Month: May 2026

May 2026 SL Web User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday May 6th 2026. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month at 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • At this location.
  • 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.

Project Zero Update

  • Project Zero (the viewer streamed to a browser) is now closed – see: Linden Lab announces Project Zero to end).
  • Interestingly, this work is now being described as an “experiment” rather than any form of product development effort; a description which is somewhat removed from how the project was initially put forward (although it is fair to say that the Firestorm iteration of the work was more experimental by the Lab).
  • “A lot” has been learned from that experiment, some of which will be used to improve both the desktop viewer and Mobile App experiences.
  • Support has already refunded all or nearly all L$ pack purchases and are working through the list to make sure everyone gets refunded. More info is in the blog post here if you need help.

Web Services Updates

  • The refresh of the the official viewer log-in splash screen is now available in the current RC (and soon to be release) version of the viewer.
    • It has already been suggested this screen could benefit by the inclusion of the Lab’s own SLBN RSS feeds for blogs, etc, even if only in link format (as with the Firestorm log-in Splash screen).
    • Official blog posts are linked-to under the Events (or some reason – space?) tab, but the broader SLBN links are absent.
    • Surfacing the official blog and the SLBN links more clearly would benefit both official communications – given many users do not directly address secondlife.com, and help the “community” nature of SL.
The refreshed official viewer log-in splash screen, available with viewer 26.2 onwards – click for full size, if required
  • The refresh of the web-base land / region purchasing pages is in its first passes of “button up work”. and is currently on track to surface in the next few months. This is seen as the second part of the Land Portal overhaul which started with the refresh of the Linden Homes pages.
  • The Responsive Marketplace Homepage making progress, and will be passing through the design/QA gauntlet soon.
    • It is hoped that some of the tools used in this work can be put to use in enhancing / re-working elements of the Marketplace in general (e.g. making it more modular than monolithic) in order to add features more easily and leverage opportunities to help promote creators and stores.
    • This work would be subject to senior management agreement.

Internal and Quality of Life Updates

  • Web Search has received a range of under-the-hood updates (OpenSearch migration, Debian updates, Python upgrades), with an eye to tackle some first pass search results updates as a result of these updates in the near future.
  • A range of under-the-hood but necessary security update.
    • Mention of which again brought forth requests for more options to be added to the current MFA process, particularly e-mail support.
  • Wrapping up assisting teams without authentication/email upgrades.

New Joiners

  • Eliza Linden is a new hire, filling the role of Economy Product Manager, with responsibilities related to the Linden Dollar, the LindeX, and also producing support to the Marketplace transactions, etc. She may also become one of the Lindens attending the Web User Group meetings in the future.
  • Crowley Linden has joined LL as a Software Engineer with the Tools & Payments team.

Other Items

  • A bug report has been filed about items shown on the front page of a Marketplace Store not showing the correct price after a listing update – although the actual listing does show the correct price.
  • Marketplace requests:
    • A suggestion was made for merchants to be able to group like items together within their Marketplace stores or to have tabs within their stores so they can display items which might be brought together, etc.
    • It was asked if it would be possible in future to have better integration between the MP and in-world stores – such as having both Marketplace listings and store vendors pull products for delivery to customers from the same repository.
    • The response to these ideas was somewhat favourable, with it being mentioned that Casper (of CasperTech fame) is now looking at the MP and familiarising himself with it, and these might be things that could be incorporated into the MP alongside of features from the CasperVend system.
    • It was requested that the ability to review Demo items (particularly those with limited functionality) due to the negative feedback Demo items can garner for this reason.
      • This led to a more extensive discussion on reviews and hope to improve them.
  • The second half of the meeting [31:59-1:10:20] involved a user-generated presentation on Marketplace usage, featuring a series of slides. Allowing for the data being a snapshot in time (with changes occurring all the time), some of the highlights include:
    • The overall volume of listings has increased throughout the MP’s lifetime, despite periodic delisting exercises for items that have not sold or listings from creators who have not logged in for specified periods (e.g., 2 years or more) and things like the de-listing of Gatcha items.
    • 2016-2017 saw a large-scale jump in MP listings / activities – largely as a result of the introduction of multiple mesh bodies and the need to cater for them all with clothing and accessories, etc.
    • In the last decade, 16,000 MP stores have put out at least one product a year (with some releasing as many as 33 per month), and the longevity of individual products has increased (e.g. whereas merchants may have previously removed slow-/non-selling products in the past, now they are being left as listed on the MP.
    • The “average price” for purchased items on the MP is L$350 (obviously with a high degree of variance between low and high cost items such as fatpacks, etc.), with the suggestion that this is a good price for new creators to consider when selling their first individual products.
    • Gatcha items appear represent a relatively low number of listings within the MP (and have been declining), but they do have a higher volume of sales.
    • AI use may have moved from AI generated content (peaking at around 1%of overall MP content being self-reported as AI generated) to the use of AI tools for imaging / branding. This led to a side discussion on AI and AI tools.
    • Please refer to the video for specifics for all of the above.
  • A request was made for a) the OAuth client for SL web being made available to users on external services, and b) if the SL Discord bot could do the same thing?
    • These questions were directed to Kermit Linden, but no specific response was offered during the meeting.
  • A complaint that a recent fix to logging-in to the Forums means that those with capitalisation in the middle of their users names now have the letters displaying in lower-case in their names (e.g. “Snuffyab123” instead of “SnuffyAB123”.
    • This issue might be related to a similar issue with SL Wiki for users with Edit rights, but this has yet to be confirmed.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026.

