The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, August 7th, 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.
Official Viewer Status
Default viewer 7.2.0.16729091892, issued August 5, promoted August 8 – New.
glTF mesh import (should have similar constraints to COLLADA upload, but does not support a unified material upload solution).
Fixes related to memory allocation, inventory floater, world map and Picks performance.
Fixes for OpenJPG, PBR Texture Panel Repeats per meter improvements and sky ambient colour not blending during day cycle among others.
Fixes for image rendering.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
2025 glTF Mesh Uploader
There were multiple requests for the behaviours within the glTF mesh uploader that do not much the COLLADA .DAE uploader to be revised so that they do conform with the latter.
These had to be shut down, largely due to technically limitations within SL’s internal mesh formats.
The hope is that over time, these limitations can be “peeled” back, and mesh import as a whole improved, most likely by using a new internal mesh format.
No details on what the new internal format will be, as this is still subject to internal discussions at the Lab, but the aim is to make things easier for both content creators and content consumers.
2025.06 Viewer
The next viewer in development is 2025.06, which is described as “not very ground breaking”.
It contains a lot of work and bug fixes original intended for the Maintenance C viewer from 2024, and prior to the viewer release process being revised.
The key feature in this viewer will be Inventory Favourites.
Currently, the viewer is going through a stabilisation process with the aim of releasing an RC Beta as soon as possible.
The aim of the 2025.06 release is to raise the cadence of official viewer releases. This is seen as beneficial on a number of counts:
It allows individual releases to become more iterative in nature, building capabilities and allowing better response to feedback from users.
It breaks the cycle of long delays between viewer releases while the Lab tries to deliver an entire project in a single viewer drop.
It will hopefully allow the Lab to be more nimble with releases, allowing them to come back to major updates and adjust them / add to them based on longer-term feedback, rather than appearing to simply drop a project into a viewer release and then never come back to it with significant updates / improvements.
In Brief
Removing Scale From LI Calculations (Recap/Update):
Signal Linden highlighted a Feedback Ticket he has raised, proposing the removal of scale from Land Impact calculations, which has been touched upon at the last couple of SUG meetings.
However, numerous caveats / issues with the proposal arose as it was further investigated, including potential impacts on physics, issues for streaming calculations, etc., all of which caused a slow-down in the idea.
Rider Linden provided an update, noting that scale land impact is so closely tied into an object’s triangle count that there is no easy way to extricate the two, leading to the risk of small items with a high tri count suddenly exploring in their LI is scale was removed from the equation.
Support for Vertex Animation Textures (VAT) – a means to create complex and non-traditional animations in real time using textures and shaders to achieve the visuals on the GPU, thus having a much lighter performance impact on the CPU when compared to traditional skeletal mesh animations.
Allowing for the complexities of SL, concern was raised over use of VAT “overloading other systems”, with the view that providing support for blend shapes could actually be preferable.
However, given the age and complexity of the SL internal mesh format, adding things like blend shape support (and / or) vertex support, is seen as a “pretty involved effort” with a number of potential complications.
The above led to a more general discussions on animations for things like plants, the LI cost of Animesh and how it precludes it from widespread use; the balance between having lots of animated elements in-world versus potential performance cost; options for baking animations into meshes, etc.
The reason this happens is that (unlike Blinn-Phong, where the offset, scale and rotation are set against the object surface) with glTF materials, that are set against the material itself (as per the relevant glTF specification extension); ergo, changing the material reset them.
This behaviour could potentially be changed through the addition of an override to give more consistency in behaviour between PBR materials and Blinn-Phong; however, any such update comes down to a matter of prioritisation. This prompted an invitation to any interested open source developer to submit a suitable update.
One concern over a possible solution is the need for additional UI elements in what is already regarded as a complicated Build / Edit floater.
Support 16-bit grayscale terrain import: this has been acknowledged by the Lab as a problem that needs to be addressed, but as yet, there has not been the opportunity to take a deep look into possible causes of issues with the RAW terrain file import, and what the correct solution(s) might be.
Nothing on the cards for further .glTF extensions at this time, however, with the glTF importer now in the release viewer “the door is open to a lot more possibilities for what we could do” (e.g. removing the “old” .glTF importer used purely for materials and allowing the “new” importer to handle them, making it much easier to add further .glTF extensions in the future).
A general discussion on scripted animation, inverse kinematics (IK), puppetry, and similar. In short:
Puppetry remains frozen.
