebRTC  between the 2026.02  Kiwi update (currently grid-wide), and the next formal RC release 2026.03 Loganberry. However a last-minute issue was discovered, delaying WebRTC whilst it is fixed.
  • The release to follow Loganberry will be 2026.04 Key Lime).

WebRTC Deployment

  • As noted above, the WebRTC deployment has been delayed, primarily for a couple of reasons:
    • LL is addressing some server issues that resulted in very occasional ‘drop from voice’ problems.
    • The WebRTC team is also digesting feedback from the recent Firestorm Town Hall in which firestorm users who have not moved away from a version 6.x (pre-PBR) version of Firestorm to a PBR-enabled version.
  • It is hoped the delay will not be longer than a week or so, so as to allow it to commence in March, but an update on this will be made soon.

In Brief

  • Rider Linden has just finished a tricky bit of infrastructure work and is now focusing on some the simulator aspects of the SLua project, including changes for being able to select a default script. A side effect of that is the ability for a viewer to specify a template script on create without the tricky copy stuff that the viewer was doing for that.
  • Leviathan Linden:
    • Has just finished fixing the “can’t save avatar action remap” problem with game_control but has not pushed the changes to a viewer repo as he working to clean the code up and produce documentation.
    • He regards this particular work as useful as it has reminded him of what remains to be done for game-control. In particular, remapping of controller buttons is not yet enabled in the preferences UI, although there should be work to support that already done under the hood.
    • He has not made any progress on Henri Beauchamp’s idea for solving the “perpetually cloudy avatar problem” see previously SUG summaries). It is coded on the server,  but he hadn’t been able to test it.
    • His next project is to audit how some “reliable” UDP messages are sent between viewer and server. There is a possibility he can fix some of the login/teleport/region-crossing connection failures with some work there. One of the message pairs to be looked at are CompleteAgentMovement/AgentMovementComplete. Dropping these is the source of quite a few B&W screens every day.
  • Monty Linden has been:
    • Working on meta problems, such as identifying Voice issues.
    • Talking to Brad Linden about making it easier to include logs in reports generated in the viewer.

General Discussion

Please refer to the video below as well.

  • An extensive discussion on llSetAgentRot and how it works and how it and avatar rotation / camera rotation/movement might be improved.
  • A short discussion on text-to-speech and how favourable (or not) it might be, based off of this feature request.
    • It was noted that transcription – speech to text – is already being experimented with using WebRTC.
  • Region  Crossings:
    • It is being reported that for the last week or so, region crossings – physical vehicle or teleport – have been getting worse.
    • In addition, it is being claimed that, after an extended period of time in a region, people are finding their avatars being “soft disconnected” from the simulators: they can still move around and communicate within the region, by any attempt to move out of it results in a complete disconnection – and allegedly a full disconnect can occur just by rezzing / deleting an object or changing outfits.
    • There have been no apparent changes to the simulator code that would account for a worsening of region crossings, and it’s not entirely clear how widespread the issues are.
    • However, Monty linden has requested logs from anyone encountering these issues.
    • This discussion took up the latter half of the meeting (and beyond the end of the meeting), mixed in part with the rotation discussion noted above,
  • A discussion on releasing SLua grid-wide without complete documentation, or waiting until a full set of documentation is ready for what is being released, and then updated as code updates are made.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, March 10th, 2026.
  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, March 17th, 2026.

† 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 rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

The beauty of London’s China Buddha Caves in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
China Buddha Caves, March 2026 – click any image for full size

Located within Gansu province in western China is the county city of Dunhaung. It sits on the old Silk Road, and forms a cultural and religious crossroads. Founded as a garrison town in 11 BCE, Dunhaung is perhaps now more famously known for its proximity to the Mogao Caves, a system of 500 temples, caves and grottoes some 25 kilometres south-east of the city.