Of Inventory, art and the artist in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2026: Manoji Yachvili/Nomore – Inventory

I’ve covered the art of Manoji Yachvili (formerly Onceagain, now Nomore) on numerous occasions in this blog, as I have with many of the exhibitions at her formerly public Onceagain gallery. So I was a little surprised to hear (through the grapevine, at least) that she had taken the decision to withdraw somewhat from the SL art world, disbanding her Onceagain art group and stating she would not be exhibiting her art in-world any more.

Of course, we all reach points in our lives when we feel either a need for a radical change in our lives or work (or both), or that what we’ve been doing for so long is less the centre of our personal or creative expression, and we need to take a step back. However, we’re also free to have changes of heart within those decisions to a greater or lesser degree. So it is that Manoji/Nomore has taken up the challenge to present one more exhibition of her work, hosted by Dido Haas in the main halls of her Nitroglobus Roof Gallery.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2026: Manoji Yachvili/Nomore – Inventory

Entitled Inventory (with the sub-title of What is Hidden Inside an Inventory), this is both something of a personal exhibition of pieces that many otherwise never have seen the light of day beyond Manoji’s eyes, and an exploration of art and the identity of the artist. It might also, to so degree, be seen as asking questions that are not only relevant to an artist, but to all of us in the modern world.

Not only finished works, but images, studies, tests, attempts, detours, forgetings. An accumulation that precedes the final form and often remains invisible. The inventory is the place where thought exceeds production, and production exceeds what is shown.
An artist thinks more than they create, and creates more than they exhibit. Of what emerges into the light, only a selected portion remains, filtered by time, context, and the gaze of others. But does what is not shown truly cease to exist?
Is it necessary for everything to be visible in order to be legitimized? The very meaning of the word “artist” lies within this tension.

– From the artist’s notes accompanying of Inventory

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2026: Manoji Yachvili/Nomore – Inventory

Thus, framed around the walls of Nitroglobus we have images and pieces, some perhaps near completion, others only partially complete or abandoned experiments, all drawing on different themes yet drawn together through Manoji’s familiar use of colour. Recovered from deep within the artist’s inventory, they present insights into the range of Manoji’s art and her willingness to experiment with forms, colour and presentation.

As pieces long hidden inventory, these pieces are used to frame an initial set of questions of their existence and “legitimacy” – just because they have been buried within inventory and thus unseen, does this make them less art than those pieces which did escape inventory’s confines and openly displayed? If they remain hidden and archived, and never seen by others, does this mean they never really existed? How do questions like this reflect on the artist behind the art? That so much remained hidden somehow lessen their own status, or does the fact they are prepared to judge their own work and/or pushing it to one side enhance their artistic reputation/ability?

