The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, September 18th, 2025. Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics.
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.
Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
Inventory Favourites System, plus assorted new features.
Improvements to avatar system; camera and movement; chat; voice; content creation tools.
Mesh uploader updates.
Text & UI polish.
Fixes for Environment and Rendering; stability and crashes; UI.
System improvements.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13.
Viewer 2025.07
This is now in QA and making its way towards release candidate status (or “beta” as RC viewers seem to now be referenced).
The added native Apple Silicon support is said to deliver “pretty impressive” performance improvements for those running on that OS.
A caveat here is that for this release only, it may not be possible to upload meshes on Apple Silicon. This is due to some Havok issues and “some licensing limitations”.
These issues will likely be resolved when the open source replacement for Havok for convex hull decomposition is integrated into the viewer. This update is anticipated as being available in the upcoming 2025.08 viewer.
The above limitation is only for Apple Silicon, it should not apply to Windows or Mac systems running x86 chipsets.
For other updates likely to be included in this release, please refer to my summary of the previous CCUG meeting.
Viewers 2025.08 and 2025.09
These are liable to be the last two viewer updates from the Lab for 2025, and both are in the planning stage.
Updates under consideration for either of them include potential updates to screen space reflections (SSR), building on work carried out earlier in 2025 but which have yet to reach the viewer.
However, precise details as to what will be in either / both viewers is still subject to internal discussions and decisions within the Lab.
General Discussion – In Brief
Mesh import support – general direction:
COLLADA.DAE support will always remain and be available, even if only for legacy content that may never be updated to glTF.
.gltf /.glb is now an officially supported mesh format or both static and rigged mesh, but with some limitations (e.g. no blend shapes) – with a request that an bugs that may be discovered are reported.
It is acknowledged that currently, importing .gltf meshes is a two step process ( .gltf materials and the .gltf mesh) which have to be imported separately to one another.
There have been discussion on supporting other mesh formats – but these are only discussions at this point in time, with absolutely no guarantee or time frame that/when other formats will be supported, as the work would require further and extensive modification to the mesh import workflow and internal SL mesh support.
A request was made for Inventory Thumbnails to support aspect ratios other than just 1:1, or to include a means for images to be cropped within the viewer post-upload.
Making changes to the the image aspect ratio for Inventory thumbnails was seen as “unlikely” in the near-term, but it was suggested the idea be raised at the next Open Source User Group meeting to see if a code contribution might be made.
A general discussion on the new Inventory Favourites capability in the official viewer, including comparisons with using the Favourite Wearables option seen in some TPVs.
Whilst the latter is not necessarily as flexible in its use as the Lab’s implementation, it was seen as scoring over the latter due to a) having a dedicated floater; and b) having that floater accessible from a toolbar button.
A request was made for some form of Inventory “cold storage”, where items can be archived without having to be boxed, and which is excluded from Inventory searches.
It was suggested that the easiest way to solve for this would be to a system folder to Inventory which is pre-set so that anything placed within it does not show up during searches.
Another suggestion was to strengthen Inventory filters to allow certain exclusions or to allow filtering by new inventory capabilities (e.g. to directly filter for all folders / items tagged as a Favourite).
The above could be combined with some UX redesign to better surface filters and make their functionality clearer, and potentially allowing filters to be set as easy-to-access inventory presets to quickly allow different views of a person’s Inventory to be accessed.
This broader discussion on inventory wound through a good portion of the meeting in terms of comments from users.
The subject of allowing region-wide reflection probes was raised – and was responded to as unlikely to happen, with a not that regions already have a “void probe” which – whilst primitive in nature – already does much of what a region-wide probe would do, using some of the data from the region. This can be visualised by going to Preferences → Graphics, locating Max Reflection Probes and setting it to None.
A question was asked as to whether LL staff and contractor work full-time on their specific areas, or if some work shorter hours / get moved around projects, thus limiting the amount of time they can spend working on certain things, leading to a lengthening of time frames, etc.
The broad response was that the (approx. 30-strong) dev staff work a standard working week, and some do get moved between projects, depending on priorities.
Further, planning, complexity and prioritisation do play a role in determining what gets worked on and how resources are used, all in accordance with management, etc., focus on platform direction and development.
Also, given the overall complexity and age of SL, the need for backward compatibility, etc., a large amount of effort has to go into simply “keeping the lights on” (to use Philip Rosedale’s term), and this also impacts available resources and determining what projects and taken up and worked on at any given time.