It is recognised the proper IK would allow for a range of capabilities (e.g. animation retargeting)
A general discussion on controls and the game_control work. As the latter is Leviathan Linden’s project, and he was not at this meeting, I’ll leave updates on this to the Server User Group summaries.
Athenaeum, August 2025 – click any image for full size
In talking to Dema Fairport at the Content Creator’s User Group recently, I was reminded that it’s been six years since my last visit to her engaging, Adult-centric and richly landscaped region of Athenaeum (see The scenic glory of Athenaeum in Second Life).
Part of the reason for this is because the major parts of the region are well-established, and only subject to the most subtle of changes – which can made blogging a little difficult. Not that the region should change just for the sake of blog posts; it has scenic beauty which is captivating to both the eye and the camera which could so easily be lost with any large-scale changes.
Athenaeum, August 2025
That said, six years is a long time between visits, so I was keen to wander around once more just for my own interest; and because so much time has passed, I thought I’d offer another write-up for the benefit of those who might not be familiar with the region or its beauty.
The virtual home of the real life Carter/Johnson Library which is owned by Viola Johnson. The library is a collective history of various kinky communities who have chosen to live and love differently. Come explore the Museum and Photo Gallery, take a walk through the lands, or find a place with that special someone to enjoy some relaxing time together or some special kinky time. Photographers Welcome, please be respectful of all.
– Dema’s description of Athenaeum
Athenaeum, August 2025
The (to me) familiar elements within the setting comprise the Carter/Johnson Library, mentioned in Dema’s description, the manor house, the pool house, most of the major structures, including the main bridges and footpaths, and the overall lie of the land, cut through as it is bye channels and a river.
The Landing Point for the setting is on the west side of the region and takes the form of a deck built over the water and home to a café, which I understand from Dema is a new feature of the setting. This sits close the aforementioned Carter/Johnson Library buildings, which itself is worthy of some expansion.
Athenaeum, August 2025
Existing in the physical world, the Carter/Johnson Library and Collection, is a 501(c) (3) organisation founded by Carla Viola “Mama Vi” Johnson (September 9th, 1912 – January 31st, 2006). It forms a collective history of various communities who have chosen to live and love differently. The collection includes thousands of leather, fetish, S/m, kink and alternate sexuality books, magazines, posters, art and more, dating back to the 1700s and chartered to bring this history to the communities it serves.
It is the Library and Collection which supports Athenaeum within Second Life, with the Library within the region recreating of one of the Library’s physical world exhibitions charting the history of BDS and kink from the 1500s to modern times – and offering a glimpse of times early than the 1500s.
Athenaeum, August 2025
A short walk from the museum is a gallery devoted to the work of New York fetish photographer Darque. Also to be found in the plaza and gardens housing the library and gallery is a quiet outdoor seating area complete with playable chess and draughts (or checkers, if you prefer).
Eastwards from the museum and gallery, a cinder path rises into the region’s central uplands to join a broad bridge spanning a gorge to provide access to the manor house is it sits on a high plateau. For those who prefer, a grass trail leads up to where wooden cabins surrounded by tall pines overlooks the north coast beach. One of the two cabins offers a wooden stairway down to the beach, but another way to reach it is to head north from the landing point, following the signs to the camp site out on the north-west headland.
Athenaeum, August 2025
The manor house itself remains much as I originally found it in 2018, when I noted:
Within its rooms are leather arm chairs, great bookcases filled with tomes awaiting reading, fires in the hearths, bottles of port and cigar humidors on some tables, coffee and After Eight mints on others, and just the most subtle of hints as to some of the activities that might follow conversations in these rooms; activities which themselves might be enjoined in the rooms above, going by their décor.
– This blog, August 2018
Athenaeum, August 2025Again surrounded by trees – Athenaeum is, among other things, a woodland haven – the manor house also features a terrace area for music events, with an adjacent pool. This terrace overlooks a precipitous drop on its west side and one of the region’s smaller islands, whilst on its north side it looks over the channel separating the manor’s high perch from the low-lying museum.
The plateau on which the manor house stations hides a secret. To be honest I didn’t work out how to get down to it and back, and resorted to cheating with a sit TP. I assume there is a hidden TP I missed. Another couple of places I don’t remember from previous visits. One was a smaller house sitting on an island to the south-east, is an outdoor ceremonial area one an island tucked into the north-east corner of the region.
