Category: Second Life

November 2025 SL Web User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday November 5th, 2025. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. The official video is embedded at the end of this summary.

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • At this location.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Updates

  • Upgrades to Marketplace tech stack and adding resilience to systems in the case of external outages (as happened this summer with Elastic Search).
  • Further account security initiatives which will be rolling out soon, some of which should help prevent attempts at account take-overs.
  • The roll-out of the “No Stipend” Premium Plus subscription. See:
  • Marketplace PLE blip:
    • PLEs were not charged between October 6th through October 28th inclusive, although subscriptions were still active and running. This caused a batch charge to occur on October 28th, which proved difficult for merchants.
    • If any merchants believe they were charged more than once as a result of these issues, please raise a support ticket.
    • LL is now working on adding more logging to these systems to prevent similar situations in the future.
  • Quality of life updates:
    • A fix to correct viewer splash screen images being cut off.
    • A fix for a display bug were review font sizes were off.
  • Under-the-hood work including:
    • Completion of the Python library upgrade for internal services.
    • A Redis upgrade which should improve shopping cart contents persistence across sessions.

General Discussion

  • The question of Marketplace / CasperVend integration was once again raised. The short answer to this is:
    • Yes, the Lab would like to work on integration between Marketplace and the in-world shopping experience offered by CasperVend, but this requires working on some baseline tech and updates which have yet to be put in place.
    • The Lab is also keen to see a bi-directional unification of features between CasperVend and the Marketplace (e.g. features of CasperVend such as gift cards, better support for sales and discounts being extended to the MP, and features within the MP not found within CasperVend also being extended that way).
    • Currently there are no time frames as to when any of this work is likely to surface.
  • A request was made for merchants to be able to delete “negative” or “harassing” reviews (a problematic request as best, given it could open the door to the deletion of any “negative” review a merchant takes issue with, no matter how valid the actual critique).
    • It was pointed out that there are already the means to flag genuinely harassing, etc., viewers.
    • It was also indicated that a request had been put forward to make the names of reviewers active links, allowing others users to click and see all reviews by a given individual, thus allowing them to better judge the reviewer’s objectiveness.
  • The request to make Marketplace images clickable to display larger version / to zoom-in on them was again raised.
    • It was indicated that LL are considering implementing some form of image zoom capability / support for higher-resolution images on MP listings.
    • However, with the focus on quality of life improvements, bug fixes, etc., this work has yet to be prioritised.
    • This led to a further discussion on MP images encompassing their use by the visually impaired, how Amazon handles images, etc.
  • Kali Linden noted another capability that is being considered is that of a “Demo / Try Before You Buy” button within MP listings. However, (and again), how this might work and when it might actually be implemented is still open to question.
  • A discussion on listings & translations and sometimes listing being mis-translated, which rolled into a general discussion on the presentation of the Marketplace website (not making full use of the browser tab width), issues with people mistaking items in the Featured section on the MP homepage as “recommended” items, rather than paid advertising; new users being unable to easily differentiate between “modern” content (e.g. good mesh with (or without) PBR and older flexiprim or sculptie content or low-resolution skins etc.),  as by default, listings do not offer any indication of an item’s age (e.g. when first uploaded), etc.
  • A discussion on the Second Life dashboard and possible improvements. Suggestions included:
    • Making the Friends Online and Groups lists more usable (e.g. so that Friends and Groups can actually be managed from them rather than having to go in-world to do so)
    • Displaying Group notices within a section of the dashboard.
    • Making elements such as Friends Online pop-outs in their own browser frames.
    • Updating the Blogs section with the feeds from the SL Blogger Network feeds as well as including the official blogs.
    • Implementing a dark mode for the pages in line with other SL pages / portal (e.g. the Linden Homes pages and the Land portal).
    • Providing more in the way of dynamic / updated content to encourage engagement, together with more informative communications from the Lab.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025.

