The Project Zero User Group provides a platform for open discussion about Project Zero, the cloud-streamed version of the Second Life Viewer. Topics can range from sharing the goals for Project Zero, demoing the current experience, and gathering feedback to help shape the future of cloud access for Second Life.
These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
The second and fourth Thursday of every month at 13:00 noon SLT.
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.
Firestorm Zero has – for the time being – been shut down as a streaming option.
Those who still had remaining purchased time for Firestorm Zero should have been refunded and received an e-mail notification that the service was being shut down.
The reason for shutting it down is primarily related to:
The amount of work required to maintain two different streaming products.
The need for the Lab to migrate project Zero to a new platform at the behest of their streaming provider, and not having time to also migrate Firestorm Zero in the same period.
This does not mean there will never be a further offering of Firestorm as a part of the Second Life streaming service.
New Joiner Workflow Updates
There has been a complete refresh of the Lab’s web-based new joiner workflow at join.secondlife.com, which now leverages the Avatar Picker first seen in Project Zero. For more on this, please see A short look at the refreshed Second Life web-based join flow.
As a part of this, the sign-up flow specific to Project Zero has also been updated. In particular, the Project Zero web site web.secondlife.com (formerly zero.secondlife.com) has been refreshed so:
It now shows the same backdrop image as now seen on the web sign-up flow.
It Includes a slide show of Polaroid-like snapshots intended to illustrate to ne users what people can do in SL, whilst waiting for an instance of the viewer to become available and load in their browsero.
My own tests of this suggested that the page will keep parsing through the images seemingly ad infinitum if you cannot be connected to a browser instance of the viewer, rather than indicating this is the case.
The revised web page for launching Project Zero (web.secondlife.com) with the backdrop splash image and the “polaroid snapshots” slide show
Overall, these changes – both to web.secondlife.com and (particularly) join.secondlife.com have resulted in more incoming users sticking around in-world.
Current Focus
In line with Philip Rosedale’s SL22B Meet the Lindens session on Wednesday, June 25th (see the video, or refer to my summary of that event for specifics), Project Zero is focused on the new user experience.
Specifically, how to get a new user from logging in and choosing an avatar through to customising that avatar so it reflects what they want to reflect, as easily as possible, using the Avatar Welcome Pack content, rather than Senra.
This is likely to be an iterative process over multiple months, with a cadence of updates intended to test and refine ideas and approaches.
The work will also involve gathering quantitative data on how well the approach(es) seem to be working, and also qualitative data through spending time at areas where people coming into SL are, and watching and interacting with them as they customise their avatar, and gain feedback.
General Discussion
Project Zero remains primarily focused on use by incoming new users, with a “very small concurrency” of existing users available to access it.
The reason for the focus on incoming new users is because it is easier to try new ideas and iterate on them easier using Project Zero, rather than trying to do so through the desktop.
It is recognised that there is a hunger among existing users to try the streaming viewer, and one way to do this might be to start to offer it on a paid basis as was the case with Firestorm Zero. However, this is not something that is likely to happen in the short-term.
The current action of Project Zero simply booting a user off when their allotted time is up without any warning / gracefully log-out is something to be addressed in “the very near future”.
Whilst the UI for Project Zero largely resembles that of the official viewer, there are differences, some visible (such as the lack of a left-side toolbar button field, and some not so visible.
The not-so-obvious difference is that elements linked to buttons are subject to redesign, so that if any are updated – such as Chat – the associated Conversations floater can be redesigned so it does not obscure so much of the in-world view when it is open.
These aspects of the work potentially allow elements of the viewer to be displayed outside of the world view, but withing the browser tab, as has been done with the Avatar Picker, leaving the in-world view unimpeded.
An example of a viewer toolbar button (Avatars) causing the Avatar Picker to be displayed within the browser tab, but outside of the Second Life viewer window, leaving the latter unencumbered.
A general discussion on helping new users understand customising their avatars – from providing freebies suitable for the bodies in the Avatar Welcome Pack in placing such as the Welcome Hub and locating these together with the teleports to the changing rooms; providing additional help and information boards, etc., within the changing rooms, offering new users a “home space” where they can go to change (much like Sansar had / has), etc.
Offering some form of recognised changing room area where new users could experiment with avatar dressing / customisation was seen as advantageous on several levels:
It has a familiarity with the way we go about trying clothing in the physical world, and thus is a comfortable environment.
It could be used by a new user and a mentor or friend, so the latter can give support and lessons without interruption.
It can save on unintended embarrassment (e.g. having a fatpack for multiple different bodies and accidentally wearing everything).
A broader discussion on how to offer new users more of an experience in Second Life – should they be prompted / directed on the basis of interest, or should it be free-form? Should users be provided with lists of Groups which share their interests? How can this be done?, etc.
The refreshed Second Life web account sign-up page with the new splash image backdrop
Linden Lab has recently refreshed the Second Life web-based new user sign-up flow at join.secondlfe.com in order to offer incoming new users a smoother, easier experience when using the web sign-up process. Some of this incorporates work carried out with Project Zero – the viewer in a browser – and the new sign-up flow applies to both the viewer and Project Zero.
Key elements of the update include:
An image backdrop for the account creation page.
Quality of life updates to make it clear what information needs to be entered and when a mistake is made; use of a clearer font, etc.
There is no longer an avatar picker for those pointed to the viewer download workflow; instead, after completing the account creation page, new users are directed to download and install the viewer.
On logging-in through the viewer, a new user will be automatically assigned an initial avatar from the Avatar Welcome Pack, and desktop version of the Avatar Picker deployed to Project Zero (see here for more) is automatically displayed to allow for avatar customisation.
