Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, July 20th, 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.
Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15976006598 July 2 – No Change.
This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, July 17th, 2025. Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics, and timestamps are to the official video, embedded at the end of this report.
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.
Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15976006598 July 2 – No Change.
This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
This project is moving into beta testing, and the updated viewer for beta testing is currently with QA, and should appear on the Alternate Viewers page “pretty soon”.
Again, as a reminder this project is providing the overall functionality available for uploading COLLADA .DAE files to the upload of glTF mesh files. As such all current constraints will continue to exist within this work.
Enhancements will be coming (and Feature Requests have been received for things like increased tri counts and vertex limits), but are regarded as a separate tranche of work.
[Video 4:50-6:00] A request was made for enhancements to the convex physic hull limits (e.g. number and complexity). This would require simulator-side changes, as some of the constraints are enforced server-side, and are “fundamental” to how Second Life works.
There is no work currently being planned around this.
In general it was considered something that might be better tackled if / when the Lab gets to “re-doing” SL’s internal mesh format.
Lighting Discussion
[Video 6:05-7:40] Light and particle exclusion volumes – the question was asked that as SL now has water exclusions “volumes”, how hard would it be to do the same for lighting and particles (e.g. to prevent lighting in one room bleeding into another).
In actual fact, SL does not currently support water exclusion volumes – it only supports water exclusion surfaces, which operate more-or-less in 2 dimensions to “hide” water”, rather than excluding it from a volume area.
Geenz noted that water exclusion and light / particle exclusions are “very different” in nature, with water exclusions surfaces being handled by a dedicated rendering pipe, and both light and particles requiring their own specific solutions.
He further noted that for lighting, other engines typically support linking a light source to a volume, constraining the light to it. SL does not have that capability, and while it would not be impossible to enable it, the work would be non-trivial, and is not something being looked at. His preferred approach would be to get shadows working more efficiently and at a larger scale.
[Video: 10:39-11:25] Related to the above, it was noted that non-shadow punctual lighting could help with lighting / darkness / shadow issues. These had been something Runitai Linden had started to look at prior to departing the Lab; in Geenz’s view, a means to determine which lights should / should not cast shadows might offer a partial solution.
[Video: 12:17-13:43] Geenz also noted there are been several requests on Canny for lighting improvements, and he would like to get some work on lighting prioritised. However, there is a large amount of work already identified for the viewer, and so prioritising and further work has the be done “carefully”.
He also noted issues with point lights were noted (fall-off being incorrect; the light radius tends to exceed the value set; point light penetrate objects far too much, etc), and suggested they could potentially benefit from a revisit at some point.
[Video: 24:36-25:30] Would it be possible to create a reflection probe-like if volume and assign an EEP setting to it?
There is no means to do this directly, but in theory could be done via LSL.
Rider Linden noted that by using an Experience, it is possible to trigger EEP settings for individual agents, which might achieve something similar.
Pathfinding’s future is still up in the air, with no final decision taken as yet. Currently all that is being looked at is the removal of the Havok sub-library from the viewer, which impacts Pathfinding.
This sub-library is used for two purposes:
For convex decomposition in mesh uploads.
Visualising / managing the Pathfinding Navmesh.
In terms of mesh uploads, there are alternative open-source libraries which could be used in place of Havok. Some of these alternatives are already being used by TPVs in preference to having to obtain a Havok sub-library licence from LL, and Geenz noted that a Pull Request from any viewer using such an alternative would be “welcome”.
Using Havok in the viewer purely for visualising the Navmesh is seen as overkill, again considering there are potential alternatives which could be used.
Philip Linden noted the need to reduce the amount of technical debt in the codebase, and removing Havok from the viewer would assist in this.
As far as Pathfinding as a whole is concerned, Geenz reiterated that currently, the Lab is not looking to completely deprecate it (both within the viewer and on the server-side); all that is being discussed at present is the need to remove Havok from the viewer.
An ancillary question asked by Rider linden was how many people at the meeting actually used Pathfinding characters, as opposed to NPCs using llGetStaticPath (which appears more popular, given the 15LI penalty and overall complexity of build Pathfinding characters).
