Category: SL User Group Meetings

2025 week #14: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Realm of Ihrydia, January 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 1st, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log of the meeting and Pantera’s video, embedded at the end of this piece.

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

  • On Tuesday April 1st, the SLS Man Channel was updated with the Durian Scones update, which includes the SSL certificate renewal, making it grid-wide.
  • On Wednesday, April 2nd, the RC channels will be restarted without any deployment, other than a WebRTC update which will be deployed to the Preflight RC channel.

Planned Updates – LI Calculation Change (Recap)

  • Signal Linden highlighted a Feedback Ticket he has raised, proposing the removal of scale from Land Impact calculations.
  • This is being possibly earmarked for a simulator update after Durian Scones.
  • This essentially means that the LI of object should not dramatically change as a result of resizing (particularly when increased in size). It could also mean that some large objects in world could see LI reductions.
  • Understandably, this announcement led to a lot of discussion / debate throughout the meeting.
  • Signal also stated that the Lab will like – at some point also take a look at Mesh uploads and use: Incentivize correct use of LODs, which is currently being tracked.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – No change.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
    • Water exclusion surfaces.
    • Water improvements.
  • Second Life Release Candidate viewer 2025.03 version 7.1.13.14115832189, March 28th – NEW.
    • New UI element for water exclusion surfaces: Build / Edit floater → Texture Tab → Hide Water checkbox.
    • The maximum amount of Reflection Probes can now be adjusted to better accommodate low VRAM scenarios.
      • Values will be set automatically depending on your chosen graphics quality. OR
      • Use Preferences → Graphics →  Advanced Settings →  Max. Reflection Probes to manually set.
    • An issue with being unable to see Sky Altitude values in the Region/Estate window has now been resolved.
    • Preferences → Graphics → Max. # of Non-Imposters has been renamed Max. # of Animated Avatars for clarity.
    • Bug and performance fixes and memory optimisations.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13973830462, March 20th, 2025 – no change.

In Brief

Please refer to the the video for details on the following.

  • A request was made for linkset larger than the current 64m limit. This would have to be “thought about”, although it led to an extensive discussion on the idea (including issues of linkset visibility / draw distance / limits on older hardware).
Arbitrary link distances sounds like a neat idea, however I suspect such a change would only exacerbate some interest list bugs. I wonder what would happen if two 1cm^3 cubes were linked at 256m. The “position” of the linked object would be one of the prims. Its measure of “visibility” should be… what? The size of one or the size of the linked set?

– Leviathan Linden

  • The above led to a broad conversation on prim / object types, physics, prim torturing, etc.
  • Signal linden noted on the status of SLua:
Updates on SLua may slow down as we got a lot of good information from the alpha. We need to make some changes and prepare for a beta and production rollout.
  • Rider Linden also dropped a request into the meeting:
I’m looking for someone to write an extension. When I open a script file using VSCode check the current workspace. If it finds a file with the same base name, “link” the two files. 1) Copy the file from the workspace to the SL script temp file every time the WS file is saved.

 

† 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.

March 2025 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 27th 2025 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

Release Updates

[Video: 3:18-4:09]

  • Version: 2025.1.543 Android / 0.5.534 iOS – Lobby release (see Below).

Alpha Testing Update

[Video: 4:11-6:38]

An update to the Alpha version of Mobile was pushed out on March 27th for those in the Mobile Alpha program.

  • New ‘touch timer’ to make interaction much more obvious.
  • New forward/backwards buttons for navigating to different locations.
  • Location bar new accepts input.
  • You can now:
    • Create Favourites by tapping on the heart icon in the parcel tray.
    • Share your location via other apps.
    • View and visit your Landmarks and Favourites
  • Performance and rendering improvements (incl. defaulting to new bone attachment handling functions – see the February meeting summary) + fixes for duplicated IMs.
  • New Developer settings:
    • Lower Resolution When Hot/Low Battery – defaults to on, but can be turned off
    • Lower Resolution When In Menu – try this to increase app performance while in Lobby
    • Disable World Loading – try this to test the UI without loading the world

Lobby Update

[Video: 9:29-14:42]

As regular users of SL Mobile are aware, Lobby is a feature designed to put key information before a user when logging-in to SL Mobile and while the world is still being loaded in the background. This information includes:

  • A world loading bar with your avatar’s current location.
  • Menu access.
  • Details of friends in-world.
  • Messages received whilst off-line.
  • Suggested places to visit.
  • Event listings.
  • Access to official blog posts.
  • relevant links to expand any of the above.
Three views of the Lobby

The following points should be noted:

  • The lobby will only be displayed when you actually log-in to a new session of the app – that is, you actually use the menu option to log-out between sessions. It will not be displayed if you close the app without logging-off and then re-open it.
  • Currently, your avatar will still be in-world when using the Lobby and will show to all those you have allowed to see your on-line status as being in-world.

