An Everbloom island in Second Life

Everbloom, June 2026 – click any image for full size

I came across the setting of Everbloom whilst nosing through the Destination Guide to see what caught my eye. The work of Carolina Jackman (CarolinaSchnuti), it occupies Homestead region which, at the time of my visit, was very rural in nature and dressed for summer, making for a suitably seasonal visit.

A place to breathe.
Let your soul unwind as the evening sun bathes the terrace in warm golden light. Surrounded by blooming gardens, gentle sounds of nature, and peaceful animals, you’ll find the kind of tranquillity that is so often lost in everyday life.
Sometimes happiness needs nothing more than a croissant, a quiet moment, and the perfect view.

– Everbloom About Land description

Everbloom, June 2026

Then Landing Point for the setting lies on the region’s east side, where a bay cuts a shallow V-shape into the landscape. Across the region and on its west side, the smaller of two beaches steps into the land, working with the Landing Point bay to give the impression of a thick neck of land joining the two larger and more circular half-isles to the south and north.

Adding to this idea of a neck of land between the two half-isles is a raised boardwalk strung across the grassland like a necklace. It almost reaches the sands of the little beach when it veers south around the edge of a large pond and provides access to the buildings sitting on this half of the island.

Everbloom, June 2026

These buildings comprise a little farmhouse and barns huddled close to the swinging arms of a windmill. They sit on the lowland meadows, overlooked by what at first appears to be a large house but which is in fact fact a café-bakery with a small residence on it upper floor and a garden market sitting on its broad terrace. It is reached via a wide stairway just of the end of the broadwalk, at the foot of which is a little cupboard of wearable hobby horses for those wishing a slightly different means of trotting around the landscape.

To the north, the land is a little higher and crowned by a single-storey villa. This can be reached quite freely as one explores, but a series of wooden stairways climb the gentle slope up to it, a spur of the boardwalk pointing the way towards them.

Everbloom, June 2026

The villa is furnished as a house, but appears open to visitors. A terrace to one side of the villa looks out over another gentle slope running down to the setting’s larger beach as it sweeps around the north-west coastline of the island.

Outside of the boardwalk and steps mentioned above, there are no man-made paths through the setting: people can simply and comfortably wander as they please, allowing mood and feet carry them through the landscape to see what they might find, be it somewhere to relax on the beaches or enjoying refreshments at the café-bakery or sitting at one of the many other places on the ground or suspended from tree branches in the form of swings.

Everbloom, June 2026

Additional life is brought to the setting through the presence of heron and flamingos. However, rather than simply strutting around the waters or watching for fish from the shore as is so often the case in region designs, Carolina has opted to add a dynamic edge to her birds by having groups of both taking to the air as if startled, causing some already airborne seagulls no small surprise as well. When exploring the island, these little vignettes give the feeling that simply in exploring, a visitor has surprised the birds, causing them to hurriedly take to the air.

And talking of taking to the air, visitors can also do so during a visit, courtesy of a bubble rezzer just a short walk north from the Landing Point. Click to rez a bubble, sit in it and off you go, PAGE UP / DOWN to climb and down and your movement keys to steer yourself and move forwards / backwards.

Very much living up to its About Land description, Everbloom makes for an engaging, picturesque visit.

Everbloom, June 2026

SLurl Details

Second Life Hair Fair 2026

Via Hair Fair

The 2026 Second Life Hair Fair opened on Saturday, May 30th and runs through until Sunday, June 14th, 2026. As with previous years, it is being run to raise money for Wigs for Kids, with every purchase seeing a percentage donated to the cause while the Bandana booths and Donation kiosks donating 100% of all proceeds received.

As with recent years, the event takes place across six regions, appropriately called Blonde, Brunette, Foils, Noirette, Redhead and Streaks,  all laid out in a loop around a central boulevard. So, no matter where you arrive or whether you head left or right, you can easily pass through all of the regions and pass all of the stores. The landing zones for the regions are located at either end of the the loop (Blonde & Streaks; Foils & Niorette), and towards the middle of the boulevard for Brunette and Redhead.

