Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, January 12th, 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.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday January 8th, 2025. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.
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), 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.
There were some outages and slow delivery times on the Marketplace in the run-up to the holidays.
Due to these problems, store holders were unable to see the view count on their Top Selling Products report, as it was not reporting correctly. This has now been corrected, and the view count is once more reporting correctly, and will not be removed from the report.
The underlying causes of all of these issues should now be fixed. Anyone experiencing continued problems WRT them should file a ticket.
Decimal point values manifesting on L$ amounts: users noted that places such as the Marketplace cashier page started displaying decimal point valves on L$ amounts (e.g. L$50.98). This was not intentional, and should now be corrected. Again, anyone still seeing it should file a ticket.
Related Items Display on MP listings: an issue with Related Items not displaying correctly on Marketplace project listings has been fixed and related items should all display correctly, even when resizing the browser window smaller.
[Video: 7:36-8:20] Featured News Blog feed: the Feature News blog widget on the default viewer log-in screen (“Linden News” on Firestorm) is currently broken.
Broken blog feed widget on the default log-in splash screen for the viewer
This may also be causing Featured News failing to display on the dashboard (which might display something like Grid Status instead).
The pages at community.secondlife.com have been refreshed as a part of the overall drive to update the appearance of the various pages / sites.
The refreshed community.secondlife.com pages / portal
Four page themes are offered on refreshed pages: Light Classic, Light New, Dark Classic, and Dark New (the default). These can be selected via the Themes drop-down link at the foot of refreshed pages:
Options for switching Second Life refreshed page themes
Issues have been reported when displaying Knowledge Base articles in the new layout (not clear if this is in general or specific to the Dark mode(s)), and LL are working to rectify these issues.
Again, if anyone notes specific issues with page displays in any of the themes, please file a ticket.
Updated, January 9th: Similar work in planned for the dashboard (secondlife.com), although at the time of writing, this has yet to be surfaced – although Sntax Linden indicated it was “very close to being deployed”. The initial Dashboard refresh has been deployed.
The initial dashboard refresh (secondlife.com) was deployed shortly after this summary was published. Currently, there is no option to change themes
Within secondlife.com, the What Next? section (top menu bar and https://secondlife.com/my/whatnext/) is also to be significantly updated, as much of it is very dated in content. However, the time frame for this surfacing is still TBD.
Sntax Linden indicated that this can also be a subject for discussion at WUG meetings (he is on of those leading the work), although it may evolve into having its own user group in the future.
Overall response appears positive, although some appear to have pain points – notably with multi-factor authentication causing problems in loading the viewer. This was thought to have been fixed, but still appears to be an issue.
The time limit for Project Zero has now been increased to 1 hour per session (from 10 minutes).
The viewer-in-a-browsers website, showing increased time limit (as of January 9th, 2025)
Reasons as to why people might not use the services (currently still free) given at the meeting included:
Inability to: save viewer Preferences; perform uploads; save chat IM logs, etc.
Lack of Firestorm support.
No in-built (client-side) AO for avatars.
Most of the above are on the roadmap – see my article in the link at the top of this section – although TPV support is dependent on TPVs being willing to engage in the project as it continues to be developed.
There have been reports of zero.secondlife.com not working on Brave (Chrome derived browser) which were thought to have been fixed; however Brave still hangs without loading the viewer (the same is true for Gener8, Vivaldi and Epic, all of which, like Brave, are heavy on privacy browsing).
Note that from the 48 minute point onwards, this conversation devolves in discussions on food.
In Brief
A further discussion on https://maps.secondlife.com/ following that of the December 2024 meeting, this focused on the search function and how it arrives at its results, given they do not appear to be region / parcel based.
This segued into a wider discussion of map searches and sources used, accuracy of returns, preferred means of searching for places (e.g. SL search – then use the Map link in the relevant result, or use Maps (in-world or web), etc.
As a part of the more general search comments, it was suggested that when users have Maturity ratings set (e.g. only G or only M), search indicated that results are limited due to the set rating.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 7th, 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, January 7th, 2025, the simulators on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no update.
On Wednesday, January 8th:
The BlueSteel RC should be updated with the Apple Cobbler simulator update, which includes: llGetAttachedListFiltered(),llGiveAgentInventory(),llMapBeacon(),llTransferOwnership(), and a modification to llModPow, so it should work faster (however, it does not correctly handle the full range of positive 31-bit integers -and Leviathan Linden is working to define the range for which it supplies correct answers, so check the wiki page for updates).
The remaining simulators on the RC channels are to be restarted without any update.
SL Viewer Updates
Release 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: none at present.
In Brief
Please refer to the video below for the following:
A discussion on llSetAgentRot and extending it, with Rider Linden noting:
I left the API open to be able to use any rot. Unfortunately there are a lot of assumptions in both the simulator and the viewer about the agent only rotating around Z. Changing that is going to be a much larger project.
Questions were asked on improving the quality of Linden Water effects and reflections. Such questions are best dealt with via the Content Creation User Group (summaries here).
An intertwined discussion with the above about Linden Water and swimming options.
There have been requests for a llSetObjectMass() function. Whilst this doesn’t currently exist, this SL wiki page has been created to provide a (hopefully) equitable capability, with Leviathan Linden noting:
Vehicle developers were asking for an llSetMass() method so they could standardize the mass of the vehicle after the agent had sat down. It turns out that LSL function is not necessary, there is a way to do it with existing LSL functionality, but it is a little tricky for multi-prim objects.
A further discussion on improving vehicle interaction with parcel bans – something LL is hoping to address – such as the potential for putting banline information on the mini-map, with other suggestions being put forward.
This led to a broad discussion on issues of parcel privacy and access, security and forced teleporting of unwanted visitors.
Requests have been made to modify Experience permissions so that creators can set them to “only this time” or “work like phone apps“. This led to a discussion on Experiences and the format of the permissions dialogue, etc.
† 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, January 5th, 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.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, December 29th, 2024
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.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, December 22nd, 2024
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 – New.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 