Future Plans / Feedback

  • There are plans to have the lobby be accessible without an avatar requiring an in-world presence.  However, this is going to take time to implement, and so should not be expected as an update in the short-term.
  • At present, there is no means to “return” to the Lobby once a user has switched to using the in-world view. However, the option to return to it is being considered – and this gained some support from those at the meeting, so is likely to be implemented.
  • I’ve provided feedback (with screenshots about the app at times loading the in-world view fully / partially and then loading the lobby, which has apparently been experienced by others.

PBR Support

[Video: 14:50-17:33]

  • As has been previously stated, SL Mobile has to work within extremely tight memory constraints – 500-800MB – in order to do everything required of it (including the app itself, rendering all in-world objects, avatars and surfaces, etc.).
  • This obviously impacts the amount of content the app can have loaded at any given time – and PBR has a much higher memory footprint than textures on their own (as much as 3x the memory use).
  • While high-end mobile devices may have increased RAM support (e.g. 8-12GB), supporting PBR could run the risk of impacting lower-to-mid-range ‘phones of the types perhaps most commonly in use.
  • Therefore, the focus at the moment is not directly on PBR rendering in the app, but rather on reducing the app’s overall memory footprint, notably with regards to textures through a mechanism the Lab calls “variable textures”.
    • This amounts to a more intelligent loading of textures based (IIUC) on what can currently be seen within a given scene, rather than loading all the textures for a scene, regardless as to whether or not they are visible.
  • The hope is that this work will reduce the overall memory used by the app, and thus pave the way for PBR support. However, it is in the R&D phase, so not something that currently has any kind of potential ETA.

Animesh Support

[Video: 17:41-20:33]

  • Animesh creations come with their own skeletons  / bones, which in turn come with all the required computational needs – joint placement, rotation, etc., which tend to make Animesh resource-heavy for SL Mobile, both in terms of memory use and in terms of CPU use + power requirements – particularly when it comes to Animesh avatar attachments working in concert with the avatar.
  • The decision thus far, therefore, has been to simply ignore Animesh objects, whether in-world or attached to avatars.
  • However, the data for in-world Animesh objects is available to the Mobile app, so there is the potential for that data to be used and in-world Animesh objects rendered in the future.
  • That said, any decision to do so would only be made after there has been extensive testing on Animesh behaviour and hardware resource use.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following.

  • [Video: 7:24-9:02] Rewards, etc.:
    • A recap on the March Mobile Millions L$ spin to win challenges.
    • LL “sort-of want to give more people more chances to actually get Linden Dollars”, so the next “thing” (/challenge?) “to give nearly every person practically a chance every day to do the thing and get the cash”.
  • [Video: 21:02-22:44] Beanies tips’n-tricks – a re-cap on friending people / offering teleports through Mobile:
    • With the avatar to be friended in-scene: long-press on the avatar Context Menu → Send Friend Request or Offer Teleport.
    • Via People → Nearby → avatar profile → long press the  Context Menu → Send Friend Request or Offer Teleport.
    • Via Chat →  click the three dots next to the avatar name for the Context Menu → Send Friend Request or Offer Teleport.
  • [Video: 23:46-23:29] Mentors and helpers: the Second Life Mobile – Welcome group is available to provide help and support to new users / those new to the SL Mobile app, and mentors and those willing to offer support to other Mobil users are welcome to join it.
  • [Video: 24:39-end] Q&A:
    • Object chat – coming “in about a month”.
    • Gestures: no current plans for implementing either in-scene or voice-activated gestures.
    • Ability to close an IM session and clear it from the list on the app – “on the list” of things to be done.
    • Messages Getting Stuck – seems to be a mixed issue as to whether people experience it or not, but it is under investigation, with a request that if anyone experiences any issues in sending / receiving messages to file feedback / a bug report on it before logging-out of the session in which it occurs.
    • I can’t teleport anywhere – same as above. This may be account related, and logged out of the app and then back in is reported as helping to clear it.
    • A reported issue of avatars getting getting stuck jumping nonstop – this has been noted by LL but “not seen in a while”. Reports again, please, if encountered.
    • A request for documentation on the Developer Settings to help users set their devices. Short answer to this was “no”, as the settings are not intended for general use, but are rather for internal testing purposes. As a result, they can give differing results depending on hardware, and documenting them as options perhaps not a good idea.
      • That said, anyone who does adjust a developer setting and finds it improves their experience is asked to report what they’ve done and how it improves things on their hardware.
      • Anyone who does want to start an SL Wiki page on the topic (subject tot edit rights) is welcome to do so, but please inform Adam Sinewave so he can sanity check to ensure the information is correct.

