2026 week #35: SL CCUG meeting summary

Meeting Purpose

• The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work.
  • This meeting is generally held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis and is held in a mix of Voice and text chat.
• Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

• Default viewer  26.3 – 26.3.0.31203661088, August 10, promoted August 17 – quality of life improvements; performance improvements; bug fixes.
• Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.3.0.32302693173, August 21.

General Viewer Notes

• 26.3, as the default viewer has a  “pretty good” low crash rate.
• It is hoped that the 26.4 Lua Editor viewer with Linux support will be moving to beta/RC status “pretty soon” – a beta/RC version is currently with QA for testing.
  • The idea being to have this available as server-side Lua support is made available on the Main (Agni) grid.
  • LL is actively building Linux versions of all viewer (alpha/project and beta/RC) moving forward.
  • There is still some back-end work to complete for Linux support (e.g. updating the viewer download pages (main and Alternative, etc.), to reflect the availability of Linux and to have the relevant URLs, etc.).
• Work has resumed on the Graphics Care Package (GCP) viewer, with the focus on bug fixes and cleaning-up regressions. This latter work includes clean-up issues around mirrors, with some long-standing mirror-related bugs also to be worked on.
  • There is further clean-up work to be done in general before a alpha/Project version of the GCP viewer appears with an official version number.
  • An alpha version of GCP will not mean it is feature complete; further updates, etc., will be made whilst it is soaking as a alpha/Project viewer, the release being to allow those who wish to to try the viewer and provide feedback.
• One element under review with regards to inclusions in GCP (and Second Life as a whole) is materials Transmission.
  • One potential use for this would be to give any in-world surface the cosmetic appearance of water which could be “seen” as such through the appropriate scripting support  – e.g. volume detect, or this Feature Request to get the face details of an in-world object.
    • Note this is not about giving surfaces / prims the same properties as Linden Water – that is a far more complex ask.
  • Transmission had been promised in the past, but there are concerns over impact performance, so its inclusion in SL is still under internal review and testing. If the impact is too greater for many systems, it is unlikely to be implemented; if its impact can be moderated through the use of a toggle in the viewer, then it might be considered.

General Discussions

• With regards to Linden Water:
  • We currently have water exclusions surfaces (objects which can “hide” areas of Linden Water when looking on it from above. This is useful for things like keeping Linden Water out of the hulls of boats, etc., when viewed from above, but if the camera moves below the surface, the visual effects of Linden Water (hazing, etc.) will still be apparent.
  • Given this, there has been a long-standing request for water exclusion volumes which would completely hide Linden Water howsoever the volume is viewed from within (above, below, etc.).
  • Whilst LL is aware of this, the development of water exclusion volumes is not currently being targeted.
• The PBR “terrain painting” project Cosmic Linden was once working on, circa 2023/24 remains “on the shelf” for now.
  • This led to a general discussion as to what form this project would take if it were to be re-started (e.g. supporting permissions, limits to use (e.g. supported at parcel level, or limited to region level), etc.
  • However, as these discussion were mostly theoretical at this point, and it is unclear if current priorities, etc., would allow for the project to be dusted-off and restarted. As such, all such discussions were largely academic at this point.
• There was a question on improving sound quality in SL (e.g. higher bitrate sampling, etc.). Currently, there is not work in the pipeline for this due to other priorities.
  • This led to a general discussion on sounds and Voice in SL – matters of attenuation, roll-off (or lack thereof), as well as general sound quality, all of which was user-led with little linden input / feedback.
• Maxwell Graf demonstrated a viewer-side project he has been working on for functional water caustics using EEP lighting / settings together with a projector with a frame-based animation with a negative cut-out to shine the light through it (+ objects to create volume).
  • He noted that scaling the idea beyond anything like fish tank or pond could be problematic, although the process does not require any scripted update mechanism, it is purely based on the animation playback and interaction with the appropriate EEP lighting.

Next Meeting

• 13:00 SLT, Thursday, September 10, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.