Category: Simulator User Group

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 6th, 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. Pantera also recorded the meeting, and that recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks to Pantera, as always, 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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice).
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

• On Tuesday, May 6th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any update.
• On Wednesday, May 7th:
  • BlueSteel and the snack channel running the Elderberry simulator update (see below) should be restarted.
  •  All remaining RC channels should be updated with Elderberry.

Elderberry Update (2025.05)

• A new option to llDerezObject – DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY, which returns the targeted object to inventory and saves its current state (e.g. has the same behaviour as Build → Object → Save Back to Object Contents.
• llIsLinkGLTFMaterial  – which can can determine if a face on a linked prim is PBR.
• REZFLAG_DIE_ON_NO_REZZER – which will cause a rezzed prim to die if its rezzer is no longer present in the region.
• llSetGLTFOverrides, rather than changes to llSetColor and llSetAlpha to work with PBR, as changing the latter was “starting to lead down some very scary paths WRT ‘What is the right thing to do'”.
• Possibly a fix for llSetGroundTexture, which currently has the NE & SW values swapped. The question was asked in this was in the release, but the question wasn’t fully answered.

Upcoming Deployment – Fig Pudding (2025.06)

• This is still being put together.
• The update is unlikely to surface before June, as the simulator team has been focusing on some necessary internal work (e.g. ensuring various repositories build and deploy via Github actions correctly; updating where docker images are stored) which has drawn attention away from feature work on the simulators.

SL Viewer Updates

•  Default viewer: 2025.03 7.1.13.14343205944, issued April 9th and promoted April 15th.
  • 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.
• Release Candidate: 2025.04 – 7.1.14.14742193597, May 2nd 2025 – NEW.
  • Includes the following new features:
    • Chat Mentions (Early Support): Type @ then pick a name. To follow: audible alerts and highlight colour pickers.
    • My Outfits subfolders: now supports the use of subfolders.
  • Key updates:
    • Build Floater improvements: increase to scale boundaries; Physics Material Type now updates when selecting linked objects; Repeats per Meter value no longer incorrect for non-uniform sized objects
    • Hover height: the minimum/maximum is now +/- 3 meters.
    • Snapshot floater: L$ balances can be hidden independently of the rest of the UI.
    • Preference Search bar: general usability and readability improvements.
  • Refer to the release notes for full updates and fixes.
• Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.14175675593, April 2nd.
  • Will only work on Aditi. Blog post: Lab officially announces Luau Alpha testing.

In Brief

• A request for SLua events to be updated along the lines suggested in this canny request. Rider Linden indicated that a update will be made prior to SLua moving to wider beta testing, and will likely It will likely end up looking similar to the Canny proposal. However, there is no current time frame as to when the update will be made.
• A Canny request was filed in January for a llGetRegionWorldMapTile feature. This was reportedly now sitting in the backlog of requests and work the server team are hoping to work through in time.
  • This saw a follow-up request at the meeting to be able to zoom down to the level of centring a parcel on the map. Rider indicated that it should be possible to give the full region map as a as a texture ID, allowing scripts to adjust the offset and scale of the texture to achieve desired results.
• A discussion on regions idling (at 1 FPS(?)) when not in use (e.g. when there are no avatars in the region, no child agents registered with in and no HTTP IN/OUT functions running); the ability for llGetEnv to obtain a region’s status.
  • Regions are not completely shut-down when “empty”. as most require scripts to keep running.
  • This broadened into a discussion on how low a region takes to start-up. The most accurate might be “no long in the scheme of things, but variable”.
• In response to a question on progress with combat 2.1 features, Rider stated:

Combat 2.1 is pushed back. I’ve got no eta when that will come back up. I’d like to get it moving, I think it introduces some important additions that have impacts outside of just Combat, but there are lots of things that need doing and I can only type so fast.