Date of Next Meeting

2025 week #13: SL SUG meeting: Certificate renewal (2); LI Calculations

Posted on by Inara Pey
Drone Haven, January 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 25th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log of the meeting – sorry, no video from Pantera 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

  • On Tuesday March 25th, the SLS Man Channel was updated with any deployment.
  • On Wednesday March 19th the Durian Scones update should be deployed to all remaining RC channels RC – this update incudes the SSL certificate renewal – see below for more.

Production Grid SSL Certificate Renewal

  • The SSL certificate for the Second Life Production Grid is set to expire on April 16th, 2025 02:40 GMT.
  • A new certificate anchored by DigiCert started deployment via the BlueSteel RC on Wednesday, March 19th, and will progress across the RC channels and to the SLS Main Channel in the normal cadence of simulator releases, to be completed in advance of the old certificates expiring.
  • Testing of this certificate can be done either within the nominated simulator channels as it is deployed, or on Aditi (the beta grid), on the following regions:
    • Bonifacio.
    • Blake Sea (Very nearly the entire set of regions).
    • Cloud Sandbox 1 through 4.
  •  For full details on the re-certification, please read Monty Linden’s forum post and thread, or the Lab’s official summary blog post.

Planned Updates – LI Calculation Change

  • Signal Linden highlighted a Feedback Ticket he has raised, proposing the removal of scale from Land Impact calculations.
  • This is being possibly earmarked for a simulator update after Durian Scones.
  • This essentially means that the LI of object should not dramatically change as a result of resizing (particularly when increased in size). It could also mean that some large objects in world could see LI reductions.
  • Understandably, this announcement led to a lot of discussion / debate throughout the meeting.
  • Signal also stated that the Lab will like – at some point also take a look at Mesh uploads and use: Incentivize correct use of LODs, which is currently being tracked.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – No change.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
    • Water exclusion surfaces.
    • Water improvements.
  • Second Life Release Candidate viewer 2025.03 version 7.1.13.13906285233, March 20th – NEW.
    • New UI element for water exclusion surfaces: Build / Edit floater → Texture Tab → Hide Water checkbox.
    • The maximum amount of Reflection Probes can now be adjusted to better accommodate low VRAM scenarios.
      • Values will be set automatically depending on your chosen graphics quality. OR
      • Use Preferences → Graphics →  Advanced Settings →  Max. Reflection Probes to manually set.
    • An issue with being unable to see Sky Altitude values in the Region/Estate window has now been resolved.
    • Preferences → Graphics → Max. # of Non-Imposters has been renamed Max. # of Animated Avatars for clarity.
    • Bug and performance fixes and memory optimisations.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13973830462, March 20th, 2025 – NEW.

In Brief

Please refer to the the video for details on the following.

  • A SLua update was deployed to Aditi during the meeting, containing the requested JSON and the B64 stuff in it.
  • Signal indicated that LL’s visit to the 2025 Game Developer Conference (March 17th-21st, 2025) in San Francisco to promote Second Life appears to have been well received, the the stand receiving a lot of visitors and interest.
  • There has been some discussion in the Content Creation channel of the Second Life Discord Server about allowing rezzing of prims and meshes larger than the current 64m limit, either for everyone, or as a switch which could be set at the estate/region level. LL are tracking this.
    • However, Signal and Leviathan Linden noted that in terms of meshes exceeding 64m in size, some research into potential physics impacts might be required.
    • Signal further suggested that if there are physics issues, such large meshes could be made non-physical on rezzing.
  • On the subject of physics, there have been reports of objects getting “stuck” with a convex version of their physics mesh until are selected by their owner, and also that sometimes the simulator forgets the mesh physics type and sets it to convex hull.
    • Rider Linden noted he spent some time trying to trace down a similar issue some time ago, without success.
    • Leviathan Linden would like to look into these issues, so Feedback reports would likely be appreciated, with logs.
  • Signal again indicated a preference to get the Havok sub-libraries out of the viewer, replace the decomp. library with an open-source one, and replace Navmesh with a solution “that isn’t janky”. However,  decisions on all of this have yet to be taken.
  • A discussion on the “energy” effect within llPush – where it has use (e.g. feeding into impact damage calculations for weapons), issues, etc., and whether or not there is a case for it being removed for SLua scripts (but not Lua VM to run LSL, so as to maintain compatibility), if at all possible (possibly not).
  • Signal Linden also dropped a request into the meeting:
If you would be seriously interested in contract work to convert the LSL wiki over to readme.com, including a Github action to generate LSL/SLua function documentation from a giant LLSD manifest, drop me a line. One thing I’m thinking about is improving documentation. Readme.com is the same platform VRchat uses for their docs rather effectively, and it would allow us to accept changes from unregistered users once again.