The web join flow still offers a random chance of a new sign-up being directed towards accessing SL via Project Zero rather than being asked to download the viewer.
The refreshed Second Life web sign-up goes from the account creation page directly to either the viewer download page (displaying the SL Mobile options) or to the Project Zero page
Further it should also be noted:
These changes do not apply to the sign-up flow for SL Mobile, although that sign-up process has been updated independently of join.secondlife.com.
The reason for removing the Avatar Picker from the web workflow was because data showed that a lot of new sign-ups were spending a significant amount of time actually in the avatar picker and customising their avatar, and then not actually going on to actually log-in to Second Life, so was seen as a blocker to getting people in-world.
All incoming new users are given the same avatar (I’m not sure if the selected avatar is periodically rotated), which can be interesting.
The Avatar Picker / Avatar Welcome Pack
As noted, the Avatar Picker – reference to as the Avatar Welcome Pack – is an idea that originated with Project Zero, and is now offered through the official viewer (and those TPVs that have adopted the 7.1.15.15596336374 – 2025.04.01 code base) with some tweaks – such as being presented as a floater within the viewer, and not having the Avatars toolbar button as is the case with Project Zero.
New users installing the release viewer for the first time should find the Avatar Picker open by default after logging-in, with the avatar tab displayed.
The Avatar Picker / Avatar Welcome Pack floater and tabs. Note: due to a known issue, only the female outfits are currently only presented / available (and Male clothing folder in the Library is empty)
Clicking on one of the six avatar images within the tab will automatically apply that avatar.
Clicking the Clothing tab with display the available outfits. Clicking on the image of an outfit will apply it to the currently-selected avatar.
Note: The update was deployed with a known issue that only the female outfits from the Avatar Welcome Pack are available in the system library. This is being addressed.
Selecting an avatar or outfit from the Avatar Picker will add the associated folder(s) to the Clothing system folder in Inventory.
If the floater is closed, it can be accessed again via the Avatar menu → Avatar Welcome Pack…, which replaces the old Choose Avatar option.
The Avatar Welcome Pack menu option
Personal Feedback
This is not intended to be an in-depth analysis of the now flow, but I have some general observations.
Overall the changes make for a smoother on-boarding, even allowing for the viewer having to be downloaded and installed (if the user is pushed through that flow).
This is very much assisted by taking the avatar customisation process out of the sign-up process, which as noted above, had become a bottleneck.
The avatar picker is fairly intuitive, but could perhaps benefit from some tool-tip prompts.
There are some areas of concern:
Each time the Avatar Picker is used, it generates a completely new folder for the selected and / or selected outfit within the Clothing system folder in Inventory. Whilst this is not directly visible to new users who might not be aware of Inventory to start with, it does potentially lead to a lot of duplication and additional inventory bloat.
There is now two very different and completely incompatible “starter avatar” systems still within the viewer:
The creator-supplied Avatar Welcome Pack (which I believe will be expanded upon).
The Senra avatar system.
Fortunately, the Senra system is fairly well buried within the system library; however, the majority of in-world information at places like the Welcome Hub, and resources on-line, such as the Second Life University videos focus on Senra. Hopefully, if both systems are to be run side-by-side, this balance will be redressed.
Senra at the Welcome Hub – but no Avatar Welcome Pack guidance as yet
The fact that the same avatar from the Avatar Welcome Pack is given to all incoming users means that the various spawn points where new users arrive can end up looking like a beam-in point for a gathering of clones.
This last point is really trivial to a point, but it does make arrival points for new avatars look and feel a little odd. As to the rest, nothing is impossible to correct – and much of it is hopefully already on LL’s radar; with limited resources, updates to all aspects of a process can take time, some of which can be spent engaged in testing and revising basic ideas and approaches.
Overall, the refresh to join.secondlife.com comes over as positive, and helps to bring the viewer and Project Zero a little closer together for those who might use both.
SL22B Meet the Lindens: Philip Rosedale, with Brett Linden (r)
On Wednesday, June 25th, 2025, Linden Lab held the second of the SL22B Meet the Lindens events, featuring Second Life and company founder, Philip Rosedale, in conversation with Brett Linden. The session was live and featured a mix of pre-submitted questions, and those asked during the session.
This is a summary of the majority of topics discussed at the session, and the official video of the session is embedded at the end of this article.
Fore ease of reference:
Timestamps are provided to the relative points within the video where specific topics are discussed, allowing readers who prefer to listen to the comments directly to be able to do so.
In the hopes of better continuity, questions asked during the open Q&A session which related back to comments made earlier in the session have been incorporated within the topic section itself under the heading “From the Live Q&A Session”.
Note this is not intended to be a full transcript, but rather covers those items discussed which are liable to be of the most interest.
Has been back working on Second Life full-time for some seven months. Prior to that, was sharing office space with LL, but was not working on SL day-to-day (that work was with In Reality Lab (IRL415).
Obviously, for the first 10 years, was the CEO of Linden Lab.
Recognises the company has 25 years of history and SL has changed a lot, but is delighted that overall, the technology LL has created / brought together is good, positive and humane for people, when as a whole within the industry, the overall impact of technology can be uncertain – or even negative (as with social media).
Would say is he is not proud of anything he has created – but is proud of what people have created in SL.
From the start, was always most interested to see what people would create in SL, and started out more from a physics perspective than a creator perspective: making various physics laws and then seeing what people created using those laws.
Points specifically to:
The volume of art produced within Second Life, and how it is exponentially larger than any single art museum.
The number of teaching / learning spaces and all the various ways they are used.
All the communities that have grown in SL – particularly their support for diversity.
Is “super, super proud” of the positive feedback he receives from people about how SL has helped and changed them.
