Category: SL User Group Meetings

2026 week #16: SUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Pususaari – Where spring feels gentle, February 2026 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 14th, 2026 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

  • No SLS Main channel deployments for the week, but the channel was restarted.
  • The WebRTC deployment will be expanded to Magnum, finally completing its deployment across all RC channels.
  • The next simulator update – Loganberry – will include (among other thinks) the performance improvement work Leviathan has been working on and the fix for avatars remaining a cloud Leviathan has also developed (which addresses causes of clouding on the simulator – viewer-side clouding is not touched).

In Brief

  • Leviathan Linden:
    • Has been ” removing use of Tilia (payments system) from our code.” Exactly what this means is unclear, given the use of the Tilia wallet and close ties between LL and Thunes, Tilla’s owners.
    • He has also spent a little bit of time trying to incorporate some suggested code changes for the game_controller code, as suggested by a user, but upon testing he found something isn’t working right, so some investigation is required.
  • Rider Linden has been working on viewer code to support the new language definition cap.
  • Monty Linden has been working with the Firestorm team on some of the TeleportFinish failure modes. One set of fixes, involving viewers simply walking away from the HTTP connection, is getting improvements so one subset of viewer-side TP/RC issues will be improved.
    • Kyle Linden noted that the SL 26.2 Flat UI Beta (releasing soon) also has a viewer-side TP disconnect fix.
  • Harold Linden (SLua):
    • There are a number of crash fixes and minor correctness fixes out on the Aditi (the beta grid), which should be coming to the Lua region on the main grid “soonish”.
    • As Rider mentioned, the scripting language definitions are going to be accessible to the viewer now, so you can always pull down the correct type definitions for whatever region you’re currently on.
    • Harold is additionally generalising his work for making llSetPrimitiveParams less annoying to use. Essentially it’ll be a fluent API where you can batch up prim params commands as you would do currently, but you do it through function calls rather than manually adding a bunch of stuff to a list.
  • Kyle Linden indicated there will be a “big push” on Lua documentation in the upcoming week(s).

General Discussion

Please refer to the video below as well.

  • It has been again reported that large linksets of prims or meshes that have alpha scripting (LSL and / or Lua) against Blinn Phong materials (apparently PBR is reported as working as expected) for certain parts of that linkset are failing to change alpha state or are slow to change. Copies of suitable linksets / a formal bug report on this were requested.
    • This sparked something of a discussion on probable causes, length of time the bug has been around, means to repo, etc., running through the mid-point of the meeting through to pretty much the end.
    • As a part of the discussion llSetLinkGLTFOverrides fails to clear alpha override was raised. No updates were given.
  • A WebRTC question was asked: the current settings seem to be 60m range, no distance attenuation. Is that the only option available?
    • Response: there should be distance attenuation. The curve is different than Vivox, though. If you’re not experiencing any distance attenuation, bug fixes are required with more details so LL can try to replicate what you’re doing.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, April 21st 2026.
  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, April 28th, 2026.

† 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.

2026 week #14: SL Open Source (TPVD) meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source Developer (OSD) meeting held on Friday, April 3rd, 2026, together with my chat log of that meeting.
  • Pantera’s video of the meeting (embedded at the end of this article) – my thanks to her for providing it.
  • Please note that this is not a full No video this week, as Pantera was absent the meeting.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The OSD meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meeting. It is open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
    • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer  – Legacy search; WebRTC improvements; QoL improvements – 26.1.0.22641522367 – March 12.
  • Release Candidate viewer – one-click installer = 26.1.1.23806384790 – March 31 – NEW.
  • Second Life Project Viewers:

Viewer 2026.01.01 – One-Click Installer / Velopack

  • Now available as a RC viewer – see above.
  • This could be promoted as early as week #15, depending on how it performs (crash rates, etc.), over the next few days..