In Brief
Please refer to the video as well.
[Video: 3:14-4:10] There is some work going into “beefing up some frame time metrics” – this will mean the viewer’s Statistics Floater (CTRL-SHIFT-1) will be updated with “a lot more” statistics going forward.
Some of this work will be surfaced in the next update to the glTF Mesh Upload RC viewer.
How many of the new stats are to be tracked in real-time is still TBD within the Lab.
[Video: 8:05-8:40] In terms of water exclusion volumes, this work has not yet bee prioritised and would required co-ordination between the simulator and viewer teams as it would require the passing of new object flags in order to work properly.
Improvements to Screen Space Reflections (SSR) on water are currently on hold pending the work on gathering better frame time metrics to be sent to the logs (how often is a user’s frame rate significantly dipping, for example), rather than just logging a user’s frame rate at the time they log-off.
The work that has been done on water SSR also still needs some further polish.
Overall the aim is to offer real-time reflections on any surface without it being a “gigantic frame rate killer”.
Other things that Geenz would like to bring back include shoreline fading, which had to be disabled due to alpha rendering issues – but this kind of work may have to wait for expanded EEP settings for water.
[Video: 37:04-48:24] A discussion on “lag”, and the (still common) assumption that most of it is simulator-side, and thus LL’s problem, rather than the viewer becoming overloaded thanks to people’s proclivity to jam-pack their avatar with complex meshes, multiple attachments, high-resolution textures, etc., thus impacting their own system’s performance (and potentially that of the people around them).
Geenz acknowledged that there is more LL could do to allow people to better quantify the impact they are having on themselves and others, vis à vis their avatar outside of the (inaccurate) avatar complexity system.
A problem here is that whether provided via options in the viewer, documentation, etc., people will ignore recommendations, warnings, reminders, etc.
Potential approaches to helping people understand the impact of the avatar include: indicating how much of their VRAM their Avatar is absorbing; having a meter display over their avatar’s head indicating the level of impact on general performance their avatar is having (both of which would only be visible to the user viewing them – and not to everyone else).
Technical solutions which might also help and under potential consideration for future implementation include texture streaming.
This discussion also encompassed the deficiencies with the ARC (Avatar Render Cost calculations & figures, and regulating the tension between people dressing their avatars so that they are resource-intensive to render, then going to a club or social venue and then dragging down the performance experienced by other users vs. allowing the venue owners to have the ability to set an “upper limit” on how resource-intensive avatars entering their club can be in order to preserve an experience that can be enjoyed by everyone.
The first 10 minutes of the meeting included a largely text-based discussion on the physics engine and viewer freezes. In short, there are no planes to change the physics engine, and the kind of viewer freezes experienced by SL as physics calculations are carried out are not uncommon within platforms using user-generated content (UGC), so trying to replace the current Havok engine (or even updating it) would not necessarily solve these issues.
A discussion between a user and Geenz concerning an EEP setting setting and use of an RGB cloud map, and whether this is supported. No definitive answer, other than Geenz would need to investigate.
The end of the meeting touched on SL Mobile issues and Project Zero – these are covered in other user group meetings.
BluShock Stackspire Depot Colony, July 2025 – click any image for full size
It’s been a few years since I’ve dropped in on the BluShock sci-fi role-play group, led by Fazzy Constantine (Faisel Constantine), so when I saw their latest world build in the Destination Guide, I knew I’d have to hop over and have a look.
Formed in 2020, BluShock is an action-oriented role-play group with a story spanning the galaxy and multiple worlds, with in-world builds focusing on specific locations from the evolving storyline. I’ve had the pleasure of covering some of the group’s adventures in these pages utilising the BluShock tag, and have always enjoyed my visits and the level of detail brought to both the evolving story and the group’s builds.
BluShock Stackspire Depot Colony, July 2025
The latest of the latter offers a unique setting in the form of the water world Thundrheim. Cast into near-perpetual twilight and hiding a secret, the planet is home to a most unusual settlement / spaceport called Stackspire Depot Colony.