If walking isn’t your thing, signs along the boulevard allow you to rez and ride a “prim bus”: just click to rez, sit to ride and hop off when you see something of interest.

Hair Fair 2026
As is usual for Hair Fair, the shopping regions are lightly decorated in order to minimise viewer-side lag that might otherwise be created by having a significant amount of extra object and texture rendering. The list of participating merchants can be found on the Hair Fair website, while for those who may not find something they wish to purchase, donation kiosks are available to help support Wigs for Kids, or there are the Bandana Booths mentioned above.

SecondLifeTime Premium and SecondLifeTime Premium Plus Membership Auction

Linden Lab has donated one SecondLifeTime Premium membership and one SecondLifeTime Premium Plus membership to Hair Fair 2026. These memberships are just that: lifetime access to all the benefits of the Premium or Premium Plus subscription tier for life – without any recurring subscription fees!

These two membership options are being auctioned across the duration of the 2026 Hair Fair event. To bid:

  • Visit the auction boards at the Fair.
  • The minimum bid increment is L$100.
  • Make sure you read the auction notes in full and select the correct board.
  • 100% of the proceeds of the auction will go to Wigs for Kids.
Hair Fair 2026 – SecondLifeTime Auctions

About Wigs for Kids

For more than forty years Wigs for Kids has been providing hair replacement systems and support for children who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy, radiation therapy, Alopecia, Trichotillomania, burns and other medical issues at no cost to children or their families. The effects of hair loss go deeper than just a change in a child’s outward appearance. Hair loss can erode a child’s self-confidence and limit them from experiencing life the way children should. With an injured self-image, a child’s attitude toward treatment and their physical response to it can be negatively affected also.

Wigs for Kids helps children suffering with hair loss look themselves and live their lives. Families are never charged for the hair replacements provided for their children; Wigs for Kids rely completely on both the donation of hair and / or money to help meet their goals.

Read more about Wigs for Kids mission, and discover how hair can be donated.

URLs and SURLs

Firestorm 7.2.4 release overview

On Monday, June 1st 2026 (SLT), Firestorm released version 7.2.4.80712 of their viewer.

This release brings Firestorm into line with most of the recent releases of the official Second Life viewer (SLV) up to and including release 26.1.0, with additional cherry-picked updates from upstream.

Note that the following is not a complete review of the 7.2.4 release and all the changes made therein; it focuses on the more visible and user-facing updates. Those requiring a list of all changes and updates, including all bug fixes, etc, should refer to the Firestorm 7.2.4 release changelog, which also provides all proper credits for the work.

Table of Contents

General Notes

Installation

  • Only download Firestorm from the Firestorm website. Do not utilise any other third-party site purporting to offer the Firestorm viewer, and remember Firestorm will never ask for log-in credentials in order to download a release version of their viewer.
  • There is no need to perform a clean install with this release if you do not wish to.
  • Do, however, make sure you back-up all your settings safely so you can restore them after installing 7.2.4.

Linden Lab Updates

This release brings Firestorm to full parity with the following recent official viewer releases from Linden Lab.

Viewer 26.1.0 – Stability and Legacy Search

Version and release notes:  26.1.0.22641522367 – March 2026.

  • The ability to hide transparent reflection probes via Build Menu → Options → Highlight Transparent Probes or pressing ALT-SHIFT-T.
  • Quality of Life improvements:
    • Gestures (Comm Menu → Gestures or CTRL-G): now includes a sortable “Status” column. Click the leftmost column to move all active gestures to the top of the list.
New Gestures ordering column will re-order gestures for either active to top or inactive to top (requires Firestorm’s Show Active Only at the bottom of the floater to be disabled)
    • Camera controls have multiple improvements, including better aspect-ratio handling and a shortcut for panning the camera downward.
    • Improved outfit list performance, especially for larger wardrobes.
    • Restored support for avatar cloth: Developer Menu → Rendering → Render Animated Avatar System Cloth.
  • Bug fixes.
  • Elements already offered by Firestorm:
    • Re-implementation of Legacy Search, added to the World menu (Firestorm has been utilising a Legacy Search capability, however please read Search-Related Updates / Improvements, below).
    • Ability to search the Resident Chooser using Agent ID (agent key).
    • Ability to save Snapshot to Inventory at 1024×1024 as a selectable resolution.