Other Viewers

  • 2026.02 – “Flat” UI and Splash Screen Refresh – this is due to have an Alpha update issued on April 3rd.
  • The Lua Alpha viewer is also due to have an update issued on April 3rd.
    • Note, LL are now officially dropping “SLua” (“SL Lua”) and just going with “Lua”.
Example of the upcoming flat UI. Via: Geenz Linden / Github #4681/2
  • The viewer formerly known as the Second Life Visual Polish viewer (SLVP) is now known as the Second Life  Second Life Graphics Care Package.
    • The hope is to get that into alpha soon – but only after we get the necessary server work done and get some regions up on ADITI.

WebRTC Deployment

  • The WebRTC deployment has hit a “hiccup”.
  • As a result the deployment has slowed, with WebRTC liable to remain only on the RC server channels (Le Tigre, BlueSteel, Magnum, etc.) and covering about14% of the Main grid until the problem is resolved.
  • Anyone experiencing Voice issues with WebRTC is asked to file a bug report.

General Discussion

  • There is an increasing issue of AI driven pull requests.
    • This appears to be a case of people trying to make claims via the bounty programme for code submissions without actually putting any effort into the work.
    • Commenting on the matter, Geenz Linden noted:
If you’re using LLMs to submit pull requests, that’s not an automatic no. However, blatantly vibe coded submissions, submissions that are effectively taking stuff from other viewers without any kind of attribution or permission and so on, and anything that just generally reads as super low effort just to claim a bounty is likely to be closed without comment in a worst case, or otherwise scrutinized in order to ascertain the individual’s understanding of what that code actually does vs. how much is just prompting to see if they can land something. We don’t want to shut down utilizing AI in people’s processes, but certain things are gonna get PRs shut down or scrutinized more heavily. So please keep this in mind.
    • This called into question the value of the bounty programme, with the fair point being made that TPV developers have spent years developing code for their viewers and submitting much of it to LL without any thought of reward other than improving people’s SL experience.
    • Geenz further noted the the bounty programme is due to get reviewed “sooner [rather]than later”, although it is likely “some form” of it will be kept, as it has also led to useful code contributions – such as those for getting the Linux viewer back into the frame (due to surface with the Lua viewer) and the viewer vcpkg work.
    • The suggestion was made that a contract programme – whereby an external coder is contracted to produce work – might be more beneficial than the current bounty programme. Again, this was pretty much the case for Linux and vcpkg.
    • A further suggestion was made to offer general bug / feature request bounties in L$ only – potentially making them less attractive to those trying to bend the system and earn US $ using AI LLMs.
  • The question was asked if Leviathan Linden’s work on server-viewer messaging would be surfacing in one (or an) Alpha viewer soon – the reply was that discussions on where and when to place this work are still ongoing, in order to ensure the viewer work and server work appear pretty much together.
  • Suzanna’s excellent write-up on the latest Lua release gained a further shout-out. On this (again):
    • This release will be deployed to Aditi (the Beta grid) first for testing.
    • It requires all Lua scripts to be recompiled in order to keep working.
  • Tis last 10 minutes of the meeting was spent discussion whether “SLua” should be retained as the name for the Lua project, or if “Lua” was better (certainly more widely recognised) given it is an implementation of Luau.

Next Meeting

2026 week #14: SUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Stevie Basevi’s Sanctuary, February 2026 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 31st, 2026 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

  • No SLS Main channel deployments for the week, but the channel was restarted.
  • The WebRTC deployment will be expanded to all RC regions on Wednesday, April 1st, 2026.
  • The next simulator release – Loganberry (can’t we have version numbers as well, aspromised?) will be deployed to Aditi.
  • The new server-side Lua updates (which require all existing Lua scripts to be recompiled) has also been deployed to Aditi for testing. See this document for more on this release.
    • These updates might start appearing on the Agni (the Main grid) “in a week or two”, with the deployment likely be timed to coincide with the issuing of the latest SLua viewer RC, and will include some additional fixes as well.