A Syntax of Absence at Nitroglobus in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Debora Kaz – Syntax of Absence
Creating and inhabiting an avatar is, for me, an act of translation. It does not replace the body; it extends it. The gestures, the gaze, and the silence of this digital body are attempts at language — ways of existing within a space where everything is image and nothing is tangible.
By using my own avatar-character, I transfer fragments of myself into a body that must learn to feel without skin, to speak without a voice, to occupy space knowing that every presence there is also an absence. It is in this tension — between being, existing, and trying to communicate — that the true pulse of my work emerges.

These are the words Debora Kaz uses to introduce the latest chapter in her Invisible Cities art series, entitled Syntax of Absence, which is being hosted by Dido Haas at her Nitroglobus Roof Gallery in Second Life.

Collectively, Invisible Cities thus far comprises Fighting Women, hosted at Nitroglobus in August 2022, The Future in the Present Overflows, presented at Artsville galleries in May 2023 and Essay on Desire, again presented at Nitroglobus in September 2023, and now Syntax of Absence. Together, these installations offer(ed) personal reflections of what it is to be a woman, with Fighting Women focusing on showing the pain and difficulty of being a woman in a world where women have historically been portrayed as objects of desire, exposed to consumption – and how they are encouraged into harmful (and often shallow) rivalry with one another in order to be seen as such.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Debora Kaz – Syntax of Absence

The Future in the Present Overflows, meanwhile expanded upon these themes, encompassing them in a boarder historical context before Essays in Desire took on a more directly personal (to the artist and the observer) exploration of the precepts of desire – notably those of sensuality, sexuality, and eroticism – and how they play a vital role within the process of self-discovery and understanding of oneself.

All three of these past exhibitions were offered in the abstract of “invisible cities”, places which are not physical or tangible, but rather symbolic; shades of light and dark, suggestions of spaces and places sketched from the void and intended to present architecture of emotion intended to backlight, if you will, the core themes and discourse Debora presented in each exhibition, rather than forming a structured part of them.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Debora Kaz – Syntax of Absence

Within Syntax of Absence, Debora more brings together the literal – as in the emotions and perceptions present within the earlier chapters of this series – more directly with the artificiality of the “digital backlighting” of those earlier installations. In doing so, she further explores concepts of self, strength, vulnerability, femininity and erasure. However, she does so through the idea of the self becoming subsumed within the digital.

The women I create live in an in-between state — they want to exist, yet they also want to disappear. They are fragments of myself, of others, and of what society insists on projecting and consuming: the female body as both victim and language, erased as person, highlighted as product.
These investigations unfold into Syntax of Absence, where the body no longer inhabits the city but becomes the code itself. The feminine turns into syntax, command, and conscious noise. Absence becomes language; presence becomes data.

– Debora Kaz, Syntax of Absence

In this idea of the subsumption of the body by the digital, Syntax of Absence in some ways completes a circle that started with Fighting Women: the study of the feminine rising out of a digital landscape to provoke and evoke our thinking, now sublimating back into and becoming lost within the digital.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Debora Kaz – Syntax of Absence

At the same time, it perhaps might also be seen as a wider observation of our current state of our digital engagement today; one in which we gain both a far greater freedom of expression and ability to escape constraints we might otherwise feel, whilst at the same time our ever-deepening involvement (reliance?) on digital means for projecting ourselves and digital (AI) tools for interactions / expression), we also risk further reducing ourselves, became more of the digital noise, our presence reduced to mere data bytes.

In all, another thought-provoking exhibition with layered meaning  / interpretation. When visiting, do please note that Syntax of Absence extends through the main gallery and The Annex at Nitroglobus.

SLurl Details

Nathhimmel’s Maunsel Sea Forts in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nathhimmel: Maunsell, November 2025 – click any image for full size

One of the places I always enjoy visiting in Second Life is the homestead region of Natthimmel, held and curated by Konrad (Kaiju Kohime) and Saskia Rieko as a public space, and which is regularly updated to (in general) reflect re-world locations. Sadly, I was unable to cover the September / October iteration of the reason, as for some reason – and despite my best efforts – the setting repeatedly refused to fully render on my PC.