Athenaeum, August 2025
Whether all of these are new additions since my last visit or not, I can’t say; six years is a long time; visits, and memory can play tricks. But that aside, Athenaeum is a richly engaging a beautifully put together region offering a lot to see and appreciate, regardless of one’s interest (or otherwise) in kink.
In fact, such is the overall low-key nature of the region’s BDSM elements, Athenaeum can be enjoyed without reference to it more adult nature, offering as it does a beautiful environment with multiple places to sit and pass the time, and plenty of opportunities for photography.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday August 6th, 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.
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
The Marketplace team hope to release the mobile responsive marketplace search updates in the next week or so.
Note this updates is only for MP search, but there will be future Mobile updates for Marketplace in due course.
Time is being given to some general web property quality of life updates.
Work is continuing on some technical upgrades to critical internal services, defined as “not very glamorous but help keep things running smoothly”.
New bank pay-out options are due to be deployed “in the next week or so” for Brazil, Canada , France, Germany, Lithuania, Malaysia, the UK, the USA and Turkey.
CasperVend integration: reported as “no official updates but we do want to take it on soon”.
Kali Linden noted that she has been working with Casper to develop product specifications for integrating some CasperTech features in to the Marketplace.
Marketplace variants / styles (i.e. multiple option for a product (such as different colours) in a single listing: the Marketplace team has yet to “get back” to this, and the request was for people to keep asking about it.
A request was made for a formal means for AI-generated content to be properly disclosed on MP listings. The broad response to this was content disclosure has generally been treated as being differed to the creator.
The group was asked that if they could create one web feature in SL, what would it be? Responses included:
A 3D SL Map.
Marketplace:
An ability to users to see a 3D preview of assets on the Marketplace.
Formal inclusion of item creation date (not listing creation date) and and the date on which the item was last updated for Marketplace listings. This has actually been looked into, and a plan to offer something “more stable” for creation date is in development, but last update date requires more work.
Filter options for removing specific creators / stores from Marketplace searches. This is acknowledged as being a popular request, and something the Lab wants to look into.
Ability to search the MP by body type. This is something that has been specified internally, and so seen as as something that could be delivered in the future.
Multiple Marketplace wish lists / favourite lists. Again, this has received a lot of requests and is being thought about.
A request for multiple stores under one account. This was seen as a nice idea, but currently hard to implement.
Making the Land Use Fees page more intuitive, and perhaps include a way to calculate group bonus, etc.
The use of AI agents to assist in Marketplace searches was raised, in order to increase accuracy of results, etc.
There is nothing specific in the works for this.
Training AI tools for Marketplace search was seen as a major undertaking, simply because of the size of the MP, and that search could generally be improved a lot more directly without necessarily requiring the use of AI tools.
A discussion on people’s favourite / least favourite things in Second Life during the past week which flowed into a general conversation – refer to the video for details.
The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Kelsey Yuitza, Beach Life
Having opened within The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated by Dido Haas, Beach Life is a highly engaging series of Second Life centric images by Kelsey Sakura-Yuitza (Kelsey Yuitza), perfectly showcasing both her abilities as a self-taught Second Life photographer and her passion for spending time at the beach. A modest collection comprising just nine images – with two of them forming triptych-like pieces, one at either end of the gallery space – Beach Life carries within it arrange of emotions and narratives, with all but two of them focused on beach settings, even if their narratives far surpass the setting itself.
As a Second Life photographer, Kelsey is self-taught, developing her skills as a result of curiosity and a willingness to learn via tutorials and videos, and a determination to master the tools at her disposal. The fruits of her labours can be seen in the fact that her images are finely crafted, perfectly edited and easily comparable to anything a physical world photographers might create.
The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Kelsey Yuitza, Beach Life
Supported by beach-like vignettes by Adwehe with which visitors are encouraged to interact by sitting or kicking a beachball around, etc, Kelsey’s images are presented in the large format generally found within the main gallery. This allows the observer to be drawn into each piece and appreciate its beauty. Most of the images speak clearly for themselves and express the joy and freedom to be found in the pleasure of a beach visit. However, mixed within the collection are pieces which I found breath-taking in their depth, artistry and message. These included both of the triptych-like pieces, Where I Began and Ronin, together with Fallen not Forgotten.