In Brief

  • Leviathan Linden:
    • Is hoping to look into the issue where, on encountering something like a high step on stairway or a physical bench or some other form of “ledge” and stopping, the avatar will start to slide sideways rather than standing still at the foot of the offending object.
    • Leviathan also has work going into the loganberry release, including:
      • Fixes for bugs related to failed simstate saves and crashes on simulator shutdown.
      • The server-side workaround for mesh face count. This should fix most issues except the bug where, on connecting to a viewer the edited texture face on the mesh will revert to its previous setting.
      • An attempted fix for the bug where trying to rez an object on a mesh surface can result in a failure to rez message – although there are still situations where this might still fail.
      • A fix for the bug about multiple chat events for multiple overlapping listeners in a script.
      • Henri Beauchamp’s suggested ObjectUpdate data fix for avatars remaining as clouds. However, as there are multiple reasons why avatars might remain cloudy besides missing attachment ObjectUpdate data, this might not fix all avatar cloud situations.
      • An optimisation to make running idle scripts a little faster, which he describes as, “Probably not noticeable, but is measurable”.
    • In addition to all this, Leviathan has spent a small portion of his “free” time trying to figure out why the game-control viewer UI doesn’t show the device config options (inverting the axis, offset, etc), but couldn’t work out why. He hopes to take another swing at it when he has more “free” time available.
  • Harold Linden (SLua):
    • Has a number of fixes in the pipeline, including one that accidentally limited how large you could make the bytecode.
    • SLua *might* be deployed in time for SL23B, but no guarantees this will be the case.
  • Region crossings: Harold hopes to have some fixes for long-existing region crossing bugs (strictly for crashes that rendered scripts unrecoverable due to script state serialization issues) with collision handlers, since he thinks he’s found the root cause.
    • This is similar to a issue with sensors from “back in the day”, so he has extended that fix to cover region crossings.
    • This fix will not resolve other region crossing problems.

General Discussion

Please refer to the video below as well.

  • A further discussion on Linden Water having waves, as also raised at the CCUG meeting (and which will doubtless be raised at the upcoming OSD / TPVD meeting on April 3rd, since some people won’t accepts “not an easy thing to do” a a single meeting, and need to hear it multiple times from multiple meetings).
    • In this case, Leviathan Linden noted, “Simulating water waves, and transmitting the oscillating surface is tough”, with others noting it would be “super costly” in terms of rendering in the viewer.
  • A number of other feature requests / bug issues were raised for feedback  / status updates:
  • The last 15-20 minutes of he meeting involved a broad-ranging discussion on matters of scripted agents (bot), Tiny Empires. Please refer to the video for details.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, April 7th, 2026.
  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, April 14th, 2026.

† 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.

2026 week #13: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log and audio recording  of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, March 26th, 2026.
  • Please note that this is not a full transcript of either meeting but a summary of key topics.
Table of Contents

 

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  – Legacy search; WebRTC improvements; QoL improvements – 26.1.0.22641522367 – March 12.
  • Second Life Project Viewers:
    • Second Life Project Flat UI – 26.2.0.22829286351, March 20 -“flat” UI and font updates.
    • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.1.0.21525310258, February 12.
    • Second Life One Click Install viewer 26.1.0.21295806042, January 26 – one-click viewer installation.
    • Second Life Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12, 2025 – Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use webRTC voice.

Viewer Notes

Viewer 2026.01.o1

  • The next viewer targeting promotion to default status, currently awaiting update to beta / RC status.
  • Comprises the one-click installer / updater to improve the viewer install / update processes.
  • Has already seen a “not insignificant” increase in the retention of users logging-in for the first time during closed testing.

