Category: Second Life

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #43

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, October 26th, 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

  • Default viewer 2025.07 7.2.2.18475198968 – Apple Silicon Support – dated October 16 –  No Change.
    • This viewer now ships as a “Universal Binary” that contains both the Intel and Apple Silicon versions of the viewer. It should give performance gains on the Apple Silicon version in particular.
    • Also includes various WebRTC improvements and bug and crash fixes.
    • Known issues:
      • This version does not support convex decomposition for physics meshes with Apple Silicon. This will be hopefully be corrected in a future update or release, possibly with the help of a code contribution.
      • Navigation buttons in the in-viewer browser are no longer present for marketplace and search – these will be restored in a future update.
      • Apple Silicon does not support pathfinding tools.
      • Subtle rendering differences might be noticed on certain configurations and EEP environments.
    • Github Changelog.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Megapahit viewer version – 7.2.2.54709 – October 23 – changelog.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • Radegast client version 2.49.488, October 25 – release notes.
  • SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1065 (A) / 0.1.1065 (iOS) – October 20.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

The Outer Garden’s Lumen Tide in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Outer Garden annex **Lumen Tide**, October 2025 – click any image for full size

Just before I took my break from blogging at the start of October 2025, I received a suggestion that I visit the latest chapter of Bisou Dexler’s Outer Garden region builds. While I was able to hop over and grab some photos, I wasn’t at the time able to get an actual blog post written up prior to taking that break.

The Outer Garden is a place I’ve been visiting on a semi-regular basis for over a decade, my first visit being way back in February 2015. As such, I was keen to cover this latest chapter – called The Outer Garden annex **Lumen Tide** – so here, a little belatedly, is my piece.

The Outer Garden annex **Lumen Tide**, October 2025

Occupying a Homestead region, The Outer Garden annex – as the name suggests – is a separate setting to The Outer Garden. It sits as a dreamlike night setting, offered as a love sonnet from Bisou to Aki69. Overhead, a starry sky split by the arc of a Milky Way-like band brings night to the setting, whilst beneath it, an infinite sea sparkles from horizon to horizon, shallow waves washing over the region itself and tickling the feet of visitors as they arrive.

Across this expanse of water lie star-like lanterns, each one glowing with colour and giving the impression it has fallen from the sky overhead. In support of this, smaller versions of these lanterns either hover just above the water, or slowly drop towards it, their gentle descent here and there contrasting with the rapid, bright lines of falling meteors or mixing with the yellow phosphoresce of swirling fireflies (been sure to have particles enabled in your viewer!).

The Outer Garden annex **Lumen Tide**, October 2025

However, the most startling and engaging elements of the setting are perhaps the drifting celestial jellyfish as they swim and float through the air, sometimes vanishing into the water, sometimes rising from it; together with the golden crescent lying just below the surface of the water towards the middle of the region.

At first resembling an underwater sandbar, it is only when one swings the viewer camera up over the setting that the “sandbar” reveals itself to be a crescent Moon, casting its own light up into the setting, adding a further layer of fantastical beauty to the design.

The Outer Garden annex **Lumen Tide**, October 2025

Throughout all of this can be found multiple places to sit and / or dance. The former take the form of little fishing stools sitting over the submerged Moon, through various boats and gondolas scattered over the water, to a bed suspended overhead (and perhaps easily missed if not actively looked for).

Music for the setting appears to be provided via You Tube, but whether it was an issue with my connection or something else, the music refused to play via the Media button. This being the case, I’m including this link to the list in case you visit hand have the same issue, so you can play the tracks in the background when exploring.

The Outer Garden annex **Lumen Tide**, October 2025

As a sonnet to Aki69, further depth is given to The Outer Garden annex by way of most of the elements within the region being creations from Aki69’s store, together with a short poem dedicated to aki69 by Bisou. The latter is offered both through the region’s About Land setting and Bisou’s profile picks:

When stars reach the twilight sky
Life’s wings rise from the water
Wearing fragile phosphorescence, spilling into the air

I forget even my casting
And listen to the wind pause

The moon emerges, night exhales
In that instant, life’s magic ignites
And the world holds its breath

Now, it feels
As if it’s just the two of us in this world.

The Outer Garden annex **Lumen Tide**, October 2025

Peaceful, beautifully created, and with a richness of love and tranquillity, The Outer Garden annex **Lumen Tide** is an ideal place for all romantics to visit.

SLurl Details

2025 week #43: SL Open Source User Group meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Oscarton Forest Park, August 2025 – blog post †

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, October 24th, 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.

