Category: TPVD / Open Source User Group

The following notes were taken from: My chat log of the Open-Source Developer (OSD) meeting held on Friday, April 17th, 2026, together with my chat log of that meeting. Pantera’s video of the meeting (embedded at the end of this article) – my thanks to her for providing it. Please note that this is not a full No video this week, as Pantera was absent the meeting.

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status 26.02.o – Flat UI 26.3.0 – Graphic Care Package Lua Viewer WebRTC Deployment General Discussion 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.

Official Viewer Status

• Default viewer  – One-Click Installer = 26.1.1.23806384790 – April 10 – NEW.
• Second Life Release Candidate (RC) viewer: Flat UI – 26.2.0.24254827122, April 15 -“flat” UI and font update – NEW.
• Second Life Project Viewers:
  • Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.1.0.21525310258, February 12.

26.2.0 – “Flat UI”

• Now at RC status, per the Above list.
• More updates to be made to this prior to promotion.
  • LL is working through some font kerning problems that were seemingly made much more obvious with the new font choice.
  • It was also noticed that the official viewer has been rendering fonts ever so slightly different from FS – which kicked off the above investigation.

26.3.0 – Graphics Care Package

• The is the viewer previously known as the SL Visual Polish (SLVP) viewer.
• The performance tweak has been ported over, and the team is now looking at additional performance work.
  • Async inventory is being parted out into easier to review chunks.
  • LL is also looking at some CPU and GPU wins overall – Geenz Linden is working on getting texture batching working for the PBR and Blinn-Phong paths. There is potentially more work on these lines, and these will likely be incorporated prior to passing the viewer to QA.

Lua Viewer

• The Lua Alpha update that it had been hoped would surface around the start of April is now being aimed for some time in week #17.
• The current lean at the Lab is to move this viewer through to RC status and then release before the 26.3.0 GCP viewer, but no firm decision has been made.
• Again, this viewer will also be the first new Linux release from LL.
• As a reminder: LL have officially dropped “SLua” (“SL Lua”) and just going with “Lua”.

WebRTC Deployment

• The WebRTC deployment is still underway. No firm end-date as yet, although it should now be across all simulator RC channels.
• Anyone experiencing Voice issues with WebRTC is asked to file a bug report.

General Discussion

• The vcpkg updates for the viewer build process will not be surfacing until “after Lua at the very least”.
  • Geenz estimates it will likely not emerge until late summer, due to dependencies on work being completed vis. KDU and the removal of the Havok sub-libraries from the viewer.
  • In terms of the latter: VHACD will replace the convex decomposition for mesh upload, and server-generated path-finding mesh will replace the Havok path-finding mesh loaded by the viewer for visualisation.
  • A major reason for removing the Havok sub-licences is the impact they have on TPVs, who have to go through the process of obtaining and signing sub-licence agreements via LL, which complicates the open-source environment.
  • In this respect, if LL had a truly open-source replacement for KDU on the graphics side, they would look to make similar moves there as well.
• Physics shapes and why and what the viewer can do with them became a topic for conversation at around the half-way point in the meeting, and this continued for around 10 minutes.
• During the above there was a general discussion on the mesh uploader and clarifying LOD numbers for those coming into mesh creation.
• A question was asked on interpreting section 8 part of the Unauthorized Uses of Linden Lab’s Trademarks policy – a question perhaps best dealt with via a support Support Ticket.
• A request was made for TPVs to receive stats reports once more (use, crash rates, etc). Geenz noted in reply:

Some of that is a bit of a black box to us as far as your specific crash rates, as for viewer usage we’re bottlenecked by a single person is responsible for that so it doesn’t always get done. I’ve been hoping to get a more automatic solution for this for a while, but our metrics folks have been booked up with other things for a good bit now.

• The question was asked about the possibility of viewer-side Lua for building custom UIs to replace some of the HUD systems people use, and whether work on this is still moving forward. Geenz repliedwith:

That’s been on the shelf for a while. Dunno if or when we’re gonna bring that one back – I think what we’d need to really look at bringing that back with a significant amount of interest is gonna be how people would want to use [it]. There’s a lot of criteria that goes into making product level decisions like that, and with the viewer side Lua stuff it was increasingly being looked at something for internal use than something like a content feature.

• The question was asked if the puppetry project was once and for all “dead”, to which Genenz again replied:

Lots of things were learned from that project, but I wouldn’t say it’s dead necessarily. Just not a priority. There’s a lot of things that would need to happen for puppetry, and I think it’s really increasingly more of a “when we need <x> we’ll work on that part of it” sort of thing. Because like joint streaming is just generally kind of useful, but we don’t have an immediate need for it. But who knows – maybe some day. Hell, if there’s any interest in having a proper poser viewer-side that ticks all of the privacy and consent boxes that might be a potential path. But we’re nowhere near there yet.