Thundrheim drifts in the shadow of its own shattered moon, caught in a rare orbital alignment that casts the planet in near-constant twilight. A perpetual solar eclipse dominates the sky — not total, but enough to smother the sun’s full brilliance.
The world itself is a churning deepwater sphere, scarred by ancient tectonic activity and dotted with archipelagos of broken land that barely reach above sea level. Beneath the waves, sonar pings often return… distorted.
Built – as is the case with all of the BluShock team’s major builds – by Noah Constantine (NoahLion), Stackspire is a mix of hideout, trading outpost, research facility and melting pot of visiting races.
Rising from the waters in the manner of an Earthly oil rig, the depot colony is not precisely a thing of beauty, giving the impression it has simply sprouted levels and extensions entirely at random to meet the demands of those living, working and visiting it, rather than as a result of planned or considered development. What appear to be ultra modern sections rub shoulders with shanty-like wooden structures built on what might have once been open working decks and / or are tucked between the sturdier levels of the station.
BluShock Stackspire Depot Colony, July 2025
Close to the uppermost levels of the depot sits the space dock – or perhaps air dock might be a better description, given the styling of some of the craft docked there, looking like they are better suited to cruising the skies of Thundrheim than to venturing beyond its atmosphere. Adjoining this is what appears to be the main commercial level of the station, a place where attempts have been made to offer some natural flora and which is dominated by advertising, kiosks and promises of other distractions arriving ship crews might appreciate.
Perched atop a narrow seamount in the planet’s equatorial belt is Stackspire Depot, a towering structure of welded metal, tangled infrastructure, and questionable legality… The depot leans out over open sea like it’s trying to escape the planet… Ships come here to disappear. Fuel up. Trade off-grid. Or bury secrets where no one will find them.
Most of the actual buildings within the depot’s structure are facades rather than offering interior spaces (which is not to say there are no indoor spaces). This allows for RP to take place on the depot’s various levels, these being interconnected by steel stairways and operating elevators. Static NPCs are also dotted around – which left me wondering if some of these could not be used to give added depth to the setting by being more interactive. Some of these NPCs, together with references through some of the signage give suggestions of various sci-fi franchises (and a video game!) without actually drawing on any of them to pollute the BluShock story; rather they help tweak a subconscious since of familiarity when exploring.
Those who seek a little adventure (and wish to perhaps discover the mysteries of what might be going on beneath the waves of Thundrheim should make their way down to the station’s lowest deck and the submersible station extending out over the waves. Here, people can board a submarine at one of the three rezzing stations (make sure you accept the HUD and attach it on boarding) and take it out – and under the waves.
BluShock Stackspire Depot Colony, July 2025
There are some interesting finds awaiting those who make the trip, from the remnants of a civilisation offering parallels with Earth’s own in the late 20th / early 21st centuries, together with the wrecks of lost space vehicles. Their presence offers further opportunities for photography and role-play.
In all, another fascinating sci-fi environment for people to explore – and perhaps join with the BluShock team in their on-going adventures.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, July 15th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting (“off week”). They 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.
These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
Every other Tuesday from July 8th, 2025, at 12:00 noon 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.
The term “off week” is used to describe meetings held by Leviathan Linden on those weeks when a “full” Simulator User Group meeting is not scheduled to be held.
Simulator Deployments
There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.
Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15976006598 July 2 – No Change.
This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
In Brief
Also refer to the video for the full meeting.
Leviathan has been working on resolving a exploit which – although this is not certain) he may have accidentally introduced into the simulator code during her first stint at the Lab(!).
Further work on the game_control project for the viewer remains in hibernation.
The core code was in a viewer development branch that was archived during the most recent switch to the viewer development and release workflow.
While much of it has been “salvaged” from the retired dev branch, it still needs to be approved for porting and merging into a current development repository.
There are also functional questions to be addressed – such as what to do about keyboard-only users and game_control.
Work on the Linux version of the official viewer also appears to be “stuck” in the archived develop branch.