Official Viewers

  • Default viewer 2025.07 7.2.2.18475198968 – Apple Silicon Support – dated October 16 –  No Change.
    • This viewer now ships as a “Universal Binary” that contains both the Intel and Apple Silicon versions of the viewer. It should give performance gains on the Apple Silicon version in particular.
    • Also includes various WebRTC improvements and bug and crash fixes.
    • Known issues:
      • This version does not support convex decomposition for physics meshes with Apple Silicon. This will be hopefully be corrected in a future update or release, possibly with the help of a code contribution.
      • Navigation buttons in the in-viewer browser are no longer present for marketplace and search – these will be restored in a future update.
      • Apple Silicon does not support pathfinding tools.
      • Subtle rendering differences might be noticed on certain configurations and EEP environments.
    • Github Changelog.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

Viewer Updates

  • 2025.07 has seen an uptick in crash rates as a result of some WebRTC changes, and LL is working to resolve this. As such, TPVs looking to ship WebRTC / updates are advised to keep an eye on the Develop branch for relevant commits to integrate into their viewers if they would prefer to avoid the 2025.07 issues.
    • As apart of the overall WebRTC project, a server-side update is anticipated as being ready for release in the next 1 to 2 weeks, with fixes for some issues and some new features.
  • Viewer 2025.08 will be a maintenance update with a focus on resolving crash issues, with the hope it may also include some log-in time improvements for those with very large inventories.
  • Work is progressing on a contributed Linux update, details in this Github PR, which LL is hoping to “land” this year.
  • A new SLua project viewer is in the works. This should include Rider Linden’s work on an official native VSCode plugin for LSL and SLua, as noted in my more recent Simulator User Group meeting summaries.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • A general discussion on the viewer UI and making it easier for new users to quickly discover how to mute those using Voice in order to be obnoxious / harass, without necessarily requiring guidance from a mentor / friend on how to do so.
    • The above also broadened into a more general conversation on improving the chat functionality in the viewer in general (e.g. Voice controls + the conversations floater, etc.).
    • Also touched on was the on-going work with Project Zero (viewer in a browser) to reconstruct the viewer UI (or elements thereof) with a HTML/React-style approach – although this is being done without any intent to “break” the existing UI approach within the viewer.
    • As Geenz Linden noted (and the meeting chat demonstrated), views on the viewer UI and things like the conversations / chat floaters (or CHUI – Conversation Hub User Interface, to use the terms employed when the overhaul Viewer 2 chat UI was first introduced back in 2011) tend to be highly subjective when opinions are voiced. As such the suggestion was made to use the Feedback Portal to offer feature requests on what might be done to improve text chat & its UI elements (and Voice chat), and to upvote features thought to be worthwhile.
  • The second half of the meeting included a lot of general discussion on what might be done to “improve” the viewer experience in general, together with a side discussion between Geenz Linden and Henri Beauchamp on the alpha-gamma fix for legacy objects rendering by PBR + improving the appearance of water on PBR rendering.
    • A very short-form summary of these latter two items is to note server-side work is required for the alpha-gamma fix, but is currently stalled, whilst water is awaiting the updates to SSR (screen space reflections), which has yet to be prioritised for a future viewer release.

Next Meeting

† 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.

Carelyna’s Nefelibata in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Akimitsu, October 2025: Carelyna – Nefelibata

Currently open at Akimitsu, a member of the Akipelago regions held and operated by Akiko Kinoshi (A Kiko), is an exhibition of art by ArtCare gallery curator, DJ and artist Carelyna. Entitled Nefelibata, it comprises a dozen images captured in Second Life and then beautifully post-processed to present scenes with a dream-like quality entirely in keeping with the exhibition’s title, which Carelyna defines thus:

Nefelibata is a Portuguese word that translates to “cloud walker”. It describes a dreamer or someone who lives in their imagination, detached from societal norms, literature, or art conventions. Originating from the Ancient Greek words nephele (cloud) and batha (walker), the term is used to describe an unconventional, imaginative, and dreamy individual who thinks and lives outside the box.

– Carelyna

Akimitsu, October 2025: Carelyna – Nefelibata

Among their many character traits, nefelibata embrace solitude and nature. For them, solitude is never lonely; it is a cherished companion. The natural world, meanwhile, is looked upon as a sanctuary offering both peace and contentment in which reflection and, notably, inspiration might be found, the latter thus becoming a muse for creativity and expression.

To the nefelibata, life is art and art is life. The medium – painting, writing, poetry, dance –  are not merely endeavours or performances; they are an expression of existence, both revealing and shaping their identity and worldview. With every word or piece of work they create, they reveal what lies within themselves and exposes an ability to see the world not for what it is so much as for what it might be.

Akimitsu, October 2025: Carelyna – Nefelibata

In this, nefelibatas might be defined as nonconformists. they reside outside of established rules governing their chosen form of expression; as Carelyna notes, “A nefelibata chooses their own path and lives by their own inner truths rather than societal norms”.