Given this, and aware that Rieko and Konrad had opened their latest build at Natthimmel towards the end of October, I was determined to hop over to take a look as soon as I was able to spend a sufficient amount of time sitting at my computer in order to appreciate it. In this, I was doubly curious / keen to do so, not only for having been unable to write about the previous build, but also because of the subject Konrad and Saskia had selected: the British Maunsell Sea Forts of World War Two.

Nathhimmel: Maunsell, November 2025

Maunsell Forts were offshore defence structures built in the estuaries of the rivers Mersey (to defend the port of Liverpool and the western industrial regions of England against bombers using the Mersey as a navigational aid) and Thames, where they performed the dual roles of trying to shoot down bombers attempting to reach London or east coast ports such as Felixstowe and Harwich or which would try to mine the coastal sea lanes, and offering a line of defence against any fast German seaborne raiders attempting to strike ports in East Anglia.

Of the two groups of forts, those within and offshore to the Thames estuary are perhaps the most famous, primarily because some survive through to this day, whereas those on the west coast were all demolished following the end of World War Two. It is the east coast forts which form the basis for the Natthimmel build.

Nathhimmel: Maunsell, November 2025

These forts were of two types: four Navy forts grounded on sand bars between 10 and 18 kilometres off the coast, and three metal Army forts of a more complex design located closer to the Thames estuary shoreline. The Navy forts were of a simpler design, comprising two large concrete towers containing 7 levels each of accommodation and storage spaces, topped by large metal gun decks mounting their main armament of guns, together with the main control building, radar and officer’s accommodation. They were were the forts charged with both anti-aircraft and anti surface vessel operations and protecting the approaches to the ports of East Anglia as well as the Thames estuary.

The Army forts were more complicated in design, comprising seven metal towers atop metal legs. Five of these were built around a central “control tower” and mounted anti-aircraft guns, with the remaining tower slightly offset and housing searchlights for illuminating enemy bombers to the guns. Connected by elevated walkways, the towers of the Army forts saw extensive action throughout the war, claiming over 20 Luftwaffe bombers shot down and, later in the war, around 20 V1 flying bombs.

Nathhimmel: Maunsell, November 2025

For their build at Natthimmel, Konrad and Saskia present interpretations of both styles of Maunsell fort, with six Army-style towers linked (or partially linked) by their raised catwalks, some of which sport both single quick-firing guns and what might be taken as rapid-fire Bofors guns, whilst another appears to be the main command tower. They are joined by a structure resembling the more off-shore Navy style fort, this one acting as the searchlight tower.

Whilst not strictly historically accurate, the combining of the two styles of fort in this way allows visitors to explore them both with relative ease (allowing for the partially collapsed catwalks between some of the “army” towers!) from the Landing Point. The latter takes the form of one of the resupply moorings located at the base of some of the Army towers, and offers a link between the accessible Army fort elements and the slightly more distant Navy element.

Nathhimmel: Maunsell, November 2025

Caught under a night-time sky which helps evoke their wartime operation, the forts at Nathhimmel are presented in a way that both also evokes the original purpose through the inclusion of their anti-aircraft guns and the beam of a searchlight splitting the sky, whilst also referencing their abandonment and decay following the end of the war, with the Army towers rusting away, their catwalks looking none too safe (or completely collapsed!), the Navy tower also looking strangely industrial in its deserted state, whilst the machinery and systems within their aging walls is clearly well past any practical use. It’s a haunting and captivating presentation.

I also like the fact that, as with so many of Saskia and Konrad’s builds, Nathhimmel: Maunsell opens the door on a period of history that might not be widely known, encouraging people to take a peep inside and perhaps find out more about the location being presented through their own research.

Nathhimmel: Maunsell, November 2025

In the case of the Maunsell forts, doing the latter is particularly worthwhile, as one of the Navy forts – Roughs Tower (formerly HM Fort Roughs) – has a very colourful post-war history commencing in the 1960s and extending right up pretty much to modern times. It encapsulates the so-called “Principality of Sealand”, armed assaults by both civilians and a band of Dutch mercenaries, hostage-taking, a ransom demand, a so-called “government in exile” (itself allegedly mixed up in laundering drug money!), and much, much more. All of this you can lean about by looking up the “Principality of Sealand”, Major Patrick Bates and Alexander Achenbach, alongside the broader history of Guy Maunsell and his sea forts.