Viewer 26.1.1 – Special Note

  • The Second Life viewer release 26.1.1.23806384790 (April 2026) implemented a new one-click installer feature for the official viewer.
  • Firestorm is not implementing this feature, so nothing from this release is relevant to Firestorm users.

Upstream Fixes included with 7.2.4

  • WebRTC:
    • Fixed WebRTC connection’s task outliving the connection (LLVoiceWebRTCConnection) – Github issue.
    • Fixed WebRTC voice being muted after quickly toggling the Speak button – Github issue.
    • Fixed incoming WebRTC voice audio being disrupted after editing audio settings – Github issue.
    • Fixed voice-disabled parcel does not immediately transmit audio after joining a p2p call – Github issue.
    • Fixed P2P text chat timeout on WebRTC regions and delay voice renegotiation on disconnect – Github issue.
  • General fixes:
    • Fixed “Quick Jump” sometimes being enabled when it shouldn’t be (due to race conditions with AGENT_CONTROL_FINISH_ANIM when chaining jumps). This corrects a issue for the Ponygirl community, where use of Quick Jump is usually banned; see FIRE-34049.
    • Fixed alpha debug overlay blend and mask conflict – see FIRE-36474.
    • Fixed PBR materials with alpha mode BLEND and alpha value of 0 are not highlighted – see FIRE-36363.
    • Fixed the default save location on Mac is the Resources file of the current viewer – see FIRE-36609.

New Features for 7.2.4

Avatar Alignment and Facing Tools

To facilitate better alignment for facing other avatars for things like hugs and kisses – or simply as a courtesy when chatting – or for fine-tuning facing a specific direction, Firestorm 7.2.4 implements new tools and avatar alignment / facing options.

  • Avatar Alignment Compass:
    • Accessed via a new toolbar button.
    • Provides options for turning your avatar and facing specific directions (per the diagram below).
The Avatar Compass for aligning your avatar to a given point (or nearest avatar), and the toolbar button used to access the Compass
  • Face Nearest Avatar toolbar button

    Face Nearest Avatar: a new toolbar button which will turn your avatar to face the nearest avatar to you within 20 metres. This is supported by the following Face Towards Avatar option found on the following menus / floaters (avatars must be within 20 metres):

    • Context / Pie menus: when right-clicking on a nearby avatar.
    • People floater: when right-clicking on the name of an avatar.
    • Radar avatar list: when right-clicking on the name of an avatar.
    • Minimap or Radar minimap: when right-clicking on the green dot for that avatar.
  • General Notes when trying to align your avatar with another for hugs, etc:
    • One person right-clicks on the other avatar and selects Face Towards Avatar.
    • The other person does the same to get both avatars initially aligned.
    • The first person right-clicks on the other avatar again and selects Face Towards Avatar to fine-tune alignment.

Region-Based Group Activation

  • Allows you to set a Group to become automatically active when entering a region.
  • Accessed via the Groups panel (Comm Menu → Groups or CTRL-SHIFT-G).
  • To set a Group to become active for a region whilst physically within the region:
    1. Open the Groups panel in your viewer and click on the Group Titles button to display the Group Tiles floater.
    2. Click on the required Group name in the Group Tiles floater to highlight it.
    3. Click the This Region button.
  • To set a Group to become active in a region when not in said region:
    1. Follow steps 1 and 2 above.
    2. Click on the Type Region button.
    3. Enter the exact region name in the pop-up prompt, and click OK to apply.
Setting a Group to become active on entering a region. 1) From the Groups panel (CTRL-SHIFT-G), click Group Titles to open the Groups floater. s) In the Groups floater click a Group name to highlight it. 3) If you are within the region in which the Group is to be active, click This Region; if you are elsewhere in SL, click Type Region and enter the region name at the prompt, then click OK
  • To remove Group selection when visiting a region:
    • Open the Groups panel in your viewer and click on the Group Titles button to display the Group Tiles floater.
    • Click on the required Group name in the Group Titles floater to highlight it.
    • Click the Clear Region button.

