Category: Second Life

2025 week #46: SUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Celestial Vale, August 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 11th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. They were taken from the video recording by Pantera, embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks to Pantera 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, November 11th, the SLS Main channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, November 12th:
    • All RC channels other than BlueSteel and Preflight should be updated with a new simulator update (Imbu). This “has a couple of performance memory fixes in the simulator. It fixes an issue with region names that contain a ‘.”
    • The BlueSteel and Preflight RC channels will be restarted without any update.

SLua Work

  • Rider Linden has been refactoring some of the official native VS Code plugin for LSL and SLua, and is planning on opening it up and making the repository public on Friday, November 14th.
  • There was a SLua update on the beta grid during week #45:
  • Since then, Harold has been cleaning up the bugs found with that release, with the aim of getting a limited deploy to a few simulators on Agni (the Main grid) later in November. This will be to simulators hosting Lab-managed regions; “volunteer” regions from region holders will be accepted further down the deployment road.
  • Viewer-side support for SLua is also defined as “iffy” – an update to the viewer has been anticipated, but work on it is pending Harold competing the work fixing the bugs in the simulator deployment.
  • A question was asked as to why vectors and quaternions are immutable in SLua. In reply, Harold stated:
Vectors are immutable because that’s just how it is in Luau, they’re not garbage-collected, they’re a value type. Storing a vector is exactly as cheap as storing a number. Quaternions _are_ garbage collected but they’re immutable for symmetry with how vectors work, and honestly people don’t tend to create a bajillion of them per frame so IDK if making them mutable is worth it. GC overhead isn’t something you have to worry about so much since we abstract away most of the GC details. 
They’re not reference types so mutability probably wouldn’t work the way anyone would expect without special language support that would be hard. In reality, they were never mutable in LSL either, it just sort of pretended they were by hiding the fact that it was actually making a whole new vector.
    • Harold also noted that he settled on the canonical name “quaternion” in SLua because it’s easier to google what to do with them compared to “rotation”(which could mean anything), but he is open to ideas on this. The term appeared to find acceptance among those at the meeting, with the conversion flowing through the middle third of the meeting.
  • It was asked if it would be possible to add more functions to SL standard SLua libraries – e.g. someone writes really commonly used functions that might then – be included in common/native libraries?
    • The reply was yes, it is possible, but currently LL are being conservative because while it is relatively easy to add things, it is harder to removed them later if they turn out to be a bad abstraction or similar.
    • This led to a broader discussion on SLua scripting, etc.

In Brief

  • Leviathan Linden has been carrying out Voice related work, but is now “almost done” with that. He is currently focusing back on simulator crash and performance issues.
  • Leviathan also provided some feedback on a question from his “office hours” meeting on November 4th:
[I was asked] last week about some bugs in llBase64ToString() method. Apparently it was designed to replace C0 control codes (chars with numerical values < 32) with “?”, and fails to replace a C0 character if it is at the end of the string. I looked at the code and as far as I can tell that really is a bug… we skip the last character of the string for an “off by one” error. It has been around since before 2007. The question is: can we fix it?
    • It was suggested that either LL should make a new llBase64ToStringFixed() LSL function so as to preserve compatibility with old scripts implementing their own workaround; or a fix similar to that for XorBase64* is implemented.
  • Monty Linden is “looking into weird bugs and doing a project related to mobile.”
  • Pepper Linden has been carrying out more Conductor work to help with region packing. Pepper has also been engaged in the work on outfits support for the next SL Mobile update.
  • A question was asked on the status of long-discussed possible updates / improvements to in-world Land Impact calculations (such as removing Scale as a factor, as had been most “recently” discussed in SUG meetings). In short: no real progress at this time, due to the issue being somewhat complicated.
    • This led to a conversation on Land Impact, LODs (and LOd decimation) allowing larger megaprims, etc.
  • Also flowing through themeeting was a conversation relating to region sizes, region crossings, water planes, etc.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, November 18th, 2025.
  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, November 25th, 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.

