Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, August 17th, 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
Default viewer 2025.05 7.2.0.16729091892, issued August 5, promoted August 8 – No change.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 12th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) off-week meeting (which I refer to as 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.
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
There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.
In Brief
Harold Linden – SLua:
Has been working on “some major garbage collector surgery” so that memory usage is “properly less than Mono” and general memory profiling will be much better under SLua.
The garbage collector is good with creation and deletion of lots of small objects, with Harold noting:
SLua is weird in that most of the objects managed by the GC are built-in things that will never go away as long as the script is running, so I’ve changed the GC to ignore those entirely to make garbage collection much much faster … I’ve added some code to the GC that’s inspired by some work that was proposed for Lua proper that makes the GC get more aggressive if it thinks it might run out of memory soon .. Luckily GC is _incredibly_ cheap now so you could run it tens of thousands of times a second and it wouldn’t make much of a dent.
Next up, Harold is hoping to work on SLua events, on which he notes:
The event style will be similar to the EventEmitter API in JS `whatever.on(‘someevent’, callback)` with an alternative form that’s similar to how they’re currently specified … It’ll return a handle you can use to unsubscribe … I’m writing a pure-SLua implementation of the new event API first so people can comment on it before it’s solidified as production code, I’ve got a WIP version but I’m just sorting out some unsubscription bugs; the most notable ones, lists-in-lists and the ability to use dictionaries / objects.
He also indicated the the LSL → SLua compiler “will be open-source once we’ve start the beta phase on Agni so people can feel free to improve it. It’s much more approachable than the current compiler.”
Overall, the hope is to start beta testing of SLua on Agni in the next few months; ahead of that, Harold hopes to get an updated alpha to Aditi (the Beta grid) “to make sure events are sound”.
Leviathan provided an update on another issue he has been looking into – a bug that would sometimes cause objects to not show up on login. In providing his update on this work, he noted:
The repro case we had was delicate and would not always show up. In any case that work finally merged into the next server update. The problem was: we were clearing out the server’s “interest list” info on login that would cause the viewer to have to re-request static/cacheable data. With the change going forward we now do a better job of resetting your interest list when you arrive at your final position in the region (on login or teleport from far away). This causes the stuff to show up maybe just a second or two sooner, and less likelihood of some stuff being missing.
However, regarding the issue of issue of some people experiencing failures on logging-in (see my summary of the previous Leviathan Hour), Leviathan noted the fix he thought he had isn’t going to help. Instead, he was able to get a reliable repro which has helped better pin down the problem, which he described thus:
It turns out… if you login with lots of inventory folders at a lull in the traffic in SL you will be more likely to succeed. The system will happily handle 100k inventory folders in less than 10 seconds when the database and login.cgi servers are not under load. However, when things are busy the viewer might decide to timeout after 40 seconds. So… Signal has an idea for how to reduce the problem. It turns out you can configure Mysql server and clients to use gzip data transmission. This would happen between login.cgi and the database, while the login server is trying to compile the big chunk of data that it sends back to your viewer. Perhaps that idea will just help login.cgi and the database keep up and the problem may happen less frequently. That is the status of that.
He further noted another workaround would be to tweak the viewer’s timeout on that particular HTTPS request. This approach would allow TPVs make suitable changes and help their users get around the issue.
Restoring LindenWorld:
This has been a repeated request – to have LindenWorld (the Lab’s first attempt at a virtual environment) “brought back to the grid”, which has had pretty much the same answer with each request.
In essence – the LindenWorld code is very different to the Second Life code; it is incompatible with the current account system. While these problems could be fixed, they would require time and effort.
Harder to solve, as noted by Leviathan at this meeting, are matters of all the backend support: asset system, user database, spaceserver, etc.
All of this would divert developer resources from Second Life, it “would require an unknown amount of backburner work. Couldn’t be done as a first priority”.
Date of Next Meetings
Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, August 19th, 2025.
Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, August 26th, 2025.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, August 10th, 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
Default viewer 2025.05 7.2.0.16729091892, issued August 5, promoted August 8 – New.
glTF mesh import ( should have similar constraints to COLLADA upload, but does not support a unified material upload solution).
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, August 7th, 2025. Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics.
The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work.
This meeting is generally held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
Official Viewer Status
Default viewer 7.2.0.16729091892, issued August 5, promoted August 8 – New.
glTF mesh import (should have similar constraints to COLLADA upload, but does not support a unified material upload solution).
Fixes related to memory allocation, inventory floater, world map and Picks performance.
Fixes for OpenJPG, PBR Texture Panel Repeats per meter improvements and sky ambient colour not blending during day cycle among others.
Fixes for image rendering.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
2025 glTF Mesh Uploader
There were multiple requests for the behaviours within the glTF mesh uploader that do not much the COLLADA .DAE uploader to be revised so that they do conform with the latter.
These had to be shut down, largely due to technically limitations within SL’s internal mesh formats.
The hope is that over time, these limitations can be “peeled” back, and mesh import as a whole improved, most likely by using a new internal mesh format.
