Category: SL Tech

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #50

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, December 14th, 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 2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – December 2 – No Change.
    • Notable addition: new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for mesh uploads.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.2.3.19911032641, December 5 –  No Change.
  • Second Life Project Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12 – NEW.
    • Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use webRTC voice.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Kokua: 7.2.2.58037 (no RLV) and 7.2.3.61786 (RLV variants), December 13 – release notes.

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer Stable: 1.32.4.13, December 13 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1075 (A) / 0.1.1075 (iOS) – December 12 – Avatar loading improvements

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #49

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, December 7th, 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 2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – December 2 – New.
    • Notable addition: new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for mesh uploads.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.2.3.19911032641, December 5 –  New.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Megapahit viewer version – 7.2.3.54856 – December 2 – changelog.

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer Stable: 1.32.4.12, December 7 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • Radegast client version 2.50.510, December 5 – release notes.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 week #49: SL CCUG meeting 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, December 4th, 2025 and my chat log of that meeting.
Table of Contents

Please note that this is not a full transcript of the 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.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer 2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – December 2 – New.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

General Viewer Update

  • 2025.08 is largely a maintenance release. However:
    • For Apple Silicon it includes a new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for mesh uploads, so creators on Apple Silicon should be able to upload meshes using it. If this library proves useful on Apple, then it will be implemented for Linux and Windows viewers, allowing the current Havok sub-library to be deprecated.
  • The first planned viewer for 2026 (2026.01) is being referred to as First Impressions. As the name suggests, the focus will be on refining the user experience for those who are coming into Second Life for the first time. Details to follow in the new year.

SLua Update

  • As per the official blog post, the SLua beta on Agni (the Main grid) has been officially announced.
  • The viewer is still a beta RC version, and an updated version is due out “soon”.
  • Official VSCode Plug-in (Recommended).
  • Official scripting documentation.
  • Third-party transpiler (LSL to SLua). Note that whilst viewed as workable, the use of this transpiler might not be as efficient as writing SLua code.
  • The nine beta test regions are centred on SLua Beta Void (mind the water or just search “slua” in the viewer’s World Map)..

WebRTC Voice Update: Speech to Text

  • There has been an LL-internal demonstration of Voice-to-text using WebRTC (transcribing Roxie Linden’s speaking into local chat in the viewer).
  • When used, the generated text is shown in local chat using a different colour to typed text.
  • Transcriptions are currently to English only (although Philip Linden indicated this will be from multiple languages).
  • The demonstration was described by Kyle Linden as “a little rough around the edges, but working.”
  • The process is direct – from voice to text, currently without any need for user intervention.
    • However, given the need for voice to be passed to the WebRTC server, then passed for transcription into text and then passed to the chat service for injection into local chat, there might be a degree of latency between someone speaking and seeing their words appear as text (around 1 second).
    • Going via the WebRTC server rather than using any form of plug-in with the viewer means that anyone using voice will have their words transcribed to text only once, rather than multiple plug-ins receiving the voice and then pushing it to a transcription service before receiving it back (which would be a non-trivial cost – e.g. 100+ plug-ins requesting the transcription of someone speaking at a Linden Community Round Table as opposed to the WebRTC server requesting the transcription once and broadcasting it to local chat).
  • One of the things LL are cognizant of is the tension between providing a fully automated service, which may tread on exiting solutions which meet specific needs, and potentially working to open the capability to allow it to work alongside of existing solutions / assist them.
  • As the transcribed text is pushed to local chat, then it is likely than worn translations tools will pick-up on the text and translate it as well; this many be both beneficial and annoying (beneficial, a non-English speaker can read the translated text just like anything else typed into local chat; annoying as it could result in someone using a worn translation tool constantly receiving walls of text (the spoken word transcribed to English text and then the translated text). As such, it was acknowledged some additional controls might be required.
  • A key point with this functionality is that it is a work-in-progress and not yet ready for formally release (WebRTC has yet to be fully deployed anyway), and once it is available, it will continue to be refined and enhanced (e.g. one enhancement might be to translate voice rather than just transcribe to English) .

In Brief

  • Default viewer chat bar. The independent chat bar was removed with the implementation of the the CHUI (communication hub user interface – the integrated chat and IMs floater) in around 2013 for the official viewer, although some TPVs re-implemented it not long after.
    • Requests have long been made for LL to return the chat bar functionality to the official viewer – and this is now being done, starting with Project Zero (the viewer in a browser).
    • However, if a TPV with the chat bar functionality were to submit a pull request to LL, then consideration would be given to taking the code as-is and implementing it into the 2026.01 viewer.
  • The bug relating to scale / offsets, etc., not being persistent on PBR when switching materials has now been addressed.

Next Meeting

December 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 December 3rd, 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 PLE retry logic following the issues experienced in October.
  • Testing and evaluating marketplace security options intended to offer grater security for merchants on the MP and users of the MP.
  • Work on account security feature to prompt users to verify their emails to reduce account takeovers.
  • Quality of life update: deployed a bugfix for description character counter.

