Category: Content Creation User Group

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, February 27th, 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 Official Viewer Status Upcoming Viewers Viewer 2026.01 Viewer 2026.02 Viewer 2026.03 General Viewer Notes Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment Next Meeting

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.

Note: The OSD/TPV meeting has tended to occur in the same week as the content Creation User Group meeting over the last several months, resulting in a lot of repetition of information between the two meetings (and combined summaries on this blog). An attempt is being made to break this cycle by having the next OSD/TPV meeting on Friday, March 6th, 2026 before reverting to the usual every other week format (so the meeting after that will be March 20th, 2026) – thus putting the OSD/TPV meeting and the CCUG on alternate weeks.

Official Viewer Status

• Default viewer 2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – December 2.
  • Notable addition: new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for mesh uploads.
• Second Life Release Candidate viewer 2026.01 – 26.1.0.22359044520 , February 25 – NEW
  • Legacy search; WebRTC improvements; QoL improvements.
• Second Life Project Viewers:
  • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.1.0.21525310258, February 12.
  • Second Life Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12.
    • Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use webRTC voice.
  • Second Life One Click Install viewer 26.1.0.21295806042, January 26, 2026 – one-click viewer installation.

Upcoming Viewers

Viewer 2026.01

• Remains the current viewer development focus with the release of the beta (RC) version, although this will be shifting more to 2026.02.
• The velopack one click installer / updater is not in the initial beta, and may now in fact slip to 2026.02.
• 2026.01 includes a high priority fix for specific Bluetooth headset configurations which will benefit WebRTC.
• Now available as an alpha viewer (above).
• As the name suggests, triggers a one-click install / viewer update process.
• Also includes improved monitoring / logging of viewer freezes and crashes, etc.

Viewer 2026.02

• 2026.02 remains on track for the “Flat” UI and font updates.
• It now also includes the WebRTC voice moderation capabilities (as seen in the project viewer) to help align viewer-side WebRTC updates more with the hoped-for server-side deployment (see below for more).
• This viewer might additionally receive some backported updates to texture streaming.
• No Alpha / Beta viewer is available as yet for this release..

Viewer 2026.03 -“SL Visual Polish” (SLVP)

• 2026.03 had been looking to an April release, however, it might slip back to 2026.04. Part of the decision-making on this is related to upcoming server-side updates to EEP and glTF which are seen as being required prior to SLVP shipping.
• It will likely to include:
  • The “long baking” SSR improvements that were started last year. This version of the viewer will likely have a long beta soak time to allow feedback on these changes to be gathered.
  • PBR specular for residents who are more familiar with the old Blinn-Phong workflow. This will:
    • Include another texture slot (tint of the specular reflection).
    • Work with metallics.
    • Follow the glTF specification, but will likely initially be without glTF overrides, as this requires server-side work.
  • HDR controls in EEP so residents can decide how bright or dark things should be. This work does require simulator-side updates. This will likely initially have server-side support on Aditi (the Beta grid).
• It may additionally include:
  • Further mirrors optimisations and a new “Ultra” quality setting that will enable a system mirror for water. A caveat on this work is that while this “water mirror” might up the quality of water reflections, it will do so at a performance hit; SSR for water will always be faster and less intensive.
  • Inclusion of an emissive strength setting for PBR.
• The Pull Request  for this work can be found here – #5385.