Added Protection: Disable URL Masking

  • Preferences → Firestorm → Protection → Disable square-bracket links in chat (URL stays visible).
  • When enabled, square-bracket links sent in chat, IM, group notices and object text from other Residents are not collapsed into a single labelled link – the actual URL is shown and linked.
  • This helps reduce phishing where the visible label hides a different destination.
  • Built-in viewer text (notifications, preferences, etc.) is not affected

Other Notable Updates / Improvements

Preferences Updates

  • Group IM Tabs by Conversation Type: it is now possible to order the appearance IM tabs in your Conversations floater by type.
    • Go to Preferences → Chat → Chat Windows.
    • Check Order IMs by Type and then select your preferred IM order from the drop-down, where:
      • Groups, Conferences, IMs will display all Group IM tabs first, then any Conference session IMs then any person-to-person IMs.
      • Groups, IMs, Conferences will display all Group IM tabs first, then any person-to-person IMs then any Conference session IMs.
      • And so on through the displayed drop-down list.
    • Once set, any incoming IMs will be appended to the relevant group of tab (so any new Group IM will appear at the end of the grouping of that type of IM), rather than just appearing at the end of the list of open IM sessions.
    • Alternatively, you can check Add New IMs First ad have new IM tab open at the top of their respective grouping.
    • Once set, the ordering will persist across log-ins until changed. 
New Preferences options and drop-down for ordering the appearance of IM tabs in the Conversations floater
  • Updated options for de-selecting chat: you can now opt to de-select chat in third-person viewer and / or when in Mouselook after sending a message –  Preferences → Chat → Typing → Deselect Chat after Sending Message + sub-options.
  • Sounds & Media:
    • The “Buttons” sliders in Preferences → Sounds & Media → Sounds and the volume control drop-down (top right of the screen) have been renamed to “Interface” for clarity.
    • Preferences → Sounds & Media → UI Sounds has been refactored from 3 individual panels (UI Sounds 1, 2, 3) into a single scrolling list of UI sound options. Also added to the panel is:
      • The ability to double-click on a sound entry to hear a preview of the sound.
      • The ability to right click a sound entry and Copy sound UUID
    • A new option to play a sound when someone uses nearby chat: Preferences → Sound & Media → UI Sounds → New Nearby Chat Message.
  • Viewer colours and Opacity: new option to set semi-transparent menu backgrounds:
    • Preferences → Colors → Miscellaneous → Menus Background Opacity.
    • This controls the opacity of context menus and top menu bar background where 0.0 = fully transparent and 1.0 = fully opaque.
  • Time format updates:
    • New Time Format drop-down in Preferences →  General →Time Format to change the appearance of chat timestamps between 12-hour and 24-hour formats.
    • This option includes a link to User Interface → Top Bars → Time Format to direct those wanting to change the the format of the time ( 12-hour or 24-hour) displayed in the the viewer window’s clock display (top right corner of the viewer).
    • Preferences → User Interface → Top Bars → “Time Format” has been renamed to “Clock Format” to better indicate it refers to setting the clock’s time format.
Time / Clock Preferences options: Left – the new option for setting the format for time stamps in local chat, etc, together with a link to: right – the renamed option for setting for format of the clock in the top right of the viewer window.