Viewer 2026.02

  • 2026.02 remains on track for the “Flat” UI and font updates + plus a possible refresh of the log-in splash screen.
  • Currently awaiting an update to include the updated viewer log-in splash screen.
Example of the upcoming flat UI. Via: Geenz Linden / Github #4681/2

Viewer 2026.03

  • It has now been decided that 2026.03 will be the maintenance and performance improvements viewer.
  • This means the SLua and Visual Polish viewers will continue along their own tracks for release.
    • The SLua viewer is due a further update.
    • The Visual Polish viewer will be taking a longer road to release, as the Lab want to give it a “good long” soak time in alpha and beat (RC) to gather as much feedback as possible once it surfaces for general use.
  • 2026.03 will be pulling some elements of the Visual Polish viewer related to performance, such as the texture streaming work to reduce the load where creators insist on using very high resolution textures, normal maps and (particularly) specular maps, etc., on every face, regardless of size (specular resolution in particular can be reduced without loss of detail.
  • Most of the performance work will be focused on trying to provide a smooth experience for those running SL on lower specification machines and with graphics set to Low to Mid quality / speed.
    • So a focus more on improving frame rates in the viewer, rather than trying to address features known to have a high impact on performance such as Shadows (which require higher quality / speed settings than most lower-spec systems can handle).
    • In this regards, the Lab has a lot of metrics (including things like hardware specifications as more specialised metrics) upon which they can draw in order to be able to drill down into general performance bottlenecks.
  • A further aspect of this work is to reduce VRAM usage, as mentioned in recent previous CCUG summaries.
  • Also being considered for lower spec systems is the ability to “turn off” or automatically disable normal and specular maps on low specification systems.
  • This viewer will also includes as many maintenance fixes as can be included as well. 

General Viewer Notes

  • It is currently a toss-up between which gains priority between the SLua viewer and the Visual Polish viewer.
  • The official Linux flavour of the viewer will still be included in the SLua release.,

General Discussions

  • A feature request to Zoom in notecards, script and image views has been raised and is currently tracked, but as per usual, no estimation as to when it might actually be worked on / implemented.
    • Given the internal discussions that are on-going related to the viewer UI framework (XUI), Geenz Linden indicated he doesn’t anticipate the request being worked on “any time soon”.
    • Exactly what these discussions might be was not open for comments at the meeting.
  • New convex hull tool for mesh uploads:
    • The VHACD  convex hull tool has been available on Apple OS (notably Apple Silicon) fora good while, and Geenz is keen to see this added to the Windows and Linux flavours of the viewer.
    • Again, the primary aim of this move is to allow LL to remove the Havok physics sub-licence requirement from the viewer.
  • A discussion on Linden Water and its appearance – with some wanting water to have more than one layer, to have physical waves, etc.; others wanting a “water asset” that could be applied to mesh / prim surfaces in a similar manner to textures / materials – although this latter is actually much harder to achieve and couple be considered a “multiple feature request” (e.g. fogging, a glTF-like transmission layer, etc.).
  • A further discussion on performance  – texture LODs and the associated drop-down in the uploader (which has nothing to do with mesh LODs), etc., – but for the general user, the most salient points are hopefully included under the 2026.03 viewer notes, above.
  • The end of the meeting comprised a theoretical discussion on the requirements to develop a new avatar system for use with SL.

Next Meeting

March 2026 SL Mobile UG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, March 26th 2026 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting. These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed.

The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At Campwich Forest.
  • 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.

Resources

Current Releases

SL Mobile (Beta) version 2026.2.1086 (A) / 0.1.1084 (iOS) – March 20 – New User chatbot; support for Portuguese in app UI.

Recent Updates

  • Several releases through the latter part of February and in March.
  • Key new feature: new user chatbot  – Prima Linden.
    • On sign-up via Mobile incoming new users had been receiving a non-interactive welcome message from Prima Linden.
    • With the upgrade to a full chatbot, Prima will now respond to, and attempt to engage with, new users and answer questions.
    • This is something of a follow-on project from work done on Project Zero to provide new users with chatbot assistance. As such, there is still more work to do in tuning the chatbot for Mobile users.
    • Feedback on the updated Pima Linde is being sought (e.g. via the Discord channel).
  • Further work on language support within the App with the addition of UI support for Portuguese to cater for SL’s large population based in Brazil (as well as supporting other Portuguese speaking countries).
    • Language changes can be accessed via Menu → Settings → General → Language.
    • This is the first step to supporting the same languages as support by the  Desktop viewer.
  • In-app update notifications for Android when new releases are made.
  • A big push on Mobile App stability on Android (hence Android version numbering being ahead of iOS).

