Day: October 3, 2026

2026 week #40: SL Open Source UG Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source User Group (OSUG) meeting held on Friday, October 2, 2026.
  • The video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera and embedded at the end of this article. My thanks to her for providing it.
Table of Contents

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 programmes.
  • 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  26.3.0.31203661088, August 10, promoted August 17 – quality of life improvements; performance improvements; bug fixes – No Change.
  • Second Life Lua Editor RC / Beta viewer with Linux support 26.4.0.35914774337, September 24 – NEW.
    • Lua scripting support (on regions with Lua scripting enabled).
    • Improved communication between the Viewer and the newly published Second Life VS Code extension.
    • Offers an experimental Linux viewer build.
    • Includes the latest WebRTC Voice and viewer-maintenance updates.
  • Second Life Chat Modernization viewer 26.3.0.35248298254, September 22 – NEW.
    • Recent conversations follow you seamlessly: a direct message you receive on SL Mobile can also be available when you return to desktop, and vice versa; Recent direct message history will be available on logging-in; existing desktop chat logs are preserved – previously saved local history isn’t being replaced or removed; conversation history feels continuous: on desktop, your existing local history and newer message history are brought together into a single conversation.

Viewer Notes

  • The 26.4 Lua Editor / Linux viewer remains at RC / beta status, but the hope is to promote that to de facto release status in the coming week.
  • Work is going into the 26.5 viewer – currently, it looks like this will include the Chat Modernisation work currently at Project / alpha stage (per the list above), together with maintenance fixes and other items.
  • Leviathan Linden’s game_control work is currently held pending further server-side work, however the overall plan for this in terms of the viewer are:
    • Get a Project / alpha viewer out as soon as possible
    • Possibly go on to roll game_control in viewer 26.5. 

General Discussion

  • Chat Modernisation work:
    • There was a reiteration that this work is currently concerned with persistence of IM histories when moving between devices / viewer instances, rather than dealing with matters such as encryption (although it was noted that the chat history itself is encrypted end-to-end).
    • It was also noted that other improvements will be made as is feasible, according to roadmaps / resource availability.
  • Official RLV support:
    • This was a project started some time ago – with the assistance of RLVa developer Kitty Barnett – to add RLV support to the official viewer.
    • This project has been stalled for some time, however, Geenz noted there is no technical blocker for the project, and internal discussions are still going on at the Lab as to how best to progress the project.
    • There is also a Github thread for RLV/a discussions.
  • There was a general discussion of texture handling – decoding, options, VRAM management, consideration for better Mobile use, etc. See the video, 25:19-35:51 (note this runs concurrent with comments on the deletion of orphaned assets from the asset service and the opening of comments on RLV/a support as noted above).
  • Please refer to the video below of the rest of the meeting comments..

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