General Viewer Notes

• Firestorm hosted a Townhall recently, with Lab presence, to try to determine why a percentage of Firestorm users remain reluctant to move away from a 6.x version of that viewer to a PBR-supporting version. The predominant issues appear to be concerns over performance and the degraded water visuals seen with PBR viewers.
  • One aspect of people refusing to move is hearsay: “X said PBR sucketh and has poor performance, therefore I will not even try it”, regardless as to whether this might be true for them or not; another is, potentially, people’s general unwillingness to change from what they like.
  • Exactly how to address such issues / beliefs/perceptions is no easy task.
  • A suggestion was made to have “toggle” in the viewer so users can determine which rendering system they wish to use (e.g. “legacy” or “PBR”). This is far more complicated than it sounds, requiring continued support of two rendering pipes in the viewer, potentially leading to multiple complications and the potential content breakage. As such, it is not going to happen.
• Geenz Linden is continuing to work with texture streaming and resolutions, with some of the work possibly surfacing in 2026.02 as noted above. He further noted that:
  • Work is not stopping at texture streaming improvements; the Lab is laying plans to deal with some of the “bigger performance bullet points”.
  • It is known that PBR  has introduced performance bottlenecks, many of which have been dealt with, others of which still need work. To this end, the Lab may start running Tracy “very, very regularly” to identify bottlenecks so they can be addressed.
  • The hope is that when adding a new PBR feature / capability, at least one existing bottleneck will be corrected.
• As noted in the 2026 week #5 OSD meeting, there are potential changes coming to the viewer build chain. These involve updates to CMake and a Pull Request relating to vcpkg. The latter is still under review, and is likely to be implemented “bite by bite”, rather than all at once. It will also be likely to go into its own branch and not emerge until after the SLua /Linux viewer work reaches release status, so as to not over-complicate things for TPVs.
• TPV Developer Henri Beauchamp (Cool VL Viewer) suggested splitting the viewer’s main thread so that the rendering code can be separated from messaging and objects updates, thus smoothing frame rates in the viewer.
  • Geenz Linden indicated that this had been looked at by a Product Engine engineer, and that it was felt that doing so would help out massively with porting the viewer to other graphics APIs.
  • However, actual work on this has not as yet started, as there is a need to “chip away” at getting approval together with a need to avoid disrupting existing releases.
  • Such is the scale of the work, it could involve “a few quarters” of effort to implement.
  • It was noted that while some multi-threading has been introduced to the viewer, this is mostly “lighter work” more easily removed from the main thread, which still does most of the heavy lifting via a single CPU core.
• The last point rotated into a more general discussion on the viewer, threads, the future potential for removing coroutines and fibers in favour of “actual” threads, etc. Please refer to the last 10-15 minutes of the video.

Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment

• This was targeting a March 2026 deployment, following the usual simulator-side deployment process (a selected RC channel or channels for the first deployment, followed by deployment to all remaining RC channels usually a week later, then a final deployment to the SLS Main channel, usually a week after that).
• However, it now appears hat the deployment is likely to be delayed, although no specifics have been given on why or when. .

Next Meeting

• OSUG: 13:00 SLT, Friday, March 6th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

The following notes were taken from: My chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, February 12th, 2026. Pantera’s video (embedded at the end of this article) and my chat log of the Open-Source Developer (OSD) meeting held on Friday, February 13th, 2026, together with my chat log of that meeting.

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status Upcoming Viewers Viewer 2026.01 Viewer 2026.02 Viewer 2026.03 General Viewer Notes Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment CCUG Meeting General Discussions Next Meetings

Please note that this is not a full transcript of either 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.
• The OSD meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meetings. 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 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 Beta (RC) viewer 26.1.0.21522948608, February 12 – NEW.
  • Legacy search; WebRTC improvements; QoL improvements.
• Second Life Project viewers:
  • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha version 26.1.0.21525310258, February 3 –  No Change.
  • Second Life Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12 – No Change.
    • Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use WebRTC voice.
  • Second Life One Click Install viewer 26.1.0.21295806042, January 26, 2026 – one-click viewer installation.

Upcoming Viewers

Viewer 2026.01

• Remains the current viewer development focus with the release of the beta (RC) version, although this will be shifting more to 2026.02.
• The velopack one click installer / updater is not in the initial beta, but is “off to one side” whilst being allowed to “cook” for longer. This may get folded back into 2026.01, but the Lab is not “super married” to this being the case.
• 2026.01 includes a high priority fix for specific Bluetooth headset configurations which will benefit WebRTC.
• Now available as an alpha viewer (above).
• As the name suggests, triggers a one-click install / viewer update process.
• Also includes improved monitoring / logging of viewer freezes and crashes, etc.

Viewer 2026.02

• 2026.02 remains on track for the “Flat” UI and font updates.
• It now also includes the WebRTC voice moderation capabilities (as seen in the project viewer) to help align viewer-side WebRTC updates more with the hoped-for server-side deployment currently targeting March 2026.
• No Alpha / Beta viewer is available as yet for this release..

Viewer 2026.03

• 2026.03 is described as a “visual polish” for the viewer. This viewer is likely to include:
  • The “long baking” SSR improvements that were started last year. This version of the viewer will likely have a long beta soak time to allow feedback on these changes to be gathered.
  • PBR specular for residents who are more familiar with the old Blinn-Phong work flow. This will:
    • Include another texture slot (tint of the specular reflection).
    • Work with metallics.
    • Follow the glTF specification, but will likely initially be without glTF overrides, as this requires server-side work.
  • HDR controls in EEP so residents can decide how bright or dark things should be. This work does require simulator-side updates. This will likely initially have server-side support on Aditi (the Beta grid).
• The Pull Request  for this work can be found here – #5385.
• 2026.03 is looking towards an April release.

