August 2025 SL Web User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday August 6th, 2025. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. The official video is embedded at the end of this summary.

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • 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.

Updates

  • The Marketplace team hope to release the mobile responsive marketplace search updates in the next week or so.
    • Note this updates is only for MP search, but there will be future Mobile updates for Marketplace in due course.
  • Time is being given to some general web property quality of life updates.
  • Work is continuing on some technical upgrades to critical internal services, defined as “not very glamorous but help keep things running smoothly”.
  • New bank pay-out options are due to be deployed “in the next week or so” for Brazil, Canada , France, Germany, Lithuania, Malaysia, the UK, the USA and Turkey.
  • A reiteration on the upcoming ending of the Character Designer programme (see: LL announce a pause in the current SL AI character designer project)
  • Kermit Linden will be leading Web User Group meetings for a while, and may be willing to host twice monthly meetings.
  • There is a “new offering” due to be announced in the next couple of months.

General Discussion

  • Several issues with maps.secondlife.com were raised, with the feedback that “some” are being worked on. Those raised were:
  • CasperVend integration: reported as “no official updates but we do want to take it on soon”.
    • Kali Linden noted that she has been working with Casper to develop product specifications for integrating some CasperTech features in to the Marketplace.
  • Marketplace variants / styles (i.e. multiple option for a product (such as different colours) in a single listing: the Marketplace team has yet to “get back” to this, and the request was for people to keep asking about it.
  • A request was made for a formal means for AI-generated content to be properly disclosed on MP listings. The broad response to this was content disclosure has generally been treated as being differed to the creator.
  • The group was asked that if they could create one web feature in SL, what would it be? Responses included:
    • A 3D SL Map.
    • Marketplace:
      • An ability to users to see a 3D preview of assets on the Marketplace.
      • Formal inclusion of item creation date (not listing creation date) and and the date on which the item was last updated for Marketplace listings. This has actually been looked into, and a plan to offer something “more stable” for creation date is in development, but last update date requires more work.
      • Filter options for removing specific creators / stores from Marketplace searches.  This is acknowledged as being a popular request, and something the Lab wants to look into.
      • Ability to search the MP by body type. This is something that has been specified internally, and so seen as as something that could be delivered in the future.
      • Multiple Marketplace wish lists / favourite lists. Again, this has received a lot of requests and is being thought about.
      • A request for multiple stores under one account. This was seen as a nice idea, but currently hard to implement.
    • Making the Land Use Fees page more intuitive, and perhaps include a way to calculate group bonus, etc.
  • The use of AI agents to assist in Marketplace searches was raised, in order to increase accuracy of results, etc.
    • There is nothing specific in the works for this.
    • Training AI tools for Marketplace search was seen as a major undertaking, simply because of the size of the MP, and that search could generally be improved a lot more directly without necessarily requiring the use of AI tools.
  • A discussion on people’s favourite / least favourite things in Second Life during the past week which flowed into a general conversation – refer to the video for details.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025.

Beach Life at Nitroglobus in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Kelsey Yuitza, Beach Life

Having opened within The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated by Dido Haas, Beach Life is a highly engaging series of Second Life centric images by Kelsey Sakura-Yuitza (Kelsey Yuitza), perfectly showcasing both her abilities as a self-taught Second Life photographer and her passion for spending time at the beach. A modest collection comprising just nine images – with two of them forming triptych-like pieces, one at either end of the gallery space – Beach Life carries within it arrange of emotions and narratives, with all but two of them focused on beach settings, even if their narratives far surpass the setting itself.

As a Second Life photographer, Kelsey is self-taught, developing her skills as a result of curiosity and a willingness to learn via tutorials and videos, and a determination to master the tools at her disposal. The fruits of her labours can be seen in the fact that her images are finely crafted, perfectly edited and easily comparable to anything a physical world photographers might create.

