On Wednesday, April 16th, 2025, Linden Lab announced that Linden Dollar buy fees are reduced to US $0.01 per transaction for all Second Life users in a “limited-time offer”.
When and What
Offer commenced: 12:30 SLT on Wednesday, April 16th, 2025.
Offer ends: 14:30 SLT on Friday, April 18th, 2025.
Offer duration 50 hours.
Any purchase of Linden Dollars made during this period (within the required trading limits), whether through an Instant (Market) or Best Rate (Limited) Buy (https://secondlife.com/my/lindex/buy.php) or through the viewer (Buy L$, top right of the viewer window), will incur a transaction (Buy) fee of just US $0.01.
The limited-time L$ Buy fee offer applies to in-viewer L$ purchased and both Instant and Best Rate buy via your Second Life dashboard
From the official blog post:
Times are tough for a lot of people, so we’ve come up with one way to make things a little easier: Second Life is launching a special LindeX limited-time offer – a chance to make Linden Dollar (L$) Buy fees nearly disappear for a limited time!
While the global economy wrestles with rising tariffs and tense trade talks, we’re responding with a bold, Resident-first promotion: we’re charging just a penny for your LindeX buy fees for the next 2 days. We’re committed to you – our Residents – through these challenging times, and we will continue to stand by you as we have over the past 22 years.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 15th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log of the meeting and Pantera’s video, embedded at the end of this piece.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Simulator Deployments
This week will see all channel restarted without and deployments.
Upcoming Deployment – Recap
This next simulator update will be called Elderberry. Among other things, this should include:
A new option to llDerezObject – DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY, which returns the targeted object to inventory and saves its current state (e.g. has the same behaviour as Build → Object → Save Back to Object Contents.
llIsLinkGLTFMaterial – which can can determine if a face on a linked prim is PBR.
REZFLAG_DIE_ON_NO_REZZER – which will cause a rezzed prim to die if its rezzer is no longer present in the region.
Updates to llSetAlpha will have a caveat: if alpha is set to >0.85, it will switch the overrides to opaque; setting under that value sets them to blend. This is because there seem to be some serious rendering issues with blend mode and an alpha near 1, per this image.
llSetGLTFOverrides, rather than changes to llSetColor and llSetAlpha to work with PBR, as changing the latter was “starting to lead down some very scary paths WRT ‘What is the right thing to do'”.
SL Viewer Updates
Default viewer: 2025.03 version 7.1.13.14343205944, dated April 9th, 2025, promoted April 15th, 2025.
New UI element for water exclusion surfaces: Build / Edit floater → Texture Tab → Hide Water checkbox.
The maximum amount of Reflection Probes can now be adjusted to better accommodate low VRAM scenarios.
Values will be set automatically depending on your chosen graphics quality. OR
Use Preferences → Graphics → Advanced Settings → Max. Reflection Probes to manually set.
An issue with being unable to see Sky Altitude values in the Region/Estate window has now been resolved.
Preferences → Graphics → Max. # of Non-Imposters has been renamed Max. # of Animated Avatars for clarity.
Bug and performance fixes and memory optimisations.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13907344519, April 2nd.
Please refer to the the video for details on the following.
A general discussion llDerezObject and whether an object being taken back by an object has been renamed will result in a copy being generated, or the original still replaced (answer: still replaced).
As a result, a DEREZ_TO_INVENTORY_COPY parameter has been requested, and could be suppled in the simulator update after Elderberry.
Rider Linden also noted he may need to disallow a reclaim on coalesced inventory objects, as once in-world, acoalesced object becomes a grouping on independent objects, with not connection between them or any means to re-group them.
Discussion around this functionally and iiDerezObject continued through most of the meeting.
Progress on SLua is described as being “good”, but as per the pervious meetings (SUG and TPVD), there is more back-end work to be done before the SLua project moves to a “beta” on Aditi.
Following the discussion on World → Show → Land Owners has been broken since the release of PBR such that all owners, regardless of type are only shown as red, rather than in different colours based on ownership (see Land owners colour), it was noted that a fix for the issue should be in the next RC viewer update – 2025.04.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
The newest Linden Homes theme – this one again for Premium and Premium Plus subscribers – was launched on Tuesday, April 15th, 2025. Entitled Aspen Ridge, it has something of the Log Homes combined with the Newbrooke Homes vibe about it in terms of the general appearance of the six styles of Home offered in the theme.
With a stone base and partial stone walls mixed with wood, the theme is described as a “new chapter” in Linden Homes, and the designs appear to leverage PBR materials. The six styles within the theme comprise:
Parkstone – a large, lodge-style home, with a grans L-shaped main room with front and rear access, a centre-rear dogleg stairway and a small rear box room with a window to the rear aspect. Exposed beams support the ceiling, with a large, single open-plan upper floor with two under-eaves balconies to the front aspect, large windows to the rear and skylight windows.