General Viewer Notes

• Viewer-side Blinn-Phong alpha-gamma improvements were raised as possible inclusion for 2026.03. The Lab’s viewer is that while these will be coming, it will not be until after supporting server-side updates have been made in order to avoid what the Lab sees as potential content breakage. This matter was viewed as “not up for debate”.
  • There is a chance that the server-side work might be undertaken and completed in time for the viewer-side fixes to be included in 2026.03, but currently, Geenz isn’t willing to commit to this due to other on-going work.
• User Animats is developing the Sharpview viewer. This includes an “infinite draw distance” – see this video as an example.
  • The Lab has been looking over this work internally, and there has been some discussion on supporting the work and giving it more of an official path.
  • Geenz noted having the map system provide terrain heightmaps could be a start.
  • Geenz also suggested having prim stand-ins for distant objects, but noted that this is a “down the road thing”.
• Geenz Linden has requested developers put their eyes on PR #5429.
  • The release ordering for this would b after the SLua works reaches release status, due to both that viewer and this work having ties to the the official Linux viewer build.
  • It is unlikely the SLua work will be merged into a main viewer code until around the 2026.04 viewer, which means the work in PR#5429 is unlikely to reach a viewer release until summer.
  • Given the changes it may bring to some TPVs, this is seen as no bad thing, as it gives the opportunity for feedback and planning, etc.
• A general discussion on re-enabling water reflections as a part of the upcoming SSR / HDR improvements. Options were mentioned, and Geenz seemed to lean towards “a slight optimization to mirrors on thin probes is not out of the question to help ‘backfill’ probe data”, before noting this would have to be very narrowly scoped for inclusion in the 2026.03 viewer.
• The transmission index of refraction (IoR – good for water reflections) project is seen as requiring more time and input than the PBR specular work, despite a good amount of work being done on the transmission / IoR work. As such, it is awaiting a re-prioritisation to continue – and this might be a while before it is forthcoming, because there is still a fair amount of complexity involved in any implementation.
• A general discussion towards the end of the OSG meeting on HDR, HDR skies, improving the brightness of the SL Sun, etc.

Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment

• The Lab is currently looking at a March deployment of WebRTC voice across the grid, but this is subject to possible change.
• The viewer server is currently in a beta soak test (see: WebRTC Voice Open Beta is Expanding).
• Deployment will follow the usual simulator update route:
  • First week: limited deployment to selected RC channels (e.g. Bluesteel / Preflight).
  • Second week (providing no significant issues occurring): wider deployment to all RC channels.
  • Third week: deployment to the Main SLS channel, marking WebRTC as grid-wide.
• As noted in the viewer notes above, there are fixes going into the upcoming 2026.01 viewer related to WebRTC:
  • These are each described as affecting a “small number” of users.
  • The first fixes an issue where some people may lose voice without reconnecting once in a while.
  • The second relates to problems with certain Bluetooth headsets losing audio after toggling PTT.
  • LL would ideally link to see TPVs cheery-pick these fixes for inclusion in their viewers so as to be available to users as WebRTC commences deployment.
• A server-side  fix to address a spatialization bug was released on Monday February 9th, and appears to have dealt with the last known significant server bug.

CCUG Meeting General Discussions

• A request was made for a check box to be added to the PDR editing tools to ignore the alpha channel in order to allow Blinn-Phong specular textures could be re-used.
  • This was seen as a “little tricky” given the way BP specular has been implemented in SL, which have resulted in some compatibility between BP and PBR (e.g. the colour RGB parts), whilst others are not.
  • Whilst some comprises could potentially be mead, they would deviate away from the glTF specification, which is not what LL wants to do.
•  Geenz indicated he is mulling the idea of possible adjustments to texture streaming to help improve it – such as streaming specular, metallic and even base colour at lower resolutions, whist keeping the normal map at the required resolution. This, he feels would compensate for any loss of detail on specular, metallic or base colour, whilst decreasing the overall streaming load.
• Scriptable IK was raised as an idea. This was something the currently suspended Puppetry Project was looking at, as well as things like use of webcams for animations, etc. It is not clear if / when this work might be re-animated (no pun intended).
• Blend shapes / custom rigs were again raised for discussion, with Geenz again noting that the issue is in part a problem with the internal SLMesh format used by SL not being particularly flexible.
  • Before anything could be done to support things like custom rigs and similar, there would need to be a new implementation of the SLMesh pipeline.
  • This would allow LL to develop a new, more flexible SLMesh format, which is more resilient to things like unexpected data and would also allow support for new fields (e.g. bland shapes – which could even be hooked up to the current slider system and / or be scriptable, etc).
  • However, such a project would be relatively long-term and require consideration of other issues (e.g. support for over 20 years of animations which will continue to require support and thus would need things like retargeting).
  • Therefore how to fit it into the roadmap and ensure the required resources are available is not currently clear given the number of other priorities already in play / awaiting attention.
• The above encompassed a discussion on external tools which might help in look creation, clothes fitting, etc., such as Character Creator and Marvelous Designer, which can be used with SL as an external tool, whilst having a good level of integration into Sansar .