† 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 #12: SL CCUG meeting summary: PBR / BOM

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, March 20th, 2025.Please note that this is not a full transcript, 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.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.

Official Viewer Status and Updates

[Video: 02:07-8:00]

Viewer Status

  • Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – No change.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
    • Water exclusion surfaces.
    • Water improvements.
  • Second Life Release Candidate viewer 2025.03 version 7.1.13.13906285233, March 20th – NEW.
    • New UI element for water exclusion surfaces: Build / Edit floater → Texture Tab → Hide Water checkbox.
    • The maximum amount of Reflection Probes can now be adjusted to better accommodate low VRAM scenarios.
      • Values will be set automatically depending on your chosen graphics quality, OR
      • Use Preferences → Graphics →  Advanced Settings →  Max. Reflection Probes to manually set. Note that lowering the value on this slider can help within environments where a lot of manual Reflection Probes have been placed out.
    • An issue with being unable to see Sky Altitude values in the Region/Estate window has now been resolved.
    • Preferences → Graphics → Max. # of Non-Imposters has been renamed Max. # of Animated Avatars for clarity.
    • Bug and performance fixes and memory optimisations.
Updates to the UI elements in the 2025-03 Release Candidate viewer (click for full size, if required)

Upcoming Viewers

  • The hope is that the 2025.03 RC viewer will progress fairly rapidly through its pre-release iterations and be promoted to de facto viewer status “soon” – most likely early April.
    • Again, this viewer includes many fixes and and work originally scheduled for the 2024 “Maintenance B” RC, which had been held over due to the focus on the performance improvements work.
  • The April release – 2025.04 – is provisionally targeting:
    • The glTF mesh uploader (based on the current .DAE mesh uploader and doing pretty much the same). Again, please note that this is not the full glTF scene importer which has been discussed at previous CCUG meetings; that work is being broken down into smaller, more easily managed projects.
    • Possibly some additional Materials features, although these are currently subject to shifting priorities.
  • Geenz Linden reiterated the idea that the new viewer update process is intended to provide work on a major feature, and also include viewer quality of life improvements – notably requests / fixed file via the Feedback Portal.

Bakes on Mesh Improvements – PBR

[Video: 12:17-24:42]

  • A bump of a feature request to provide the ability to make alphas for AUX BOM layers led Geenz to note that there are internal discussions on Bakes on Mesh and what additional things / features the Lab would like to tackle with regards to it (e.g. blend options, including the ability to blend materials attributes).
  • However, nothing is as yet on the roadmap for implementation.
  • This led to a general request on feedback as to what creators would like to see by way of BOM improvements. Responses included:
    • Full PBR Materials compositing / baking.
    • The mentioned materials blending + Photoshop-like blend modes + the ability to have blends (+ opacity) user-modifiable, even if the assets themselves are not.
    • Provide opacity sliders on the bakes slots, so as to allow things like the creation of a universal tattoo in 100% opacity black, then being able to ‘fade’ it without using more textures with separate opacity settings – see: Introducing Opacity Control for BOM Layers.
    • The ability to drag different BOM layers around when changing layer priorities, rather than having to use the current Up/Down buttons in the appearance floater.
  • Additional requests should be filed via the Feedback Portal.
  • A request for real-time in-viewer painting for alpha layers with a very basic editor was also requested as a part of the above, with Geenz indicating this would be unlikely any time soon.
  • Providing full support for PBR materials within the Bake Service is being actively “thought about” at the Lab, but Geenz noted there are some caveats. For example:
    • There is both a compatibility issue and some degree of “convertibility” between supporting a mix of PBR materials and “legacy” (Blinn-Phong) materials within BOM.
      • The compatibility issue is that both are largely different in how they operate.
      • The “convertibility” aspect lies in the fact that the specularity channel within “legacy” materials was developed with what was at the time (2012) the glTF specularity workflow. This potentially opens the door towards mixing both.
    • However: there are multiple considerations when it comes to possibly supporting both Blinn-Phong and PBR materials in BOM – particularly when it comes to ensuring the end-user understands what is going on, what might happen when editing / combining layers, and the whole question of how the necessary guidelines / caveats / warnings can be meaningfully put before users without causing confusion.
    • These internal discussions are currently on-going.
  • The idea of being able to modify blending when the assets themselves are No Mod was described as “an interesting one”, with Geenz suggesting it is something that should be posted as a request to the Feedback Portal to gain broader feedback from the user / creator community before any specific actions are taken, particularly given changes to the permissions system can lead to debate.
    • This led in part to an additional discussion on the idea of “opening” the permissions system in other areas – such as allowing users the ability to colour tint meshes that are otherwise No Mod, or add glow, if required).
  • During the discussion Geenz noted that in general, PBR is unlikely to be getting displacement mapping “any time soon”.