Ridgeway – similar to the Parkstone, but with the upper floor divided into three areas: a large landing / hall with a balcony to the rear aspect, a small box room with balcony to the front right, and a large room to the front left with roof extension with panoramic window.
Aspen Ridge Linden Homes: Parkstone
Highpoint – an A-frame unit with a large main lower floor room with front access and a smaller rectangular room with view to the front and rear opening off of it. Dogleg stairs provide access to a large, open-plan upper floor.
Summitview – a split-level lodge-style home with the upper gallery space overlooking the main front room with panoramic windows to the front and rear aspect. Two small rooms are located under the gallery floor, both access via a short hall.
Aspen Ridge Linden Homes: Summitview
Elkridge – a cabin-style house with a square main room and smaller box room to the front. Stairs front the main room rise to a single rectangular upper floor room.
Crestwood – a single-storey cabin-style home with a awkwardly-shaped main room complete with two front entrances, with two rectangular rooms opening off of it, one to the rea and one to the front right aspect.
In terms of being a “new chapter”, this seems to reference the fact that the homes appear to use PBR materials as noted, and, in an interesting move, the fact that the ground on which they sit changes to match the northern hemisphere (North American?) seasons – this being spring at the time of writing. This is certainly a new tweak to Linden Homes, and it will be interesting to see if anything is done to retrospectively update past theme to offer the same – if possible.
Aspen Ridge Linden Homes: Crestwood
As far as the overall design, I’ll be honest, I found them a mixed bag. If I were to go for one of them, it would most likely be the Parkstone or Ridgeway, whilst the Crestwood strikes me as a missed opportunity. But that said, the use of PBR and the magic of changing seasons likely aren’t enough to crowbar me out of my Log Home. I also had to (again) question what it is about Linden Homes and back doors – or the lack thereof in many of the styles.
It’s a question I’ve often pondered, and it came to mind again in looking at the Aspen Ridge, of which only two have doors to the rear (and they are, ironically, the two with perhaps the largest footprint for any 1024 sq m parcel Linden Home – limiting the garden space front and rear). It’s not exactly a big thing, but if your house happens to be in a position so as to encourage having both a front and rear garden, having styles that require traipsing around to the back garden from the front door tends to get … old.
And with that off my chest, I’ll note that the Aspen Ridge theme can be previewed at the BelliHub Linden Home Demo area and at the demo area within the Second Life Welcome Hub.
Aspen Ridge Linden Homes: Ridgeway
Retirement of “Old” Linden Homes Announced
The release of the Aspen Ridge homes brought with in confirmation that the original 2010 Linden Homes (now referred to as “legacy Linden Homes”) and their mini-continents are to start to finally be retired. This had been indicated back in 2019, when the current Linden Homes launched with the Traditional and Houseboat themes, but the actual retirement was repeatedly delayed as the older Homes appeared to remain fairly popular among those disinterested in moving.
With the confirmation the legacy Homes are now to be retired, those still holding one are strongly advised to upgrade via the Linden Homes page.
During the March 2025 Community Round Table / Town Hall meeting (which I have summarised here, complete with the official video of the event†), there was a peaceful demonstration by some Second Life users on the use of AI / generative AI within the platform. Such concerns have also been formulated elsewhere, such as this document outlining objections to AI on the Feedback Portal.
At the time of that meeting, Lab CTO, Philip Rosedale stated the company would look to hold an open Town Hall meeting to discuss concerns about AI, together with the opportunities it might present, and on community values around the use / presentation of AI in Second Life.
On Monday, April 14th, 2025, the Lab officially announced the event, now entitled Second Life Town Hall on AI & the Future of Our Virtual Community.
Meeting Date, Time and Location
Date and Time: Friday, April 18th, 2025, commencing at 12:30 SLT.
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly present in both our physical and virtual worlds, the Second Life community is coming together for a Special Town Hall event to explore its evolving role and impact within our shared metaverse.
This special event will include an open and interactive conversation focused on the opportunities, concerns, and community values surrounding AI in Second Life. We’ll be diving into topics that matter deeply to residents—from identity and authenticity to economic impact, creative ownership, and the future of social interaction.
This event will be hosted by Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, who will facilitate a lively discussion with the community on all-things-AI.
Topics under consideration for discussion are listed as:
How AI-generated avatars may affect identity and trust in social spaces
Generative AI and the Second Life creative economy.
Emotional manipulation, consent, and transparency with AI-driven characters
Use of AI in customer support and other non-in-world services
Balancing creative opportunities and responsible use of emerging AI tools
Participation
The meeting is open to all Second Life users and will – I presume, as there was no direct mention of this in the official announcement when I read it – be livestreamed. Direct participation in the event is being offered in one of two ways:
Those who have questions / comments / thoughts on the potential / current use of AI in Second Life can submit such questions or comments for consideration during the event via this form.