Next Meetings

• CCUG: 13:00 SLT, Thursday, February 26th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.
• OSUG: 13:00 SLT, Friday, February 27th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

The following notes were taken from: My chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, January 29th, 2026 and my chat log of that meeting Pantera’s video (embedded at the end of this article) and my chat log of the Open-Source Developer (OSD) meeting held on Friday, January 30th, 2026.

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status Upcoming Viewers Viewer 2026.01 – One-click Installer / Updater Viewer 2026.02 – “Flat” UI, Font Changes General Viewer Notes “First Impressions” Context Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment SLua Update General Discussion OSD Meeting CCUG Meeting Next Meetings

Please note that this is not a full transcript of either 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.
• The OSD meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meetings. 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 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 version 7.2.3.19911032641, December 5 –  No Change.
• Second Life Project Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12 – No Change.
  • Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use WebRTC voice.
• Second Life Project One Click Install viewer 26.1.0.21295806042, January 26, 2026 – one-click viewer installation.

Upcoming Viewers

Viewer 2026.01 – One-click Installer / Updater

• Now available as an alpha viewer (above).
• As the name suggests, triggers a one-click install / viewer update process.
• Is still being worked on, with a focus on ironing out some kinks in the one click install, including an uninstaller for old non-velopack viewers that can be triggered when required, the usual registry stuff for Windows, and so on.
• Also includes improved monitoring / logging of viewer freezes and crashes, etc.

Viewer 2026.02 – “Flat” UI, Font Changes

• This viewer is to be part of the Lab’s “first impressions” push to make SL resonate more with incoming new users and hopefully encourage them to keep logging in.
• Will include a new “flat” UI (as seen in the Project Zero (viewer in a browser) version) which comprises things like a font change, a colour scheme change,  and generally giving the viewer a more “modern” look and feel. This is not a major UI overhaul in terms of overall look and feel, more an aesthetic one.
• Font changes within this viewer are currently described as “experimental”.
• Also looking like it will include a log-in landing refresh.

General Viewer Notes

• Work on clearing viewer bugs and implementing smaller feature requests into the viewer is continuing, so users can expect more of this, allowing for other priorities in viewer work.
• On the viewer development side:
  • There should be some vcpkg movement in the near future. A Pull Request for this work via a third-party developer is apparently in progress, but will not be shipped immediately on approval. Rather, it will be allowed “soak time” so other developers can assess impact on their build pipelines downstream and the like.
  • There will also be some CMake project changes, although these appear to be more of a “modernization” push, to bring CMake in the viewer into line current CMake project norms.
• LL is contemplating bringing back viewer maintenance releases to try to encourage some TPVs to pick-up bug fixes and incorporate them faster into their viewers (rather than waiting for a major viewer update which includes bug fixes to get to release status and then merging them).
  • If this is done, the maintenance releases will be “much smaller in scope” than past maintenance updates (so a kind of taking bug fixes that are flowing into upcoming major viewer releases, cherry picking them and then QA’ing and releasing them as a small update to the viewer.
  • Those TPVs at the meeting indicated this could either add to their workload or that they would not alter their existing workflow due to overheads, but instead will continue to cherry-pick upstream fixes as a part of their own release cycles.
• In response to questions on whether Kitty Barnett’s RLVa code contributions will be included in the official viewer (and which are currently pending fixes she has submitted for RLVa avatar appearance fixes anyway), Geenz Linden stated:

If we did, it’d likely be a very progressive and targeted thing that we do. And hopefully not in a way that significantly makes downstream more difficult to maintain. It’s a longer discussion that needs to be had basically. 