A general discussion on versioned sky assets, weather, the old 768-metre system clouds, etc. In terms of versioning EEP assets, this is something still under discussion at the Lab, but is not something currently being targeted for implementation.
Bryggen, Second Norway, September 2025 – click any image for full size
It’s no secret that I have an island home within Second Norway; I’ve written about the estate on numerous occasions in these pages, both pre- and post my move to it. Some of these posts covered the estate’s near-closure and subsequent recovery while others have highlighted some of the public spaces to be found within Second Norway. It is in reference to the second category of Second Norway that this little piece belongs.
At the end of August 2025, I received a message from Gian (GiaArt Clip), a region designer whose work I’ve also covered on multiple occasions in these pages, informing me about their latest project – the overhauling of what might be regarded as the “gateway” to Second Norway when approaching it along the water corridor from Blake Sea: Bryggen.
Bryggen, Second Norway, September 2025
The region is named for the eastern side of Vågen harbour in Bergen, Norway, once part of the centre for Hanseatic League commercial activities in that country (Bryggen meaning “the dock”, and also being known as Tyskebryggen – “the German dock”). It is particularly famous for its Hanseatic heritage commercial buildings, marking it as a natural tourist attraction as well as being a listed UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. In respect of this, Bryggen in Second Life has long offered a reproduction of those famous houses on its waterfront.
Under Gian’s reworking of the region, reproductions of these famous building have been retained. They straddle a waterway running west-to-east through the region, those on the north side of this waterway forming a double row of properties, most (all?) of which appear available for rent, the gay colours of the front row lining a pedestrian waterfront much like those so often photographed in the real Bryggen also do so).
Bryggen, Second Norway, September 2025
The units on the southern side of the waterway are a little more constrained in terms of space, being partnered with a part of Second Norway’s road system – notably the local bus station / terminus, which sits behind the local working docks and Get the Freight Out hub and fish market. Movement between these two waterfront areas is facilitated by the broad pedestrian / road/rail bridge spanning the waterway. All of the brightly-painted Hanseatic style units are occupied by local businesses, adding more colour and life to the setting.
As well as the Hanseatic buildings, Bryggen in Second Norway was also home to a distinctive stave church. At one time in Bryggen’s history, this stood on a rugged headland overlooking the main channel leading into the estate from Blake Sea. With Gian’s remodelling, the church has been retained, but it has been relocated into an expanded recreation of a Viking settlement.
Bryggen, Second Norway, September 2025
The village is located on a rocky plateau in the south-east quadrant of the region. Here it overlooks the southern precinct of Hanseatic commercial buildings. Cut through by a road tunnel, the plateau for the village sits at the same elevation as a large neighbouring commercial / business district in the north-east side of the region. However, the two are separated by a narrow gorge – home to the Bryggen central rail station – which appears to leave the village isolated on its plateau.
Solving the mystery of accessing the village is a matter of taking the footbridge over the rail station from the bus terminus (itself alongside the landing point), then following the cobbled footpath along the edge of the gorge towards the local courthouse. Here visitors will find a sign directing them down to a grassy path leading to the main entrance to the village.
Bryggen, Second Norway, September 2025
The business district itself is home to a range of properties, including the courthouse mentioned above, the local hotel and pub and the local nightclub – Club 25, which will be (at the time of writing) hosting DJ Noir from 00:00 SLT on September 19th, 2025.
It should be noted that there are a couple of private residences within the setting – notably in the north-west corner, on the far side of the bridge relative to the double rows of Hanseatic units on that side of the waterway, and also on the raised headland sitting above the Viking village. Other than these, I think the rest of Bryggen is open to exploration, and has plenty of detail and touches in order to make it an interesting and attractive backdrop for photography.
Bryggen, Second Norway, September 2025
Overall, this reworking of Bryggen brings a real sense of life to the region and offers an engaging visit. My thanks to Gian for the invitation to drop in and explore, and my apologies for taking a little time to get to the point of writing it up.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 16th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. They were taken from my chat log of the meeting and the video recording by Pantera, embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks to Pantera for providing it.
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 “SUG Leviathan 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
On Tuesday, 16th, September, 2025, the SLS Main channel was restarted without any updates
On Wednesday, September 17th:
The majority of simulators on the RC channels will be restarted.