Where I Began a celebration of origins, possibly on a personal level of Kelsey, but also in reflection of her growing love of photography in Second life. Ronin, meanwhile, offers a wealth of visual metaphor; there’s the idea of feminine strength and courage; the hint of honour and loyalty as enshrined in the Bushido Shoshinshu followed by samurai (even if ronin were regarded as having failed to live up to the demands of the code to commit seppuku upon the death on his master).
The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Kelsey Yuitza, Beach Life
Then there’s evocation of the traditional interpretation of ronin (“wanderer”; “drifter”) together with the idea of the modern-day drifter who might be found wandering along a beach, and the rich counterpointing of the more idiomatic interpretation of the word (“wave” and “person”) with the backdrop of the open, unfettered ocean to suggest a free spirit.
In its use of camera angle, lighting and shadow, focus and vignetting Fallen not Forgotten genuinely speaks for itself. To call in poignant would be an understatement; it is a marvellous tour de force of artistic expression and richness of narrative. It is powerful and evocative.
The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Kelsey Yuitza, Beach Life
A truly marvellous exhibition; one not to be missed.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 5th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) off-week meeting (which I’ll be referring to as the “SUG Leviathan Hour” going forward). These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting and Patera’s video, which is embedded at the end of this article – my thanks to her 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, August 5th, the majority of the grid – SLS Main channel and RC channels – was updated with simulator update 2025-07-25.16512260888.
The purpose behind this en masse restart (the first in a long time) was to account for network changes intended to allow the Lab to spread simhost servers across across multiple AWS availability zones (not necessarily AWS global regions).
As a result, there will be no RC channel restarts on Wednesday, August 6th.
AI Summit and Tools
Week #31 saw a Linden Lab summit on brainstorming how to use AI moving forward and experimenting with possible uses.
As a result, Leviathan Linden has been exploring how hard it would be to use AI assistants to replace the llmath code in the viewer with GLM (graphics library math), a more standard and faster library; however, this is turning out to be more of a challenge than anticipated, with “lots of changes”, requiring care with the work.
SLua Update
Signal Linden defined the next goal for SLua is to roll it out to some Agni (Main grid) regions in a limited fashion. However there is work to be completed ahead of this happening – such as the project being made production ready, and “real” documentation assembled, and the inclusion of a new API for event handling.
Feedback / ideas for the events API can be submitted here.
Such a partial deployment would obviously be for testing purposes, and would mean that SLua scripts would only run on regions with the server-side support.
It was suggested that those regions offering building / scripting courses are considered for inclusion in Main grid SLua testing.
There is a concern that due to the amount of CPU time consumed even when idling, there is a concern that all script time in a region with a large number of SLua scripts could be consumed by idling scripts. This lead to a discussion on scripts, loads, scheduling and script times.
In Brief
As well as experimenting with GLM, Leviathan Linden has also trying to get some old server projects merged and shipped:
A slight speedup of scene load at login (and maybe less frequent missing content on arrival).
Compressed data from login.cgi for faster download of initial login data (and maybe fewer failed logins for people with lots of inventory folders).
Leviathan also hopes soon start working on the WebRTC voice streaming system.
Rider Linden is hoping to complete the LSL land functionality work he’s been developing for the Moles. This will include a llSetParcelForSale function (name still to be finalised at the time of writing).
Rider is also looking to expand llRequestInventoryData. There have already be requests for it to encompass to get information like tint and alpha from PBR textures, and sound and animation length.
Additional suggestions include PBR properties like metallic/roughness; animation priority; last attach point/position/rotation for a worn item, and last rezzed/in-world position/rotation.
Pepper Linden:
On the Conductor front, it’s been moving through QA, and we anticipate an Aditi and Agni rollout within the next week. During the initial roll out, we’ll be keeping the packing mode the same, and later on, turning on our new ‘packing’ logic (how we place regions on servers).
Some minor notes on our Discord integration for community servers, I had promised that we’d get that out relatively soon but unfortunately Discord has rolled out a UI change to profiles that’s now hiding the connection details, so that’s something we’ll need to figure out and handle before releasing it.
Monty Linden is finishing-up work to move the experience KVP store.
Signal Linden has been working on multiple projects:
Putting together release plans for the next viewer release.
Coordinating with contributors on viewer Discord integration, apple silicon support and other projects.
Following up on the August 5th deployment, and preparing to put some simhosts into another AWS availability zone.
