Category: Second Life

2026 week #7: SL CCUG and Open Source (TPVD) meetings summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, February 12th, 2026.
  • Pantera’s video (embedded at the end of this article) and my chat log of the Open-Source Developer (OSD) meeting held on Friday, February 13th, 2026, together with my chat log of that meeting.
Table of Contents

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 OSD 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.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer 2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – December 2 – No Change.
    • Notable addition: new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for mesh uploads.
  • Second Life Beta (RC) viewer 26.1.0.21522948608, February 12 – NEW.
    • Legacy search; WebRTC improvements; QoL improvements.
  • Second Life Project viewers:
    • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha version 26.1.0.21525310258, February 3 –  No Change.
    • Second Life Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12 – No Change.
      • Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use WebRTC voice.
    • Second Life One Click Install viewer 26.1.0.21295806042, January 26, 2026 – one-click viewer installation.

Upcoming Viewers

Viewer 2026.01

  • Remains the current viewer development focus with the release of the beta (RC) version, although this will be shifting more to 2026.02.
  • The velopack one click installer / updater is not in the initial beta, but is “off to one side” whilst being allowed to “cook” for longer. This may get folded back into 2026.01, but the Lab is not “super married” to this being the case.
  • 2026.01 includes a high priority fix for specific Bluetooth headset configurations which will benefit WebRTC.
  • Now available as an alpha viewer (above).
  • As the name suggests, triggers a one-click install / viewer update process.
  • Also includes improved monitoring / logging of viewer freezes and crashes, etc.

Viewer 2026.02

  • 2026.02 remains on track for the “Flat” UI and font updates.
  • It now also includes the WebRTC voice moderation capabilities (as seen in the project viewer) to help align viewer-side WebRTC updates more with the hoped-for server-side deployment currently targeting March 2026.
  • No Alpha / Beta viewer is available as yet for this release..
Example of the upcoming flat UI. Via: Geenz Linden / Github #4681/2

Viewer 2026.03

  • 2026.03 is described as a “visual polish” for the viewer. This viewer is likely to include:
    • The “long baking” SSR improvements that were started last year. This version of the viewer will likely have a long beta soak time to allow feedback on these changes to be gathered.
    • PBR specular for residents who are more familiar with the old Blinn-Phong work flow. This will:
      • Include another texture slot (tint of the specular reflection).
      • Work with metallics.
      • Follow the glTF specification, but will likely initially be without glTF overrides, as this requires server-side work.
    • HDR controls in EEP so residents can decide how bright or dark things should be. This work does require simulator-side updates. This will likely initially have server-side support on Aditi (the Beta grid).
  • The Pull Request  for this work can be found here – #5385.
  • 2026.03 is looking towards an April release.

General Viewer Notes

  • Viewer-side Blinn-Phong alpha-gamma improvements were raised as possible inclusion for 2026.03. The Lab’s viewer is that while these will be coming, it will not be until after supporting server-side updates have been made in order to avoid what the Lab sees as potential content breakage. This matter was viewed as “not up for debate”.
    • There is a chance that the server-side work might be undertaken and completed in time for the viewer-side fixes to be included in 2026.03, but currently, Geenz isn’t willing to commit to this due to other on-going work.
  • User Animats is developing the Sharpview viewer. This includes an “infinite draw distance” – see this video as an example.
    • The Lab has been looking over this work internally, and there has been some discussion on supporting the work and giving it more of an official path.
    • Geenz noted having the map system provide terrain heightmaps could be a start.
    • Geenz also suggested having prim stand-ins for distant objects, but noted that this is a “down the road thing”.
  • Geenz Linden has requested developers put their eyes on PR #5429.
    • The release ordering for this would b after the SLua works reaches release status, due to both that viewer and this work having ties to the the official Linux viewer build.
    • It is unlikely the SLua work will be merged into a main viewer code until around the 2026.04 viewer, which means the work in PR#5429 is unlikely to reach a viewer release until summer.
    • Given the changes it may bring to some TPVs, this is seen as no bad thing, as it gives the opportunity for feedback and planning, etc.
  • A general discussion on re-enabling water reflections as a part of the upcoming SSR / HDR improvements. Options were mentioned, and Geenz seemed to lean towards “a slight optimization to mirrors on thin probes is not out of the question to help ‘backfill’ probe data”, before noting this would have to be very narrowly scoped for inclusion in the 2026.03 viewer.
  • The transmission index of refraction (IoR – good for water reflections) project is seen as requiring more time and input than the PBR specular work, despite a good amount of work being done on the transmission / IoR work. As such, it is awaiting a re-prioritisation to continue – and this might be a while before it is forthcoming, because there is still a fair amount of complexity involved in any implementation.
  • A general discussion towards the end of the OSG meeting on HDR, HDR skies, improving the brightness of the SL Sun, etc.

Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment

  • The Lab is currently looking at a March deployment of WebRTC voice across the grid, but this is subject to possible change.
  • The viewer server is currently in a beta soak test (see: WebRTC Voice Open Beta is Expanding).
  • Deployment will follow the usual simulator update route:
    • First week: limited deployment to selected RC channels (e.g. Bluesteel / Preflight).
    • Second week (providing no significant issues occurring): wider deployment to all RC channels.
    • Third week: deployment to the Main SLS channel, marking WebRTC as grid-wide.
  • As noted in the viewer notes above, there are fixes going into the upcoming 2026.01 viewer related to WebRTC:
    • These are each described as affecting a “small number” of users.
    • The first fixes an issue where some people may lose voice without reconnecting once in a while.
    • The second relates to problems with certain Bluetooth headsets losing audio after toggling PTT.
    • LL would ideally link to see TPVs cheery-pick these fixes for inclusion in their viewers so as to be available to users as WebRTC commences deployment.
  • A server-side  fix to address a spatialization bug was released on Monday February 9th, and appears to have dealt with the last known significant server bug.

CCUG Meeting General Discussions

  • A request was made for a check box to be added to the PDR editing tools to ignore the alpha channel in order to allow Blinn-Phong specular textures could be re-used.
    • This was seen as a “little tricky” given the way BP specular has been implemented in SL, which have resulted in some compatibility between BP and PBR (e.g. the colour RGB parts), whilst others are not.
    • Whilst some comprises could potentially be mead, they would deviate away from the glTF specification, which is not what LL wants to do.
  •  Geenz indicated he is mulling the idea of possible adjustments to texture streaming to help improve it – such as streaming specular, metallic and even base colour at lower resolutions, whist keeping the normal map at the required resolution. This, he feels would compensate for any loss of detail on specular, metallic or base colour, whilst decreasing the overall streaming load.
  • Scriptable IK was raised as an idea. This was something the currently suspended Puppetry Project was looking at, as well as things like use of webcams for animations, etc. It is not clear if / when this work might be re-animated (no pun intended).
  • Blend shapes / custom rigs were again raised for discussion, with Geenz again noting that the issue is in part a problem with the internal SLMesh format used by SL not being particularly flexible.
    • Before anything could be done to support things like custom rigs and similar, there would need to be a new implementation of the SLMesh pipeline.
    • This would allow LL to develop a new, more flexible SLMesh format, which is more resilient to things like unexpected data and would also allow support for new fields (e.g. bland shapes – which could even be hooked up to the current slider system and / or be scriptable, etc).
    • However, such a project would be relatively long-term and require consideration of other issues (e.g. support for over 20 years of animations which will continue to require support and thus would need things like retargeting).
    • Therefore how to fit it into the roadmap and ensure the required resources are available is not currently clear given the number of other priorities already in play / awaiting attention.
  • The above encompassed a discussion on external tools which might help in look creation, clothes fitting, etc., such as Character Creator and Marvelous Designer, which can be used with SL as an external tool, whilst having a good level of integration into Sansar .

Next Meetings

2026 week #7: SUG Leviathan Hour

Posted on by Inara Pey
Jade Koltai: Inis Oírr, January 2026 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 10th, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) off-week meeting (the “SUG Leviathan Hour”). These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. They were taken from my chat log of the meeting, and Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article – my thanks to her, as always, for recording and 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.

Mesh Face Count Mismatch Bug

  • This is a long-term bug whereby some mesh objects fail to accept a texture change on some faces. The texture change shows up on the viewer, but if you take to inventory or relog the texture change vanishes.
  • The problem appears to require changes on both on the simulator side and on the viewer.
  • Leviathan describes the bug a a form of protocol bug introduced by an old asset-upload-pipeline bug, which he believes has been complicated by a viewer-side bug.
  • In short:
    • LL pack texture data using a variable-length scheme, depending on whether all faces are the same or there are differences, but the actual number of faces is not encoded; instead the simulator has been relying the number of faces being implicit to the “VolumeParams” of a prim (this approach pre-dating mesh).
    • LL then introduced meshes with up to 8 texture faces.
    • This, combined with a potential bug in the asset upload pipeline which caused the number of faces in the asset to be wrong, caused errors on the server side of things.
    • A fix for the upload problem was implemented, but the the issue persists for mesh objects uploaded prior to any fix for uploads being applied.
  • Leviathan has a fix for the simulator issue(essentially a means to encode the number of faces into the legacy texture encoding without breaking protocol and without eating many bytes).
  • However, in testing it, he found a viewer-side issue in loading and updating / recording mesh face textures data. He’s still working on this issue, but believes the viewer and server will have to have an updated protocol interpretation so they can communicate how many faces they think there are in an object. the data will live in the new object created by making any changes to a rezzed item.
  • He noted that such a fix might also correct the issue of LSL not seeing the right number of faces.
  • This discussion also involved some confusion over sculpties and their  total number of faces, and the actual total number of faces (8 or 9 – it’s 8 hard-coded on the simulator).