Thinks Second Life has so many hidden gems. Second Life could be compared to Los Angeles, but has for more to discover within it than can be found in LA, so picking on a particular thing as a “hidden Gem” feels “goofy”.
That said, would say that one thing he would like to see more of is the “sandbox experience”: people building and sharing together in sandboxes, becoming friends learning from one another, teaching one another.
Does not believe LL has intentionally changed this, but the nature of the platform has simply drifted away from it. So while not a “hidden gem”, would like to see a move back towards it more.
From the Live Q&A Session
[Video: 52:41-54:54] In response to a comment that while he mention in-world building, Second Life has become more about building content outside of the platform and then “showcasing” it in-world, rather than fostering the arts of in-world creation, and asking if SL will “again” get tools to encourage the latter?
Believes SL has always been a place for content creation, and believe it should remain so, but recognises a need to provide more tools for content creation.
Notes that earliest content creation was prims, and most users learned to build using them. However, mesh is a more sophisticated means of content creation, which necessitated leaning on external building tools and then import the results.
Were it possible, he would have some form on in-world mesh editing capability, but providing such would be difficult because of the complexities and capabilities of the toolsets involved (e.g. blender).
Suggests that if SL is not supporting enough of the features of something like Blender in-world, then perhaps the Lab might need to figure out how to correct that.
[Video: 58:58-1:01:07] What is the one thing you would change in Second Life if you could?
While there are lots of things he would like to change, the first thing that came to mind was better support for democracy and Groups.
A lot of good work has been done with Groups, but when SL was started, Groups weren’t considered, nor were things like social media, as SL was supposed to be a place.
Groups were one of the things that came out of SL that he didn’t really expect, and it has given him pause for thought on how self-governance tends to be done through Group membership.
So sees making Groups stronger in terms of governance, democracy, identity and reputation, etc., as important, and as such, would liked to have considered Groups from the outset as a “kind of a fundamental all primitive in Second Life”.
Second Life can do something really special – preserve diversity in an increasingly homogenous world.
A lot of what is going on in the physical world – social media, AI, the geopolitical situation in many countries (notably, but not exclusively the United States) – is trying to make everyone in the world more similar and repressing differences between people.
So in thinking about a “vision” for Second Lie, tends not to focus on a specific feature or reason for the platform, but the opportunities SL has to stand as a place that preserves diversity and differences, and the ways in which it can deliver on that.
On Expanding the User Base: Non-Verbal Communication Cues
Find it amazing that SL has been around for 20+ years, and still represents probably the largest gathering of “grown-ups” in a virtual world.
Recognises that SL is not for everybody and only a tiny fraction of a single percent of people are using it, whereas social media is used by a majority of people worldwide.
Personally believes that to make SL more accessible to the majority is to get people comfortable with using SL through better transmission of nonverbal cues.
Right now, an SL avatar is non-expressive in terms of what a person is expressing by way of hand-gestures, facial expression, etc.
Such no-verbal cues are critical to communications, and in order to gain millions (or more) users, SL needs to be able to someday express them.
Believes this is a particular reason why VR Chat has been so successful, because VR headsets allow more non-verbal cues on communication to be expressed.
Obviously recognises there are other technical aspects of SL which need to be addressed: the complexity of the viewer UI, avatar dressing, etc., but to grow the user base, SL needs to get everyone more comfortable talking to people they don’t know by transmitting these non-verbal cues.
From the Live Q&A Session
[Video: 35:07-37:23] In response to a comment on the benefits of the asynchronicity of text chat, which many users prefer:
Didn’t mean to dismiss other means of communication in Second Life such as text chat, avatar actions, etc., and totally values these means of communication.
Rather, he meant that if two complete strangers are put together with Second Life, unable to physically see one another and their avatars their only means of communication / interaction, most will express discomfort at conversing with a stranger without the benefit of body language and non-verbal cues as to what the other person is thinking.
So while the more “advanced” means of communications within Second Life are valuable, there are table stakes around getting people comfortable when they are conversing with strangers through non-verbal cues.
Bringing native VR headset support to SL is something the Lab is “always” thinking about. However, there are no current plans to do so.
Has a deep respect for VR Chat in the way it has demonstrated how to build an experience like SL entirely for VR headsets – something he tried to do with High Fidelity, and recognises there are “amazing” experiences to be opened up by VR headsets.
However, also recognises that VR headsets are not for everyone and they’re may not be particularly with people to whom something like Second Life appeals.
As such feels the overlap between VR headsets and virtual worlds is not clear, but is by no means a 100% overlap.
But again, does feel there are capabilities SL has which VR could “completely open up” (e.g. the already mentioned non-verbal communication cues).
Also notes that some of this could possibly be achieved without the need for a VR headset, such as using a combination of AI tools and a webcam (or webcams) as a means of conveying non-verbal cues and controlling an avatar, without the need to put on a “face toaster”.
So, does think VR support for SL is interesting, it’s just not something the Lab has any announcements about at this time.
As a sophisticated technologist, and is very involved in AI, and is on the board of the California Institute for Machine Consciousness (AI), and so is doing a lot of work on AI outside of Second Life.
Within Second Life, believes the Lab has been very cautious with regards to AI, and has tried to be respectful as to the risks and the debate about how to use AI.
The Lab hasn’t “done anything broad” as yet with AI outside of a few experiments.
Stated that any use of AI within Second Life “has got to end up by enhancing human contact not reducing it”, by helping people to connect to one another, and must do this “well”.
If AI can help with that, I’m all for it; if it hurts that, we shouldn’t do it. And as long as I’m here, I’m going to think I maintain precisely that position.