In Brief

  • [Video: 6:02-7:05 + later in the meeting] glTF mesh uploads:
    • The outline of this work can be found in Add Simple (llmesh) GLTF Model Import.
    • In short: it should be taken that whatever can be done within the existing .DAE uploader will remain so for uploading glTF mesh models at the first pass. Enhancements – including possibly forking the glTF  uploader into its own floater distinct from the .DAE uploader – will come later.
    • Given this, the ability to upload custom skeletons / rigs will not be supported. This does not necessarily mean that custom skeletons / rigs will “never” be supported – rather than it is a more significant project that requires further consideration before a decision can be made.
    • A request was made to be able to select maps / materials for upload in the glTF uploader, e.g. whether it should be a selectable list rather than a drop-down (for materials – which defaults to one or “bulk”) – this also has been included in the Feature Request.
  • [Video: 8:29-11:59] Kyle Linden sought information on why those using vehicles – notably boats / aircraft disable sky rendering (via Advanced → Rendering Types) during normal game play (e.g. not for matters of terraforming, etc.).
    • The majority of feedback within the meeting suggested the core reason to be doing so gives a small FPS boost (and there have been reports filed that sunset / sunrise rendering can impact FPS).
    • Anecdotally, it was suggested that it can improve region crossings, although examples weren’t cited.
    • Some also stated they did it to stop the “frantic” cloud scrolling when moving between different regions with different EPP settings (why not just apply a preferred EEP setting to your avatar to avoid this?). This prompted Geenz Linden to remark that there have been some internal discussions about making the transitions between EEP setting less jarring.
  • [Video: 26:23-27:53] some are reporting increased frequency of texture thrashing on PBR viewers over non-PBR viewers.
    • This is in part why LL has been adding further controls over texture use of VRAM.
    • Manually adjusting VRAM usage may not always resolve all issues of texture blurring (as there can be multiple reasons for it), and tweaking thing like the slider for adjusting the amount of VRAM available for texture loading can make things worse in certain conditions – so keep this in mind.
  • [Video:37:02-38:26] A request was made via chat for the Feedback portal to have a means for people to view all the tickets they have filed. This was seen as something that the Canny developers would need to implement in general, rather than a capability LL could add to the system, and so should perhaps be requested on Canny itself!
  • [Video: 38:51-41:08] It’s been reported that the eye-dropper for tinting PBR surfaces from the colour picker swatch is not working. This extended into comments that copying / pasting materials between surfaces can fail and planar face alignment not working. Fixes for issues such as copying PBR materials are within the 2025.03 RC viewer, together with a fix for PBR materials not always persisting when applied to a mesh face.
  • The last 20 minutes are a general discussion on VR support (not yet, to much work in other areas to complete first); reflection probe fixes (such as better blending) to be looked at; anecdotal comparisons on frame rates being experienced at the meeting (anecdotal as no real indication of overall graphics settings being used, direction people had their camera point & the complexity of their field of view, etc.); general performance and performance tracking.
  • [Video: 58:12-1:00:05] Part of the discussion on frame rates / performance it was noted that turning off the name tag display in the viewer Preferences → General → Name Tags options) can cause an increase in FPS – most likely due to the use of alpha layer in name tags pulling on performance.  This led to request for feedback on whether the default should be left at Name Tags On & left to a person’s individual choice to alter it; or perhaps change it to Show Briefly; or perhaps alter the behaviour so the name tag only renders when the mouse is hovered over an avatar (without necessarily having the hovertips enabled).