In Brief

  • Leviathan has a fix for the problem whereby when sometimes rezzing an object on a mesh surface will fail and supply an incorrect or misleading message (e.g. not having parcel rez rights or something). See: FIRE-15429 and Beq Janus’ blog Coming to Firestorm soon… A couple of new features for builders and non-builders alike. It is currently in a Pull Request.
  • There are no updates on the status of the game_control work,  and the pre-release of the game-control viewer remains unchanged.
    • Moving this project forward is dependent on the progress of the new SL Linux viewer build.
    • The next steps are to make some UI adjustments and identify any further changes required to get the code through QA for release.
    • As a reminder, game_control provides some keyboard mapping options from the existing avatar control actions:
      move forward, strafe, turn, jump, fly, and (maybe) crouch. It doesn’t currently support “all the keys” input.
    • The reason for game_control is to provide LSL scripts access to game controller input. But how the controller interacts with avatar-control, fly-cam, and keyboard mapping complicated things.
    • There was talk during the early days of the project the game_control could be made to handle MIDI inputs; however this is currently not supported.
    • This led to an extended discussion on key mapping options.
  • Leviathan expressed an interest in turning to support the current drivers for the Connexion 3D Mouse devices (e.g. SpaceNavigator, etc.), given the current working driver for SpaceNavigator is badly out-of-date, and more recent versions. However, this is an interest, not a commitment to actually do so.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, February 17th, 2026.
  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, February 24th, 2026.

† 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.

Crossing Grauland Gap in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grauland Gap, February 2026 – click any image for full size

It seems Sod’s Law and I are becoming very well acquainted. This was brought home to me today with regards to Jim Jim Garand’s Grauland. I’ve been aware that Jim had been working on a new design for his region for over a month, so had been keeping an eye out for its opening. Sod’s Law then determined I would be absent SL when it did open, causing me to miss the event.

I always enjoy Jim’s builds; they offer much to appreciate and draw on lots of varying sources of inspiration, some of them present in the physical world, other from the imagination; hence why I’ve been writing about them for some six years. The region design Jim presents to us at the start of 2026 is called Grauland Gap, and it appears to draw a degree of inspiration from Los Angeles.

Grauland Gap, February 2026

The most obvious evidence for this statement lies in the “gap” which gives the setting its name. It splits the region north-to-south, cutting it into two unequal halves. This gap – a broad channel – carries a striking resemblance to the channel found within Los Angeles and which carry the waters of the Los Angeles River and its associated storm channels. It’s a look enhanced by the road and rail bridges crossing it; however, unlike the many LA channels seen in film and television, this one has an uneven riverbed floor rather than further smooth cement, giving it a unique look quite apart from any hint of LA.

The landscape in which Grauland Gap is far enough removed from LA, however, to ensure it stands apart from any physical world location. High mountains and tall cliffs rise over the setting, some of the mountains reaching out to sea and rising from it, leaving Grauland Gap with a second meaning behind its name: the town sits within a gap between the high cliffs and mountains, connected to the rest of the world by tunnels alone.

Grauland Gap, February 2026

As a town, Grauland Gap is rich in detail and local life, be it the graffiti along the angled sides of the river channel to the people attending at what appears to be a gathering of classic and vintage cars in the south-west corner of the region, or enjoying a sunny wander along the streets. There is also what  – to me at least – something of a clever juxtapositions within the region which might be seen as something of an artistic statement in place of the more overt art elements that so often form a part of Jim’s design.

This can be found in the car show mentioned above. It sits alongside a trendy coffee house, the cars pristine and admired in a weekly Cruise Night car and music show. The vignette speaks to the upbeat America we all prefer to see, from the trendy coffee house to the shiny fast cars – a general love of life and freedom.