The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Kelsey Yuitza, Beach Life

Supported by beach-like vignettes by Adwehe with which visitors are encouraged to interact by sitting or kicking a beachball around, etc, Kelsey’s images are presented in the large format generally found within the main gallery. This allows the observer to be drawn into each piece and appreciate its beauty. Most of the images speak clearly for themselves and express the joy and freedom to be found in the pleasure of a beach visit. However, mixed within the collection are pieces which I found breath-taking in their depth, artistry and message. These included both of the triptych-like pieces, Where I Began and Ronin, together with Fallen not Forgotten.

Where I Began a celebration of origins, possibly on a personal level of Kelsey, but also in reflection of her growing love of photography in Second life. Ronin, meanwhile, offers a wealth of visual metaphor; there’s the idea of feminine strength and courage; the hint of honour and loyalty as enshrined in the Bushido Shoshinshu followed by samurai (even if ronin were regarded as having failed to live up to the demands of the code to commit seppuku upon the death on his master).

The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Kelsey Yuitza, Beach Life

Then there’s evocation of the traditional interpretation of ronin (“wanderer”; “drifter”) together with the idea of the modern-day drifter who might be found wandering along a beach, and the rich counterpointing of the more idiomatic interpretation of the word (“wave” and “person”) with the backdrop of the open, unfettered ocean to suggest a free spirit.

In its use of camera angle, lighting and shadow, focus and vignetting Fallen not Forgotten genuinely speaks for itself. To call in poignant would be an understatement; it is a marvellous tour de force of artistic expression and richness of narrative. It is powerful and evocative.

The Annex at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Kelsey Yuitza, Beach Life

A truly marvellous exhibition; one not to be missed.

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2025 week #32: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Caerleone Manor, May 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 5th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) off-week meeting (which I’ll be referring to as the “SUG Leviathan Hour” going forward). These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting and Patera’s video, which is embedded at the end of this article – 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 is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
  • The “SUG Leviathan Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
  • Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, August 5th, the majority of the grid – SLS Main channel and RC channels – was updated with simulator update 2025-07-25.16512260888.
  • The purpose behind this en masse restart (the first in a long time) was to account for network changes intended to allow the Lab to spread simhost servers across across multiple AWS availability zones (not necessarily AWS global regions).
  • As a result, there will be no RC channel restarts on Wednesday, August 6th.

AI Summit and Tools

  • Week #31 saw a Linden Lab summit on brainstorming how to use AI moving forward and experimenting with possible uses.
  • It is possible this summit may have caused the announcement on the forthcoming suspension / closure of the Character Generation project also made public during that week (see: LI announce a pause in the current SL AI character designer project).
  • As a result, Leviathan Linden has been exploring how hard it would be to use AI assistants to replace the llmath code in the viewer with GLM (graphics library math), a more standard and faster library; however, this is turning out to be more of a challenge than anticipated, with “lots of changes”, requiring care with the work.

SLua Update

  • Signal Linden defined the next goal for SLua is to roll it out to some Agni (Main grid) regions in a limited fashion. However there is work to be completed ahead of this happening – such as the project being made production ready, and “real” documentation assembled, and the inclusion of a new API for event handling.
  • Such a partial deployment would obviously be for testing purposes, and would mean that SLua scripts would only run on regions with the server-side support.
  • It was suggested that those regions offering building / scripting courses are considered for inclusion in Main grid SLua testing.
  • There is a concern that due to the amount of CPU time consumed even when idling, there is a concern that all script time in a region with a large number of SLua scripts could be consumed by idling scripts. This lead to a discussion on scripts, loads, scheduling and script times.