• The latter half of the meeting was taken up with discussions of texture loading, the impact of alpha layering, non-optimised contents and similar, the majority of which was more viewer-centric. They arose from a complaint that Fantasy Faire is overloaded with “4K textures” (which aren’t actually a thing in SL) causing viewer performance issues.

 

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 29th, 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.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice).
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

• On Tuesday, April 29th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any update
• On Wednesday, April 30th:
  • BlueSteel and a snack channel should be updated with the Elderberry simulator update (see below).
  •  All remaining RC channels should be restarted without any change.

Upcoming Deployment – Elderberry

• A new option to llDerezObject – DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY, which returns the targeted object to inventory and saves its current state (e.g. has the same behaviour as Build → Object → Save Back to Object Contents.
• llIsLinkGLTFMaterial  – which can can determine if a face on a linked prim is PBR.
• REZFLAG_DIE_ON_NO_REZZER – which will cause a rezzed prim to die if its rezzer is no longer present in the region.
• llSetGLTFOverrides, rather than changes to llSetColor and llSetAlpha to work with PBR, as changing the latter was “starting to lead down some very scary paths WRT ‘What is the right thing to do'”.
• Possibly a fix for llSetGroundTexture, which currently has the NE & SW values swapped. The question was asked in this was in the release, but the question wasn’t fully answered.

SL Viewer Updates

•  Default viewer: 2025.03 7.1.13.14343205944, issued April 9th and promoted April 15th – No Change.
  • 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 7.1.12.14175675593, April 2nd.
  • Will only work on Aditi. Blog post: Lab officially announces Luau Alpha testing.

In Brief

• A (reasonable) request was made to have simulator release names (“Elderberry”, “Puff Pastry” or whatever) actually reflected on the release notes rather than referencing them solely by release number.
• Questions llDerezObject() DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY:
  • Is the clean-up procedures after de-rezzing any different to other objects? Should not be, the; the object is killed from in-world on receipt of the derez command, then a new asset is generated to replace the deleted one in the rezzing object’s inventory.
  • Is DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY to to any capability? No. The code was originally set up to respond to a message from the viewer and so would report messages back that way; however it is being updated to be smarter than that to avoid missed messages, etc.
• A feature request to allow attachment rezzing directly from another object’s inventory has been received (e.g. to assist with changing outfits). It is regarded as a large project and, if accepted, has yet to be added to the development roadmap.
• A feature request to Add function to get a list of objects in the region (somewhat similar to the Area Search in some TPVs) has been submitted and is currently being tracked. Upvote if you’d like to see it get onto the roadmap for implementation.
• A discussion on prim manipulation and LSL and differences between viewer-side and simulator-side disconnects (e.g. LSL cant set sphere taper, and viewer can’t set floating text or particle). This drifted into discussion of prim / linkset ordering and an actual node hierarchy for the same that is known to the viewer, together with a means to set the linkset number for a given object in the linkset / “click and assign” root prim for a linkset.
• Leviathan Linden offered some feedback to those testing the SLua regions on Aditi:

One thing I was working on a week or two ago but currently on hold: people on the Lua servers were using the faster scripts to thrash a log of prim properties, which would generate a storm of Full Updates. Someone noticed some hot spots in the generation/sending of those updates, slowing things down making the problem look like Lua’s fault. So, I was working on a speed-up there. Wasn’t done, got side-tracked. Will get back to it.

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 22nd, 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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice).
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

• This week will see all channel restarted without and deployments.

Upcoming Deployment – Elderberry

• It is hoped the at Elderberry update will be deployed the BlueSteel RC channel on Wednesday Apeil 30th, 2025.
• This release will likely include:
  • Anew option to llDerezObject – DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY, which returns the targeted object to inventory and saves its current state (e.g. has the same behaviour as Build → Object → Save Back to Object Contents.
  • llIsLinkGLTFMaterial  – which can can determine if a face on a linked prim is PBR.
  • REZFLAG_DIE_ON_NO_REZZER – which will cause a rezzed prim to die if its rezzer is no longer present in the region.
  • llSetGLTFOverrides, rather than changes to llSetColor and llSetAlpha to work with PBR, as changing the latter was “starting to lead down some very scary paths WRT ‘What is the right thing to do'”.