There may be a deployment to the BlueSteel RC channel (2025.08 Huckleberry – which subsumes 2025.07 – Grape Juice). This includes some land sale functionality and llSetParcelForSale(). However, this is disabled at the moment, as there is no way to grant the required permission without a viewer update.
However, the Huckleberry deployment is subject to a couple of last minute bugs, the fixes for which will have to clear QA in order for it to go ahead.
SLua Updates
Harold Linden is currently focused on:
Fixing the SLua memory limit accounting logic (not increasing / decreasing limits, just making it more accurate). Essentially only memory that’s currently reachable by your script is counted against your limit so the garbage collector isn’t really a factor at all. The garbage collector can actually release the memory whenever it wants because stuff it hasn’t gotten around to yet isn’t counted against you.
Implementing the event API (see [RFC] SLua event handling proposal #3 for details). He noted he’d to get that and the 1-indexed API changes for the `ll.` functions as well as the Boolean conversion stuff all done at the same time so “we only break APIs once :)”.
He further noted that he’d like to have the ability to embed LSL functions in SLua, “but that’s a bit far out”.
The SLua project is close to a public beta – possibly opening in mid-October, although this is still tentative at this point, and that LL will “figure out opt-ins for the beta once we have things relatively stable on the first few regions”.
SLua have native switch cases, since there’s no support for it in Luau.
Rider Linden continues to work on an official native VSCode plugin for LSL and SLua.
He “has the basics in” and he plans on supporting most of the FS preprocessor commands.
The initial release will be Lua only but that’s only so it can be released in a reasonable amount of time.
He is “up in the air about” `switch` for LSL, but indicates that when he opens the repo, he’ll be happy to take that as a contribution.
He further noted he will have to do some juggling for `require` though, describing it as “basically #include but wrapped in an anonymous function call”.
Leviathan Linden is “mostly done” with making sure the webRTC voice router automatically submits crash reports should it fall over. He’s currently working on the simulator bugs noted above.
Monty Linden has had a side project investigating viewer disconnects (e.g. goes to black and white on disconnect). He describes this as “finding known and new things”, with one of the “new things” (specific to the EventQueueGet capability) is here: https://github.com/secondlife/viewer/issues/4685 .
He also noted that his current “main” project is some work for the mobile group around chat.
A further discussion on memory accounting and garbage collection, both in general and WRT SLua, broadening into a discussion on scripting and coding – please refer to the video for details.
Date of Next Meetings
Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025.
Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Cold Moon, September 2025 – click any image for full size
Back in July, I visited Lost Place of Norbu, a marvellous sub-tropical Homestead region design by Miri (SilentChloe). It was a place I found more than lived up to its the English version of its name (“jewel”), as I noted in Lost Place of Norbu: a sub-tropical jewel in Second Life.
More recently, I came across Cold Moon in the Destination Guide and saw it carried a Japanese theme – something which immediately caught my attention and causing me to add it to my list of places to visit. When hopped over to grab a landmark and saw the designer was Miri, I knew I’d be in for something special, as would anyone else paying the setting a visit, and decided to go ahead and write about it immediately.
Cold Moon, September 2025
As with Lost Place of Norbu, this is setting with an Adult rating, and which does include items which can be used for adult and BDSM activities. However, and again like Lost Place, these items are cleverly placed and designed to blend in with the overall design of the setting, and when not in use appear to be part of the overall décor, blending with the rest of the setting.
Cold Moon is a small island surrounded by the ocean. Discover the wild nature and enjoy the sound of the sea and the whistling wind. Enjoy your stay in this beautiful and mysterious place. This place is dedicated to Japanese pearl divers.
– from the Destination Guide entry for Cold Moon
Cold Moon, September 2025
The Landing Point is located on the southern and largest of the five islands making up the setting. Low-lying, somewhat rugged in nature, a fair portion of this island is itself flat, rain-swept rock, the water suggesting it has been subject to a recent downpour. An open-sided pavilion overlooks the Landing Point and provides one of several places to be found throughout the region where visitors might sit and pass the time.
Facing the pavilion from across the puddle rock is dedication to Japanese pearl divers in the form of the story of Lady Tamatori (Tamatori hime), the “jewel-taking princess” and legendary Ama (pearl diver). Just touch the dedication to receive a notecard to read her story.
Cold Moon, September 2025
Close to this dedication board, a path winds down to a long bridge spanning the waters to the second largest island. This is marked by high cliffs over which water tumbles and large statues. The low-lying part of this island offers a further place to sit and a shrine to a fallen warrior. Stepping stones also reach out over the shallow waters to one of the smaller islands in the group, this one dominated by another structure offering a further retreat in which to pass the time.