Next Meeting

• 13:00 SLT, Friday, May 1st, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

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

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status Viewer 2026.01 – On-Click Installer / Velopack Other Viewers WebRTC Deployment General Discussion 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.

Official Viewer Status

• Default viewer  – Legacy search; WebRTC improvements; QoL improvements – 26.1.0.22641522367 – March 12.
• Release Candidate viewer – one-click installer = 26.1.1.23806384790 – March 31 – NEW.
• Second Life Project Viewers:
  • Second Life Project Flat UI – 26.2.0.22829286351, March 20 -“flat” UI and font updates.
  • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.1.0.21525310258, February 12.

Viewer 2026.01.01 – One-Click Installer / Velopack

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

Other Viewers

• 2026.02 – “Flat” UI and Splash Screen Refresh – this is due to have an Alpha update issued on April 3rd.
• The Lua Alpha viewer is also due to have an update issued on April 3rd.
  • Note, LL are now officially dropping “SLua” (“SL Lua”) and just going with “Lua”.

• The viewer formerly known as the Second Life Visual Polish viewer (SLVP) is now known as the Second Life  Second Life Graphics Care Package.
  • The hope is to get that into alpha soon – but only after we get the necessary server work done and get some regions up on ADITI.

WebRTC Deployment

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

General Discussion

• There is an increasing issue of AI driven pull requests.
  • This appears to be a case of people trying to make claims via the bounty programme for code submissions without actually putting any effort into the work.
  • Commenting on the matter, Geenz Linden noted:

If you’re using LLMs to submit pull requests, that’s not an automatic no. However, blatantly vibe coded submissions, submissions that are effectively taking stuff from other viewers without any kind of attribution or permission and so on, and anything that just generally reads as super low effort just to claim a bounty is likely to be closed without comment in a worst case, or otherwise scrutinized in order to ascertain the individual’s understanding of what that code actually does vs. how much is just prompting to see if they can land something. We don’t want to shut down utilizing AI in people’s processes, but certain things are gonna get PRs shut down or scrutinized more heavily. So please keep this in mind.

• • This called into question the value of the bounty programme, with the fair point being made that TPV developers have spent years developing code for their viewers and submitting much of it to LL without any thought of reward other than improving people’s SL experience.
  • Geenz further noted the the bounty programme is due to get reviewed “sooner [rather]than later”, although it is likely “some form” of it will be kept, as it has also led to useful code contributions – such as those for getting the Linux viewer back into the frame (due to surface with the Lua viewer) and the viewer vcpkg work.
  • The suggestion was made that a contract programme – whereby an external coder is contracted to produce work – might be more beneficial than the current bounty programme. Again, this was pretty much the case for Linux and vcpkg.
  • A further suggestion was made to offer general bug / feature request bounties in L$ only – potentially making them less attractive to those trying to bend the system and earn US $ using AI LLMs.
• The question was asked if Leviathan Linden’s work on server-viewer messaging would be surfacing in one (or an) Alpha viewer soon – the reply was that discussions on where and when to place this work are still ongoing, in order to ensure the viewer work and server work appear pretty much together.
• Suzanna’s excellent write-up on the latest Lua release gained a further shout-out. On this (again):
  • This release will be deployed to Aditi (the Beta grid) first for testing.
  • It requires all Lua scripts to be recompiled in order to keep working.
• Tis last 10 minutes of the meeting was spent discussion whether “SLua” should be retained as the name for the Lua project, or if “Lua” was better (certainly more widely recognised) given it is an implementation of Luau.

Next Meeting

• OSUG: 13:00 SLT, Friday, April 17th, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

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

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status Upcoming Viewers Viewer 2026.01 – On-Click Installer / Velopack Viewer 2026.02 – Flat UI + Splash Sceen Viewer 2026.03 – Maintenance Release Viewer 2026.04 – SLVP or LUA (TBD) WebRTC Deployment General Discussion 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.

Official Viewer Status

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

Upcoming Viewers

Viewer 2026.01.01 – One-Click Installer / Velopack

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

Viewer 2026.02 – “Flat” UI and Splash Screen Refresh

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

Viewer 2026.03 – Maintenance Release

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

Viewer 2024.04 – SLVP or LUA (TBD)

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

WebRTC Deployment

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

General Discussion

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

Next Meeting

• OSUG: 13:00 SLT, Friday, April 3rd, 2026, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.