It was off to Mysterious Isle for me after receiving an invitation to visit the November 2025 installation by Cica Ghost, entitled simply 100th. The name reflects the fact that this is Cica’s 100th solo installation in SL – and I’ve been fortunate to cover more than 90 of of them down the years (as well as Cica’s collaborations with Bryn Oh and her special exhibitions for charity events), and it has been a genuine delight to do so.
The installation is framed by a quote from editorial cartoonist, humourist, Monday columnist, and Promotional Manager of The Trenton Times for over 30 years, Frank Tyger. It’s a quote that perhaps aptly sums up Cica and her art:
When you like your work, every day is a holiday.
Cica Ghost, November 2025: 100th
For me, visiting Cica’s installations generally tends to be something of a holiday, as so many of them naturally evoke a sense of fun and happiness which can be infectious, and clearly born of Cica’s own sense of fun and adventure. Even those which have in their time encouraged deeper exploration of themes and ideas have demonstrated a gentle tickling of one’s thought processes and light nudging of emotions rather than demanding we sit up and take note.
Cica’s 100th perhaps offers an added layer of that sense of fun for us to share, presenting as a does a setting and inhabitants looking like they have all be moulded from plasticine (or playdough / playdoh if you prefer) which immediately transports one to memories of younger years and creative expression when rolling, squishing, shaping and pressing lumps of either material to create worlds and creatures of our imaginations; places and things of riotous bright colours, sometimes additionally decorated with things “borrowed” from around the house (in this case – buttons!).
Cica Ghost, November 2025: 100th
100th is a genuinely joyous little setting which celebrates some much we’ve come to associate with Cica’s work: fantastical creatures and insects, funny little houses, blooming flowers, cats and other animals (I particularly like the cow apparently wearing blue wellies!), together with Cica’s signature interactive elements: places to sit or dance, little vehicles to rumble around in and – tucked away and waiting to be found – a little gift from Cica. All of which is presided over by a very happy Sun looking down from a sky in which dough-like clouds serenely float.
As with all of Cica’s installations, I recommend viewing 100th using the local Shared Environment, and if your system can handle them, with Shadows enabled. And if you’d like to look back through all of Cica’s installations over the years, then why not take a look at her Flickr photostream as well?
Cica Ghost, November 2025: 100th
For may part, I’ll simply congratulate Cica on reaching her 100th solo installation, and raise a glass in the hope of seeing my more!
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, November 6th, 2025 and my chat log of that meeting, together with Pantera’s video (embedded at the end of this article) and my chat log of the Open-Source Developer meeting on Friday, November 7th, 2025.
Please note that this is not a full transcript of either meeting but a summary of key topics.
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 and is held in a mix of Voice and text chat.
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 and is generally text chat only.
Release Candidate 2025.08 – 7.2.3.18980112811 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – November 4 – NEW.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
General Viewer Updates
2025.08 is liable to be the last viewer release for the year, with development work as a whole (including server-side) liable to slowing down due to end-of-year holidays and company breaks.
That said, Geenz Linden is hoping to get the go-ahead to try and get “a few things” out for the door before year-end. These include fixes/improvements to PBR water , and also clearing some technical debt.
The fixes/improvements to PBR water sparked a brief conversation on the PBR water issues and solutions (e.g. tweaks to SSR and whether or not these will “fix” things – although it was made clear that the “old” water reflections code will not be coming back to the official viewer codebase).
Work is progressing on getting a Linux flavour of the official viewer back into shape. Those interested in the work can find it in this viewer repository, and the Lab is actively looking for feedback.
Note that this build is WebRTC only, Vivox Voice is not supported.
Depending on progress / feedback there is a potential for this viewer to surface as a Release Candidate / beta viewer before the end of the year – Geenz is hoping to achieve this as a part of the technical debt clean-up work.
Open Source meeting: Geenz is attempting to move forward with replacing the viewer Contributor License Agreement with digital certificates of origin for code contributions to the official viewer.
In short, instead of contributors having to read through and accept LL’s code license, and assign rights accordingly, when a code contribution is made, the originator just adds a sign-off as a part of the code contribution commit.
There will be new documentation on this revised process that will be made available ahead of it being implemented.
You Tube Embedding Issue
You Tube recently updated elements of their video embedding code such that non i-frame youtube.com/embed/NNNNN style links will not work within Second Life (whilst youtube.com/watch/NNNNN style links will still function correctly – although this latter format does expose all the You Tube on-screen video controls, etc).