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2026: Manoji Yachvili/Nomore – Inventory

Beyond this, the exhibition also seems to offer a broader subtext for artists and the rest of us to consider. This can be particularly seen within the wall of Polaroid-like shots with their hashtag elements as they both encourage us to remember who we are and question things from the role of the artist through to the devil of the moment – the use of AI (which somewhat circles back to the questions of archiving raised in the artist’s notes accompanying the exhibition: yes, art might be preserved (or accidentally lost) through digital archiving, but it might also be put at risk of corruption by the devouring need of AI and its image harvesters).

Richly engaging visually, whether or not one delves into the artist’s own notes or attempts to identify potential subtexts and meanings, Inventory is a captivating exhibition – and I hope it is not forever Manoji’s last.

SLurl Details

LL partner with Essential Inventory to bring Second Life users “more”

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

On Tuesday, May 5th, 2026, Linden Lab announced a new partnership with Essential Inventory to bring Second Life subscribers and users “more discovery, more rewards, and more ways to experience everything the grid has to offer”.

With this new partnership, Second Life Subscribers (Plus, Premium and Premium Plus) and user will be able to benefit from the following:

Second Life subscribers:

  • Five curated gifts every month across a variety of categories – with the first gifts becoming available at 12:00 noon SLT on Tuesday, May 12th, 2026 at the ACCESS shopping event, and at the  dedicated Essential Inventory Premium Gifts region.
  • Early access to some of Second Life’s most popular shopping events – with the first early access opportunity being Sunday, May 10th, 2026 at the ACCESS shopping event.

All Second Life users:

  • Access to a new publication – What’s Hot in Second Life – which will be published every Tuesday at 1:00 SLT.
    • What’s Hot in Second Life is intended to be a curated guide highlighting “the most exciting and relevant content across the entire Second Life ecosystem”.
    • The first issue is currently available on the Essential Inventory website.

More About Essential Inventory

Essential Inventory began as a community-driven discovery platform of the kind encouraged by the Second Life Creator Partnership Programme. Whilst there are few details relating to the group(s) running Essential Inventory, the website does include the following information:

  • Founded in September 2022.
  • Boasts 3 million views over a 20 month period, with 285,487 site sessions in August 2025.
  • Has over 3,000+ e-mail subscribers.
  • Offers paid advertising for brands, etc., including “social boost packages”.
  • A “one-time free coverage” option to help promote a brand or event through Essential Inventory.
  • A “free/paid recurring event coverage” option to promote recurring events through Essential Inventory.

To find out more, visit the site directly.

 

 

 

Astoria’s Zen-on-water in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Astoria, May 2026 – click any image for full size

I first visited Astoria, a Homestead region held by Eromara Vita and Dots (Dotties Stoop), in December 2024 (see: Astoria’s wintertime in Second Life), and had intended to make a return view a lot sooner. However, things have been what they were, so to speak, and so May 2026 marks my first opportunity to make good on that hope of a revisit; and it turns out that being able to do so now is rather serendipitous for me, as the region had, for spring 2026, been redressed as a most pleasant Zen environment – oriental themes for region designs being a favourite for me.

Step into a sanctuary of stillness, where nature and serenity meet. Whether you seek meditation, a yoga session, or a moment of silence away from the noise of daily life, this tranquil space offers the perfect escape. Come as you are. Leave renewed.

– Astoria’a About Land description

Astoria, May 2026

In this iteration, the region stands as a series of six small islands, each of which features Alex Bader’s excellent Zen Garden building kit (a personal favourite of mine) as the foundation for their overall look. Arranged in a rough circle, the islands are in turn surrounded by an off-region range of rugged, forested hills which enfold them in a gentle hold, cutting them off from the rest of the world somewhat and adding to their sense of tranquillity.

Separated by deep, clear waters, five of the six islands are connected one to another by a mix of bridges and stepping stones, allowing visitors to move between them without getting wet. However, the sixth is somewhat separated from the others in that no stepping stones or bridge runs across to it.

Astoria, May 2026

This separation appears to be by intent rather than any oversight in providing either a bridge or stepping stones, as it stands as a venue for music events (the next being May 15th and featuring Bsukmet – click the information board on the island for a direct Landmark). Given this use, the island is also a little different in appearance to the others, being formed as a stage, with a dancefloor of stones floating before it on the water for dancing.