Grauland Gap, February 2026

Across the river channel however, and diagonally opposite the pristine cars in their well-kept parking lot, is a wrecking yard filled with the rusting, broken, carcasses of disposed cars and vehicles. The contrast between the two could not be more striking particularly in what might be seen as a possible artistic commentary on American consumerism, and short-termism.

The contrast can also be found in the sheer newness of the coffee house, its parking lot and the cars and the tired façades of the buildings across the road. Elsewhere, artistic intent is more directly expressed in the form of a sculpture upon which a latter-day artist has added their own statement, courtesy of a few spray cans of paint. It joins the river channel graffiti form the most visible physical displays of art.

Grauland Gap, February 2026

The Landing Point sits on the south side of the region in the middle of the road running alongside the wrecking yard. A teleport disk sits in the road like an oversized manhole cover ready to do nasty things to an unwary passing car provides access to Jim’s skyborne store. Sitting between the landing point and the open sea is a children’s playground and steps down to a rough shingle beach that curves around to join the outflow of the river channel.

That the majority of the buildings in the setting are just façades and without interiors makes no difference: Grauland Gap (anywhere USA) is a visually engaging setting – do be sure to view it under the region EEP settings.

Grauland Gap, February 2026

SLurl Details

Cica’s Oh My Heart in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cica Ghost, February 2026 – On My Heart

February has arrived, and with it all the romance (and frequent commercialisation- although in this day and age, what special holiday or day isn’t a commercial opportunity first? In the UK it only took many stores to open on Boxing Day  – the day after Christmas Day if you’re not familiar with the term – for customers to find shelves stocked with love hearts, Valentine’s chocolate selections – and, worse, Easter eggs, fluffy Easter bunnies and Easter bears) of Valentine’s Day.

Fortunately, there are many who are here to offer more fulfilling celebrations of love, romance and Valentine’s Day, including Cica Ghost, who offers a light, fun and engaging view of the month of romance with Oh My Heart.

Cica Ghost, February 2026 – On My Heart

Filled with semi-anthropomorphic hearts, cuddly bears and rabbits, lovable elephants and a Queen of Hearts who is most definitely not of the “Off with their heads!” type. All are gathered within a landscape filled with giant green flowers, looping vines and areas of red-and-black chequerboard patterns, complete tower and wall of red-and-black cubes with blocky rocky upthrusts.

The red heart characters stand on booted feet and appear to be without a care in the world. Their houses are also heart-shaped, whilst the bears and rabbits cuddle red hearts or offer heart symbols to passing visitors. Meanwhile, the Queen of Hearts presides over all from the height of her fairy tale castle up on a mesa reached by stone steps. Black hearts offer dances throughout and sit-points  – some obvious, others perhaps not so obvious, so be sure to mouseover! – are also scattered about, this is another light and delightful setting for anyone to enjoy, whether a romantic or not.

Cica Ghost, February 2026 – On My Heart

The setting comes with a quote from humourist, playwright, poet and author Alan Alexander Milne. It was two tomes of his verses – When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927) – through which he found his literary métier: writing for children. Thus came the two volumes for which he is perhaps most famous: Winnie the Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Whilst ostensibly written for children, notably his son, Christopher Robin Milne, these two works are rich in observations about human behaviour, gentle truths on how to behave and what in life to treasure. It is from the latter that Cica has chosen her quote:

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.  

– A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Cica Ghost, February 2026 – On My Heart

There is a marvellous depth of truth and meaning in this single sentence; so much so that likely it means something different to many of us. Given this, I’m not about to churn out a litany of interpretations. You can do that for yourself both before and after visiting Oh My Heart. What I will say is that I felt especially drawn to this installation because of the quote: Milne is an author I try to read once every 12-18 months (at least the Winnie the Pooh books). I simply love Milne’s kindness and insights.

So, why not go an enjoy Oh My Heart, and then, if you’ve never read the Milne’s two volumes of Winnie the Pooh’s adventures with his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, or haven’t read them in a while / as an adult, I urge you to consider doing so as well.