– Philip Rosedale on AI
Outside of Second Life, thinks that AI offers “big possibilities, but also even more enormous risks”, and is going to cause some “necessary existential risk” which will cause “profound change” in the whole human population, and believes this will include:
Forcing us as a planet-girdling species to change how we work together and do things.
As someone who programs a lot with AI, and as an engineer, is both shocked and excited about the potential impact of AI in the world whilst still trying to make sense of it.
Returning to SL, believes the Lab is being “super cautious” and respectful of the risks that people have been raising.
From the Live Q&A Session
[Video: 41:31-47:10] On the use of AI Tools in Content Creation & managing the influx of copyrighted and potentially copyright-derived material produced using AI being upload to SL / the Marketplace.
Notes that there are many different types of AI content, and that the general thinking among experts is that there is little hope of using AI tools to detect AI generated content.
Given this, it would not be technically possible to add a “no AI” filter to the SL upload mechanisms; the technology is simply moving too fast, and would outstrip any such capability.
That said, LL does respect the conversation going on around whether and to what extent and what should be the proper approach for AI should be.
Believes that the wider global discussions on the use of AI are appropriate to be considered.
Also feels that a lot of AI generated 3D content is so bad he doesn’t believe it would gain much of a foothold in SL compared to the content people are making, and that given the overall state of AI 3D content tools, doesn’t feel that at this point in time, it is not a major concern – although this could change.
Points to his essay Ultravalletic Catastrophe and the potential for AI to completely overwhelm social media messaging due to its ability to impersonate people, which he sees as a major issue, and notes that this could result in fake AI “people” creating Second Life accounts, and we’re not even going to know it; so we’re all going to have to deal with the problem, and there’s not an easy way to just put a there’s not an easy way to put an AI filter on Second Life, even if everyone wanted one.
Believes that with his background and LL’s geographic positioning, the company will probably figure out what to do “right” with AI.
Is particularly looking forward to the full deployment of the WebRTC (Real Time Communication) Voice service to replace Vivox.
As well is improving Voice quality, this will allow:
Speech-to-text and text-to-speech.
Language translations.
Thinks this can all be done later in 2025, with captioning (speech-to-text) and text-to-speech being the “number one” accessibility request of which he is aware.
Notes that between Project Zero (the SL viewer in a browser) and SL Mobile, the Lab has been able to get 10 times as many people from the sign-up page and into SL compared to having to download and install the viewer.
This looks to have doubled the number of people returning to SL after the first couple of times they initially log-in.
Regards this as an important metric in allowing LL to further grow Second Life.
Following-on from this, the focus is shifting towards
The experience new users have after coming into Second Life.
The whole dressing an avatar / changing an avatar’s appearance.
Some of the latter has been initiated through the Avatar Welcome Packs, and will be expanded into the complexities of actually customising an avatar, with the aim of simplifying it – or at least making it “modestly difficult rather than almost impossibly difficult.”
His own experiences in trying to create an avatar / look (see the videos here and here) have helped inform a design direction for the Lab to take, and so updates should be coming Soon to Welcome Areas.
From the Q&A Session: Project Zero
[Video: 37:24-38:51] Will Project Zero ever be free to those on lightweight hardware?
The hope is to make it free at some point; currently, it is expansive to stream the viewer to a browser by the hour.
So yes, longer term the hope is there, but right now, LL cannot offer it for free, and are focusing on offering it more to incoming new users rather than existing users – hence why some have not been unable to access it.
Is optimistic about being able to offer it potentially for free because the rapid advances in AI are driving the price of GPUs down very fast, so there will be a crossover point which, once reached, will make more sense to offer Project Zero free to everybody, but things are not yet at that point.
On Creativity and Messaging / Policies and Supporting Creativity
Agrees that maybe there are ways LL could do a better job to about what should be compelling to you as you’re coming to Second Life as a creator.
Outside of for the “table stakes” of content creation: keeping fees low, the GDP stable, the ability to make money through content creation, etc., believes that adding creative features and capabilities is a mechanism for supporting creators.
Support for glTF mesh import, which is currently available (at the time of writing) within an initial release candidate viewer.
Notes that support of glTF is important a) because it is a recognised standard and makes it easier to import from content creation tools into SL; b) support for the current mesh import format (COLLADA.DAE) is being increasingly deprecated within content creation tools.
These are projected aimed for this year, and more broadly, notes the Lab needs to keep adding new (and modern) capabilities to support content creation.
There are often questions concerning how LL prioritises work, e.g. bug fixes vs. Stability vs. implementing new features. Part of this is because it’s a little harder to see what goes on behind the scenes.
Feels that since his return full-time to SL, for any release and at any given time, around 75% of development time is toward infrastructure maintenance performance improvements and bug crashes and fixes, including (but not limited to): DDOS attacks; upgrading the platform on Amazon services. etc.
So for the 50-ish strong development team, 75% at any time are working on “keeping the wheels on the car” and some 25% are working on “new shiny” features.
[Video: 34:05-34:55] It is hard to keep Second Life running, but everyone at the Lab is doing good work, and there are not a lot of things the teams could just stop doing, which drives the 75%/25% split.
SL has been fortunate as the mechanisms put in place (e.g. land fees) allowed the company to become profitable very early on – breaking even in around 2006.
Since then, the company has been able to increase its profitability “a bit beyond that”. So yes, the company is “comfortably profitable”.
This means the company will continue to be able to do what it has always done: set its own course. There is no critical market fit or monetisation problem requiring further funding from investors.
As such, the company is able to sustain profitability and choose where it wants to take things next without having to worry about additional capital inflow.
In theory should be relatively easy to move those servers which are most heavily used by a geographic region, but is not sure how much this has been looked into.
Also notes the same is true for Project Zero – the servers running the viewer instances could be located in multiple Amazon centres. This is something that the Lab “should definitely do” as Project Zero starts to open up to more users.