Upcoming Updates

  • WebRTC Voice usability improvements, e.g. reducing the new of steps to enabling Voice on Mobile.
    • These improvements are already available on the closed Alpha programme, and will be coming Soon to the open Beta.
  •  Localisation language improvements (e.g. the App detecting the default language used on a user’s device, and if different to that used within Mobile, ask the user if they would prefer to switch to using the device language selection, as well as support for additional languages.
  • Improvements to Chat history, making it viewable cross-platform (e.g. Desktop and Mobile, or different Mobile devices, etc.).

General Q&A

  • Question on why more existing users haven’t come over to Mobile.
    • Potentially because most existing users are comfortable with the Desktop viewer which, in comparison with Mobile, offers easier accessibility to features and settings and obviously currently have a wider, deeper range of capabilities and features (e.g. inventory, building, ease of camming, etc.).
    • Keyboard access to Desktop tends to be far more convenient to many that touch-typing on a small screen.
    • Much easier to tab between SL and other applications running on a PC than on Mobile, which can sometimes freeze during switching, etc.
    • Mobile might be more popular to some if more of a “companion app” than alternate (e.g. being able to use it alongside of the Desktop viewer when going AFK for a few minutes and still be able to monitor chat, hear Voice, respond, etc).
  • Question on what people think is the “top” feature Mobile is currently missing that is keeping Desktop users from trying Mobile (highly subjective – and acknowledged as such):
    • Responses included: Inventory access; better appearance tools; ability to interact with objects via llDialog and dialogue boxes / menus (which is being worked on, per my February meeting summary); lack of suitable hardware (not really a Mobile issue).
  • A follow-up discussion on how people would prefer to see Mobile develop – such as a focus on a single feature, and how should it be presented.
    • For example: a focus of inventory would likely be beneficial, but releasing it in a manner where it can be seen but not fully manipulated could be seen as pointless, but releasing it in a manner to match inventory on Desktop could be a major investment in terms of time required to bring it to fruition and release it).
    • Even so, Inventory remained the popular choice.
  • LL are planning to survey incoming new users on Mobile to get their feedback on the App as well.
  • A user question on testing – does LL use VPNs, etc., to simulate logging-in from different parts of the world. Answer: yes, this is done, plus the team is somewhat international – Adm Sinewave (lead Mobile developer), for example, is based in Australia.

Date of Next Meeting

2026 week #12: SL Open Source (TPVD) meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • Pantera’s video (embedded at the end of this article) and my chat log of the Open-Source Developer (OSD) meeting held on Friday, March 20th, 2026, together with my chat log of that meeting.
  • Please note that this is not a full transcript of the meeting but a summary of key topics.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The OSD meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meeting. It is open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
    • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer  – Legacy search; WebRTC improvements; QoL improvements – 26.1.0.22641522367 – March 12.
  • Second Life Project Viewers:
    • Second Life Project Flat UI – 26.2.0.22829286351, March 20 -“flat” UI and font updates.
    • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.1.0.21525310258, February 12.
    • Second Life One Click Install viewer 26.1.0.21295806042, January 26 – one-click viewer installation.
    • Second Life Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12, 2025 – Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use webRTC voice.

Upcoming Viewers

Viewer 2026.01.01 – One-Click Installer / Velopack

  • Remains the current viewer development focus, with a beta (RC) update targeting a potential availability in week #13 (week commencing Monday, March 23rd). Actual promotion to release status depends on how long the viewer may ned to remain at RC status.
    • There is one major blocker to promotion, which is being worked on, but otherwise, it is “very close” to being a candidate for release, user feedback allowing.
  • Geenz Linden noted that the repo for the viewer is getting updates to more easily ship updates for those TPVs opting to adopt Velopack as their updater.
  • Velopack benefits:
    • The move to Velopack allows LL and TPVs  to move off from VVM with the exception of cohort management, and allows LL to discontinue the old SLVersionChecker all of which should streamline the viewer install and update processes as experienced by users.
    • Velopack also opens the door to partial viewer updates  – although LL are still in internal discussions on when to actually start doing this.
  • A side effect of this viewer, when generally available, is that it will not automatically uninstall versions of the viewer using the old install / update processes, and there will be no requirement to manually uninstall such versions (although users can if they wish). The reason for this latter point is a concern that inexperienced users will simply click YES when asked if they wish to remove all their settings, etc., and thus lose them.
  • Testing of this viewer against incoming new users to SL saw a “not insignificant” increase in day 1 user retention..