The Landing Point for the region is located on the tallest of the six islands. This is topped by a small teahouse offering views out over the other islands. A short gravel path with seating links the teahouse with steps leading down to the water’s edge. Here, stepping stone branch out from the island to provide the means to get to two more of the islands.

Astoria, May 2026

One of these island is home to a shrine which has suffered some external damage. However, Buddha still sits serenely inside while a statue of Bishamonten (a Japanese form of the Indian god Vaisravana) outside, keeping his proper place and guarding Buddha. A short bridge connects the shine island with a small, flat island topped by a gravel circle with a place to sit and a bamboo fountain.

Buddha is also to be found on the other island which can be reached via the stepping stones from the Landing Point. Here, he resides outdoors in the lee of a tall rock. A pillow is placed before him for those wishing to meditate with him, while a yoga mat on the other side of the rock offers the opportunity for exercise. The entire island takes the form of a small Zen garden looped by gravel paths with water features and places to sit.

Astoria, May 2026

A long span of a bridge allows the Zen garden walk to continue on the last of the larger island in the group. This is again low-lying and offers places to sit and contemplate, the peace only broken by the slow clunk of another bamboo fountain as its arm fills with water before dropping to deposit the water into another little stream.

As well as the islands and their walks, the waters here also present points of interest for photographers: lanterns float on the water under a bridge and among lilies; a small dragon fountain sits on a rock rising from the waters, whilst a large water dragon appears to be keeping an eye on the Landing Point and teahouse. The gardens also have lots of little touches to bring them to life without every breaking from their sense of serenity.

Astoria, May 2026

In all, another engaging and pleasant design from Dots and Ero.

SLurl Details

Patch Linden departs Linden Lab

Posted on by Inara Pey
Eric Nix (aka Patch Linden, in-world). Via Linden Lab

On Tuesday, May 5th, Linden Lab announced that Senior Vice President of Product Operations, Patch Linden (known in the physical world at Eric Nix), is to depart the company after some 20 years.

No precise reason for his departure has been given, other than the fact it comes as part of a reorganisation of the Product Operations and Customer Success divisions, both of which have been under his remit.

Patch originally joined Second Life as a resident user in 2004, running his own business in-world. In September 2007, he officially joined the Lab as a support agent, rising to a support liaison. From there he moved to the Concierge team, and was gradually promoted to manage that particular team. Following this, he shifted his focus to the role of Operations Support Manager for around a year before joining the Product division, which has the responsibility for defining the features, etc., found within Second Life.

Whilst a part of the Product division, Patch developed the Land Operations team, which includes the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW). He also became the prime mover with the Land Operations team and LPDW in establishing and expanding the Linden Homes offerings for subscriber users, and developing the Bellisseria content land (and water) masses.

Patch Linden, circa 2017, via Linden Lab

In 2018, he established the company’s support office in Atlanta, Georgia, and in 2020 he oversaw the move to larger office space in Atlanta, which was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and then in 2019, he was promoted to Vice President, Product Operations.

In this role he became part of the troika of Senior Vice Presidents (along with the Senior VP of Product and the Senior VP of Engineering responsible for overseeing Second Life’s continued development on behalf of the company’s most senior management and board. As Senior VP of product Operations, he has been responsible for managing some 5 teams, including the LDPW.

Path has generally enjoyed popularity among many Second Life users, often appearing at public and special events – such as Meet the Lindens sessions at the Second Life Birthday celebrations, as well as the likes of the annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) event, and has been featured in a number Lab Gab sessions. As such, he will be missed by many.

Whilst the blog post implies Patch will be departing the Lab, a check on his account in-world suggests he may already have actually left (or at the very least, the Patch Linden account has been “retired”), as it appears to be no longer available – which is generally a sign an employee has left the company. However, whether he has departed or has yet to, I wish him well in his future endeavours.

Update: not long after this piece was published, Eric Nix’s name and image were removed from the Lab’s About page, further confirming his departure.

Be ready: WebRTC goes grid-wide in Second Life, May 5th, 2026

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

As indicated in a recent official blog post, the WebRTC voice service is due to complete its deployment to the entire main grid (Agni) on Tuesday, May 5th, 2026.