Just be sure to do so after you’ve visited Nathhimmel: Maunsell!

Nathhimmel: Maunsell, November 2025

Slurl Details

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #44

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, November 2nd, 2025

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy.
  • This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Outside of the Official viewer, and as a rule, alpha / beta / nightly or release candidate viewer builds are not included; although on occasions, exceptions might be made.

Official LL Viewers

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Kokua: 7.2.2.57909 (no RLV) and 7.2.2.61649 (RLV variants)  (2025.06), November 2 – release notes.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

October 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, October 30th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting. These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed.

The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At Campwich Forest.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Resources

Current Releases

SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1065 (A) / 0.1.1065 (iOS) – October 20.

Updates:

  • Fixed a bug with object loading
  • Added a new 25m draw distance option (Menu > Settings > General > Max Draw Distance) – default is 40m.
    • There have been some reports of this resetting to the default if 25m is set, and then another application is opened on a device. This is under investigation.
  • Improved framerate on lower-end devices
  • Rendering resolution now adjusted on the fly to keep things running smoothly. The app looks at your framerate over the last 10 seconds and automatically lower or raise resolution to maintain at least 20fps (or 80% of your framerate cap, whichever is higher). You might notice a short dip when loading new areas, but it quickly recovers.
  • Added a new “unloader framework” that decides which items should be temporarily removed if the system runs low on memory. Instead of deleting them, it safely suspends them so they can return once memory becomes available again.
  • A performance index now estimates your device’s power using real-world benchmarks. Default settings—like draw distance (how far you can see) and max avatars (how many avatars are shown) —automatically scale to fit your device’s capabilities.

Performance Updates

[Video: 2:06-5:58]

  • The initial October update (560) caused a performance regression on some Android devices, prompting further releases during the month with a focus on re-upping the performance on “lower-end Android devices” (although this in itself covers a wide spectrum of hardware and devices due to the way various devices might be configured by the manufacturer to prioritise things like battery life).
    • The biggest change in this regard is that the the rendering resolution is based on frame rate when initially loading a scene, the idea again being to speed-up the load time.
    • In addition, and again particularly with Android, changes were made to the number of rendering passes being made, together with some simplification within the shaders to again help boost performance.
    • Android testing indicated that these changes should hopefully see around a 20-25% performance boost for most of the affected hardware, which should help alleviate some of the pain users may have been feeling earlier in the month.
    • Those who did experience performance issues on the earlier October releases for Android are encouraged to try the October 20th release, and see if their issues have been resolved (and if not, to please provide feedback).
  • Additionally, changes have been made to how out-of-memory situations are handled.
    • Previously, if the app showed signs of running out of memory, it would attempt to start deleting content held in memory (but not necessarily seen on-screen) to try to stay ahead of the curve and prevent the entire app from crashing due to running out of memory.
    • However, any such content deleted from cache in this way was essentially “gone”; it could not be reloaded, even if the app had available memory to do so.
    • Changes at the start of October altered this behaviour to enable content to be automatically re-loaded, and this has all been synced-up withing the memory management code to make sure that content is reloaded as soon as there is memory available.

Upcoming Work: Texture Memory Use

[Video: 6:12-9:00]

  • For convenience “and a number of other factors” SL Mobile has been “pretty much” loading textures at one fixed resolution (with the exception of avatar textures). This means that the app does not take into consideration things like the size of an in-world object in order to determine a suitable texture resolution.
  • Work is now in-hand to switch-over to a new texture resolution mechanism which allows textures to be loaded at resolutions based on the surface area of an object (what LL is calling “variable textures”).
  • This also means larger objects will get more texture memory allocated to them, whilst very small objects (e.g. a ring, a button, etc.) will get loaded at the absolute lowest resolution.
  • The overall goal is to allocate available texture memory more efficiently than currently is the case, and allow for adjustments to texture memory to be made on the fly as an avatar / camera moves around a scene, with texture memory use changing as any particularly object gets re-sized larger or smaller within the scene.
  • Work on this has been in progress for the last couple of months, and is now a focus for the next beta release, and will be coming the Alpha version of the Mobile app for wider testing prior to release.
  • It is hoped that by carrying out this work, more memory will be made available for future use – such as
  • supporting PBR materials.

