2025 week #26: SL SUG meeting

Pususaari, April 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 24th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They 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. No video this week.

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.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • 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

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts (RC channels subject to confirmation at the time of the meeting).
  • The back-end work which had stalled simulator updates over the last few weeks is now coming to an end.

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • The subject of holding the meeting every other week was raised again, somewhat supported by those who have only been attending since the simulator release cycle had been put on hold. The majority still favoured a weekly meeting, with the chair possibly rotated between those Lindens who regularly attend.
  • Leviathan Linden:
    • His work to try to fix the “sometimes not all content shows up at login” problem is awaiting review. If it passes, it could be in the next simulator update (Fig Newton / Fig Pudding – whichever name is now en vogue).
    • Has an idea as to what might be causing missing content on sim crossing and inter-sim TPs, but needs time to dig into it and try to come up with a solution.
    • Also hopes to finish working on a slight speed-up of the code that generates full object updates so that SLua scripts don’t seem slow when processing such updates.
    • Further noted that reports that the new version of Firestorm causing the server to suffer low FPS (45 → 35) for 1 – 4 seconds, every 60 or 90 seconds when driving a vehicle might also be related to object update issues, although he has yet to carry out a detailed investigation to determine a) if it is real; b) what might be causing it.
  • Monty Linden:
    • Has been tracking down the cause of the issue of corrupted Linden grass on and simulator restart (see this report as a reference).
    • Is doing some maintenance work on the Key Value Pair (KVP) store (associated with Second Life Experiences), but noted there are currently no plans for more in-depth work on the KVP store at present, although some plans are being considered.
    • Responding to
    • Allow llHTTPRequest to request application/x-ndjson, noted it would have to be reviewed and that LL’s  http library insists on interpreting response bodies even though it shouldn’t (e.g. can’t do ‘Range’ if a fragment of json or other structured language is to be returned).
  • A request was made for a native HTTP library for SLua, with Leviathan Linden noted there would probably be no special path for SLua http; rather, the plan is for any custom script callback operations to be uniform across the various script engines.
  • A further discussion on issues of people being being able to select non-owned vehicles / having a scripted ability to report when someone else touches a person’s vehicle / attempt to interfere with vehicles.
  • A further discussion on SLua capabilities, with a comment from Leviathan Linden that Rider Linden (on vacation) and Harold Linden (not available for the meeting) would likely be better placed to answer in detail.

† 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 week #25: SL SUG meeting

Semina: The Interactive EP Experience, Silent Melody, April 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 17th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They 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. No video this week.

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.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • 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

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.
  • The stall in simulators releases should be ending soon. It has largely been the result of:
    • Mainly a back-end move from one cloud asset store to another.
    • Coupled with continuing work on setting up github actions to build, store, deploy the various bits and pieces that run the SL backend services.

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • Rider Linden raised the idea of shifting the Simulator User Group meeting to once every two weeks.
    • This was considered fine *if* there were not a lot going on – and with the exception of last few weeks and the end-of-year slow-down, this generally isn’t the case.
    • Most of those at the meeting expressed a desire to keep it on a weekly basis, with one suggestion that if there is not a lot to discuss during any given meeting, it is brought to a close early, rather than always trying to spin it out to an hour.
    • Another suggestion  – from Leviathan Linden – would be to keep the meeting to once a week, but alternate the Linden chairing it (so not always Rider Linden).
  • Questions on Introducing Opacity Control for BOM Layers and Mesh with same material applied to two or more faces but in different slots fail in interesting manner met with pretty much the same response: the ongoing back-end work and updates has more-or-less presented any significant updates involving the simulator.
    • Pepper Linden did indicate there is a desire within LL to do ore with Bakes On Mesh (e.g. PBR support).
  • llGetRegionWorldMapTile is tracked, but currently not on the roadmap for implementation.
  • A discussion on a Canny requesting the ability to trigger animations by UUID: how  / good bad the idea might be; the need to respect content rights (e.g. the The animation asset and the actively playing animation needing separate UUIDs).
    • No conclusions were drawn at the meeting.
  • The above got folded into a discussion on increasing regions sizes, based on this idea, and on a further discussion on UUIDs as a means of storing outfits to “save links” in inventory, uses for “wardrobe2 systems such as CTS, etc.
  • LSL functions to adjust parcel settings was raised and received positive responses from meeting attendees & Lindens (with a due discission on permissions and preventing idiots maliciously using scripts to bugger with other people’s land.