In Brief

  • As well as experimenting with GLM, Leviathan Linden has also trying to get some old server projects merged and shipped:
    • A slight speedup of scene load at login (and maybe less frequent missing content on arrival).
    • Compressed data from login.cgi for faster download of initial login data (and maybe fewer failed logins for people with lots of inventory folders).
  • Leviathan also hopes soon start working on the WebRTC voice streaming system.
  • Rider Linden is hoping to complete the LSL land functionality work he’s been developing for the Moles. This will include a llSetParcelForSale function (name still to be finalised at the time of writing).
  • Rider is also looking to expand llRequestInventoryData. There have already be requests for it to encompass to get information like tint and alpha from PBR textures, and sound and animation length.
    • Additional suggestions include PBR properties like metallic/roughness; animation priority; last attach point/position/rotation for a worn item, and last rezzed/in-world position/rotation.
  • Pepper Linden:
On the Conductor front, it’s been moving through QA, and we anticipate an Aditi and Agni rollout within the next week. During the initial roll out, we’ll be keeping the packing mode the same, and later on, turning on our new ‘packing’ logic (how we place regions on servers).
Some minor notes on our Discord integration for community servers, I had promised that we’d get that out relatively soon but unfortunately Discord has rolled out a UI change to profiles that’s now hiding the connection details, so that’s something we’ll need to figure out and handle before releasing it.
  • Monty Linden is finishing-up work to move the experience KVP store.
  • Signal Linden has been working on multiple projects:
    • Putting together release plans for the next viewer release.
    • Coordinating with contributors on viewer Discord integration, apple silicon support and other projects.
    • Following up on the August 5th deployment, and preparing to put some simhosts into another AWS availability zone.
  • As noted in my week #31 TPVD meeting notes, Camera Constraints Bug (below -0 metre altitude) has been filed. This affects all v7 viewers – but Kirsten Lee (Kirsten’s Viewer) has filed a possible fix.
  • The mention of the llSetParcelForSale function resulted in a discussion on land rentals in the second half of the meeting – specifically around the use of texture  / signs at altitude advertising regions / parcel available for rent, when looking at the world map.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, August 19th, 2025.
  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, August 26th, 2025.

† 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.

Purple Moon Ashes in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025 – click and image for full size

Purple Moon Ashes is a Full private region developed as a public space encompassing fantasy and magic, designed by Elguaje70 and DjDDB. It drew my attention after I noted it in the Destination Guide due to the use of items created by Elicio Ember, whom regulars to the pages will know, is both a close friend and a creator of elven-themed designs I never fail to find gorgeously attractive.

Surrounded by off-region hills, Purple Moon Ashes is a setting which becomes increasingly more attractive the longer one spends time within it – although I would note that the Shared Environment available at the time of my visit differed substantially from the EEP settings used in the Destination Guide entry for the region and – in my personal option – didn’t display the region at its best. This being the case, and after a little experimentation, I opted to use one of my personal “fallback” EEP settings for the photographs shown here.

Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025
It is a pleasure to invite you to explore this wonderful Purple Moon Ashes, a place where magic lives from the first moment you arrive; enjoy the dragon ride and the gondola ride. Come and discover how much more magic you can experience.

– Purple Moon Ashes About Land Description

The core of the region comprises a circular lake dominated by a central water / ruins feature which includes two large stone water serpents gushing water from their mouths. Three circular dance floors extend out over the lake from the surrounding largely circular, land enclosing the waters. Each of these platforms is placed roughly equidistantly around the circumference of the lake and each offers two points of access to the shallow waters, allowing visitors to walk to the central feature if they so wish.

Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025

Outside the lake, the land surrounding it offers multiple points of interest, all neatly linked by footpaths and flower trails.  The Landing Point sits on a plateau on the north-west quadrant of the region and is home to one of the teleport boards offering quick links to the major locations within the region (although I recommend using your pedal extremities to explore!) and the dragon ride mentioned in the About Land description. It also hides the region’s secrets below it – but I’ll leave it to you to discover the way into them 🙂 .

There are two ways down from the top of the plateau, each utilising elements created by Elicio. One runs gently down to the western side of the region, before a glass footpath directs explorers south and then east, where it is possible to climb the long finger of a rising promontory, which itself turns back to the north as it comes to the eastern side of the setting.

Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025

The second way down from the plateau is on its north side, passing by way of a large dance area build atop a smaller plateau of rock rising from the sea. Steps from here descend to join another glass path lain among the wildflowers as it travels eastwards to reach a large domed pavilion at it furthest extent, and beyond which the trail becomes one of grass and flowers.