Viewer 2026.02 – “Flat” UI and Splash Screen Refresh

  • An alpha version (see viewer status, above) was released on Friday, March 20th, but without the log-in splash screen updates. These will be in an upcoming update.
  • This viewer includes the “flat” UI design, font updates and WebRTC voice moderation capabilities to help align viewer-side WebRTC updates more with the server-side.
Example of the upcoming flat UI. Via: Geenz Linden / Github #4681/2

Viewer 2026.03 – Maintenance Release

  • 2026.03 will now see the return of official viewer maintenance releases, with the initial focus on viewer performance improvements, together with a focus on top crashers and regressions, up to a certain limit, so they can be kept as relatively small releases rolled out on a reasonably fast basis.
  • 2026.03 should see (partial list):
    • A backporting of the texture streaming changes at the very least, with Geenz particularly focused on getting lower RAM usage in general.
    • Kitty Barnett’s long-waiting avatar appearance fixes.
  • Geenz also hopes to get some work done on lightening the main thread burden in the viewer – which is potentially more difficult, and may take longer.
  • A hope with this cycle of maintenance releases is to put a reasonable dent in some of the debt we’ve accumulated with PBR’s release.

Viewer 2024.04 – SLVP or LUA (TBD)

  • The 2026.04 viewer release is liable to be either the Second Life Visual Polish (SLVP) release (containing all of the SSR, PBR Specular, and HDR EEP parameters work), or a SLua release.
  • Work on improving mirrors for SLVP is currently on hold whilst 2026.01.01 and 2026.02 is on the table.
  • SLVP is liable to spend a long time at alpha status (which may be why SLua moves ahead of it in the order of things).

WebRTC Deployment

  • This commenced on Wednesday, March 18th, with a deployment to the BlueSteel RC channel covering approximately 3.4% of the grid.
  • This early release allows us to verify performance, stability, and compatibility in real-world conditions before expanding further.
  • Users in the release candidate channel may experience:
    • Failure of peer-to-peer (P2) Voice calls between regions on WebRTC and the rest of the grid. These will not be fully resolved until WebRTC is grid-wide.
    • Differences in audio quality depending on being in or out of the release candidate channel.
    • Ongoing tuning and iteration as we gather feedback.
    • For more details, see: WebRTC Voice in Second Life — Limited Release Begins March 18, 2026.
  • The next, larger deployment is currently scheduled for week #14 (commencing Monday, March 30th). However, a smaller deployment might be made in week #13.
  • There are thoughts being given to next steps for WebRTC: transcription, the ability in-preferences to hear how you sound, etc. (a replacement for echo canyon), but these are subject to other priorities.
  • The existing Vivox Voice service is liable to be shut down “a few months” after the WebRTC deployment has been completed. However, no target date has as yet been decided.
    • During the deployment phase, Vivox, users on the latter will not have spatial Voice when in WebRTC regions, although they should have p2p/conference/group voice with others on Vivox regions.

General Discussion

  • Mesh Convex Hulls:
    • The new physics choice for mesh uploads is currently available on ARM Macs, and on the “to do” list for other viewers.
    • Geenz’s first choice for the role choked on a lot of content for SL, so VHACD is the choice of libraries.
    • As has been previously mentioned, the aim is to remove the Havok sub-libraries from the viewer entirely – but this a process several steps down the line.
  • There was a general discussion on performance, lightening the load on the viewer’s main processing thread (some noted above).

Next Meeting