No details on what the new internal format will be, as this is still subject to internal discussions at the Lab, but the aim is to make things easier for both content creators and content consumers.
2025.06 Viewer
The next viewer in development is 2025.06, which is described as “not very ground breaking”.
It contains a lot of work and bug fixes original intended for the Maintenance C viewer from 2024, and prior to the viewer release process being revised.
The key feature in this viewer will be Inventory Favourites.
Currently, the viewer is going through a stabilisation process with the aim of releasing an RC Beta as soon as possible.
The aim of the 2025.06 release is to raise the cadence of official viewer releases. This is seen as beneficial on a number of counts:
It allows individual releases to become more iterative in nature, building capabilities and allowing better response to feedback from users.
It breaks the cycle of long delays between viewer releases while the Lab tries to deliver an entire project in a single viewer drop.
It will hopefully allow the Lab to be more nimble with releases, allowing them to come back to major updates and adjust them / add to them based on longer-term feedback, rather than appearing to simply drop a project into a viewer release and then never come back to it with significant updates / improvements.
In Brief
Removing Scale From LI Calculations (Recap/Update):
Signal Linden highlighted a Feedback Ticket he has raised, proposing the removal of scale from Land Impact calculations, which has been touched upon at the last couple of SUG meetings.
However, numerous caveats / issues with the proposal arose as it was further investigated, including potential impacts on physics, issues for streaming calculations, etc., all of which caused a slow-down in the idea.
Rider Linden provided an update, noting that scale land impact is so closely tied into an object’s triangle count that there is no easy way to extricate the two, leading to the risk of small items with a high tri count suddenly exploring in their LI is scale was removed from the equation.
Support for Vertex Animation Textures (VAT) – a means to create complex and non-traditional animations in real time using textures and shaders to achieve the visuals on the GPU, thus having a much lighter performance impact on the CPU when compared to traditional skeletal mesh animations.
Allowing for the complexities of SL, concern was raised over use of VAT “overloading other systems”, with the view that providing support for blend shapes could actually be preferable.
However, given the age and complexity of the SL internal mesh format, adding things like blend shape support (and / or) vertex support, is seen as a “pretty involved effort” with a number of potential complications.
The above led to a more general discussions on animations for things like plants, the LI cost of Animesh and how it precludes it from widespread use; the balance between having lots of animated elements in-world versus potential performance cost; options for baking animations into meshes, etc.
The reason this happens is that (unlike Blinn-Phong, where the offset, scale and rotation are set against the object surface) with glTF materials, that are set against the material itself (as per the relevant glTF specification extension); ergo, changing the material reset them.
This behaviour could potentially be changed through the addition of an override to give more consistency in behaviour between PBR materials and Blinn-Phong; however, any such update comes down to a matter of prioritisation. This prompted an invitation to any interested open source developer to submit a suitable update.
One concern over a possible solution is the need for additional UI elements in what is already regarded as a complicated Build / Edit floater.
Support 16-bit grayscale terrain import: this has been acknowledged by the Lab as a problem that needs to be addressed, but as yet, there has not been the opportunity to take a deep look into possible causes of issues with the RAW terrain file import, and what the correct solution(s) might be.
Nothing on the cards for further .glTF extensions at this time, however, with the glTF importer now in the release viewer “the door is open to a lot more possibilities for what we could do” (e.g. removing the “old” .glTF importer used purely for materials and allowing the “new” importer to handle them, making it much easier to add further .glTF extensions in the future).
A general discussion on scripted animation, inverse kinematics (IK), puppetry, and similar. In short:
Puppetry remains frozen.
It is recognised the proper IK would allow for a range of capabilities (e.g. animation retargeting)
A general discussion on controls and the game_control work. As the latter is Leviathan Linden’s project, and he was not at this meeting, I’ll leave updates on this to the Server User Group summaries.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday August 6th, 2025. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. The official video is embedded at the end of this summary.
Meeting Overview
The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Updates
The Marketplace team hope to release the mobile responsive marketplace search updates in the next week or so.
Note this updates is only for MP search, but there will be future Mobile updates for Marketplace in due course.
Time is being given to some general web property quality of life updates.
Work is continuing on some technical upgrades to critical internal services, defined as “not very glamorous but help keep things running smoothly”.
New bank pay-out options are due to be deployed “in the next week or so” for Brazil, Canada , France, Germany, Lithuania, Malaysia, the UK, the USA and Turkey.
CasperVend integration: reported as “no official updates but we do want to take it on soon”.
Kali Linden noted that she has been working with Casper to develop product specifications for integrating some CasperTech features in to the Marketplace.
Marketplace variants / styles (i.e. multiple option for a product (such as different colours) in a single listing: the Marketplace team has yet to “get back” to this, and the request was for people to keep asking about it.
A request was made for a formal means for AI-generated content to be properly disclosed on MP listings. The broad response to this was content disclosure has generally been treated as being differed to the creator.
The group was asked that if they could create one web feature in SL, what would it be? Responses included:
A 3D SL Map.
Marketplace:
An ability to users to see a 3D preview of assets on the Marketplace.
Formal inclusion of item creation date (not listing creation date) and and the date on which the item was last updated for Marketplace listings. This has actually been looked into, and a plan to offer something “more stable” for creation date is in development, but last update date requires more work.
Filter options for removing specific creators / stores from Marketplace searches. This is acknowledged as being a popular request, and something the Lab wants to look into.
Ability to search the MP by body type. This is something that has been specified internally, and so seen as as something that could be delivered in the future.
Multiple Marketplace wish lists / favourite lists. Again, this has received a lot of requests and is being thought about.
A request for multiple stores under one account. This was seen as a nice idea, but currently hard to implement.
Making the Land Use Fees page more intuitive, and perhaps include a way to calculate group bonus, etc.
The use of AI agents to assist in Marketplace searches was raised, in order to increase accuracy of results, etc.
There is nothing specific in the works for this.
Training AI tools for Marketplace search was seen as a major undertaking, simply because of the size of the MP, and that search could generally be improved a lot more directly without necessarily requiring the use of AI tools.
A discussion on people’s favourite / least favourite things in Second Life during the past week which flowed into a general conversation – refer to the video for details.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 5th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) off-week meeting (which I’ll be referring to as the “SUG Leviathan Hour” going forward). These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting and Patera’s video, which is embedded at the end of this article – my thanks to her for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
The “SUG Leviathan Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.
Simulator Deployments
On Tuesday, August 5th, the majority of the grid – SLS Main channel and RC channels – was updated with simulator update 2025-07-25.16512260888.
The purpose behind this en masse restart (the first in a long time) was to account for network changes intended to allow the Lab to spread simhost servers across across multiple AWS availability zones (not necessarily AWS global regions).
As a result, there will be no RC channel restarts on Wednesday, August 6th.
AI Summit and Tools
Week #31 saw a Linden Lab summit on brainstorming how to use AI moving forward and experimenting with possible uses.
As a result, Leviathan Linden has been exploring how hard it would be to use AI assistants to replace the llmath code in the viewer with GLM (graphics library math), a more standard and faster library; however, this is turning out to be more of a challenge than anticipated, with “lots of changes”, requiring care with the work.
SLua Update
Signal Linden defined the next goal for SLua is to roll it out to some Agni (Main grid) regions in a limited fashion. However there is work to be completed ahead of this happening – such as the project being made production ready, and “real” documentation assembled, and the inclusion of a new API for event handling.
Feedback / ideas for the events API can be submitted here.
Such a partial deployment would obviously be for testing purposes, and would mean that SLua scripts would only run on regions with the server-side support.
It was suggested that those regions offering building / scripting courses are considered for inclusion in Main grid SLua testing.
There is a concern that due to the amount of CPU time consumed even when idling, there is a concern that all script time in a region with a large number of SLua scripts could be consumed by idling scripts. This lead to a discussion on scripts, loads, scheduling and script times.
In Brief
As well as experimenting with GLM, Leviathan Linden has also trying to get some old server projects merged and shipped:
A slight speedup of scene load at login (and maybe less frequent missing content on arrival).
Compressed data from login.cgi for faster download of initial login data (and maybe fewer failed logins for people with lots of inventory folders).
Leviathan also hopes soon start working on the WebRTC voice streaming system.
Rider Linden is hoping to complete the LSL land functionality work he’s been developing for the Moles. This will include a llSetParcelForSale function (name still to be finalised at the time of writing).
Rider is also looking to expand llRequestInventoryData. There have already be requests for it to encompass to get information like tint and alpha from PBR textures, and sound and animation length.
Additional suggestions include PBR properties like metallic/roughness; animation priority; last attach point/position/rotation for a worn item, and last rezzed/in-world position/rotation.
Pepper Linden:
On the Conductor front, it’s been moving through QA, and we anticipate an Aditi and Agni rollout within the next week. During the initial roll out, we’ll be keeping the packing mode the same, and later on, turning on our new ‘packing’ logic (how we place regions on servers).
Some minor notes on our Discord integration for community servers, I had promised that we’d get that out relatively soon but unfortunately Discord has rolled out a UI change to profiles that’s now hiding the connection details, so that’s something we’ll need to figure out and handle before releasing it.
Monty Linden is finishing-up work to move the experience KVP store.
Signal Linden has been working on multiple projects:
Putting together release plans for the next viewer release.
Coordinating with contributors on viewer Discord integration, apple silicon support and other projects.
Following up on the August 5th deployment, and preparing to put some simhosts into another AWS availability zone.
As noted in my week #31 TPVD meeting notes, Camera Constraints Bug (below -0 metre altitude) has been filed. This affects all v7 viewers – but Kirsten Lee (Kirsten’s Viewer) has filed a possible fix.
The mention of the llSetParcelForSale function resulted in a discussion on land rentals in the second half of the meeting – specifically around the use of texture / signs at altitude advertising regions / parcel available for rent, when looking at the world map.
Date of Next Meetings
Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, August 19th, 2025.
Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, August 26th, 2025.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 