On Users Helping Spread the Word about SL / Helping Improve the New User Experience
With the company able to bring-in more people (via Project Zero / SL mobile, for example), the Lab needs help in figuring out how to make a newcomer’s experience in their first few minutes in SL “10 times better”.
Is not sure exactly how users and communities can help LL to do this, but one way might be to experiment with different ideas and bring them to the Lab (e.g. develop an experience that would be comprehensible, compelling and interesting to a new user who has just arrived in SL).
There are a couple of on-going programmes built around the new user experience, and those interested in helping are encouraged to join with those programmes.
Has also ready noted the design challenge of helping people to more easily dress and customise their avatar, making it fun while also exposing them to SL content. To be effective, this work must involve changes to the software and to in-world content so a new user can more easily create an avatar that speaks to their needs.
Spatial audio can be a pain in the posterior is that Bluetooth devices (including Apple) do not support stereo when the microphone is on. This means that spatial audio cannot be presented to the ears when the microphone is on.
This has been one of the contributing factors as to why spatial audio hasn’t been more directly pursued within SL despite the environment being “amazing” for its use.
Does believe that this issue will get fixed “in the next year or two”, and Bluetooth will support spatial audio correctly when microphones are on. When this happens, SL will definitely embrace everything that you can do with spatial audio; and you have to have spatial audio for group conversations to be comfortable.
Thinks it would be “wonderful” to have LindenWorld (the precursor to Second Life) in-world.
Suggests that perhaps the “easiest” way to do this would be to have an intern who can focus on the project. However, the challenge would be to just get LindenWorld running again, as it did involve a different approach and a lot of user-generated content.
Believes LL have created a strong asset with SL Mobile, which has Unity under the hood, giving LL access to the Unity renderer which could be used on the desktop and be a potential stepping-stone towards VR support and offers “solid base that we can use for a lot of stuff.”
Understands that in the coming quarters there will be further improvements.
Everybody here, all of us, should be proud to have been part of what is now more than 20 years of an experiment in demonstrating that online experiences, something you do online on your computer with other people can actually bring people together and make them happier and healthier. As opposed to making them lonelier and angrier, which sadly seems to be what we’ve done with most of our technological product time in the last decade or so…
And the hope that that gives to the world is something we all need right now … The whole world needs to see that you can use technology to bring us together; it is not just a force for evil. And so I think everybody here should be incredibly proud of having been part of that experiment and hopefully continuing to be a part of it indefinitely as we as we carry on so thank you.
SL22B Meet the Lindens: Product Operations: (l to right): Brett Linden, Kali Linden and Grumpity Linden
On Tuesday, June 24th, 2025, Linden Lab held the second of the SL22B Meet the Lindens events, featuring personnel from the Product Operations teams. The session was pre-recorded, but included a text-based Q&A session afterwards. The session featured:
Grumpity Linden – Senior VP of Product & Engineering.
Kali Linden – Director of Engineering, Web & Platform Kali Linden.
This is a summary of the majority of topics discussed at the session, and the official video of the session is embedded at the end of this article.
For ease of reference, timestamps are provided to the relative points within the video where specific topics are discussed, allowing readers who prefer to listen to the comments directly to be able to do so. Note this is not intended to be a full transcript, but rather covers those items discussed which are liable to be of the most interest.
Grumpity Linden: joined SL as a contractor with The Product Engine and helping with the development of (the then) Viewer 2.0 in 2009, and formally joined LL in 2014. As the Senior VP of Product and Engineering she is responsible for coordinating both teams and overseeing their various projects, often in a hands-on capacity (as with SL Mobile).
Personal highlight for the last 12 months at the Lab: working more closely with the creator community and going to the 2025 Game Developers Conference (GDC).
Kali Linden
Kali Linden: has been with Linden Lab for ten years, working on Second Life directly for the last five. She heads-up the teams responsible for the Lab’s web properties, the account management and log-in services, etc. Her current focus is on improving LL’s technology stack, improving the user experience and supporting the overall SL infrastructure.
Her teams directly oversee: the SL Marketplace; Web Search; the Linden Homes web portal; the Destination Guide pages; region purchasing pages; transactional security and accuracy; liaising with AWS for maintenance and cost efficiency; support tooling, asset delivery and storage – managing the databases handling all the inventory of all of SL user’s.
Personal highlight for the last 12 months at the Lab: Agrees with Grumpity on the GDC, and finds the energy and enthusiasm for the platform shown by users to be “really infectious”.
Working Together
While Grumpity and Kali have different core focuses, they work together on matters of account security.
Working on developing the Premium Plus and Plus subscriptions and working to try to make all subscription tiers a value proposition for users.
They noted that not all the work that is carried out is necessarily user-visible (e.g. implementing new back-end tools in support of services, etc.), but often forms the backbone of keeping Second Life operations going.
Work is going into making the Marketplace more mobile-friendly and to display well on different screen sizes and from within the in-viewer browser without blotting out the entire scene view.
The hope is to have a fluid experience so, for example, a user can see an item on an external website (Primfeed was the example used) can tap on the Marketplace link and view the item on the Marketplace with ease for any device and, if they want to, purchase it.
CasperVend:
LL still plan to integrate CasperVend into the Marketplace.
Kali’s goal is to have the integration such that merchants can manage their CasperVend inventory and their Marketplace presence from the same place.
Would like to incorporate CasperVend capabilities such as coupon sales and gift cards into the Marketplace as well, and expand on them.
Further plans include making it easier for merchants to manage their Marketplace presence – easier inventory management, simpler listing import, and better reporting data.
Continuing to improve MP Search in response to feedback from shoppers and merchants.