This is an issue liable to impact a variety of in-world television and similar systems utilising You Tube.
The is very much a You Tube issue, so while the Lab could investigate options for workarounds there is no guarantee they would remain valid / useful for any length of time.
Note that (obviously) Vemeo (and other services) video embedding is unaffected by this issue, as does hosting from a personal server.
All are essentially under investigation (or awaiting further information), although prioritisation is unclear.
A request was made for an official viewer specific user group “to discuss the UI”.
As pointed out at other meetings where this has been raised, there are already two user groups wherein the official viewer and TPVs are discussed: the Content Creation User Group, and the Open-Source Development User Group (formerly the TPV Developer UG). Adding a third really doesn’t add anything significant.
In terms of UI “discussions”, it was suggested these are rarely fruitful with in a large group, as opinions tend to be subjective / biased according to which viewer people prefer to use, and which UI style (viewer 1.2X style or viewer 2.0+ style or variations thereof) they like. Ergo, a meeting specifically focused on the viewer UI isn’t potentially going to be that beneficial in terms of generating actual UI improvements.
A discussion on SL enhancements and prioritisations: A general note on the complexities of making enhancements to SL and determining what should / can be done and when.
In terms of graphical enhancements, it was noted that often, these tend to work best with dedicated / more recent GPU cards, with the problem being that stats show the majority of SL users tend to run medium or lower specification hardware, often with more limited GPUs and / or integrated graphics which may or may not be able to adequately run newer rendering options. Thus, the implementation of such capabilities can become a complex balancing act of determining what the “average” SL system can manage, how well it can do so without dramatically changing how SL appears to the user (changes to SL’s in-world appearance often causing widespread backlash when changes are made), determining what the general defaults for new capabilities should be in order to best address end-user hardware capabilities, etc.
Then there are enhancements to the platform which may not have a performance impact, but which do have questions around them in terms of overall benefit to users (e.g. quality of life improvements for the majority of users, content creation improvements, etc.), and also around resources required to bring them to fruition, etc., all of which need to be balanced against one another and with things like graphics improvements, et al, in order for the Lab to determine prioritisations.
The above extended to offering hardware cut-off points for SL, with the Lab preferring to keep this more towards operating systems (and associated hardware drivers, etc.) reached a manufacturer’s end-of-life, rather than arbitrarily setting cut-off points.
An example of this could be taken with older versions of the Mac OS (e.g. OS 12 or older). LL would like to cease support for these versions of the OS and focus on more recent releases offering support for more up-to-date libraries, etc., offering better functionality, but the number of Mac users still running systems only capable of running older versions of the OS currently prevents LL from setting a cut-off for Mac support.
The flipside to this is when OS vendors present an end-of-life for a given operating system, it can actually benefit SL and users who do upgrade (e.g. the ending of official support for Windows 10 bringing many older versions of Intel’s integrated HD graphics to an end of life state).
The above expanded into a conversation on communications, keeping users informed of SL’s capabilities and changes, what can be done within SL with the right viewer settings, informing users of the potential impact on their systems of enabling / increasing various settings (based on stats, etc., the viewer is dynamically gathering on in-world scenes and the hardware running the viewer), etc
Geenz indicated that a longer-term hope is that more work can be done in making the viewer more multi-threaded in CPU use and cutting down on the reliance on co-routines within the viewer code as a result. However, no time frames on this.
OSUG Discussion – In Brief
It is likely that the current alpha-blend Blinn-Phong issues are likely to be fixed prior to year-end, as these require server-side work as well, and the server team is already very busy with WebRTC and SLua.
The first part of the meeting involved a discussion on Linden water reflection, Screen Space Reflections, lighting probes (all as summarised above) and a potted history of invisiprims and their “return” as water exclusion surfaces.
Elements of work Geenz is looking to try to get moved forward with the viewer include:
Re-introducing legacy search.
Discord integration with the viewer.
Making the viewer updater “more open source friendly”.
“Killing” Autobuild in the viewer build process.
Geenz offered a PSA to TPVs:
If you are receiving increased reports about the latest AMD drivers causing problems with shadows enabled, I can confirm that a rollback to the previous version fixes that. I’m already digging around to see who I can report a driver bug to.
A request was put forward to have TPV stats (usage per OS, crash rates and crash types) on a more frequent basis once more (they were at one time monthly, then switched to weekly before becoming more sporadic once more). This will be looked into.
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.
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:
The launch appears to have been positively received by many users.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 