SL Mobile New Starter Experiences

[Video: 12:15-19:48]

  • Already available to those in the SL Mobile alpha programme are four new starter experiences, and soon to be released within the beta versions. Specifically developed in collaboration with various SL creators, these are intended to offer new users coming into SL via the Mobile app with high-quality experiences, intended to be “fast, social, photogenic, and touch-friendly” (that is, interactive).
  • The four experiences are:
    • Scaredycat’s Funhouse (by MadPea) – a gamified experience involving catching little kitties.
    • Midnight Pulse (by Bad Unicorn) – a nightclub-style experience.
    • Chronicles from the Backwaters (by Arcback / Altscape) – a “dark, gritty, interactive novel”.
    • The Mobile Learning Centre (by Second Life Studios) – designed to teach people how to move within and use the Mobile app.
  • These have been built as a result of insight gained during the continued development of SL Mobile (e.g.  because new users are looking for “snackable” experiences within the app to engage them), and have been informed by the manner in which people are using SL Mobile, together within its ouch-based UI, and things like the form factors of various mobile devices, and how people tend to use their mobile devices and apps in general (e.g. taking photos / selfies, creating shareable moments, etc.), and trying to lean into that kind of device usage.
  • New users coming into SL for the first time using SL Mobile will be able to select the experience that most interests them as a part of the join process.
  • Existing users will find the experiences can be accessed via the Lobby.
  • As these experiences become more widely available, the plan is to iterate upon them whilst also monitoring them for how they are used and the kind of metrics they produce in terms of engagement, re-use, popularity, etc.
  • The initial focus of this monitoring will be new user retention over the first 24 hours / first week, then expanding to look at month over month stickiness; if / when people make the move from Mobile to Desktop.
  • Alongside of this will be on-going monitoring of general performance within the different experiences and what improvements can be made to them / to SL Mobile as a whole.

Q&A Session

[Video 21:32-End]

  • Bring the Map to SL Mobile: while the web-based SL maps (maps.secondlife.com) have been made mobile device responsive, they have not been directly added to the SL Mobile app as yet as there is not a lot of utility in doing this at this point in time due to limited functionality within the web-based maps toolset.
  • Memory fragmentation:
    • Some users with multiple accounts (notably subscription accounts) have noticed decreasing SL Mobile loading performance when successively logging-on different accounts (e.g. working through the accounts each day to claim Streaks rewards).
    • This is caused in part by the way current versions of Unity work, which leaves small fragments of memory remaining marked as allocated unless an app is completed cleared from memory (swipe up) after use. These fragments then “break up” the larger pool of memory to eventually leave insufficient amounts of contiguous free memory available for other accounts to use when logging-in, thus increasing their load times.
    • It is believed that Unity 7 will offer a better garbage collector for clearing memory, thus preventing this kind of fragmentation from occurring, and this will become available when the SL Mobile is moved to this version of Unity at some point in the future.
    • For the time being, the easiest way to avoid the issue by those encountering it is to swipe up on logging-out of the app, thus removing it completely from memory, and then re-launching it to log-in on the next account (or, if using other apps at the same time, closing them and swiping up to remove them from memory, so as to prevent them causing fragmentation / using memory SL Mobile might otherwise access).
  • Localisation for SL Mobile in support of non-English speaking users is on the roadmap, but has yet to be scheduled as a tranche of work.

Date of Next Meeting

  • Check the SL Public calendar for details. At the time of writing, no meetings had been schedule for November or December.

2025 week #44: SUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

Paradise Of Fantasy, August 2025 – blog post
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 28th, 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 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, October 28th, the SLS Main channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, October 29th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel should be updated with a new simulator update (Imbu). This “has a couple of performance memory fixes in the simulator. It fixes an issue with region names that contain a ‘.”
    • The remaining RC channels will (I believe) be restarted without any update.