• • This led to concerns that LL could end up implementing a variant of  RLVa that is at odds with the current RLV/RLVa API, and effectively end up being ignored for being incompatible. In response, Geenz further noted:

I’d prefer one that everyone can participate in if we do go that route so we can be more targeted with others helping to guide that. Last thing we want to do is make it take 7 months to ship a TPV just because we made a change to RLVa. We also have to consider overall content compatibility and such.

• Also as per the last meeting, official Linux support is aligned with the in-progress SLua viewer .

“First Impressions” Context

• This work is focused on trying to ease that first experience for a lot of new residents to try and drive up retention numbers.
• The work is seen more-or-less as experimentation at this point in time, but the goal is to drive up first day engagement among incoming new users to encourage them to continue to log-in to SL.
• Work on this is on multiple fronts, and more will be shared on it in due course.

Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment

• The Lab is currently looking at a March deployment of WebRTC voice across the grid, but this is subject to possible change.
• The viewer server is currently in a beta soak test (see: WebRTC Voice Open Beta is Expanding).
• The last major server crash has been fixed, and there have been none since that fix went in.
• There is an upcoming fix – see Pull Request #5322  (included in viewer 2026.01) – to address some of the issues with voice dropping. The recommendation is for TPVs to get this into their viewers for a good user experience.
• An upcoming server-side update will hopefully address some of the issues with WebRTC spatialisation (e.g. voice volume varying greatly with even small camera position movements on the part of a listener).
• Additional connection tweaks for WebRTC have been made to the 2026.01 viewer to help improve voice performance (e.g. to improve auto-reconnect).
• Feedback on people’s experiences with WebRTC is still being sought (notably via the beta testing).

SLua Update

• An update to the SLua project viewer is forthcoming.
• As noted above, this will bring with it support for Linux
• Still no confirmation as to when SLua will go live across SL

General Discussion

OSD Meeting

• SSR and PBR water real time reflections and shadows: Geenz indicated that work is progressing on this and that when available, it will be given “a proper” alpha/beta/Release Candidate process.

• The was noted that whilst improvements on SSR and PBR water reflections are being made, they will never 100% match pre-PBR views without a lot of work being put into optimisation, what would likely still result in mixed feedback without any significant win.
• This led to a general discussion on addressing water reflections and shadows.

CCUG Meeting

• PBR lighting: still on the list of potential updates, but requires “quite a few” server-side changes in order for it to happen.
  • The existing SL lighting system has a range of constraints dating back 20+ years, and so would require significant modification in order to enable PBR lighting support.
  • As such, this is currently viewed as being on the back burner for the foreseeable future, while other things are worked on.
• A question was asked on whether it would be possible for an Animesh using only ten bones in total to have a lower Land Impact / rendering cost than one rigged to 10 out of the 110 bones of the default skeleton. Short answer: no, not without custom rigs.
• Custom rigs themselves are acknowledged as something SL should have, but the work involved in enabling them is extensive and touches on multiple areas (e.g. re-targeting bones for clothing fits; re-targeting animations – and even a couple overhaul of the animation system -, etc.). There is also work to be carried out elsewhere that would yield benefits for things like quality of life which are of a higher priority. As such, custom rigs are not something currently on the roadmap.
• In-world mesh creation tools: unlikely to be a thing, as the implementation would be costly in time and effort, and likely would not measure up to the capabilities of external tools like Blender.
• It was asked if the import route for rigged meshes could be “streamlined” without the need for AvatarStar / MayaStar. Neither of these tool are actually a requirement for rigged mesh import / export, rather they are tools that can help with the process of rigging from within SL. Meshes that have been correctly rigged and weighted using external tools should import correctly through the current import mechanisms (COLLADA or glTF).
• Overhauling the mesh import file format  / process through the support of something like OpenUSD is an idea that is being mulled over within the Lab. However, a) this is not something that is likely to be prioritised in the next 12 months; b) it is something that would require a lot more in the way of discussion before moving towards it; c) there is still work to be done in improving the import / export of currently supported formats before trying to add to them / replace them.
• Materials import for meshes: this is something the Lab wanted to implement for glTF mesh import (rather than having to import materials separately).
  • However, due to the way in which asset uploads to SL work, it proved to be more a complex issue than first thought.
  • The hope is that the work can be returned to in the future, possibly using a new import flow that is more in line with other platforms and tools, but this is not something on the current roadmap.
• PBR specular support: this is still something Geenz would personally like to get done, but it is currently sitting behind various other items which need to be completed / implemented in order to clear time for working on it. Also, this work does have impacts on things like the glTF upload validator, scripting, simulator support, managing glTF overrides (which are currently not well handled) etc., all of which would have to be factored into the work and which are outside of Geenz’s immediate responsibilities.
• In terms of extending glTF support in general (PBR specular, IoR, etc.), the preference at the moment is to fix more of the existing issues / bugs within the existing PBR capabilities before adding further options.
• The meeting was somewhat sidetracked by talk on the use of bots, ToS bot violations, Tiny Empires, etc., the majority of which are more of a Governance issue.

