Day: August 4, 2026

2026 week #32: SUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Simulator User Group meeting place at Longfellow

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 4, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. No video for this meeting – Pantera is on vacation.

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 “Leviathan Office 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

  • The hot fix for some regions failing to grant capabilities correctly to the viewer (and thus crashing the viewer) deployed in mid-July … has a bug (causing log-in and teleport issues).
    • As a result, the fix was rolled back on August 4 for the SLS Main channel and will be rolled back on August 5 for the RC channels.
    • Once the roll-back is complete, things should behave as per the Kumquat simulator update.
    • This roll-back should help alleviate many of the recent region crossing issues people have been experiencing in the last week – see below for more.

Game_Control

  • Leviathan Linden continues to work on game_control (viewer and server-side).
  • Viewer:
    • He has added a “mouse” mode: it is possible to press a button on a game controller and move the viewer’s mouse  the mouse around. This also allows mapping of  mouse left- and right-click function to a controller.
    • However, he noted he is unsure of what to do with the “semantic data” there (e.g. axis values will currently show the delta_X and delta_Y input that is driving the mouse, which isn’t particularly useful; he imagines scripters would be more interested in “mouse_X, mouse_Y”, so he is still wondering about how best to make that info available, if it is needed).
    • He has, however further modified PromptFont (used for the game_control preferences UI) to make it more readable.
  • Server side:
    • As noted during his previous Office Hours meeting, there are some further server-side aspects to game_control he wishes to complete.
    • However, it might be a few weeks before this is in any way ready – and this work needs to be deployed ahead of the viewer-side code becoming generally available in viewers, and will include the required UDP message updates to pack “semantic data” & make it available to LSL via a new function call.

Region Crossings

  • As per the last SUG meeting and the previous Leviathan Office Hours, Pepper Linden has put together some fixes to address vehicular region crossings (see this bug report).
    • This are currently available on the Blake Sea region on Aditi (the Beta grid) for those wishing to test them.
    • Pepper encourages those who can to log-in to Aditi hand test things & provide feedback. Pepper can be reached in-world via IM or via the SL Discord server.
  • In terms of the recent (last week-ish) region crossing issues:
    • These are believed to be related to the bug introduced into the simulator coder, per the simulator notes at the top of this summary.
    • As most of the Blake Sea regions are on the BlueSteel RC channel, it was suggested that once the roll-back on the RC channels scheduled for Wednesday, August 5 has been completed, crossings can be tested there.
    • If people continue to experience issues which appear to be the same as or similar to those experienced prior to the roll-back
    • However, if people continue to experience significant crossing issues, they can message Rider with details on the SL Discord server.
  • A general discussion on region crossings – reporting issues, keeping people informed of changes / updates, etc., formed a major part of the meeting.

Lua Notes

  • Harold Linden has mostly finished the upgrade of the SLua repository to match the current upstream version of Luau.
  • The development version now has integers in Lua, and  support for them has been added to lljson “and friends” so they should be supported when Lua is deployed.
    • He noted this has been a significant change, removing a lot of integer and yield-related code that now has an upstream equivalent, so in the next few weeks people working with Lua  will need to recompile any existing scripts using Lua – although in the future, this will not be necessary, as there will be a compatibility framework which can be used.
  • Rider Linden has rolled out new wrappers for the functions relating to particles and HTTP requests enabling properly-typed tables to be passed to them without having to remember the arcane rule names and values for particle systems. He noted would welcome  PRs that wrap some of the other lists as well.
  • As per my notes from the previous Content Creation User Group meeting, Rider Linden has produced a new version of the VSCode plugin with might tighter integration with the viewer.
    • However, it has been pointed out to him that it is not entirely obvious on how to set the plug-in up, so in order to help with this issue he has opened up a documentation page, which will be populated.

General Discussion

  • Monty Linden has been itemising some HTTP changes for LSL, “so that we can support things that are less weird and arbitrary”. He hopes to make this a public RFC or a blog post “soonish”.
  • The face count mismatch bugfix remain in limbo, having raised numerous internal questions at LL during code review. Leviathan – was had been looking at it – has also been focused on game_control but will try to take another look at that as soon as game-control is “mostly done” (e.g. server- and viewer-side communication changes, new LSL call, as mentioned above).
    • Monty Linden added that a fix is “very much wanted”, as the current coding around the issue is “interesting”, but he wants the final result to be “absolutely solid”.
  • The request for a llGetRegionWorldMapTile function remains on a “thing that would be nice to get done” at LL, but does not have any resources looking at it at present.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, August 11, 2026.
  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, August 18, 2026.