† 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 #24

Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, June 15th, 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: 2025.04 – 7.1.14.15192634334, issued May 25, promoted May 28 – No Change.
  • Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15361077240 June 2 – No Change.
    • This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Firestorm 7.1.13.78266 June 15 – release notes.
  • Kirstens Viewer S24(3) – Fara Build 2440 – Beta, June 15 – release notes.
  • Kokua: 7.1.15.57097 (no RLV) and 7.1.15.60783 (RLV variants), June 7 – release notes.
  • Megapahit: 7.1.145.53776 – June 13 – changelog.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 week #24: SL SUG meeting

TheNest: Sunbird Featherwish, April 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They 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. No video this week.

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.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • 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

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.
  • The Preflight RC will likely get a WebRTC update in the week; the simulator version won’t change but the service will be different – the release includes a fix for a file descriptor leak that lead to crashes. This does not require any viewer-side updates.

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • Parcel boundaries:
    • a long standing issue is that of people (mostly on Mainland) unexpectedly hitting parcels that are closed to public access (e.g. because the parcel edges onto a public road), and the ensuing confusion of getting bounced / losing the vehicle they are on, etc.
    • Rider Linden is hoping to be able to take another look at this in the near future, in terms of making such events less chaotic.
Just to remind people … the parcel bounce is for vehicles entering a parcel. It would check the permissions of all sitters and deny entry if any one sitter couldn’t enter. Essentially it would “bounce” the whole vehicle.
    • The response from those at the meeting was generally positive to this, in that it would end the situation of avatars being unseated from a vehicle which might still be able to enter / pass through the parcel.
  • SLua event handling proposal is being worked on – but exactly what this means could not be specified at the meeting.
  • A general discussion on mesh, mesh physics, uploads and decomposition, which appeared largely driven by a user seeking clarification, which strayed over into the realm of region crashers.
  • The subject of possibly deprecating pathfinding on the simulator (and potentially removing Havok from the viewer, allowing for an alternation for mesh decomposition came up at the meeting: see the In Brief section of my TPVD Meeting Summary for week #23 2025, for more.
    • In addition, Leviathan Linden indicated that pulling “some” Havok dependencies from the viewer could make it easier for physics engine updates.
    • The led to a lengthy discussion on how pathfinding might be replaced, concerns from those who are using it, with no definitive solutions.

† 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 #23

Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, June 8th, 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: 2025.04 – 7.1.14.15192634334, issued May 25, promoted May 28 – No Change.
  • Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15361077240 June 2 – NEW.
    • This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Kokua: 7.1.14.57095 (no RLV) and 7.1.14.60779 (RLV variants)  (2025.03), June 7 – release notes.

V1-style

  • No updates.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.5.550 (A) – June 4 / 0.1.548 (iOS) – June 5 (Further avatar rendering improvements;  improvements to the v-stick controller – size, position and visibility; new water shader + a new setting “Use New Water”; setting to enable/disable automatic log-in; iOS: fix for an intermittent crash when opening Second Life Maps links).

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 week #23: SL TPVD meeting summary

The Quieting, April 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from my chat transcript + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Third-Party Developer meeting (TPVD) held on Friday, June 6th, 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 are generally conducted in text chat.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers

  • Official Viewer: 2025.04 – 7.1.14.15192634334, issued May 25, promoted May 28 – NEW.
    • Chat Mentions (Early Support): Type @ then pick a name. To follow: audible alerts and highlight colour pickers.  This does not support generic mentions such as @everyone or @here.
    • My Outfits subfolders: now supports the use of subfolders.
    • Build Floater improvements: increase to scale boundaries; Physics Material Type now updates when selecting linked objects; Repeats per Meter value no longer incorrect for non-uniform sized objects.
    • Hover height: the minimum/maximum is now +/- 3 meters.
    • Snapshot floater: L$ balances can be hidden independently of the rest of the UI.
    • Preference Search bar: general usability and readability improvements.
    • Refer to the release notes for full updates and fixes.
  • Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15361077240 June 2 – NEW.
    • This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