Next Meetings

• CCUG: 13:00 SLT, Thursday, February 12th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.
• OSUG: 13:00 SLT, Friday, February 13th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

The following notes were taken from: My chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, January 15th, 2026 and my chat log of that meeting Pantera’s video (embedded at the end of this article) and my chat log of the Open-Source Developer meeting held on Friday, January 16th, 2026.

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status Upcoming Viewers Viewer 2026.01 – One-click Installer / Updater Viewer 2026.02 – “Flat” UI, Font Changes General Viewer Notes Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment – Initial Announcement General Discussion – Both Meetings Next Meetings

Please note that this is not a full transcript of either 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.
• The OSUG meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meetings. 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 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 version 7.2.3.19911032641, December 5 –  No Change.
• Second Life Project Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12 – No Change.
  • Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use webRTC voice.

Upcoming Viewers

Viewer 2026.01 – One-click Installer / Updater

Viewer 2026.01 is in progress. This will include:

• Improved bugsplat support (we want better reporting for freezes, and just generally better crash reporting). This work builds on the successes of 2025 in detailing with viewer crashes and reducing overall causes for crashes.
• A new one-click installer, which in brief:
  • Will be powered by a new dependency called velopack, and will allow a single-click installation of the viewer (with a brief pop-up message), with the viewer launching once the install process is complete.
  • Will default to installing under Apps/Local on windows; will remain as a drag-and-drop process on Mac OS, while Linux is currently TBD. It will still be possible to install the viewer to a custom location, initially via a command line argument.
  • Will not change the install location of config files, or anything that counts as user data.
• Development work on this did hit a delay, which has now been cleared, the hope remaining to get an Alpha (previously known as Project) viewer out with the update code in place sooner rather than later.
• As an added benefit to the switch to velopack for TPVs, LL will be providing a solution to add auto-update functionality to TPV projects, if TPVs wish to leverage it. More information on this is due to be made available in the next week or so.

Viewer 2026.02 – “Flat” UI, Font Changes

• This viewer is to be part of the Lab’s “first impressions” push to make SL resonate more with incoming new users and hopefully encourage them to keep logging in.
• This first impression work is on multiple fronts, and for the 2026.02 viewer will be a switch to the “flat” UI seen in the Project Zero (viewer in a browser) version which comprises things like a font change, a colour scheme change,  and generally giving the viewer a more “modern” look and feel.
• The font update:
  • • Should not impact people’s use of unicode.
  • Will require XUI updates which will likely require updates for TPVs using their own custom XUI – TPVs are advised to keep an eye on Discord and Github for more information on these changes as they develop, and to particularly track this github issue.

General Viewer Notes

• Linux support will likely ship as a part of the in-progress SLua beta viewer.
• The viewer development roadmap is still being worked on in terms of fixes and updates and actioning feature requests, the focus being to work these into the viewer without disrupting major initiatives the Lab is looking to develop (such as the “first impressions” drive).
• 2026.02 might include some screen space reflections (SSR) updates to help improve the appearance of Linden Water under PDR/HDR.
• The avatar appearance fixes contributed by Kitty Barnett and intended to make the current outfit folder more reliable when changing outfits, messing with outfits, etc., may get to see the light of day in viewer 2026.03 – but this had yet to be confirmed.