Linden Lab: Gaeta 1 closure reversed + Mainland improvements

Posted on by Inara Pey
Gaeta 1: no longer to be removed from Second Life – but will it ever be completed?

Back in April 2026, Linden Lab announced some significant Mainland changes involving the Gaeta 1 continent and the Adult continent of Zindra.

In particular, the announcement noted Gaeta 1 would be closed and removed from the grid once all land holders (and any tenants they might have) had been assisted with relocating elsewhere within the Mainland continents.

A Town Hall meeting was held subsequent to the announcement of these changes, which saw – along with a forum topic on the subject – considerable concerns raised (see all relevant links at the end of this article for further details).

However, on Monday, August 2nd, 2026 Linden Lab announced a change of direction with the plans for Gaeta 1, which notes in part:

After further review of resident feedback, relocation activity, and our long-term plans for Mainland, Linden Lab has decided that Gaeta 1 will remain open.
… We are sorry for the disruption and uncertainty this reversal has caused, especially for residents who made decisions or completed relocations based on the information and direction we previously provided. We recognize that those residents acted promptly and in good faith, and we are committed to providing affected residents with meaningful choices moving forward.

– from the official blog post on plans for Gaeta 1 and the Mainland as a whole

What This Means

For Former and Current Gaeta 1 Land Holders

  • Those who have relocated from Gaeta 1 should have already received direct communications from the Lab outlining their options (e.g. remaining where they are or receiving assistance in relocating back to their original parcels on Gaeta 1).
  • Those who hold land on Gaeta 1 / have yet to complete any planned relocation will be receiving communications from LL outlining their options (e.g. those who have not given up their land on Gaeta 1 no longer having to face relocation if they have no wish to move).

For Gaeta 1 and Mainland

  • Gaeta 1 will remain as an active Mainland continent.
  • Mainland will in turn see a renewed focus on making small, but noticeable improvements and updates, such as:
    • The addition of further open water homesteads in an effort to improve the sailing and flying experiences around some of the continents.
    • Repairs to many legacy Mainland regions with badly baked edges, to fix longstanding region crossing issues between these specific regions, and make them more attractive overall.
    • The restoration of several legacy  Mainland builds such as the Balloon Tour in Linden Village, the Snowlands chairlifts, and the Pomponio Crater areas within Sansara.

For the Zindra Continent

  • The expansion of, and improvements to, Zindra is to continued unchanged from the April 2026 announcement.

Feedback and Personal Observations

A forum topic has been opened for discussion of the August 2nd announcement†.

Of the comments made thus far, feedback appears to be the typical mix of Second Life responses: favourable, unfavourable, questioning, theorising, arguing.

In broad terms, that the Lab has reversed direction on Gaeta 1 and is indicating that the Mainland continents outside of Bellisseria are to have a renewed focus for improvements and updates has been welcomed. I find myself particularly in agreement with the positive response to the Mainland as a whole.

Whilst understanding that Bellisseria is a core part of demonstrating the valve of Second life subscription memberships, the overwhelming focus it has received during the last five years has been to the broader detriment of the rest of the Mainland (I also think the entire development of Bellisseria has been poorly managed, leaving the Second Life World Map looking like a cat coughed up across it – but that’s another matter entirely). So seeing a commitment being offered to make even small improvements to the latter is a positive thing (one which will hopefully continue well beyond those outlined).

In terms of Gaeta 1, I have no strong feelings other that noting it would be nice to see it completed, and  – more particularly – emphasising with Gaeta 1 land holders and their tenants for any consternation they may have felt or feel towards both announcements, and any relief felt at this latest announcement.

It is not unfair to say that everything from presenting Gaeta 1’s demise as a fait accompli, through the Town Hall to taking a further three months before announcing a change of course, has been a less than optimal course of events; one that just might have been avoided had there been more in the way of a closed discussion with those directly affected ahead of any announcement. But then, anything is possible with 20/20 hindsight – although hopefully, a lesson has been learned, should it be required in the future.

† Those with specific feedback, suggestions or requests about Gaeta 1 or Mainland improvements they wish LL to see/ consider, should make them via the forum  topic rather than here, as LL are far more likely to take note of such feedback via the forums than they are by reading this blog!

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