Kali views the web as an extension to users’ in-world experience, and as such is constantly thinking about:
An ability to view and possibly manage inventory from the web.
A calendar system for events which also works in-world, and which can include maturity filters.
Options for managing Groups and Friends from the web.
Would like to see the web become a means for people to more easily be able to manage their Second Life without necessarily being logged-in to the desktop viewer.
Is aware of request for people being able to gift subscriptions to friends; for tools for creators and venue owners to promote their spaces; proving shareable Marketplace gift cards – all of these might be seen as making Second Life a more connected environment in which it is easier to share with people you care about.
At the start of the project, there would doubts about being able to get avatars rendering correctly on mobile devices – and it has proven to be hard.
However, the team has made great strides in this area [Please refer to my April and June and / or watch the video below].
Currently, work is focused on further performance improvements to further benefit avatar rendering and the app.
Currently have a platform that allows existing users to do a lot of the things they can do on the desktop, stay in touch with friends / customers, etc.
At the same time, what is available at present is not really enough for those new to SL to come in to it through the Mobile app and really get what Second Life is about.
Work is therefore about meeting both sides of the coin: making Mobile a meaningful and useful companion for those already engaged in SL, and on making it a meaningful route for on-boarding those new to Second Life and giving them a clearer understanding of the broader “SL universe”.
What the Mobile team is not doing is to try to force all of the desktop experience into the app – the aim is to translate what Second Life is into a more compact experience that meets the needs of new and experienced users.
On the short-to-medium term roadmap are plans to work with the server team to provide this like:
Persistent chat between Mobile and desktop, without loss of chat history when moving between one and the other
The ability to use Mobile whilst logged-in to the desktop, so allowing people to leave their desktop (e.g. to get a drink or something) and still continue to chat, see group notifications, etc.
Direction for development is often the result of taking feedback from users. Such feedback is gathered via the Feedback Portal, including the Mobile Alpha Features section, through the monthly Mobile User Group meetings [Note: summaries of Mobile User Group meetings can be found here].
Feedback can also be gathered by a physical presence at new user starting locations.
Data has shown a lot of Mobile users are in fact new to SL, heightening the desire to make it a great experience for them.
The last 6+ months has seen a concerted effort to improve the performance of the viewer.
This work has seen a number of performance gains, although it is in part to compensate in a loss of performance seen in late 2024.
These performance improvements have been made across different platforms and for different chipset.
Work is continuing on performance, looking at crash rates, FPS, as well as having a focus on quality of life improvements in the hope of making the viewer more a tool to allow people to “get to” their second life, rather than being a product in and of itself.
;The viewer team has also been working closely with Firestorm to help them get their most recently release out the door, which contains all of the features and improvements LL have released over the last 6+ months, as well as including WebRTC (new Voice service) support.
The aim with the glTF importer is to make things like importing meshes and materials as simple and straightforward as possible.
The initial alpha release of a viewer with the importer can be found on the Alternate Viewers page.
Mesh content creators and encouraged to try it out and offer feedback and to attend the Content Creation User Group to discuss the importer.
[Note: summaries of Content Creation User group meetings can be found here]. The more feedback given, the 9potentially) faster the importer can be stabilised and make its way through to a release viewer.
WebRTC (Real Time Communications) is the new Voice protocol for Second Life, replacing Vivox and the need for a Voice API plug-in in the viewer.
The WebRTC had been stalled as a result of the focus on performance coupled with a large (but now in substantial decline) number of users using a pre-PBR version of Firestorm (and thus without the necessary WebRTC support).
The current target is to have the entire grid running WebRTC by the end of summer 2025.
WebRTC voice quality should be superior to Vivox.
WebRTC also offers “practically endless” possibilities for feature development.
One of the first features to be included with WebRTC is that of moderation tools: these will allow land owners to set the rules for using Voice on their land and carry out Voice moderation – when people opt to be stupid in Voice.
Other options being considered for use with WebRTC included AI tools to allow things like instant translation, voice-to-text, text-to-voice, all aimed at expanding accessibility.
Pending a formal announcement, LL are thinking about how to make Premium Plus benefits accessible to a broader swath of users.
This includes the idea of offering a version of Premium Plus for creators [only?] without the weekly stipend payout, which would reduce the overall cost of having a Premium Plus account, whilst retaining all the other benefits.
This subscription might also be payable in Linden Dollars, although this may not be an option when it is initially launched.
Details will be made available on this once things are finalised / ready to be announced.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 24th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They 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. No video 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.
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
There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts (RC channels subject to confirmation at the time of the meeting).
The back-end work which had stalled simulator updates over the last few weeks is now coming to an end.
Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15361077240 June 2 – No Change.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 – No Change.
In Brief
The subject of holding the meeting every other week was raised again, somewhat supported by those who have only been attending since the simulator release cycle had been put on hold. The majority still favoured a weekly meeting, with the chair possibly rotated between those Lindens who regularly attend.
Leviathan Linden:
His work to try to fix the “sometimes not all content shows up at login” problem is awaiting review. If it passes, it could be in the next simulator update (Fig Newton / Fig Pudding – whichever name is now en vogue).
Has an idea as to what might be causing missing content on sim crossing and inter-sim TPs, but needs time to dig into it and try to come up with a solution.
Also hopes to finish working on a slight speed-up of the code that generates full object updates so that SLua scripts don’t seem slow when processing such updates.
Further noted that reports that the new version of Firestorm causing the server to suffer low FPS (45 → 35) for 1 – 4 seconds, every 60 or 90 seconds when driving a vehicle might also be related to object update issues, although he has yet to carry out a detailed investigation to determine a) if it is real; b) what might be causing it.