SLua Work

  • Harold Linden continues to work on the SLua implementation, focusing on some minor API changes, which he initially defined as: “just tons of lingering issues to file off sharp edges on APIs to make them do what people would reasonably expect.” Later in the meeting, he further expanded on the first of these changes thus:
I was looking to clear up one of the big warts of LSL: “keys” are not strictly UUIDs, they’re strings in disguise. That means the UUIDs that vary only in casing are considered unequal, which is very weird if you’re used to more modern UUID APIs. The only cases where people generally want that behaviour is in llMessageLinked() / ‘link_message()’ so you can pass an extra string as ‘id’, but it causes weird unexpected issues elsewhere. In SLua, I’d like to make ‘UUID()’ return nil if the passed-in string is not a valid UUID, like the existing Lua functions do, and make [the] ‘link_message()’ ID field just a string, because people mostly mash arbitrary strings in there. … All APIs that accept key or string in SLua are implicitly a union of ‘string | UUID’, and that doesn’t change. 
    • This approach was welcomed by the majority of scripters at the meeting.
    • As a part of this discussion, it was suggested that SL could benefit from an improved llMessageScript, such as llMessageScript(scriptname,data), and Harold Linden indicated that something like this is being planned.
  • The other API change Harold is working on is the removal of ‘integer()’, which he views as having been only a temporary requirement, but is now no longer needed as he has “fixed up all the bridges to existing LSL functions to tolerate a Lua number”. As such, he regards it as a nuisance to developers as it is likely to slow scripts and make them hard to optimise, as the Luau optimiser doesn’t know about it.
  • Harold also noted that he is not opposed to “adding stuff” to LSL on SLua (e.g. such as a table type), however, given the amount of foundational work that’s considered a higher priority, this is unlikely to happen soon (if at all).
    • Rider Linden also noted that such work would not be a small task, and as such, nothing is currently on the drawing board as yet.
  • Yardang, one of the SLua regions on Aditi has been down for possibly as long as a week. Rider Linden has requested that anyone testing SLua who notes any if the the associated regions appears to be down to contact him in-world.
  • Rider was engaged in a couple of technical debt projects over the course of the past week but is now now working on the official native VSCode plugin for LSL and SLua once more. The hope is to have this deployed in the upcoming week, although it will need further tweaking when the next version of the SLua project viewer is issued.
  • The first half of the meeting included a general discussion /catch-up on the above and related work, including:
    • The plugin should support linting (check a script for errors without running it) and also downloads the current language definition from the viewer and formats it so Luau-LSP and Selene can use it.
    • Wolfgang Senizen has also produced a VSCode plugin + documentation for use with SLua, although notes this will likely be discontinued when the official plugin is made available, and he will shift to contributing code to that project.
    • A note that LSL/SLua functions cannot be directly called from outside of the simulator (e.g. via a web page), but “in theory” it might be possible to create an RPC (bot) service of some kind to achieve the same.
    • Harold Linden reiterated that LL is working on a new LSL / SLua web portal, which will include documentation and code examples, etc.
  • The latter part of the meeting focused on suggestions for future SLua support, and discussions on the use of JSON / LLSD – please refer to the video for details.

In Brief

  • Harold and Leviathan Linden have been working on fixes for script scheduling (“do with have to do anything for this script / are we allowed to run it?”), and which should reduce script times on a simulator “a reasonable amount”.
  • Additionally, Leviathan Linden is working on fixing more memory leaks within the simulator code, noting that those fixed in the upcoming Imbu release are “small potatoes” compared to what the Lab thinks is out there.
  • Leviathan is also hoping to get back to the game_control work in the the near(ish) future, noting, “I have a link to the Linux viewer branch (which is almost deliverable) and I will be building on top of that”.
  • Given the lateness of the year and the limited time for further simulator updates, it is unlikely there will be further work on region crossings during 2025.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, November 4th, 2025.
  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, November 11th, 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.