All of this is softly, beautifully captured in the twelve pieces presented by Carelyna. In nine of them, individual figures – male and female – are presented.  They are the nefelibatas, the settings in which they are featured presenting clear expressions of the individuality of their dreams, their thoughts, the world as they see it within their imaginations. For all but one of these nine pieces, the faces of the individuals are either unseen or at best partially seen, adding to the idea of them being dreamers; their presence within the pieces as dream-like as the setting itself.

Akimitsu, October 2025: Carelyna – Nefelibata

All of them present the world in terms of its natural beauty, each expressing a dream-like quality  Taken as a whole, the images marvellously present the theme of the nefelibata and underscore Carelyna’s own position as on of these upward-looking artistic nonconformists.

SLurl Details

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #40

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, October 6th, 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

  • No updates.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.10.563 (A) / 0.1.560 (iOS) – October 3.
    • Unity Engine upgraded to Unity 6.
    • Networking upgrade – replacement and upgrading of internal networking libraries; more robust handling of transitions between cell and wifi connections.
    • Scenes should load significantly faster and more reliably, with better handling of large crowds of avatars.
    • Improved handling for Bakes on Mesh materials.
    • Better support for EEP/Windlight shaders, including a direct port of the windlight sky shaders; improves general object lighting.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 week #40: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, October 2nd, 2025. Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics.
Table of Contents

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.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer 2025.06 7.2.1.17108480561 – August 29 – No Change.
  • Second Life Beta viewer 2025.07 7.2.2.17774206511 – Apple Silicon Support – September 26 –  NEW.
    • This viewer now ships as a “Universal Binary” that contains both the Intel and Apple Silicon versions of the viewer. It should give performance gains on the Apple Silicon version in particular.
    • Also includes various WebRTC improvements and bug and crash fixes.
    • Known issues:
      • This version does not support convex decomposition for physics meshes with Apple Silicon. This will be hopefully be corrected in a future update or release, possibly with the help of a code contribution.
      • Navigation buttons in the in-viewer browser are no longer present for marketplace and search – these will be restored in a future update.
      • Apple Silicon does not support pathfinding tools.
      • Subtle rendering differences might be noticed on certain configurations and EEP environments.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

Viewer 2025.07

  • LL are working on implementing some bug fixes prior to offering a further beta version of this viewer.
  • One change with the next version will be the return of Havok convex decomposition for Mac Intel systems to enable mesh uploads under emulation Requires the enabling of Rosetta in the universal build for Mac) until such time as a an alternative can be implemented.
  • Work on an alternative solution is in progress via code contributions. This is likely to be included in viewer 2025.08.

General Discussion – In Brief

  • The confusingly-worded Create “System Body Shape v2.0” came up for discussion.
    • In short: LL unlikely to implement any form of new / updated system avatar, preferring to focus on implementing more modern technology and capabilities that allow creators to develop more capable (and less complicated to users?) avatars.
    • This included a brief discussion on “open souring” the avatar system body so creators could take it and modify / improve it for themselves, with the note that technically it is, but as it misses some critical elements which tend to render doing this moot.
  • A potential bug with touching scripted objects was demonstrated with attachments designed to be touched (in short: a object could miss initial touches and thus fail to trigger touch_start() ). This was demonstrated at the meeting, and a Canny report was requested on the problem, together with the demo item.
    • This discussion also encompassed issues with fast clicking on object in-world and cursor positioning, and unexpected results (e.g. rapidly clicking on a touchable object with the mouse moving, so that a subsequent click “misses” the item, causing the server to register that in favour of the the expected return  – like a dialogue box or something – from the initial click).
  • A discussion on setting materials / overrides on PBR vs. Blinn-Phong. In short, with Blinn-Phong, a change in texture / material can be carried out with a reset of overrides; within PBR, changing the material resets overrides. In the case of scripted items, unless the material change and new overrides are sent as a single packet, changing the material can result in the object appearing to “flash” as the material is displayed prior to the new overrides being applied.
    • The prompt for the question arose out of how a scripted bottle held by an avatar could change to a selected texture (to presumably represent the drink in the bottle), and how this might be better coded rather than relaying purely on texture caching, which appeared to be the root of this particular problem.
    • Possible solutions for this became somewhat convoluted (outside of finding a mean by which required textures could be pre-loaded), and frankly zapped right over my head. However, the conversation took up the the last part of the meeting.
  • A question was asked as to why sometimes trying to rez mesh items (or items onto mesh objects)  results in a “Failed to place object at specified location” error message.
    • This can often come down to the physics shape of the surface on which an item is being rezzed, as Beq Janus explained in one of her videos.
    • Another cause can be a mismatch between where the viewer thinks an object is trying to be placed and where the simulator views it as being placed – which has been a long-standing problem.
  • A misunderstanding has apparently led to some concerns that support for sculpties is being deprecated / sculpties are being “eliminated”. Neither of these are correct; there are no plans to either deprecate or eliminate sculpties. 

Next Meeting