As noted in my week #31 TPVD meeting notes, Camera Constraints Bug (below -0 metre altitude) has been filed. This affects all v7 viewers – but Kirsten Lee (Kirsten’s Viewer) has filed a possible fix.
The mention of the llSetParcelForSale function resulted in a discussion on land rentals in the second half of the meeting – specifically around the use of texture / signs at altitude advertising regions / parcel available for rent, when looking at the world map.
Date of Next Meetings
Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, August 19th, 2025.
Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, August 26th, 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.
Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025 – click and image for full size
Purple Moon Ashes is a Full private region developed as a public space encompassing fantasy and magic, designed by Elguaje70 and DjDDB. It drew my attention after I noted it in the Destination Guide due to the use of items created by Elicio Ember, whom regulars to the pages will know, is both a close friend and a creator of elven-themed designs I never fail to find gorgeously attractive.
Surrounded by off-region hills, Purple Moon Ashes is a setting which becomes increasingly more attractive the longer one spends time within it – although I would note that the Shared Environment available at the time of my visit differed substantially from the EEP settings used in the Destination Guide entry for the region and – in my personal option – didn’t display the region at its best. This being the case, and after a little experimentation, I opted to use one of my personal “fallback” EEP settings for the photographs shown here.
Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025
It is a pleasure to invite you to explore this wonderful Purple Moon Ashes, a place where magic lives from the first moment you arrive; enjoy the dragon ride and the gondola ride. Come and discover how much more magic you can experience.
– Purple Moon Ashes About Land Description
The core of the region comprises a circular lake dominated by a central water / ruins feature which includes two large stone water serpents gushing water from their mouths. Three circular dance floors extend out over the lake from the surrounding largely circular, land enclosing the waters. Each of these platforms is placed roughly equidistantly around the circumference of the lake and each offers two points of access to the shallow waters, allowing visitors to walk to the central feature if they so wish.
Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025
Outside the lake, the land surrounding it offers multiple points of interest, all neatly linked by footpaths and flower trails. The Landing Point sits on a plateau on the north-west quadrant of the region and is home to one of the teleport boards offering quick links to the major locations within the region (although I recommend using your pedal extremities to explore!) and the dragon ride mentioned in the About Land description. It also hides the region’s secrets below it – but I’ll leave it to you to discover the way into them 🙂 .
There are two ways down from the top of the plateau, each utilising elements created by Elicio. One runs gently down to the western side of the region, before a glass footpath directs explorers south and then east, where it is possible to climb the long finger of a rising promontory, which itself turns back to the north as it comes to the eastern side of the setting.
Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025
The second way down from the plateau is on its north side, passing by way of a large dance area build atop a smaller plateau of rock rising from the sea. Steps from here descend to join another glass path lain among the wildflowers as it travels eastwards to reach a large domed pavilion at it furthest extent, and beyond which the trail becomes one of grass and flowers.
It is this second route down from the plateau which offers one of the opportunities to take one of the region’s gondola tours (just to the left of the raise walkway from the last set if steps descending from the plateau). These tours are point-to-point, and so also allow visitors to reach specific destinations within the region. Boats are suitable for singles or couples, and sitting in a gondola will display a dialogue box of the destinations available from each embarkation point.
Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025
As each tour ends at the embarkation point for another, it is possible to use them in sequence to view the region, hopping from one boat to the next at each stop. It is via these gondolas that the narrow spit of land running along the north side of the region is best reached (“Forest Love”).
There is a good degree of repetition across the region in terms of statues and architecture – unicorns large and small, benches with statues, winged fairies spouting water, Elicio’s elven arches and glass walkways, stone gazebos with giant daisy-like places to sit within them, etc. These all work thematically and act as motifs for the region, offering opportunities for the imagination to invent suitable backstories for the setting.
Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025
Also to be found through the setting are multiple places to dance, including couples poseballs tucked away here and there as well as the more familiar dance systems hanging in the air over the more obvious dance locations. From the advertising I caught during my visit, I gather the region is also home to live music events. Details of these, I assume, are available through the local Group – but it appears this requires contacting either Elguaje70 or DjDDB in order to join.
With places to sit scattered throughout (including about the sail vessel and within the aforementioned caves), Purple Moon Ashes provides multiple reasons to not only explore, but also to relax and unwind within its borders. The local sounds are not intrusive, and the setting lends itself to a wide variety of EEP options.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 