2026 week #32: SL Open Source UG Summary

Meeting Purpose

• The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
• This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
• Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

• Default viewer  – 26.2.0.25386466510, May 19 -“flat” UI and font updates.
• Release Candidate 26.3.0.30006559438, July 27 – quality of life improvements; performance improvements; bug fixes.
• Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.3.0.30154945611, July 29.

Viewer Notes

• 26.3 is to see a further RC / beta update prior to getting promoted. There has been an increase in log-out failures with the current RC, so LL is working on fixing that.
• Viewer 26.4 is now confirmed as being the Lua editor viewer (with Linux support), and a further update to that viewer (currently alpha / project status) should be forthcoming in the next week or so.
• Discussions are still continuing on where to place the viewer-side code for game_control. Per my SUG meeting summary notes, this in part rests on his API work semantic to help with naming controls, etc.
• Geenz has resumed work on the Graphics Care package (GCP) viewer. 

Other Items

• Transparent Media on a Prim (MOAP) – the ability to have parts of a MoaP surface be transparent rather than the whole thing –  appears to be moving forward as well. As a general heads up on this, Geenz noted it might bring a few security minded modifications along with it, but no details on this at present.
• Roxie Linden noted that LL is still actively looking into transcription functionality, and the hope is to evaluate more technologies to make sure a good option for SL is identified.
  • Also being evaluated is transcription accuracy, to allow a fast follow-on for functional translation. Roxie reaffirmed that transcription / translation are being looked at is internal services, rather than utilising any 3rd party solutions, so as to maintain privacy.
  • However, Jerome noted that whether an internal service is created or there is a move to use an external service could come down to issues such as cost, maintenance, etc., – however, privacy will remain a priority either way.
• A suggestion was put forward for a “decode once, use many” approach to the texture cache (e.g. decode the textures from the asset CDN once, then store them as something like KTX,  which can be streamed directly into the GPU).
  • Brad Linden noted this is actually done for SL Mobile, and that it would be good to standardise on an approach across both Mobile and all viewers.
  • Geenz noted that whilst this would be good, it could be impactful on client performance, noting:

It’s definitely an interesting direction, and one I don’t think would be bad – but I think the bigger question is gonna be how do we do this without decimating every single texture that has text on it?

• As a part of the above discussion, Geenz noted that moving away from OpenJPG as the graphics API will likely that the initial direction will be Vulkan and Metal (Mac) to start, with the potential for DirectX 12 to be added-in as well (although if LL stick to using slang-rhi, DX12 should be supported anyway).
  • A caveat here was that if LL doesn’t have to directly support hardware outside of what Metal and Vulkan will run on, then they’ll constrain the work to just what is needed.
• Geenz also hinted that things might be changing more broadly with the graphics pipeline, suggesting that in the future, deferred rendering may not by a part of it – and people should think more in terms of forward+ or clustered. Again, this is not to say this direction will be taken; the comments were more things Geenz is mulling, as was the case with musings on the potential for froxels potentially being something worth looking into.
• The last part of the meeting was more specific to viewer pull requests (PRs), and bug reports, including:
  • Depth-splice rigged attachment alpha into world alpha– #5927 (and concern over possible content breakage if actioned – if any viewer dev has impelemented and noted any breakages, Geenz would like to hear).
  • PBR client opacity issue on textures with alpha channel (Windows) –  seen as not a simple fix as  it needs some server work for the alpha gamma parameters.
  • Run State Breaks Glow and Transparency on moving linkset– reported and Maestro linden has been poking at it.

Next Meeting

• 13:00 SLT, Friday, August 21, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.