In Brief

  • The following question was asked by LL: If you could REMOVE a feature from Second Life’s web interface, what would it be (i.e. items viewed as annoying / low-use, not things that might be considered bugs requiring fixing)? Responses included:
    • Removal of the Download Second Life banner on the right of a user’s dashboard (under the Lindens Homes banner), on the grounds that the vast majority of SL users will likely have already downloaded and installed the viewer when accessing their dashboard.
    • The removal / update of the Events section of the dashboard.
  • Requests were made regarding:
    • Providing better traffic information through the DG / Search, etc. For example: ensuring traffic numbers are more immediate rather than possibly referencing the previous 24 hours; perhaps providing more of an average metric (e.g. average number of users of a 24, 48, 72 hours or similar period, etc.), or a mix of both (e.g. users currently within a region + an average over a period of time).
    • Enabling panoramic images taken via the 360º snapshot function to be more widely used within SL web properties (e.g. such as the Destination Guide) and / or to be stored in a manner such that they can be used in the About tab of landmark / place floaters, etc.
    • SL’s web map page to support searches by region name as well as the current options.
    • Clarification on how to get edit rights to the SL Wiki – in short, due to issues of spamming text to the wiki via bots, etc., editing rights must now be requested via e-mail.
    • When better guidelines on the uploading / labelling, etc., of AI-generated content to the Marketplace might be forthcoming. This was said to be still subject to internal decision-making.
  • It was pointed out that login-in tokens may not always be passed to the in-viewer web browser (e.g. someone is using the viewer and receives a link to the Destination Guide, which opens the in-viewer browser, they may still be asked to log-in to the DG website within the browser – despite effectively being logged-in to SL – rather than the in-viewer browser loading the Destination Guide main page).
  • General discussions on (refer to video)
    • Translations within SL properties and the viewer UI, etc. In short:
      • A third-party service (not an AI tool) is used for translations.
      • If those fluent in a given language notice errors in translation, they can report them via the feedback portal.
      • It was noted that translation within SL can be difficult due to the number of “made-up” words / terms which might not readily be recognised as “simple” brand names or specific-to-SL-terms without a more generally translatable term.
    • The date last updated field within Marketplace listings (which currently has a bug so it might not display the correct date, which is being investigated) and for the addition of a Date Uploaded field within listings, so users have both.
    • Marketplace reviews, including giving a clear idea of what the star ranking means (e.g. 1= “I don’t recommend it” through to 4 = “this is good” and 5 = “this is perfect”) in order to try to clarify to merchants and consumers alike what people are indicating when they provide a star rating.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, January 7th, 2026.

2025 week #48: SUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Goddess Temple, August 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 25th, 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

  • All simhosts appear to be undergoing restarts this week, with no deployments. This will be due to it being Thanksgiving in the US.
  • One final simulator release for 2025 is in the works.
    • 2025.10 is to be code-named “Jackfruit”, and will comprise crash fixes, optimisations, some internal updates and also work on “some early [WebRTC] Voice moderation features” which will not be exposed to users for the time being.
    • First panned deployment is to the BlueSteel RC channel on Wednesday, December 3rd.
  • The first simulator release for 2026 will be 2026.01 “Kiwi” – details TBA.

SLua Work

  • The SLua beta is now available on the Main grid (Agni). Official information on this is to be blogged either on Wednesday, November 26th, or early in the week after US Thanksgiving.
  • The nine beta test regions are centred on SLua Beta Void (mind the water!).
  • Harold Linden is working on the SL-specific JSON encoding so you can encode and decode vectors and keys, etc., and have them decode as actual keys.
    • This work is implemented within the SLua repository, but has yet to be deployed.
  • The question was asked on when it will be possible to get require from script assets. Rider Linden noted that LL likely doesn’t have plans on the drawing board to include directly from a script asset in inventory, although it could be done with the JSONRPC (plugin makes the request, viewer finds the script, plugin includes it in the pre-processed code) – however, you’d have to have full rights to the script you are including.
  • Official VScode plugin notes:
    • It is not yet available on the VScode marketplace.
    • Issues and PRs for code submissions can be made here, and the plugin downloaded.
  • A general discussion on possible SLua capabilities.

SLua Resources

WebRTC Update

  • Roxie Linden noted that there has been a WebRTC voice server update. This provides HRTF (better spatialization) as well as server crash fixes. It’s still regarded as “beta”, but the WebRTC team is looking for feedback on its usability.
  • WebRTC remains limited to selected Linden-owned regions (on the Preflight RC channel).
  • There have been discussions on expanding the number of Main grid regions supporting WebRTC, but there are no firm plans as to when this might happen.
  • There have also been some internal experiments with voice transcription (captioning).
    • The above led to general requests about text-to-speech and how it “should” work. Roxie made it clear that while the capability has been discussed, no work has thus far been scheduled for it.

In Brief

  • Rider Linden was on call for the past week, so his attention has been split. He has fixed an issue with one of the mail in scripts and keeping on top of the Pull Requests into the VSCode plugin and monitoring the SLua regions on Agni.
  • 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.
  • Monty Linden has been working on an SL Mobile project and will be working on some simulator fixes over the holiday period.
    • He also hopes to find time to write-up all he knows about TP/RC failures and the systems that contribute to them. This is work that will be looked at in the New Year.
  • A general discussion on the use of Discord, including as and official channel for Second Life communications, the pros and cons with the platform, its generally popularity and the requirements for joining various Discord channels (including the SL official).
  • A discussion on SL supporting various chat tools.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025.
  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, December 9th, 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 #47

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 23rd, 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

  • Black Dragon for Windows –  5.5.0 November 21 – release notes.

V1-style

  • No updates.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1067 (A) / 0.1.1067 (iOS) – November 20 – Avatar rendering improvements.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links