Day: April 28, 2026

2026 week #18: SUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
China Buddha Caves, March 2026 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 28th, 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 planned for the week, although all server channels will be restarted. The pause is to allow for more adjustments to be made to WebRTC prior to it going grid-wide.
  • There will be a new simulator update  – called Kumquat – which will contain the necessary infrastructure updates for the above, and which will be deployed ahead of the planned next simulator release (Loganberry).

In Brief

  • LL have added a new cap that delivers pre-generated configuration files for the Lua definitions and the viewer and the VS code plug-in are being updated to support this. These updates will allow for the removal all the language definition munging from the plug-in itself.
  • Leviathan Linden:
    • Has been working on updates related to the new Kumquat simulator update and “some related back-end services.
    • Had no progress to report on for game_control, and is hoping to get back to it soon.
  • Harold Linden (SLua):
    • Has been bundling up all the scripting-related definitions in a sensible way so they can be served.
    • Has also been working to complete the prim params builder RFC. He views this work as complete and warns that those will any input should “speak now or forever hold your peace”, as he will shortly start implementing it.
    • Harold noted that the prim params does it allow to set ‘nil’ or not provide a value or something else that would do “keep current” behaviour; it is strictly a wrapper around SetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast. He noted that requested work such at this would require an overhaul of SetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast.
    • The above formed the basis for a discussion through the meeting.

General Discussion

Please refer to the video below as well.

  • The request for llGetRegionWorldMapTile was raised. Apparently, Brad Linden has indicated implementation could be more complicated, suggesting LL should set up a web API that provides the map tile textures and make it possible for people to enable web on a prim for trusted domains.
    • The above led to a discussion on map tiles and options around the basic idea contained in within the feature request – such as making map tile textures function in a similar manner to Bakes on Mesh (using UUIDs – although the scale of this when using thousands of regions could be difficult / complicated).
    • This discussion went on through most of the meeting – please refer to the video below. The most positive idea given the amount of suggestions / confusion over map tiles, was for a design document to be put forward to allow focused discussion.
  • There was a report of issues with Vivox Voice service repeatedly failing at Fantasy Faire – notably within the Lost Pages region, home to the Literature, Film and Theatre festivals.
    • The Voice teams indicated they were not aware of any specific instability issue with Vivox – with the caveat the focus has been on WebRTC.
  • The question was if there are any plans to re-allow residents to upload animations with animation constraints (apparently turned off when it was found that there was no validation for chain length, which could cause a null pointer error if it goes too high up the skeleton). It was felt this has useful constraints such as “GROUND” which allow the feet to automatically IK feet to the ground, reducing the issue of an avatar  floating off the ground on un-even surfaces.
    • Currently, there are no plans in this direction at present.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, May 5th 2026.
  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, May 12th, 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.

Visiting Varna in Bloom in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Varna in Bloom, April 2026 – click any image for full size

As I continue to try to get back into the swing of blogging – health things are finally showing improvement on a more solid footing – I dived into the Destination Guide to see what was new and / or interesting. And thus I came across Varna in Bloom, a setting created by AmyElle Atheria.

Varna in Bloom is a blooming fantasy destination where flowers and stories grow side by side. Books are woven throughout the landscape alongside flowering paths, hidden portals, and details that reward the curious explorer. It sits at the edge of a story: beautiful, a little dreamlike, and worth getting lost in. Popular with photographers, couples, and anyone who has ever wanted to fall into a good book.

– Varna in Bloom Destination Guide entry

Varna in Bloom, April 2026

I’ve no idea if the setting has in some way been inspired by Bulgarian city of Varna and its locale as it sits on the Black Sea coast. On the one hand, there are references to Bulgaria and Varna in the setting’s About Land description and within AmyElle’s Profile; however, whether this is in reference to the actual place or the setting in SL, I’ve no idea. Certainly, the majority of the setting appears to be drawn more from the imagination than being offered as a direct homage to a physical world location, so I’ll put that thought to one side.

Covering slightly less than the full 65,000+ sq metres of a region, Varna in Bloom sits within a Full Mainland region towards the western end of Corsica, and at an altitude of 1466 metres. A Landing Point is enforced (so no TP hoping around!) and sits towards the northern edge of the setting.

Varna in Bloom, April 2026

As the Destination Guide indicates, this a setting designed for relaxation, photography, spending time with others (or someone special) – and which contains some secrets of its own. Given this, the setting is unsurprisingly largely rural in design, and while paths do lead away from the Landing Point, visitors are left to their own devices as to where they wander.

Sitting within the glades and meadows and along the coastline of the setting are numerous points of interest – vignettes, as I like to call them – where visitors might like to tarry. These carry within them various motifs or themes as it were – notably those of books and on reading – whilst remaining varied and independent of one another.

Varna in Bloom, April 2026

One of these vignettes sits a little to the south of the Landing Pont and emphasises Varna’s over-arching themes of restfulness, harmony and reading. Guarded by two large mushrooms, it presents a place to sit back and relax with the crescent Moon, pull out a book or cuddle with a loved one and simply be.

Further afield, visitors might also come across a little garden space offering a homage to Alice and her Adventures, complete with an Alice-like little figure dressed as the Queen of Hearts at the gate (an interesting combination!) and reference to that famous tea party within the garden together with other references to the stories, watched over by a more familiar take on Alice.

Varna in Bloom, April 2026

The setting is not entirely without buildings. To the south there is a large cloister-like structure built around three sides of a rain-soaked stone square – the rain falling as heavy inside the covered walkways as outside of them. Away to the north and sitting with its back to an off-shore island and lighthouse, sits an open-sided wood-built pavilion where couples might dance (touch the statue for dance poseballs).

The above are not the only structures to be found, but by virtue of their size, they are the most prominent. Elsewhere to be found are tree houses, a VW camper van and even half a subway train car tidily converted into a haven from the rest of the world. As well as these, there are plenty of other spots where visitors and couples can sit and pass the time, both on land and on the various waters within and around the setting.

Varna in Bloom, April 2026

As to the “secrets” contained within Varna, these take the form of Experienced-based teleport portals (labelled by hovertext to aide in their discovery) leading to further skybox-style locations or islands floating overhead. You will have to accept the Experience when encountering one of the portals for the very first time, thereafter all teleports are automatic. Each of these destinations offers a bookish theme (one carrying you from a garden featuring Alice et al, to a room focused in part on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel The Secret Garden (I’ll not mention the little Tolkien references also waiting to be found here and there!).

Whether you are seeking a place to explore, a place to spend time with a loved one, a place to photograph or simply somewhere you can wander and catch your breath, Varna in Bloom could well be the destination you’re looking for. So why not pay it a visit?

Varna in Bloom, April 2026

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