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #45

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, November 9th, 2025

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy.
  • This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Outside of the Official viewer, and as a rule, alpha / beta / nightly or release candidate viewer builds are not included; although on occasions, exceptions might be made.

Official LL Viewers

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Kirstens Viewer S24(5) Beta 1 – November 8 – release notes.

V1-style

  • No updates.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

The mystery of Hrafn Island in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hrafn Island, November 2025 – click any image for full size

Occupying a small portion of a homestead region – the rest being given over to open water – is Hrafn Island. The work of Frankie (Frankie Blackwood), it is a windswept place, aged and with a sense of both history and mystery.

Black sand, cold mist, and the echo of wings. The ravens came first, then the sea. Some say the waves still carry their voices, whispering to those who dare walk alone.
The island remembers what it’s given, and what it’s taken back

– Hrafn Island About Land

Hrafn Island, November 2025

As regulars to these pages know, I tend to be especially drawn to locations in Second Life which have – or may have – been (in full or in part) inspired by physical world locations. On seeing the name of this setting, I couldn’t help but wonder if it might have been inspired by the small but handsomely rugged Ramsey Island sitting off the  Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, a name that forms “Hrafn’s Island” in Old Norse, referencing the many ravens (and perhaps choughs which might from a distance be mistaken for ravens) to be found there (among a variety of other species of birds).

It turned out my assumption was likely wrong, but this doesn’t negate the fact that Frankie’s Hrafn Island is a home to ravens, and is – more prominently – a richly engaging setting carrying with it both overtones and undertones of Nordic expression (for example, as well as meaning “raven”, Hrafn is also masculine personal and byname in Old Norse).

Hrafn Island, November 2025

This is a setting that is beautifully minimalist, much in keeping with parts of Iceland: rugged, green, and showing clear signs of its volcanic history – in this case, notably by the basalt columns protecting much of the coast from the surrounding waters and the dark volcanic sands of the beach areas. The humped back of the island is devoid of trees and shrubs, the land being given over to rough grass on which sheep graze and a horse roams. The honest, simple beauty it presents is breath-taking, as is the dual sense of history and mystery I’ve already alluded to.

Further Nordic elements can be found in the form of the small homestead and its barn also occupying the island, together with small totems on the beach and the rough-hewn standing stones carved with runes. These – perhaps in part because of the region’s misty Shared Environment (by which it should obviously be seen – give the setting an enigmatic air.

Hrafn Island, November 2025

The greater part of this mystery, however, comes in the form of 17 pages of a journal. Scattered across the island and awaiting discovery by the keen-eyed, these appear to have been written by one Eira Sævarsdóttir – a name which further points to Iceland as a source for the setting’s imagined location, as does the place by which Eira appears to have reached this island: Stykkishólmur, a town located on Iceland’s Snæfellsnes peninsula.

This journal presents an unfolding story of a deeper, older secret wrapped around the island; a mystery which draws Eira into its (dark?) heart, her fate forming a further chapter in its writing. It’s a tale I don’t want to spoil here; far better for it to to be discovered as the various pages are found and compiled (such is their scattering across the island, indoors and out, the order in which they might be found does not necessarily match their numerical order) such that they might be read in chronological order. While this may take a little time (it’s not always easy to locate individual pages – although a viewer with Area Search might help those pushed for time), for those who like to fully enjoy a setting, I do recommend doing so and then reading the journal in full.

Hrafn Island, November 2025

With its mystery to be solved, a windswept, rugged beauty and even a spot of surfing to be had by those so minded, Hrafn Island makes for an engaging visit.

SLurl Details

Cica’s 100th in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cica Ghost, November 2025: 100th

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!

SLurl Details

  • 100th (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

2025 week #45: 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 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.
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 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.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

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.

CCUG Discussion – In Brief

  • Brief discussion on the following PBR bugs:
  • 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.

Next Meetings

November 2025 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 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.
    • 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

  • 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:
  • 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.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025.