Grid-Wide WebRTC Deployment – Initial Announcement (OSD Meeting)

• The Lab is currently looking at a March deployment of WebRTC voice across the grid.
• The schedule is not firmly set as yet, but will follow the usual server-side deployment routine: first to one (or more) simulator RC channels, then to all simulator RC channels (if not all rolled at once), and then a week after this, deployment to the Main simulator channel.
• The important point in this is that once grid-wide, WebRTC will completely supplant Vivox Voice, and those who use Voice by who are not running a WebRTC voice capable viewer (which generally means anyone not on a non-PBR supporting viewer) will be unable to use Voice.
  • This does not mean that the Vivox service will be immediately shut-down. It will remain an option for the Lab to re-enable until such time as LL is confident in the WebRTC service and no surprises have come to light.
• There is one remaining WebRTC critical issue in the viewer that makes the experience not great for a small body of users:
  • People with certain network characteristics may see a dropout because the WebRTC provider is not properly handling renegotiation.
  • LL has a fix which should be deployed with viewer 2026.01. However, TPVs wishing to merge it now can do so via Pull Request 5126.
• In the meantime, the beta for WebRTC has expanded – see this official blog post for details.
• Roxie Linden also indicated that LL is experimenting with speech-to-text using WebRTC, but does not as yet have anything available for public demonstrations.
• The issue of Linux builds not using Pulseaudio but with the WebRTC code crashing on start-up was reiterated at the meeting. Whilst this might not be a widespread issue, the feeling was that it should be looked at; however, if the pool of impacted users is liable to be very small, it will not be seen as a reason to block / delay WebRTC deployment as a whole and any fix is liable to be prioritised in terms of resources / impact of the issue, post-deployment.

General Discussion – Both Meetings

• Avatar support related:
  • Shape key support and / or custom bone hierarchies – seen as complex area of work, and not being looked at.
  • While the current avatar does technically use shape keys, it is very different to how modern blend shapes are used.
  • SL’s internal format also doesn’t store bones.
• Questions were raised on the status of game_control. This is more a subject for the Simulator User Group meetings, where Leviathan Linden indicated he was trying to resume work on the code. However, it was also indicated during this meeting that Leviathan had again been “borrowed” to work on other code.
• Despite rumour to the contrary, Puppetry is not currently set for revival or on the current 2026 roadmap.
• Geenz noted that while work on things like new tools, updates to the GLTF uploader, etc., are not “done”, the focus for the time being in more on dealing with technical debt together with the aforementioned “first impressions” initiative, etc.
• Questions were asked on auto / planar-aligning PBR materials  – see: Aligning Faces when using PBR and Planar face alignment with PBR GLTF materials. This is something the Lab has yet to resolve, and has offered a contribution bounty for any developer who is able to provide a solution. Geenz also indicated he would try to get bugs like this better prioritised.
• A general discussion on ideas for improvements to chat, including: ability to have a “last unread” indicator in chat when logging-on; having the chat rings on the mini-Map on by default, some idea about a special chat tab that would allow region-wide chat (presumably at the region owner’s discretion to enable), ability to correct text in chat / IM after sending(!), etc.
• The You Tube embedding issues was again raised (see here for more), with a possible (if hacky) workaround. LL are looking to You tube to address the problem, as they created it.
• There was a general discussion on the complexities of Land Impact, particularly – but not restricted to – mesh objects. In short, LI is a complicated subject, and not easily addressed; hence why the Lab backed away from the subject recently. This also strayed into the equally complicated realm of LOD generation.
  • On the subject of LOD generation, it was suggested that the Lab should look to implement a LOD generator and then inform creators LODs have to be generated  to fit a defined set of criteria – or defaults will be forced.
• A discussion on the choice of VHACD over HACD as a replacement for Havok in mesh decomposition. The latter is seen as more mature, but LL opted for VHACD is a “middle ground” solution as it is more regularly maintained, it is also apparently more reliable when dealing with the “weirder meshes” some SL creators produce, when compared to something like CoACD. However, Geenz indicated it would be “nice” to have “swappable”  convex decomposition solutions at runtime.
• A further request for Error creating thumbnail” message on SL wiki, breaking images  to be addressed.

Next Meetings

• CCUG: 13:00 SLT, Thursday, January 29th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.
• OSUG: 13:00 SLT, Friday, January 30th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

The following notes were taken from: My chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, December 18th, 2025 and my chat log of that meeting Pantera’s video (embedded at the end of this article) and my chat log of the Open-Source Developer meeting held on Friday, December 19th, 2025.

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status Viewer Updates Viewer-Side Voice Moderation Viewer 2026.01 – One-click Installer / Updater General Viewer Notes General Discussion – Both Meetings Next Meetings

Please note that this is not a full transcript of either 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.
• The OSUG meeting is a combining of the former Third Party Viewer Developer meeting and the Open Source Development meetings. 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 2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301 – maintenance update with bug fixes and quality of life improvements – December 2.
  • Notable addition: new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for mesh uploads.
• Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha version 7.2.3.19911032641, December 5.
• Second Life Project Voice Moderation viewer 26.1.0.20139269477, December 12.