Next Meetings

  • Subject to confirmation: Saturday CCUG, Saturday, March 29th, time TBA.
  • 13:00 SLT, Thursday, April 3rd, 2025, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.

2025 week #12: SL SUG meeting: Grid SSL Certificate Renewal

Posted on by Inara Pey
l’Oree des lumieres, January 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 18th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • 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

  • On Tuesday March 18th, the SLS Man Channel was updated with any deployment.
  • One Wednesday March 19th:
    • Durian Scones should be deployed to the BlueSteel RC – this update incudes the SSL certificate renewal – see below for more.
    • The rest of the RC channels should be restarted without update.

Production Grid SSL Certificate Renewal

  • The SSL certificate for the Second Life Production Grid is set to expire on April 16th, 2025 02:40 GMT.
  • A new certificate anchored by DigiCert in being deployed, starting with the BlueSteel RC on Wednesday, March 19th.
  • Testing of this certificate – particularly with accessing the grid from older viewer versions is recommended.
  • In addition, the certificate can be tested on Aditi (the beta grid), on the following regions:
    • Bonifacio.
    • Blake Sea (Very nearly the entire set of regions).
    • Cloud Sandbox 1 through 4.
  •  For full details on the re-certification, please read Monty Linden’s forum post and thread, or the Lab’s official summary blog post.
  • The plan is to complete deployment of the new certificate ahead of the old certificate expiring.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – No change.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
    • Water exclusion surfaces.
    • Water improvements.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13858460198, March 14th, 2025 – NEW.

In Brief

Please refer to the the video for details on the following.

  • A discussion on encrypting local chat  – or at least moving it from UDP to HTTP2. No so much due to chat passing through the Lab’s servers, but due to concerns about external agents eavesdropping.
  • A general discussion on SLua and updates, and on issues and requests.

† 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 #11: SL TPVD meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Coda Haze, January 2025 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Third-Party Developer meeting (TPVD) held on Friday, March 14th, 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 re conducted in a mix of Voice and 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

  • Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – NEW.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
    • Water exclusion surfaces.
    • Water improvements.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13858460198, March 14th, 2025 – NEW.
    • Will only work on Aditi, within the following regions: [Luau Yardang], [Luau Tombolo], [Luau Mesa] and [Luau Tideland].
    • See below for more.

Viewer Releases, Cadence and Open Source Contributions

  • As previously noted in these pages, viewer releases are changing:
    • The viewer version numbering will be changed to reflect the year / month of release, so 2025.03 (March 2025) will be the next viewer in the pipe, followed by 2025.04 (April 2025).
    • The new viewer numbering may not initially be reflected in installer / viewer About floater, but it is something Signal Linden would like to see achieve – and maybe even back in the viewer’s top bar.
    • The will be a move towards a monthly release cadence, although during the TPV meeting, Signal Linden indicated it might be every other month at times.
  • Overall the viewer release cadence is intended to better match the sever updates cadence, so that simulator updates with require viewer changes will not have to wait so long for those changes to appear in the release viewer.
  • In line with all of the above, Geenz Linden has put forward a proposal for revamping the open source programme and making it more responsive, inviting input from TPV and open source developers. This will likely include a new Contribution Agreement.

SLua Alpha Testing

  • SLua (Slew-ah, or SL Lua) is the name given to the server-side implementation of Lua as a replacement for Mono as the compiled scripting language for Second Life.
  • The alpha is now available on Aditi.
  • Please refer to the official blog post and (if you prefer) my blog post for more.
  • At the TPVD meeting, Signal Linden indicated that LL is considering open-sourcing the SLua virtual machine, once it is ready.

In Brief

  • It is likely that the open Source Developer meeting and the TPVD meeting will be merged, with one (or both) changing time (and frequency?) as a result.
  • With new simulator certificates coming in, it was recommended that older viewer versions on Aditi to ensure they can still access SL on simulators running with the new certificates. These Aditi simulators are:
    • Cloud Sandbox 1-4.
    • All of the Blake Sea regions.
    • Bonifacio.
  • The viewer-side implementation of Luau (as distinct from the SLua project) is described as being in a “project branch and liable to stay that way for now”, with no short-term plans for rolling it out.
  • Still no firm date on when the Vivox Voice service will be switched off in favour of WebRTC.

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.