Monty Linden:
Has been tracking down the cause of the issue of corrupted Linden grass on and simulator restart (see this report as a reference).
Is doing some maintenance work on the Key Value Pair (KVP) store (associated with Second Life Experiences), but noted there are currently no plans for more in-depth work on the KVP store at present, although some plans are being considered.
Responding to
Allow llHTTPRequest to request application/x-ndjson, noted it would have to be reviewed and that LL’s http library insists on interpreting response bodies even though it shouldn’t (e.g. can’t do ‘Range’ if a fragment of json or other structured language is to be returned).
A request was made for a native HTTP library for SLua, with Leviathan Linden noted there would probably be no special path for SLua http; rather, the plan is for any custom script callback operations to be uniform across the various script engines.
A further discussion on issues of people being being able to select non-owned vehicles / having a scripted ability to report when someone else touches a person’s vehicle / attempt to interfere with vehicles.
A further discussion on SLua capabilities, with a comment from Leviathan Linden that Rider Linden (on vacation) and Harold Linden (not available for the meeting) would likely be better placed to answer in detail.
† 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.
SL22B Meet the Lindens: Product Operations: (l to right): Squeaky Mole, Missy Mole, Patch Linden, Keira Linden and Izzy Linden
On Monday, June 23rd, 2025, Linden Lab held the first of the SL22B Meet the Lindens events, featuring personnel from the Product Operations teams. The session was a live event and featured:
Patch Linden – Senior VP of Product Operations, Customer Support & Trust & Safety.
For ease of reference, timestamps are provided to the relative points within the video where specific topics are discussed, allowing readers who prefer to listen to the comments directly to be able to do so. Note this is not intended to be a full transcript, but rather covers those items discussed which are liable to be of the most interest.
As well as updating theme with new styles, the work also involves updating the back-end technology and improving the overall look of the Linden Homes.
The size of Bellisseria makes updating all Linden homes to things like PBR “a challenge”, but will be “chipped away at” as things progress. Updates will continue through the year.
[Video 16:19-17:52] Updates will be made on an ongoing basis, notably with PBR improvements, but it might not be possible to implement the seasonally changing landscaping across all of the Linden Home regions.
[Video 1:14:15-1:14:30] There have been requests from content creators to be able to hook-into the Linden Homes season changing capability, and this is being worked on.
By the end of 2025 the Linden Homes offerings should be: 10 Premium themes (with Trailers also supporting Plus); 5 Premium Plus themes and 1 theme of mixed Premium / Premium Plus.
This last mixed theme is scheduled for later in the year and will include “some exciting features”.
[Video: 1:16:57-1:19:39] Why does the Lab move on to a new theme of home before an existing theme is “finished”.
No theme is every really considered “complete”; while there is an initial map, the Lab is more driven by a mix of demand and diversity.
Demand: rather than deploy a “complete” build involving (say) 50 regions, only a handful might be initially released, and those then added to over time based on the popularity of the theme.
Diversity: additional themes are released whilst others are still available / not fully occupied to give users an broader choice of themes / styles.
The next theme will be Premium Plus Homes and is “right around the corner” and will be offered under the name Ridgewood Enclave.
It will “be separate and kind-of its own thing” and be LL’s first foray into offering allowing commercial activities (which has long been requested).
Those obtaining a parcel within Ridgewood Enclave will have the option of devoting their parcel to a home, or splitting it between home and commercial.
The roll-out will likely be the homes first, followed by the ability to split parcels between home and commercial.
Will the selection process for Linden Homes within a theme be improved to that the system does not re-select a parcel a user has already rejected in their current batch of searches (limited to 5 per 24 hours)?
Not really. The system is a) old; b) as random as it can possibly be.
However, it is recognised it will keep serving up specific parcels, even if far more are available, and may only move on when the parcels it keeps offering are all taken.
If a user finds they are constantly being re-offered the same parcel within one of their 5-picks periods, they can contact support, who can reset the user’s number of picks once for any given 24-hour selection period.
Premium Plus users have the ability to place a ticket with support to obtain an available Linden home parcel they would particularly like to claim (outside of the initial 24-hour after the release of a new theme).
Are there plans to offer region holders more autonomy over managing their regions?
LL has already added the option to restart regions to the holder’s secondlife.com dashboard.
Allowing regions holders to take other actions – renaming a region was given as an example – is under consideration, but no time frame as to when such options might be delivered.
Are more server options going to be made available for hosting regions?
LL already off a bonus Land Capacity option for Full regions and offer both the Event and Elite Event region products, all of which are also available as upgrades.
All three cost extra in tier, the Event and Elite Event regions are underpinned by more performant AWS hardware, allowing them to support more agents (avatars) per region, etc.
Mainland has always had a “free to build” outlook, without the imposition of zones, covenants, etc., by Linden Lab.
A frequent request to the Lab is to offer such zoning / covenants within Mainland to allow people to build themed communities there.
This idea is seen as potentially having merit and benefits, and is something the Lab has considered, and tends to revisit as an idea. However, it does have complexities:
Should it be a full covenanted Mainland area (like Bellisseria, but without the Linden Homes)? Is it something on a smaller scale? Is it something primarily aimed at stopping specific activities – e.g. preventing ban lines?
How would the model work / impact private estate regions offering their own models and covenants, etc.
As such, the idea is not rejected, but it is not on the current roadmap, and if it to reach the point of being actively considered, then it would be a topic to bring back to the community for a more focused discussion and to gain feedback.
Adult-rated content an images can be seen within moderate rated Mainland regions, often simply by using the road system. What is being done to remediate this?
It is acknowledged that this does happen, but given the size of Mainland, LL often rely on users reporting instances where it can be found / seen via the Abuse Report mechanism.