Search-Related Updates / Improvements

  • LL and Firestorm Legacy Search:
    • Linden Lab’s implementation of Legacy Search is used by default in Firestorm 7.2.4.
    • To continue to use the Firestorm Legacy Search implementation:
      1. Open the viewer’s Debug Settings floater (Advanced Menu → Debug Settings).
      2. Enter FSUseFSLegacySearch into the floater’s search filter.
      3. Enable the TRUE radio button.
      4. Close the Debug Settings floater.
      5. Close and re-open the Search floater if required. On re-opening Search, the Firestorm Legacy Search floater should be displayed.
    • To switch back to used the LL Legacy Search floater, repat the steps above, but set FSUseFSLegacySearch to FALSE.
    • The following have been added / ported to the LL Legacy Search implementation to offer matching functionality with the Firestorm Legacy Search:
      • An Open Profile button has been added to the People / Group searches.
      • Ability to search via Agent ID in People Searches.
    • There are multiple additional fixes and improvements to Legacy Search – see Legacy Search in the changelog.
Firestorm 7.2.4 uses the LL implementation of Legacy Search (left), with some additional refinements – such as an Open Profile button for People searches (ringed). The Firestorm Legacy Search, with numerous improvements and clean-up, can be used via the FSUseFSLegacySearch debug setting
  • Area Search: Copy functionality added to Area Search results using keyboard shortcuts to copy selected rows from the Area Search results list to the system clipboard in tab-separated format.
    • CTRL-C: copies selected rows to the clipboard.
    • CTRL-A: select all items in results list.
    • Copied information is in tab-separated format for easy pasting into spreadsheets, can paste directly in Excel/Google Sheets, and includes header row with column names.
  • Gesture floater: a Search field has been added to the Gestures floater (Comm Menu → Gestures or CTRL-G).
  • World Map Region Search: region maturity rating (G, M, A) has been added to the names of regions returned in a search.

Firestorm Animation Override and Avatar Poser

Multiple update to the above, for details please refer to the following changelog entries:

Building and Scripting

Contact Sets Updates / Improvements

  • Drag and drop capability:  enables dragging-and-dropping name into a Contact Set from the Friends list and calling cards. See FIRE-31146.
  • Names can now be moved between Contact Sets.
    • Contact Sets → Move This Avatar to Another Contact Set.
    • See FIRE-34543.
  • Search/filter field has been added to Contact Sets.
    • Contact Sets → Filter people bar.
    • People → Contact Sets → Filter people bar
    • See FIRE-17568.
  • People in your Contact Sets can now be highlighted as such in your Friends list.
    • Contact Sets → Configure selected Contact Set → Custom Colors → Color friends list entry based on their Contact Set.
    • See FIRE-32748.
  • Sort Contact Sets by people’s On-line status:
    • Contact Sets → Configure Selected Contact Set → Sort by Online Status.
    • See FIRE-21531.
  • Set custom Autoresponse messages to Contact Sets.
    •  Contact Sets → Configure selected Contact Set →select one of:
      • Use custom Busy-mode Autoresponse for This Set.
      • Use custom Autoresponse-mode message for This Set.
      • Use custom Non-friends Autoresponse for This Set.
    • See FIRE-17006.
  • It is now possible to bulk apply Set Alias in Contact Sets. See FIRE-31777.
  • Contact Sets are now supported in the Avatar Picker. See FIRE-34809.
  • If an avatar is in one or more of your Contact Sets, you will see those Contact Sets listed below their Groups list when viewing their Profile. See FIRE-32401.
  • Quality of Life Contact Sets improvements and fixes.

And the Rest

For information on RLVa updates, OpemSim updates, skinning & translations, performance and stability updates, viewer build Improvement and Fixes in the changelog for details.

Feedback

I’ve been using the various beta release of this version of Firestorm – and most notably 80712 since it was made available and have found it as stable and reliable as the previous release version. While I’m not aware of specific performance boosts (and so this could be purely subjective). this version does appear to load my home location in SL a lot more smoothly than 7.2.2.80036. Of the new / updated features, I like the Firestorm implementation of LL’s Legacy Search – if only because I no longer have to click over the the People tab (my usual Search option) when opening the floater. The avatar alignment / facing addition is rather neat and the region-based Group activity is handy for making sure rezzing rights are maintained when hopping around regular haunts where I have said rights.

As to the rest, I leave it to you.

2026 SL viewer release summaries week #22

Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, May 31st, 2026

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy.
  • This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Outside of the Official viewer, and as a rule, alpha / beta / nightly or release candidate viewer builds are not included; although on occasions, exceptions might be made.

Official LL Viewers

  • Default viewer  – One-Click Installer = 26.1.1.23806384790 – April 10 – No change.
  • Second Life Release Candidate (RC) viewer: Flat UI – 26.2.0.25386466510, May 14 -“flat” UI and font update – NEW.
  • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 6.1.0.23768336784, April 29 – No change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer Stable: 1.32.4.31; Experimental 1.32.5.1:  May 30 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links