SL Viewer Updates

•  Default viewer: 2025.03 7.1.13.14343205944, issued April 9th and promoted April 15th – 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 7.1.12.14175675593, April 2nd.
  • Will only work on Aditi. Blog post: Lab officially announces Luau Alpha testing.

In Brief

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

• Ability to rename a group is marked As Planned, but “is not currently in the queue right now”.
• A request to make gravity / physics variable on a region basis (or as least when underwater. The response to this was twofold:
  • File a Feature Request outlining the requirement and how it might be used (e.g. through the SL Experiences mechanism) and see what the feedback from the community might be.
  • Whether the work could be undertaken or no would depend on a combination of how feasible it would be; the effort required to implement it (particularly in relation to other requests); how it might be employed.

The physics engine can handle a different acceleration of gravity, no problem. But, we’d have to track down all the places where we have hard-coded the normal value of gravity (server and viewer) and then replace that with a value that is communicated from the server, so we’d have to adjust the data protocol a bit, then get that work in all the important TPVs. Just thinking out loud how hard it would all be.

– Leviathan Linden

• The above threaded through much of the meeting, in placing crossing over  into discussions:
  • About facilitating natural swimming in SL (i.e. Linden Water shouldn’t exhibit the same gravity as land and causing avatars to drop to the riverbed / sea floor).
  • The idea of the official viewer providing a built-in AO system (e.g. akin to Firestorm’s, but making use of llSetAnimationOverride.
  • On the SL wind and its usefulness (and to the ability to have wind-driven weather).
• The official Discord channel has seen a conversation about allowing experience scripts to optionally rez objects as the experience land owner, rather than only the owner of the object (e.g. let an experience gun rez bullets under land group instead of needing to set land to open rez). Rider Linden stated he’d like to get something like this added to the roadmap.
• Although more viewer-side, the camera became a focus of discussion:
  • While no work has been taken on it, New llSetCameraParams() rules: CAMERA_POSITION_KEY and CAMERA_FOCUS_KEY is something that might be a part of providing better camera controls for the likes of machinimatographers.
  • A reminder was given, as well: llSetKeyFramedCamera.
  • Leviathan Linden remided people that he had re-implemented follow-cam in the game-control project, so that the camera could be moved around with the game controller device. However, “there was much work to be done there to make anyone happy”.
• The viewer-side implementation of Lua (not the server-side SLua project currently being tested on Aditi), is apparently “on hold”.

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 15th, 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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice).
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

• This week will see all channel restarted without and deployments.

Upcoming Deployment – Recap

This next simulator update will be called Elderberry. Among other things, this should include:

• A new option to llDerezObject – DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY, which returns the targeted object to inventory and saves its current state (e.g. has the same behaviour as Build → Object → Save Back to Object Contents.
• llIsLinkGLTFMaterial  – which can can determine if a face on a linked prim is PBR.
• REZFLAG_DIE_ON_NO_REZZER – which will cause a rezzed prim to die if its rezzer is no longer present in the region.
• Updates to llSetAlpha will have a caveat: if alpha  is set to >0.85, it will switch the overrides to opaque; setting under that value sets them to blend. This is because there seem to be some serious rendering issues with blend mode and an alpha near 1, per this image.
• llSetGLTFOverrides, rather than changes to llSetColor and llSetAlpha to work with PBR, as changing the latter was “starting to lead down some very scary paths WRT ‘What is the right thing to do'”.

SL Viewer Updates

• Default viewer: 2025.03 version 7.1.13.14343205944, dated April 9th, 2025, promoted April 15th, 2025.
  • 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 7.1.12.13907344519, April 2nd.
  • Will only work on Aditi. Blog post: Lab officially announces Luau Alpha testing.