The above also applies to avatars behaving in appropriately as well.
The name of the avatar account filing any Abuse Report is never revealed to the subject of any subsequent investigation.
There has been a delay in responding to support tickets. This has in part been due to a reorganisation of the support teams at the end of 2024, which resulted in a backlog of tickets.
The estimate was that in January, the backlog stood at 7,000-7,500 tickets, and this has since been halved, with the remaining number being rapidly reduced.
Older tickets in the backlog are being addressed in order to clear them as quickly as possible.
This, and the nature of more recent ticket that have been coming into the system, has meant that certain cases have taken much, much longer to resolve.
LL have been recruiting-in new support personnel, and has almost completed this, to make the customer Success and Trust and Safety teams larger than they were previously, by around 10 people.
Currently, most areas of support – tickets, live chat, phone – are back to within their 72-hour SLA requirements.
To further help with support matters, weekend support is being re-introduced as from Saturday, June 28th, 2025 (phone and live chat).
With the sale of Tilia to Thunes now complete (see: LL completes Tilia sale to Thunes: What you need to know) work is underway to streamline handling of support issues over things like cashing-out from SL between the two companies.
Those experiencing delays or issues should always submit a support ticket to Linden Lab first, to see if the issue can be addressed directly, and to allow LL to deal directly with Thunes.
Going directly to Thunes first can lead to greater confusion and delays.
Should someone who has had their account placed on hold receive notification that this is the case?
When an account is placed on hold, an e-mail is sent to the address specified in the account. This should include the hold notification and the reason for it, and a timeline as to when to expect access to be re-enabled (if available).
These notifications can end-up being steered towards spam or junk or promotions-type folders, so be sure to check these in case filtering has misdirected the e-mail.
Those who are sure they have not received any such notification, but have found their account on hold should contact Support.
[Video: 44:49-47:54] Can more permanent action be taken against copybotters – e.g. IP bans?
Instances of copying content should be reported by the creator of the original content, who can supply LL with all the relevant data (e.g. item location, UUID, etc.), and information on the original.
To assist in the process, and if required, LL might additionally request the creator to file a DMCA Notice, if they have not already done so.
In terms of preventing repeat offenders returning, LL is always evaluating how to better prevent this / slow repeat offenders from being able to quickly re-access SL.
This work also involves evaluating various tools that might assist with investigations into these types of issues.
LL is actively looking at tools to identify and prevent malicious activity within the platform, and making some basic changes to alert people to the risks in clicking on links, etc.
In addition, the Trust and Safety are looking to implement a new Trust and Safety User Group meeting to replace the old Governance User Group, so that matters around account security, etc. Can be discussed.
Payment and billing is now handled through Thunes, per the links concerning Tilia, above.
Thunes is looking to make additional payment options available to SL users, but which options in particular might be put forward is not yet clear, but will be checked.
Any new payment options agreed to between the Lab and Thunes will be announced on the Second Life official blog.
Can an option be provided to allow those paying tier directly to LL to do so early, if required (e.g. to cover for when they might be on vacation, or in hospital, etc)?
It would require extensive programmatic changes to achieve.
However, would appear to be a good idea, and a Canny Feature Request was requested via the Feedback Portal.
Lifetime Premium and Premium Plus Membership Offers and SL22B
There will be no Premium or Premium Plus Lifetime membership offered at SL22B.
Such offers are now being reserved for special events (e.g. with partners such as the American Cancer Society), where it is specifically possible to have the funds generated through such offers donated directly to charitable organisations.
Depends on the position: Customer Success & Trust and Safety operate out the Atlanta offices, and so people working on those teams are based there; Product Operations and its related teams does have the potential for remote working.
This was a difficult decision, given InfoHubs are intended to be newcomer-friendly social gathering spaces.
However, too many people were using Voice within these places to harass and cause disruption, so in the interests of the larger community using the InfoHubs the decision was made to disable Voice.
The Lab will continue to monitor InfoHubs and may revisit this decision in the future.
[Video: 54:54-56:49] Do the Shop and Hop events complete too heavily with user-created shopping events held at the same time (e.g. Valentine’s Day, Christmas, etc.).
LL are always “cognizant” of the potential for such impact, but thus far has not directly received any complaints from the organisers of other shopping events or the creators attending them.
Shop and Hop is perhaps a broader tent than other shopping events, many of which are geared towards specific genres (sci-fi; fantasy; adult; etc.).
Shop and Hop is intended to be seasonally limited (with the special SLB Shop and Hop being an exception), and not driven with the intent to “blot out” other shopping events.
If people do feel it is harming other events, then feedback is welcome on that.
Creators selected for the Shop and Hop events are selected more-or-less on the basis of a lottery, not based on how quickly they apply.
Not everyone who applies can automatically be granted store space at a Shop and Hop, as they are limited by scale and manageability. For SL22B, for example, there were over 840 applicants – doubling the overall logistical requirements for hosting, running and managing the event.
[Video: 1:07:15-1:09:49] Is it possible to use the Name Change capability and not have the new name linked to previous names?
Currently no, for assorted reasons (e.g. to prevent someone doing something nefarious and then using the Name Change capability to hide their guilt).
The above was also something the community was worried about at the time Name Changes were introduced.
If attitudes have since changed, then the suggestion is to raise a Canny Feature Request was requested via the Feedback Portal.
Cape Ekim has been considered “very, very seriously” in terms of preserving the history of Second Life Linden Homes.
Once all the old Linden Homes have been retired, the plan is to make a special area paying tribute to them, and as such, Cape Ekim, “isn’t going anywhere”.
There was a final question on AI tool for translation services, and a full answer on the subject was deferred to the Operations and Engineering session.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 