Cica Ghost, February 2026 – On My Heart

SLurl Details

2026 SL viewer release summaries week #6

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, February 8th, 2026

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 2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – December 2 – No Change.
    • Notable addition: new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for mesh uploads.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.1.0.21525310258, February 3 –  NEW.
  • Second Life Project Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12 – No Change.
    • Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use webRTC voice.
  • Second Life Project One Click Install viewer 26.1.0.21295806042, January 26, 2026 – one-click viewer installation – No Change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer Stable: 1.32.4.20, February 7 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1075 (A) / 0.1.1078 (iOS) – February 5 – Bubble Chat and fixes.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

February 2026 SL Web User Group

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

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday February 4th 2026. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

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

Updates

  • The past month has largely been focused on planning and information gathering as the Web team works out priorities for the year ahead. As such, direction an initiatives may change as decision are made based on information gathered.
  • Current work in progress:
    • Marketplace responsiveness work (i.e. making it more Mobile-friendly), particularly focused on the Marketplace home page and including things like category total to the site navigation sidebar, possibly making the Feature Items on the page high contrast.
    • Refresh of the viewer log-in splash screen, described as “same item, just a different arrangement”. This will b an iterative process within viewer releases as updates are made.
    • Possibly adding the long-requested ability to search by region on the web maps – although this is described a “complicated”. This work might also include some clean-up of other web maps issues that have been raised.
    • A clean-up of legacy codebases.
    • Upgrading the log-in infrastructure.
    • Release of the viewer log-in email modal, asking people to make sure they have a valid email address on file with LL.

In Brief

Also refer to the video.

Marketplace

  • Question to attendees:  if you were a merchant, which Marketplace page would you like to have responsive and would be the most useful to you? currently, Search and listing pages are responsive.
    • This got side-tracked somewhat be a request for data on the number of Mobile users using the Marketplace and questioning why Mobile users would want to have access to the Marketplace, given “they can’t wear anything” (so what? I frequently brose the MP via my PC’s browser without having the viewer running; doesn’t stop me from buying stuff for later, even if I cannot wear it when using my browser; the same is likely true for established users on Mobile).
    • In terms of Mobile responsiveness and merchants – would a merchant use Mobile to manage their listings, etc., over logging-in via their desktop / laptop and managing their stores?
    • A broader preference was expressed for the consumer experience on on Mobile to be more responsive.
  • The Variants / Style work – allowing one listing to have all the colour options for an item – which under Reed Linden’s time at the Lab was a focus to the point of being promised at the “first deployment” in 2023 – appeared to ultimately get swallowed by a black hole. There may be a (further) move to get it back onto the roadmap.
  • A discussion on providing the cost of items in two currencies on MP listing – L$ and local currency (or USD), the idea being to put how much items in SL cost in real terms to help new users. There are complexities to this.
  • Suggestions for the  “Related Items” in listings  should also have:
    • A “Quick Buy” button to add them to the shopping cart without having to open the actual listing and then add it.
    • A “Quick Demo” button to obtain the demo of an item (if the creator provides one) without having to go to the main listing and then click on the demo link and then add the demo to the shopping cart.
    • Both of these options could also be added to Search results as well, allowing people to click through a list of search returns and add the items they want to their cart.

General

  • Question to attendees: which web property would you like to see all nicely polishing and “finished”? Maps was inevitably referenced (as was having the SL Map on the viewer splash screen – which is most certainly a non-trivia project to undertake, together with specific pages in the MP and web search.
    • My preference would be for the Second Life dashboard to be overhauled (elements made more directly accessible, navigation improved, use of drop-downs for things like Groups and Friends lists, options for better input from LL – such as “mini posts” offered as pop-ups within the dashboard, as was once the case, etc.). The dashboard is a core centre for information but looks terribly dated in layout.
  • Canny often receives suggestion for new Canny categories. Should these be submitted individually or as a “group” of suggestions? Group them.
  • It is unlikely that Web User Group meetings will move to a more frequent cadence than once a month as some have requested (ironically, they have also stated other meetings can be “dry” – possibly as a result of them being held too frequently, leaving some meetings with little to discuss).
  • Several subjective opinions were expressed:
    • Banning gacha because “I don’t like them” (so don’t use them – and let those who do carry on).
    • No icons in MP category listings because “I hate them”. Well, they serve an accessibility purpose and are cross-language –  although subjectively, I’d personally like to see some of them made more relevant to their category – what has a figure apparently hanging by one hand from an invisible branch have to do with “Apparel”? Why not an icon an actual item of apparel – pants or a shirt or a dress? If people have to decode an icon by reading its label, then the point of the icon is lose.
    • The icons discussion led to a suggestion that LL should see if descriptions / definitions could be added to categories, so that a mouseover or click would display them.
  • A general discussion on whether gacha items are “use items” or not (yes and no) and to whom the gacha market is aimed.
  • Various discussions on payment methods and other topics in the last third of the meeting.
  • Whilst not a topic for this meeting, it was suggested that the SL URL create.secondlife.com is confusing, suggesting it is for general content creation, whereas the actual portal to which it resolves is focused solely on SLua / LSL scripting(why not script.secondlife.com?).

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, March 4th, 2026.