Viewer Updates

Viewer Side Voice Moderation

• Introduces the ability to moderate spatial voice chat in regions configured to use webRTC voice.
• Allows region  / parcel owners (the latter subject to local region permissions) to moderate Voice chat (i.e. muting people if required) on their land.
• Allows existing Group moderators to moderate Voice chat, if used within their groups.
• This function is viewer-side and limited to muting people.
  • Muting remains active through the muted individual’s log-in session (i.e. if they TP out of a parcel where they are muted, then TP back, they will still be muted; however, if they log out / in, then they will be unmuted until moderation is re-applied).
  • This approach is to make the moderation more a social tool – e.g. muting someone who has left their microphone open and are accidentally flooding the channel with background sounds whilst AFK.
• For more obnoxious users on Voice, the currently-existing ban methods are recommended.

Viewer 2026.01 – One-click Installer / Updater

Viewer 2026.01 is in progress. This will include:

• Improved bugsplat support (we want better reporting for freezes, and just generally better crash reporting). This work builds on the successes of 2025 in detailing with viewer crashes and reducing overall causes for crashes.
• A new one-click installer:
  • To be powered by a new dependency called velopack.
  • The process will literally be: click once, and a (small) pop-up is briefly displayed stating the viewer is being installed, and the viewer is launched when done.
  • On Windows, the viewer will default to installing under Apps/Local; on Apple OS it will remain as a drag-and-drop; Linux is still TBD.
  • It will be possible to tell the installer to install to a custom location, if preferred, but initially, this will be via a command line argument.
  • Config files and such are not changing. Anything that counts as user data will not change. It’s only where the viewer is installed by default that is changing.
  • In addition:
    • Older viewers will need to be uninstalled.
    • NSIS installer scripts will still be around for projects that prefer that.
    • Velopack does output “portable” viewer installs – literally a zip file with everything needed to install the viewer, if required.
    • The new installer will be offered as an opt-in to TPVs wishing to make use of it.
  • The one-click install capability will likely be an alpha (formerly project) viewer, which will be made available “in the coming days” in order to gain some user feedback.
  • These changes will not affect the current viewer repos, channels, cohorts, etc., as currently used by TPVDs.
• It is also hoped to include a new updater to make viewer updates more transparent, running the the background without the need for direct user intervention.
  • So, when there is a new version of the viewer available and a user attempts to launch their current version of the viewer, the new version will be downloaded, installed and launched.
  • It will still be possible to disable automatic viewer updates from within the Viewer Preferences.
• The idea behind the new installer  / updater is to make installing and updating the viewer a less onerous task for newer users.

General Viewer Notes

• Viewer 2026.02 will likely be UI-focused. This might include:
  • Changes to the UI font See: https://github.com/secondlife/viewer/issues/2023), which will likely require some updates to various floaters and panels in the viewer.
  • Adoption of some of the UI updates made to the Project Zero (viewer in a browser) version of the viewer.
  • More information will be available on this viewer as plans are settled.
• As a general note on viewer performance, and within the official viewer, Geenz Linden notes that at the start of the year, LL was tracking an average viewer FPS of around 40 on the official viewer, but as the end of year approaches, the average has “moved well past that”, and “getting pretty close” to tracking above 50 FPS.

General Discussion – Both Meetings

• No plans to offer larger sizes for prim creation at present.
• WebRTC voice:
  • Still needs further adjustments (e.g. such as with voice roll-off with distance).
  • Can have issues of “muffling” when moving the camera, and these are still being looked at.
  • Is now available on the Project Zero viewer.
• A general discussion on colour palette spaces in the colour picker for saving colours (e.g. providing more, and whether it might be better served as a list).
• A further debate on having a dedicated chat bar exposed in the official viewer.
• A general discussion on the derender capability found in various TPVs (very useful for photographers / machinima makers; silencing noisy  / spammy objects, etc).
• A discussion in the OSUG on the upcoming viewer font update.

Next Meetings

• CCUG: 13:00 SLT, Thursday, January 8th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.
• OSUG: 13:00 SLT, Friday, December 16th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

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 Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status General Viewer Updates SLua Update WebRTC Update: Speech to Text In Brief Next Meeting

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

• 13:00 SLT, Thursday, December 18th, 2025, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.