Leviathan asked if anyone has tried to use the SL raw terrain save/load system, and if so, whether they have found it works correctly. There are apparently some bugs within it, and he’s trying to determine how best to prioritise it for fixing.
The general consensus at the meeting was getting the OK to update, port and merge the game_control code should be a higher priority than the terrain save/load.
A general discussion on porting features / capabilities to / from Firestorm (and on offering Pull Requests to Firestorm for code such as game_control).
A brief indication of “prioritisation competition” for viewer-side features at the Lab: some developers prefer to develop the code and build a functional UI to access it, then polish the latter; others (and management?) prefer code that is put forward with a complete, polished UI design.
Date of Next Meeting
Tuesday, July 22nd, 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.
Three Finger Pines, July 2025 – click any image for full size
Occupying a Homestead region, Three Finger Pines is an imaginatively engaging location brought into being by Kitten Caboose. It presents a visually rich mix of natural beauty, science fiction narrative and an underpinning commentary / warning about humanity’s continued self-centred abuse of our own world.
The narrative is offered via a notecard which can be obtained at the setting’s Landing Point. This should be read in full in order to appreciate the full context of the region’s story, and I’ll merely précis here.
Three Finger Pines, July 2025
After eons of unchecked pollution and climate change, the once bio-diverse world of Seva is on the brink of total collapse, its atmosphere toxic and its land sterile. Hoping to discover a means to reverse the damage they have wrought on their world, the Seravarians dispatched ships into the galaxy to study worlds with similar atmospheres and biodiversity as had once been found on their own planet. One of those worlds is a planet we call “Earth”.
The story notes the Seravarian vessel didn’t so much arrive quietly on Earth – within the forested hinterlands of the place we call Canada – so much as it crash landed (the wreckage is still to be found within the setting).
Three Finger Pines, July 2025
It’s not clear if the craft was crewed or not, but it is evident that either its crash landing or the data it returned to Seva prior to its demise prompted a crewed rescue / follow-up mission: hovering in the sky above the crash site – three rugged lake islands surrounded by high peaks – sits a massive spacecraft, docked against what appears to be a free-floating tower, both happily ignoring the generally insistent demands of gravity.
There is a strong hint of Kubrick / Clarke’s USS Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey about the vessel (a kitbash by Nia Angel (NiaHalley) utilising elements created by Beth Delaunay (Isilmeriel) of Delaunay Industries / Isil Designs fame). Given the back-story, I’m sure this is simply inspirational, rather than indicative of any intended link between the setting and the film / novel. Certainly, there is no doubting the imposing beauty of the vessel.
Three Finger Pines, July 2025
Down on the islands, meanwhile, the crew have clearly been busy. On the longest and southernmost of the three islands sits a cultivation dome where vegetables, fruits and fungi are being cultivated, presumably for study. Close by, containers are being moved back and forth between this and another station on the middle of the three islands.
This second structure has been built into the ground somewhat, and is a further centre for plant research. Both of the research facilities can be reached on foot by means of a large slab of rock towards their eastern ends, where it arches over the narrow channel separating the two islands.
Three Finger Pines, July 2025
A cliff-side path also descends along the middle island’s south side to reach the lowlands at its western end. Combined with the path leading up to the south island’s biodome and the rocky arch, this offers the best means to explore both the southern and middle islands to their fullest public extent with both trails offering opportunities to sit and / or photograph local wildlife. A second path close to the Landing Point on the southern island also offers the opportunity to explore the lowlands between the two islands.
I confess to not having found a means to directly access the small northern island save by flying, but this also offers a walk up from its low-lying western end to its mid-point peak, and also down to the crash-site of the original Seravarian scout vessel.
Three Finger Pines, July 2025
One point of note – and as stated in chat at the Landing Point – is that there is a private residence at the eastern end of the middle island. It intentionally has no direct access to it by foot to emphasise its private nature, and if you try a direct TP, you will earn the ire of the local security system – so don’t! 🙂 .
In all, a very well designed and creative setting, complete with several places to sit and relax while exploring, and which offers plenty of scope for both photography and story-telling.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, July 13th, 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.
Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15976006598 July 2 – No Change.
This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 