In Brief

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

• A general discussion llDerezObject and whether an object being taken back by an object has been renamed will result in a copy being generated, or the original still replaced (answer: still replaced).
  • As a result, a DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY_COPY parameter has been requested, and could be suppled in the simulator update after Elderberry.
  • Rider Linden also noted he may need to disallow a reclaim on coalesced inventory objects, as once in-world, acoalesced object becomes a grouping on independent objects, with not connection between them or any means to re-group them.
  • Discussion around this functionally and iiDerezObject continued through most of the meeting.
• Progress on SLua is described as being “good”, but as per the pervious meetings (SUG and TPVD), there is more back-end work to be done before the SLua project moves to a “beta” on Aditi.
• Following the discussion on World → Show → Land Owners has been broken since the release of PBR such that all owners, regardless of type are only shown as red, rather than in different colours based on ownership (see Land owners colour),  it was noted that a fix for the issue should be in the next RC viewer update – 2025.04.

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 8th, 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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice).
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

• This week will see all channel restarted without and deployments.

Upcoming Deployment

This next simulator update will be called Elderberry. Among other things, this should include:

• A new option to llDerezObject – DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY, which returns the targeted object to inventory and saves its current state (e.g. has the same behaviour as Build → Object → Save Back to Object Contents.
• llIsLinkGLTFMaterial  – which can can determine if a face on a linked prim is PBR.
• REZFLAG_DIE_ON_NO_REZZER – which will cause a rezzed prim to die if its rezzer is no longer present in the region.
• Updates to llSetColor and llSetAlpha to work with PBR.
  • llSetAlpha will have a caveat: if alpha  is set to >0.85, it will switch the overrides to opaque; setting under that value sets them to blend.
  • This is because there seem to be some serious rendering issues with blend mode and an alpha near 1, per this image. Rider Linden added:

Also. It bears repeating… since I forgot. BP colours (what you set with llSetColor) are in sRGB space. PBR is linear. I’m doing the conversion internally so it should be the same colour in both cases.

SL Viewer Updates

• Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – No change – crash and performance fixes; Water exclusion surfaces and water improvements.
• Second Life Release Candidate viewer 2025.03 version 7.1.13.14174767759, April 2nd.
  • 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 7.1.12.13907344519, April 2nd.
  • Will only work on Aditi. Blog post: Lab officially announces Luau Alpha testing.

In Brief

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

• A request was made to have changes to releases on the SLua test regions on Aditi added to the release notes mechanism so that those using the regions can see when / why things are going to change or are going to change.
  • This is going to be looked into. In the interim, Rider Linden is going to try to to provide notification of updates to the Second Life Discord server.
• World → Show → Land Owners has been broken since the release of PBR such that all owners, regardless of type are only shown as red, rather than in different colours based on ownership (see Land owners colour).
  • No update in fix status.
• Add flag to llSetLinkSitFlags, SIT_FLAG_INVISIBLE is described as on the to-do list, and will likely be a viewer-side change so the flag is respected.
• A status update was requested for work on providing a means to ease issues of ban line collisions and vehicle loss, and having the simulator provide more timely information on parcel access permissions before a vehicle is on top of a parcel in which access is denied for the avatars riding it.
  • This is something Rider Linden is hoping to get to in the simulator release after Elderberry).
  • The discussion broadened through the when and how the simulator should provide parcel information to the viewer – e.g. in general or on demand, and what information could be provided, having a mandated delay on security systems on the Mainland to prevent the enter parcel / immediate teleport / ejection situation.
• Still no news on when the Mainland legacy EEP setting (now seen as dim and murky post PBR deployment), although it is believed the Moles are working on Mainland region settings.

† 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.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice).
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

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.
  • Monty Linden’s forum post and thread.
  • The Lab’s official summary blog post.
• 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.
  • Will only work on Aditi. Blog post: Lab officially announces Luau Alpha testing.

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.