Day: October 17, 2026

2026 week #42: 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 16, 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 26.4.0.37384746592, October 13 – 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 26.5.0.38448248489, October 16 – NEW.
      • Seamless integration of IM histories between clients / devices.
      • Camera and Travel improvements.
      • Create an account from within the viewer.
      • LEAP Camera API.
      • Portable viewer storage.
      • And more.

Viewer Notes

  • 26.5 in now the Chat Modernisation viewer, currently in RC / Beta, per the above list.
    • No word on whether or not game_control will make it into 26.5 or be its own viewer at some point.
  • The work on vcpkg work (under-the-hood viewer packaging to replace the current Autobuild process used to build the viewer) remains stalled due to other priorities.
  • LL is current looking to rewrite their viewer deployment flow – figuring out what can be public and what needs to be private on that given it touches a few internal systems. 

General LL News

  • The Nectarine simulator update is now grid-wide and stable.
  • Pepper Linden’s region crossing updates remain on a dedicated RC channel called “Breeze”.
    • This includes “almost all” of the Blake Sea regions on the Main grid (Agni).
    • The request is for people test the code as much as possible, particularly corner-to-corner crossings between regions.
    • Feedback can be presented via this Canny.
    • If all goes well, these updates will likely be included in the next simulator deployment, code-named Olive, and which is currently in development.
  •  WebRTC:
    • Roxie Linden has been addressing issues related to Bluetooth devices with the aid of the Firestorm team.
    • Cosmic Linden is working on transcription capabilities, but it will ” still be a while before we have anything definitive on that, but we are making headway.”
  • Callum Linden has been working on restructuring the CEF plugin system to allow use of a mode in CEF that will allow faster launch of CEF pages. There are also updates to allow for better spatialisation for Media on a Prim (MOAP) via CEF .

General Discussion

  • A short general discussion on some experience gesture sounds at extreme vertical distances (e.g. hand clapping on the ground heard at 2,500m altitude).
  • Further requests for LL to make viewer stats available.
  • A general discussion on the plethora of communications channels used by SL users (Reddit, Primfeed, Flickr, Twitter, Blue Sky, Discord, Prim Network, Facebook, etc.), and why they are used.
  • Please refer to the video below of the rest of the meeting comments..

Next Meeting