It is this second route down from the plateau which offers one of the opportunities to take one of the region’s gondola tours (just to the left of the raise walkway from the last set if steps descending from the plateau). These tours are point-to-point, and so also allow visitors to reach specific destinations within the region. Boats are suitable for singles or couples, and sitting in a gondola will display a dialogue box of the destinations available from each embarkation point.

Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025

As each tour ends at the embarkation point for another, it is possible to use them in sequence to view the region, hopping from one boat to the next at each stop. It is via these gondolas that the narrow spit of land running along the north side of the region is best reached (“Forest Love”).

There is a good degree of repetition across the region in terms of statues and architecture – unicorns large and small, benches with statues, winged fairies spouting water, Elicio’s elven arches and glass walkways, stone gazebos with giant daisy-like places to sit within them, etc. These all work thematically and act as motifs for the region, offering opportunities for the imagination to invent suitable backstories for the setting.

Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025

Also to be found through the setting are multiple places to dance, including couples poseballs tucked away here and there as well as the more familiar dance systems hanging in the air over the more obvious dance locations. From the advertising I caught during my visit, I gather the region is also home to live music events. Details of these, I assume, are available through the local Group – but it appears this requires contacting either Elguaje70 or DjDDB in order to join.

With places to sit scattered throughout (including about the sail vessel and within the aforementioned caves), Purple Moon Ashes provides multiple reasons to not only explore, but also to relax and unwind within its borders. The local sounds are not intrusive, and the setting lends itself to a wide variety of EEP options.

Purple Moon Ashes, August 2025

In all, a visually engaging and charming visit.

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2025 SL viewer release summaries week #31

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, August 4th, 2025

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy.
  • This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Outside of the Official viewer, and as a rule, alpha / beta / nightly or release candidate viewer builds are not included; although on occasions, exceptions might be made.

Official LL Viewers

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Kirstens Viewer S24(3) Revision 1 – July 30 – release notes.
  • Megaphit glTF Mesh Import – 7.2.0.54160 – August 2 – changelog.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Where the flowers are in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Elven Falls Art Collective: Julana Allen and Eta: Where the Flowers Are

Currently open at the Elven Falls Art Collective is an exhibition by Julana Allen (Julana Teichmann) and eta (etamae) entitled Where the Flowers Are.

The name is apparently a reflection of Julana’s love of Joan Baez, and the art is a mix of AI images created by Julana, mounted on frames created by eta (I believe I’m correct in saying), together with additional 3D elements by eta. The exhibition is spread across two floors of the gallery space, with an elevator teleport linking the two levels.

Elven Falls Art Collective: Julana Allen and Eta: Where the Flowers Are

Offered primarily in monochrome (there is a well-considered use of colour in places), the images are – as might be gathered from the exhibition’s title – focused on flowers and plants; although not exclusively so. All of the work is finished using PBR materials, so using a PBR-capable viewer is recommended for viewing the exhibit as intended by the artists.

What is most striking about the images, for me at least, is the manner in which they are been processed. This gives them an extremely tactile look, as if they have been etched. This is further enhanced by the manner in which they have been mounted, eta’s backings helping to give depth and substance to each piece.

Elven Falls Art Collective: Julana Allen and Eta: Where the Flowers Are

A further attractive element within the exhibition space lay with the 3D elements provided by eta. Comprising circles, curving lines, teardrop forms, spheres, and flowing glass-like forms, the perfectly counter the harder lines of the picture frames and mounts, enhancing the presence of nature within the exhibition, as found within Julana’s images.

There is so much to find with the individual pieces, from single-frame narratives (e.g. Scent of a Woman) to reflections on Nature’s order of things (e.g. Busy) to reflections on Nature’s ability to please and inspire (e.g. Smile). This further adds depth found with Where the Flowers Are.

Elven Falls Art Collective: Julana Allen and Eta: Where the Flowers Are

In all, an elegant and appealing collaboration.

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