The remaining two islands lie between to two large islands and tucked into the south-west corner of the region respectively. The former is home to statues of a samurai and a geisha, whilst the latter is a rocky sentinel watching over a nearby floating bar and boat dock.
Cold Moon, September 2025
All of the above is little more than a physical description of the setting; what is harder to convey with words is the overall beauty waiting to be found in Cold Moon.
As with Lost Place of Norbu, this is a setting brought to life be the level of detail Miri has brought to it, from the birds and waterfowl, through the plants and trees to the décor and furnishings found within the various buildings and across the islands. On the water are little boats and a raft carrying with it the suggestion someone might be pearl diving), together with floating lanterns, the latter offer a sense of romance as they sit on the water around the statues of the geisha and samurai on their little isle.
Cold Moon, September 2025
All of this is captured under an ideal environment setting which brings both an edge of fantasy / mystery to the setting and a hint of autumnal days. Combine this with the sense of tranquillity within the setting, and Cold Moon makes for a genuinely engaging visit.
The following notes were taken from my chat transcript + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Open Source User Group (OSUG) held on Friday, September 12th, 2025. My thanks to Pantera as always for providing it.
Meeting Purpose
The OSUG meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meetings. It is 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.
Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are generally conducted in text chat.
The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.
In order for PBR lighting to render anywhere close to correctly, alpha blending had to be switched from SRGB to linear colour space. This can cause some older content using Blinn-Phong, to look either more opaque or more transparent than in did pre-PBR.
The plan is all BP content will default to gamma space blending to get around the problem of permissions on older content without introducing another ugly permissions hack.
A fragmented discussion on LL possibly offering better Linux support in the future (and subject to priorities) and on Linux packaging in general, which ran through a good portion of the meeting.
A discussion on alpha being inverted on PBR vs. Blinn-Phong (e.g. 1 is fully transparent on BP and fully opaque on PBR), and on whether one of the values should be flipped. Geenz indicated that no flipping would occur, due to the risk of confusing for people, given the two (PBR and Blinn-Phong) are distinct workflows.
Appearance fixes #3492 for current Outfit Folder (COF) issues is potentially being looked at for inclusion in the 2025.08 viewer update.
CoACD is being considered (alongside other options) as a replacement for Havok mesh decomposition.
Again, please refer to the video for the rest of the discussion.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Catherine Nikolaidis – Skin like Syntax
It was back to Nitroglobus Roof Gallery for me of late, to catch the September 2025 Main Hall exhibition. I was keen to do so as Nitroglobus owner and curator, Dido Haas, has invited Catherine Nikolaidis to display more of her art.
I’ve touched on Catherine’s SL-based photography on several occasions in these pages. Working predominantly in monochrome with a focus on avatar studies, she has a gift for framing her work as much a photo-essays in reflection of mood, emotion, beauty, vulnerability, and life. Her skill lay not only in the technicalities of composition, framing, processing, cropping, and so on, but in inhabiting her images with a depth of life and subtle detail rich in the power of communication.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Catherine Nikolaidis – Skin like Syntax
This was very much brought home to me some two years ago, when I was able to catch two overlapping solo exhibitions by Catherine, hosted at Frank Atisso’s Artsville Gallery and at the Kondor Art Centre (see: Catherine’s black and white photography in Second Life), and it is further underlined within this Nitroglobus exhibition, which Catherine has called Skin like Syntax. The easiest way to describe this exhibition is to use Catherine’s own words.
Skin like Syntax explores woman and her body as a living language. In monochrome tones, I capture shifting moods and the balance between softness and strength, intimacy and distance.
Through my lens, real life turns into visual poetry, where light, shadow, and emotion blend together.
– Catherine Nikolaidis
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Catherine Nikolaidis – Skin like Syntax
The result is a stunning collection of images rich in context, subtle in narrative and utterly captivating in form and presentation. Within each of them is a story – or perhaps a poem might be a better term, given Catherine’s description – waiting to be told. In fact, such is the richness of expression to be found in each piece that offering words here is somewhat superfluous – and would merely be subjective on my part.
As such, I will close here, and leave it to you to visit Skin like Syntax and allow Catherine’s unique voice to speak to you.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Catherine Nikolaidis – Skin like Syntax
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 