glTF Mesh Uploader

  • The GLTF Mesh Uploader will be the next viewer release, although it doesn’t as yet have a new-format version number.
  • It is now available on the Alternate Viewers Page (and the version current at the time of writing is linked-to above).
  • The initial release is regarded as a “pretty rough cut”, with fixes already streaming into the code branch such that there is likely to be an update within the week.
    • Those trying the initial release should be aware that rigged mesh import in particular is in an “iffy state” for some of the more complex avatars.
  • As the next planned release, it will be merged-up to the Develop branch shortly – so if anyone would like to get some PRs in now would be a really good time to do that.

Test Items

Linden Lab is seeking content content creators who would be willing to contribute items for testing. Specifically, the Lab is seeking:

  • Rigged meshes only – unrigged content is not required at this time.
  • Everything from the most basic avatar mesh to complex bento, fitted, etc. meshes, clothing and Animesh is welcome.
    • However, avatars with onion layers should not be submitted. If possible, merge such avatars into a singular mesh with rigging in order to help simplify the Lab’s debugging work.
  • Content should be supplied in both glTF and COLLADA.DAE formats, to allow for A/B testing.
  • Content files should be sent to gltf@lindenlab.com.

glTF Uploader “Phase 2”

  • A “reunification” of the various asset import flows, focused on under-the-hood work with the import pipeline.
    • It used to be that assets like sounds, animations, images, etc., were uploaded through a single API when uploaded, but since the arrival of mesh, new asset upload types have diverged from the “common” flow to use their own.
  • The idea now is to provide a single API to get things from a creator’s computer and in-world to simplify the upload process.
  • According the CCUG meeting, this work will include an improved preview capability, providing more representative of what creators can expect to see under a set of EEP parameters, etc.
    • The ability to preview items in-world on Agni (the main grid) prior to upload will not be provided. However, there is still Aditi (the beta grid) for this.
  • It is also hoped that the import flow can be made easier to understand for existing and new content creators (e.g. providing a better preview; having things laid out in a way that makes potential problems more obvious, etc.).

In Brief

  • Switching away from OpenGL: this has not been mentioned for a while, and currently, it looks like LL is going to use an existing API abstraction, so as to allow Apple Metal to be targeted as well. The API mentioned was “something based off of NVIDIA’s Slang API” – with a note that hopes of getting “something potato friendly” is low.
    • However, there has been no firm decision, and alternatives were suggested in the meeting, so things are still up in the air.
  • Signal Linden requested feedback on the idea of deprecating and removing Navmesh characters / llCreateCharacter (i.e. Pathfinding).
I don’t state the idea lightly, and I understand its low adoption is partially due to a complex and buggy implementation. However, I pulled some data and it appears we have 1,900 navmesh characters across the entire grid. Half of those are ours (Think LL experiences.) There are 6 user-owned regions with more than 10 characters… This is very low usage. I haven’t seen any major merchants release notable content with the system due to its unreliability: but please correct me if I’m wrong.

– Signal Linden

    • Those at the meeting didn’t object to the idea.
    • An alternate approach (“more nuanced” as Signal Linden referred to it, once raised) suggested was to leave server-side the functionality in place and just drop the viewer side, until such time as new ways to handle Pathfinding could be developed.
    • Signal repeated that there are benefits (Pathfinding accounts for a lot of simulator-side code), but that not decision has been made as yet, he is seeking feedback.
    • The subject of Havok in the viewer was raised (used for both Pathfinding and mesh decomposition), with suggestions to replace Havok with the open source HACD library or VHACD (or similar newer implementation), were this to be done.
    • A suggestion was made for TPV developers to bring a HACD / VHACD to the viewer as a code contribution.
  • The above lead to a wider discussion on textures (slightly sidetracked by a complaint over the cost of 2K texture uploads for non-Premium + members), and related issues of texture loads on GPUs with limited VRAM,  texture crushing, etc., which continued through the latter part of the meeting.

Next 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.