Those wishing to make an initial brief presentation or give prepared comments on the subject should submit a request via this form.
via Linden Lab
†While they are not officially representative of the Lab or these meetings, please note that I attempt to provide summaries of meeting such as these, and for a number of user group session within these pages.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, April 13th, 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.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – No change.
Numerous crash and performance fixes.
Water exclusion surfaces.
Water improvements.
Second Life Release Candidate viewer 2025.03 version 7.1.13.14343205944, April 9th – NEW.
New UI element for water exclusion surfaces: Build / Edit floater → Texture Tab → Hide Water checkbox.
The maximum amount of Reflection Probes can now be adjusted to better accommodate low VRAM scenarios.
Values will be set automatically depending on your chosen graphics quality. OR
Use Preferences → Graphics → Advanced Settings → Max. Reflection Probes to manually set.
An issue with being unable to see Sky Altitude values in the Region/Estate window has now been resolved.
Preferences → Graphics → Max. # of Non-Imposters has been renamed Max. # of Animated Avatars for clarity.
Bug and performance fixes and memory optimisations.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.14175675593, April 2nd, 2025 – no change.
Pususaari, April 2025 – click any image for full size
Recently added to the Second Life Destination Guide is a Homestead region setting by SL couple Lu and Leelou Von Perkle (Lu Carrillo and LeeLou Graves respectively). Called simply Pususaari, its engaging description was enough to have me hopping over to take a look:
Pususaari is a little island made for kisses and quiet smiles. Wander through meadows, chase the sunset, whisper secrets by the sea, get lost in a moment, discover, cuddle, or dance under open skies. For lovers, dreamers, and quiet explorers.
– Pususaari Destination Guide entry.
Pususaari, April 2025
I have no idea as to the inspiration behind the setting – whether it simply draws its name from Pususaari (roughly “Pusus island”) on lake Puruvesi, Findland, or has been so-named in memory of a visit to that tiny island, or the similarities in the naming of both islands is just coincidental.
On the one hand, Lu’s physical-world time zone suggests he might hail from Finland and thus aware of the physical world location, and there is something of a similarly between the two islands in as much as they both have their greatest length running along a south-east / north-west line. However, whether there is any strand of a link between the two is rendered largely immaterial by the rugged beauty and sense of peace to be found within Pususaari in Second Life.
Pususaari, April 2025
It is towards the south-eastern end of the island that the Landing Point is to be found. It sits on a deck built out over the coastal waters and alongside the island’s southern headland. The latter rises behind the café occupying a good portion of the deck, perhaps offering it shelter from any harsher weather that may pass over the island. A broad arc of beach stretches north and west, its southern extent not quite reaching out to the deck and the café, so a wander along a raised boardwalk is required to reach the sands with dry feet.
From this beach, the island might be split into six distinct area suitable for exploration. Directly east of the boardwalk steps, the sands lap at the foot of a grassy slope deeply scored by water run-off channels rises to the top of the southern headland’s large plateau. It thus offers a way up over the plateau to the eastern shoreline or, for those fancying a further climb, up the summit-topping lighthouse sitting at the tallest part of the island.
Pususaari, April 2025
Separated from this plateau by a deep cut of an inlet lies another east coat highland area. Rivalling the lighthouse summit in terms of its highest point, it is reached by leaving the beach and striking out across the meadow that forms the central lowlands of the island.
The path upwards here is via another grassy slope with signs of heavy rain water run-off over the years, and which reaches up between two bony shoulders of rock to reach a rough path. This winds through a wooded area atop the hills before it splits, one arm dropping down to the north-east coast occupied by a cosy little holiday shack, the other pointing to a further grassy climb running up to the spine of these uplands, forming the route up to the high tree.
Pususaari, April 2025
Across the meadow to the west, the land is equally divided, stony, rocky lowlands to the south sitting under two further shoulders of rock. Water drops from one of these shoulders to a pool of water below, while atop the other, and reached via a further sleep slope between them, sits a large windmill. Finally, to the north across the meadow to the north is a further ribbon of beach running from the north-eastern highlands to the lee of those to the west, where a Tuscan-style villa sitting within their lee.
Throughout all of these areas are places to sit an spend time, be it within little shacks hugging the east coast, wooden chairs sitting on the rough-and-tumble lowlands beneath the waterfalls, little spots on the beaches or up up among the hills or in and around the villa and / or the café. All of them present a variety of views and encourage visitors to stay and let the time pass without worry, with some requiring a bit of a climb – as with the bench under the gnarled tree mentioned above, or the ruined clock tower sitting high above the villa; all of them offer their own destination within the various parts of the landscape.
Pususaari, April 2025
Rich in detail large and small, indoors and out – including local animal life (wild and domesticated), Pususaari lives up to its description fully: a place caught under an ideal shared environment, offering plenty of opportunities for photography, romance and simply wandering pleasure; even the default region name – Bisous – is perfect.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 