Currently available across around 25% of the grid on RC channels, the full deployment of WebRTC will see the completion of the initial phase of converting Second Life to a Voice service that is not dependent on a third-party supplier (Vivox) and can be directly maintained and enhanced by Linden Lab, opening the door to a potential range of new capabilities in the future (such as voice-to-text).

The WebRTC project started roughly two years ago, when the Lab first publicly made known it was looking to move Voice services away from a reliance on Vivox and the SL Voice plug-in for the viewer to something more modern and potentially capable. WebRTC (RTC=”real-time communication”) was selected as it is something of a “defacto standard”, being built-in to most web browsers and supporting  wide range of real-time communications tools in common use.

Since then the project has taken time to mature and reach a point where the Lab is confident it can be fully deployed across the grid without too much risk of disruption, particularly now that people are increasingly using viewers which have adopted WebRTC in their more recent versions (which was a particular problem for Firestorm with its large user-base, where because WebRTC was somewhat linked to the arrival of PBR and the performance impacts that caused, many users opted to remain with “pre-PBR” versions of the Firestorm viewer which also did not have the requisite support for WebRTC).

What This Means

  • Firstly, if you do not use Voice at all, then probably not a lot.
    • If you are using a recent (i.e. from around mid-2024 onwards) viewer version, you’ll most likely already have WebRTC support even if you never actually use it.
    • If Voice has never been a part of your SL and you’re on a viewer version without WebRTC support, you can allow other factors and viewer updates determine your upgrade path.
  • If you do use Voice, and again are on a “recent” version of a viewer, then you again don’t need to do anything; the change to grid-wide availability of WebRTC occurs on the simulator / server side of things, so there is no need to upgrade your viewer.
    • That said, if you want to have the latest bug fixes for WebRTC, and are not already using it, then you should consider updating to the latest release version of the official viewer, or whether your preferred TPV has incorporated the fixes in either a release or beta/RC version.
  • As the legacy Vivox system is decommissioned, viewer versions reliant on that service will lose all Voice functionality. This is a mandatory backend change by Linden Lab that cannot be altered or bypassed by third-party viewers. So if you wish to continue to use Voice and are on an older version of your preferred viewer, you should update to a WebRTC-capable version in order to smoothly continue using Voice.
  • If you regularly use the SL Mobile App, again there is nothing you need to do; the App already supports WebRTC.
  • One of the more noticeable impacts of the full deployment will be with peer-to-peer (P2P) Voice communications. During the transitional period, when both WebRTC and Vivox have both been operational on the grid, cross-system P2P communications between WebRTC and Vivox have not always functioned correctly. With the full deployment of WebRTC, this will no longer be an issue.
  • Similarly, other points of confusion (and possible disconnects) as a result of moving between regions running the two services will also be eliminated, as WebRTC will be the primary service across all regions.

Adding Capabilities

Moving forward, the WebRTC service will continue to be enhanced. In fact, as a part of this work, WebRTC viewer-side voice moderation capabilities are already being tested on the grid using the Second Life 2026.02 Release Candidate (RC) viewer available via the Alternate Viewers page.

Voice moderation provides the following capabilities to authorised users (e.g. Group moderators): mute or unmute individual participants; mute or unmute all users in a voice channel; manage disruptive or unintended background noise. Further:

  • WebRTC voice moderation is already available in some TPVs, so check the release notes on the most recent versions (including any beta/RC versions) of your preferred viewer to see if this is the case.
  • The official 2026.02 RC viewer with the voice moderation capabilities will be promoted to release status in the near future, allowing the code to be picked-up and incorporated in all TPVs as and when they update.

As well as voice moderation tools, and as noted above, WebRTC offers the potential for other capabilities such as voice-to-text, etc., to be added. In fact, experiments with voice-to-text have been underway within the Lab for some time, although the focus on getting the initial WebRTC fit for full deployment means that this work is far from complete and has yet to make it to a publicly-accessible project or RC viewer. Given this, it may be a while before the capability surfaces for public testing.

In the meantime, if you wish to keep up-to-date with WebRTC development, it is frequently a subject for discussion at the following user groups: