The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 18th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – 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.
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.
Simulator Deployments
On Tuesday, February 18th, 2025, the Banana Bread update was deployed to the SLS Main channel This update includes expansions to llGetObjectPermMask that let you get an object’s permission mask taking into account the permissions on its inventory, and that ability has been added to llGOD.
On Wednesday, February 19th, 2025:
Carrot Cake should be deployed to the Bluesteel RC. This includes Monty Linden’s work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible).
The remaining RC channel will be restarted without any deployment.
SL Viewer Updates
Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No Change.
In Brief
Please refer to the video below for the following:
Leviathan Linden has been been working with another Lab developer to improve avatar loading. He believes they have been able to make a few improvements, particularly in improving near-to-far sorting for avatar loading, with those nearby loading the fastest.
He hopes that the work will surface in a viewer update in March.
This is seen as offering “small” improvements, as further work will be required on the simulator end so the server sorts avatar data at its end rather than just sending it, but this has yet to be done.
Leviathan also noted that the packet loss / UDP data loss noted in the last SUG meeting appears to be a result of the viewer allowing the network socket buffer (the one managed by the OS) to overflow, which can happen when the viewer experiences a long frame. It can also affect avatar loading, so his fix for the issue is going into that work.
Region crossings / Disconnects: More reports of issues, particularly around teleports and disconnects user Quinn Elara has been logging her experiences, which the Lab has been looking at (note: be aware if posting viewer log information to the Feedback Portal, as it can contain personal information). This issue became a topic of conversation through a portion of the meeting.
The above slid into a conversation of using the BugSplat tool in the viewer for reporting data.
† 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, February 16th, 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.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Release viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226. formerly the ExtraFPS RC, dated December 17, promoted December 19 – No change.
Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No change.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Third-Party Developer meeting (TPVD) held on Friday, February 14th, 2025. My thanks to Pantera as always for providing it.
Meeting Purpose
The TPV Developer meeting provides an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and features for, the Second Life viewer, and for Linden Lab viewer developers and third-party viewer (TPV) / open-source code contributors to discuss general viewer development. This meeting is held once a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.
Vir Linden Departure
Vir Linden is one of the latest departures from Linden Lab. A long-time members of the Viewer Team and well-liked and respected for his work their and on a range of projects such as Bento (which he morphed into the Content Creators User Group), and will as running the open Source Developer meetings. No information on Vir’s departure was given, but his place for this meeting (at least) was taken by the Lab’s Director of Engineering, Signal Linden.
My personal best wishes to Vir, and thanks for all his work at the Lab, and time spent working with users.
Official Viewers
Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025.
Numerous crash and performance fixes.
Status
ForeverFPS is defined as “being in a home stretch” in getting the viewer to release status.
The focus now is on showstopper bugs and getting as much feedback as possible on the viewer.
And upcoming version of ForeverFPS will include all the updates to Linden Water (some of which are also in the latest Firestorm Beta versions undergoing testing).
Geenz Linden re-iterated the overall status on the work with Linden Water as stated at the last CCUG meeting, including outlining the new water exclusion surfaces (e.g. for keeping water out of boat hulls) and their limitations (e.g. they are not intended for use as exclusion volumes in underwater structures, that’s “for the future”).
Open-Source Contributions, Viewer Release Cadence and Roadmap
Signal Linden has put forward a document for improving how open-source contributions are managed, including general communications between the Lab and contributors and offering more transparency on how contributions are managed.
Alongside of this, LL are hoping to introduce a more predictable release cadence with viewer updates, something delayed since the move to gitflow in 2024 due to the sheer volume of viewer changes and updates spread across multiple viewer RC branches which had to be directed into the core Develop branch.
The hope is that implementing the latter will:
Enable TPVs to have a more predictable calendar of viewer updates they need to pull and merge.
Open-source contributors can have a more reasonable expectation as to when they might see contributions reach the viewer.
The aim is to move to a monthly viewer update cadence, and to implement a viewer version numbering system which reflects this cadence (e.g. viewer version numbers with 2025.03 to indicate a March 2025 release, 2025.04 for April, etc.).
To achieve this, the plan is to make releases smaller and more digestible for TPVs to absorb (again, making the flow of contributions and key code updates faster) rather than having them face huge merge requirements and testing.
One possible caveat to this is might be with “significant” projects which do incorporate large numbers of changes to the viewer, leading to them being handled differently. However, exactly how they might differ will be dependent on what comes along in this regard (e.g. glTF mesh uploads (and scene imports?)) .
To further assist in viewer development visibility, LL hope to update and be more forward in maintaining a visible viewer roadmap, together with “public planning meetings”.
[Vide0: 28:50-37:45] A discussion on ways of highlighting issues among the 700+ LL have in github for which they really need help from TPV / open-source developers, including some form of rewards system (in addition to the SEC bounty payments) as used to be done with LL merchandise, credits in the viewer Help → About, etc.
LL recently blogged on matter of account and L$ balances security, the post came in the wake of LL noting a rise in reports of what they call “account takeovers”.
One specific vector used for phishing for account credentials is the use of links sent via Group (or even direct) IMs and within Profiles which carry the user to a fake SL website (e.g. a false Marketplace page), encouraging the user to enter their credentials, or which hide a potentially malicious webpage with in link.
Given this, Philip Rosedale asked for ideas on how such false flag links might be better countered / reduced in their threat level.
Displaying external link found in Group IMs, Profiles, etc., could be via dialogues which display the URL, to help prevent phishing, etc.
Numerous suggestions were made, including: new accounts shouldn’t be able to start a large group chats; only Group owners and moderators can share links; posting links in Groups should be made a specific Group ability to be granted by the owners / moderators; making users more aware that hovering the mouse over links in chat, Profiles, etc will reveal the link URL; having a dialogue interdict clicks on links which displays the URL and requests the users to confirm whether or not they wish to go to the website (as with licking in-world items with embedded links (see right); force the URL to be the link (rather than hidden behind text).
This discussion also encompassed logging-in and alerts based on geo-location (e.g. in cases where user X traditionally logs-in from one country, but suddenly logs-in from the other wise of the world, so they get an alert to confirm they are actually logging in).
Please refer to the video for the specifics of the discussion.
Still no firm date on when Voice services will become WebRTC only (and the Vivox service turned off), outside of “hopefully, early this year”. Several factors are delaying this, including the number of users who are not utilising WebRTC-enabled viewers (predominantly those who have not moved to a PBR-capable viewer).
Havok physics in the viewer: over a decade ago, Havok sub-libraries were added to the viewer specific to assist with Pathfinding mesh uploads.
These libraries are starting to prove problematic in various areas (e.g. getting the viewer to run with native Apple Silicon support).
As a result, there have been discussion internally at LL about removing Havok support from the viewer.
One suggestion for doing so is to switch over to the open-source Recast Navigation for Pathfinding, and to use a convex hull decomposition library for mesh uploads.
A general discussion on text rendering in-world on prims, etc., such as by using Signed Distance Field (SDF).
† 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 11th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – 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.
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.
Simulator Deployments
On Tuesday, February 11th, 2025, the simulators on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no update.
On Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 the Banana Bread update should be deployed to the remaining RC channels, having been deployed to BlueSteel RC last week) This update includes expansions to llGetObjectPermMask that let you get an object’s permission mask taking into account the permissions on its inventory, and that ability has been added to llGOD.
Upcoming Deployments
The simulator update to Banana Bread is called Carrot Cake.
Development on this update has been “accelerated” such that an initial deployment to the BlueSteel RC in week #7 (commencing 17th, February 2025).
This update should include llSetGroundTexture – this will allow a region owner/EM to set and adjust ground textures on a region, including some of the PBR features like rotation, offset and scale.
Monty Linden indicated his work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible) is to be rolled into Carrot Cake. He further indicated that he plans to update the SL Wiki documents on EventQueueGet as time permits.
SL Viewer Updates
Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025.
Numerous crash and performance fixes.
SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1.542 / 0.5.533 – Create / Delete accounts, fixes – February 4, 2025.
In Brief
Please refer to the video below for the following:
Requests were made for LSL capabilities for manipulating the upcoming llGroundTexture.
There was a report that the entire SLS Main Channel was restarted a second time during week #6. However, Rider Linden indicated that a number of regions were moved between servers, which prompted restarts, but there was no additional LL-lead restart of the entire channel.
There are reports that there is a bug with llRezObjectWithParams: in using REZ_POZ with the local flag set TRUE, the rezzed object is positioned against in-world coordinates instead of rezzer local coordinates. So, for example, if the rezzer is aligned with world coordinates, the object arrives where expected, but if the rezzer is rotated, the object continues to arrive at the unrotated position. A bug report has been requested on this.
Rider Linden noted that there is liable to be Lua server-side scripting engine news “soon”. This was followed by a general discussion on the project.
Leviathan Linden has confirmed the viewer is dropping packets when it gets spikes of UDP data. He is going to try to provide a patch for viewers to prevent this, but also needs to look into the server behaviour to try to determine why and how the data spikes are happening. This sparked a discussion on UDP, packet loss and bandwidth which ran the most of the meeting.
† 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, February 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.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Release viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226. formerly the ExtraFPS RC, dated December 17, promoted December 19 – No change.
Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No change.
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 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: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, 2024, promoted December 20, 2024 – No Change.
Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025.
The “not so great news”: it is not possible to get Linden Water to look exactly as it did “pre-PBR”.
The “great news” is that LL can get very close in terms of overall look.
Most of the old Fresnel reflection/refraction, together with some of the underwater fogging has been restored.
Some of the fixes for water are currently in the very latest Firestorm Beta (and will presumably be going into the official ForeverFPS RC, if not there already).
Feedback on the changes – with the caveat things cannot (per above) ever be 1:1 with “pre-PBR” water appearance – is regarded as very important in order for the Lab to judge how well the changes are working.
This work is not the end of water tweaks; Geenz is looking at restoring real-time water reflections once the performance impacts of doing so can be assessed.
This will involve the use class of Hero reflection probe (like mirrors), which means the mirror capability as a whole will need additional optimisation work, as any frame rate drops it might incur are currently deemed as “not acceptable” by the team.
In addition, Geenz is looking at improving reflections more generally via the automatic reflection probes, such as reducing the moiré effect of Screen Space Reflections (SSR) on water.
The above will hopefully be released either in a dedicated viewer to follow ForeverFPS, or rolled into the viewer(s) directly following ForeverFPS.
“Hide Water” – Water Exclusion Surfaces
Geenz Linden has been working to provide a means of excluding Linden Water from internal volumes such as boat hulls, and has arrived at a solution with the technical name Water Exclusion Surfaces (WES).
The capability will hopefully be surfacing in an update to the ForeverFPS RC viewer. When it does:
It will likely be an option setting within the Texture tab of the Build / Edit floater, the name of which is still TBD, but is currently being referred to as “Hide Water”, and will work with most prim and mesh shapes to which it is applied (see the limitations notes, below).
When used with boats and similar:
It will cull Linden Water and the associated subsurface fogging when looking down on the hull / surface from above.
If looked at from directly below, it will only cull the underwater plane, the fogging will be intact.
Water exclusion surfaces should work as well as / better than invisiprims (e.g. they won’t clash with worn alphas or cause shader issues, occlusion culling will work correctly, etc.
Limitations:
The capability will not provide volumetric water exclusion (e.g. “hiding” water from the inside of underwater buildings) – This is a “future looking thing”, which might be addressed in the future. It is intended for use in boats and similar.
It is not intended to replace all use cases associated with invisiprims, and should not be taken to be a “replacement” for the latter.
The capability will not work when incorporated in an attachment (the attachment will render, but the exclusion surface will be ignored and will not hide Water) or rigged mesh (the rigged mesh will likely be rendered black). This is by intent, to limit performance impacts. Also do not work on the system avatars.
There are some additional limits to ease performance impact (e.g. fogging will not get really dense when looking up through the water plane).
In Brief
Placing Linden Water on prims or mesh: not a capability currently being developed, but one that is subject to internal discussions at times.
It was again noted that many creators are still awaiting scripted support for PBR (e.g. PBR specific texture offset / UV coordinate manipulation).
This support is described as “still on the roadmap”, but may have had other priorities push it down the list of priorities.
The fact that creators are waiting on them will be taken back from the meeting for internal discussion.
Cosmic Linden’s PBR terrain painting work remains on hold due to her being engaged in other work. Work on glTF mesh import is much the same.
Geenz noted that following ForeverFPS there is a lot of additional render maintenance and similar work required on the viewer as well as additional / in progress feature sets, and all of this work needs to be prioritised.
Maxwell Graf recently posted a request to increase the polygon resolution for terrain – and asked about the potential technical / performance issue this might cause (if any), and whether it is something that might be selectable (e.g. if you want the higher polygon resolution then enable it on your region(s), if you don’t – then don’t!).
The short answer to this, there is no technical reasons as to why not – beyond testing and assessment for unforeseen impacts; although a) the request itself has yet to be officially responded to; b) the above doesn’t necessarily mean it will be acted upon.
However, it did led to LL requesting people with ideas for SL terrain to file feature requests for future consideration.
A further request was made for scenic backdrops to be available for regions (e.g. rendered options that can be rendered in place of the water and taking the form of a range of in-viewer selectable options – cityscape, forest, hills, mountains, etc., – so that actual mesh / sculpty based region surrounds do not have to be used.
This is something Sansar did reasonably well – including custom surrounds.
Feature requests via the feedback portal were asked for on this.
It was noted that SL lighting still needs to be updated – again not on the immediate roadmap, but under consideration; however, the hoped-for punctual lighting has been pushed back.
An issue with updating lighting (and things related, like how shadows function), is that the lighting system was developed at a time (early 2000s) where it had to be constrained. While things have developed to a point where those constraints may no longer be applicable, they are nevertheless heavily baked-in to SL, and will require considerable effect to unpick and replace.
Feedback through the feedback portal on what people would like to see with lighting / shadows was requested, in order to help the Lab further understand expectations, determine options and factor feedback into a more holistic approach to lighting in SL at some point in the future.
Screen Space Reflections (SSR): this is again something Geenz would like to get back to, but (again) would like feedback via the feedback portal on issues people have why they do / do not use SSR – particularly issues they have with SSR that are not related to Linden Water (e.g. on glossy surfaces), what they feel is needed, etc.
The general feedback on this was that SRR on other surfaces works reasonably well (if with random noise in places – which Geenz believes he has a handle on fixing in the future), and possibly increasing the angle at which it can be seen to take effect).
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 