Also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, the network represents, along with other cave systems in the area, some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period some 1,000 years, the earliest caves having been dug in around 366 CE, initially as places of rest, worship and meditation. However, as time passed, they became a place of pilgrimage, and further caves and grottoes were dug, with the system expanding through until the 13th century, before they were “lost” until the late 19th century.

China Buddha Caves, March 2026

I mention all of this because in his latest artistic installation, London Junker offers us a vision of the Mogao Caves and the beauty of their art, sculptures and design with his China Buddha Caves build- project was sponsored by SL Public Land Preserve and Ravenglass Rentals (La Montana Rosa) – to which he extended a personal invitation for me to visit.

Situated in the snowy uplands of south-western Sansara, the build is initially deceptive to the eye. The Landing Point sits at the head of a descending gorge through which water tumbles and falls towards the sea. A large Buddha sits behind the Landing Point, undoubtedly offering blessing to arrivals, whilst a single grotto with wall murals and three more figures of Buddha sits to one side.

China Buddha Caves, March 2026

A further Buddha can be seen lower down in the valley, together with a shrine and structures built with their backs towards the rising cliffs. A single path runs down the side of the gorge, passing over a long bridge and down stairs to reach a second bridge crossing the waters and provide access to the tall statue of Buddha and the shrine, whilst a second path rises to the lowermost of the structures build against the cliff, and which forms the entrance to the caves proper.

The art and carvings within the Mogao Caves is truly magnificent, and the site fortunately escaped the Buddhist persecutions ordered by Emperor Wuzong of Tang in the ninth century, continuing to be used through until the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century. However, it was during that era that new trade routes started to open, and the use of the Silk Road fell into decline – and with it, the use of the Mogao Caves as a place of pilgrimage. By the mid- 14th century, no new caves were being built, and the site was largely forgotten other than by locals.

China Buddha Caves, March 2026

It was not until the 19th century that the caves were re-discovered.  Interest in exploring the ancient Silk Road and uncovering its secrets was initially a goal of western explorers and historians, and this eventually led them to Dunhuang and the caves. However, it was at the start of the 20th century that the greatest work of rediscovery commenced, with the good intentions of one man in particular.

His name was Wang Yuanlu. A Chinese Taoist, he had appointed himself guardian of the caves, and in the early 1900s set about clearing the entrances to many which had become blocked over the centuries, as well to trying to renovate many of the damaged statutes.

China Buddha Caves, March 2026

Most particularly, Wang’s work led to the discovery of a vast trove of manuscripts in what had simply been called Cave 17, but which afterwards was referred to as the Library Cave. Some 1100 scrolls and 15,000 books were found in the cave, together with an estimated 50,000 texts on a range of subjects including philosophy, art, literature and medicine. This discovery brought the Mogao Caves to wider global attention, with a number of foreign expeditions to explore them being mounted – several of which simply carted off whatever they could.

Fortunately, London’s China Buddha Caves suffers none of this looting. Rising up through multiple levels, as is the case at Mogao, they instead offer a captivating interpretation of their physical world inspiration, presenting a rich mix of Buddhist art and history,  the walls bearing beautiful murals and paintings, the statuary magnificent in detail and finish. As you rises up through the caves (take your time in exploring, some of the rising tunnels are easy to miss!), you will come across an opening to a veranda located against the cliff and above the main entrance, reflecting a similar, almost pagoda-like structure found at Mogao.

China Buddha Caves, March 2026

Each level becomes more expressive and rich as one ascends, with the upper most and the landing and grotto leading up to it being particularly attention-holding. However, all of the levels capture the beauty and history to be found in the caves at Mogao, and perfectly reflect the beauty of the murals to be found in many of the caves there. In this, I would advise using a PBR viewer in order to fully appreciate this installation, or if you are still pre-PBR, that you enable ALM.

Presenting a glimpse of what is now a UNESCO World Heritage Centre (since 1988), London’s China Buddha Caves offer a superb means by which to catch a glimpse of what is a magnificent centre of Buddhist history and art in the physical world.

CChina Buddha Caves, March 2026

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