The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work.
This meeting is generally held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
Official Viewer Status and Updates
Viewer Status
Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – No change.
Second Life Release Candidate viewer 2025.03 version 7.1.13.14174767759, April 2nd – New.
Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13907344519, April 2nd – New.
The current version of 2025.03 will remain in soak for the next few days in the hope that it will be ready for promotion to de facto release status “in the very near future”.
The April release – 2025.04 – is provisionally targeting:
The glTF mesh uploader (based on the current .DAE mesh uploader and doing pretty much the same). Again, please note that this is not the full glTF scene importer which has been discussed at previous CCUG meetings; that work is being broken down into smaller, more easily managed projects.
Possibly – and subject to confirmation – re-enabling subfolders within the My Outfits folder.
In short: it should be taken that whatever can be done within the existing .DAE uploader will remain so for uploading glTF mesh models at the first pass, and enhancements will come later.
This means that anything that is compliant with COLLADA which can be currently imported to SL via the uploader will work under glTF.
Any “new” capabilities not available to the current uploader will then be duly considered an implemented over time.
This is not a replacement for COLLADA format uploads – it is an addition to; uploading of .DAE objects will remain possible unless support for COLLADA becomes untenable.
The reason for this approach is to avoid having a large-scale glTF import project (variously referred to has “scene import” or the “Post-Materials Features Project” or PMFP), which would take months / years to develop, enhance and ship, and instead be more spritely in development and improvements.
This does not mean that everything that had been targeting the scene import / PMFP work will be abandoned.
Rather, it means those aspects which could end-up delaying it due to the amount of research, development and testing required to support them (e.g. custom skeletons / rigged meshes) can be put to one side for future development, rather than preventing the foundations to enable them from being laid.
The back-end format for imported mesh objects (“SL mesh”) will not be changing at this time. One of the reasons for this is the “SL mesh” format allows for easy upload of selected LODs.
However, this does not mean the format will not be improved upon in the future (and even a possible hybrid glTF / SL Mesh format implemented).
One aspect of the new mesh uploader will be the potential for adding materials-related glTF extensions to the current Khronos glTF specification.
These include (but are not limited to) the likes of the glTF specular extension, transmission, IOR, iridescence, emissive strength etc.
Geenz Linden is particularly interested in these, as the uploader allows them to be quickly added, and he would like to put together a package of extensions that a) creators can readily use; b) help move things towards being better placed to support other aspects of the PMFP work.
There was more discussion on support for uploading complete mesh region surrounds – this again was seen as something for consideration after the initial phases for implementing the glTF upload have been completed, and something possibly requiring the implementation of something like a node hierarchy.
Texture “Stutter” Issues
The recently introduced changes to texture use of VRAM have resulted in some users experiencing “viewer stutter” when the viewer is loading / uploading textures in a scene.
As a result, the options to define texture VRAM settings have been disabled in the 2025.03 RC.
Geenz Linden is anticipating being able to work on this issue later in April with a view to determine the cause and hopefully rectifying it.
This work will likely also look at texture streaming in general and make adjustments where textures tend to get loaded at resolutions that “don’t make sense” at the time of loading, and so improve that.
It is not anticipated that this work will start to surface much before the 2025.06 viewer development cycle.
Removing Scale From LI Calculations
Signal Linden highlighted a Feedback Ticket he has raised, proposing the removal of scale from Land Impact calculations, which has been touched upon at the last couple of SUG meetings.
However, there are now a few caveats starting to appear possibly impacting “everything from rendering to physics”, which require further internal discussion at LL.
One of these is the LI goes in both directions – so while removing scale from the calculation may be positive for a net reduction in the LI of objects that have been scaled up in size – it could have a net negative for objects scaled down (e.g. you have a group of objects each with 20 LI, and have scaled them down so each only has 10 LI, removing scale would reset them to 20 LI apiece).
In Brief
Allowing larger Linksets: raised at recent SUG meetings as well, this has not been ruled out for the future, but has some inherent issues, notably:
Limitations within the current physics engine, which would probably have to be updated.
Interest List issues – if a scene has a particularly massive linkset within it, it could simply fail to render in a viewer using a limited Draw Distance, simply because the root prim is outside of the viewer’s DD, even if child elements of the object are within range.
PBR Bakes on Mesh: this is seen as having a minimum of two requirements:
Providing PBR specular support.
Being able to set blend modes for different layers. This has some added complications in how blend modes should work for different types of maps, and this needs to be worked through in terms of implementation.
Rider Linden will try to get at least llSetAlpha and llSetColor updated to support PBR (with intelligent switching between the use of linear and RGB colour space depending on whether BP or PBR is being affected) within the next simulator update, which is currently being put together.
The viewer / graphics roadmap is being reviewed, and it is hoped that and updates / decisions on direction will be available for discussion at the next CCUG meeting.
The is no time frame on the delivery of “water exclusion volumes” (i.e. the ability to hide Linden Water entirely from the inside volume of an underwater room). Again, it is not because this cannot be done, but rather there is other work deemed as having a higher priority LL wish to address.
It was found that the water shoreline fade was causing issues with shoreline water effects (e.g. things like mesh shoreline elements using alphas to simulate the ebb and flow of shoreline tide looking broken / patchy / flickering), and so the fading has been disabled until the issue can be corrected.
It is possible this might for a wider piece of work to improve water / sky environment assets in general to make the ambient environment rendering less likely to break content.
Improving light sources (e.g. punctual lights, better point lighting, etc.) is seen as a future issue to be addressed before of current limitations within the current forward rending. Forward+ is one potential way forward, but this would require proper scoping ahead of any attempt to change the current rendering system.
On Thursday, April 3rd, 2025, Linden Lab announced a further promotion to encourage the use of the SL Mobile app through a giveaway of Linden Dollars. The promotion – called Dash for Cash – is available to all Second Life users – Basic and any subscription tier.
How It Works
Throughout April, the Lab will send out a notification to Mobile users.
Users then have a limited time period to log-in to Second Life via the Mobile app and claim a L$ prize.
To ensure a chance to claim:
Make sure you are using the latest release of the Mobile app (at the time of writing, 2025.3.548 (Android) / 0.5.537 (iOS)).
Enable push notifications on the app to receive the Dash notifications via Menu → Settings → Notifications → enable App Communications, per the images at the top of this article.
Note you may have to click on a blue button at the bottom of the Notifications screen and confirm you wish to allow the app to send notifications, if you are doing this for the first time.
You’ll also see a Dash for Cash announcement in the mobile app’s Lobby, reminding you to check in daily.
You can view the official Dash for Cash blog post in your device’s browser directly from the SL Mobile Lobby, if required.
Wait for the Dash for Cash notification & on receipt, log-into SL via the Mobile app.
Those doing so within the specified time will have the amount specified in the notification credited to their SL account.
Notes
Linden Dollar amounts may change.
Everyone can win, but Premium Plus, Premium and Plus members are eligible to receive higher L$ rewards than Basic users.
Note that Dash for Cash is in addition to the Streaks Rewards, which currently remain unchanged in format and availability.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday April 2nd, 2025. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript.
A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary, with sections of this summary times stamped to the relevant points in the video for those wishing to refer to the audio. My thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.
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.
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.
Fixes for spaces within Map links, with more fixes for incorrect spaces in links still to come.
Requests were again made to be able to search maps.secondlife.com by region name, which is apparently a little harder to implement than had been thought.
Minor fixes to the Marketplace:
See Mature Content link was not working as expected.
Translations updates and added.
Project Zero / Firestorm Zero (SL in a Browser) Update
Recent work has been focused on stability and performance.
Work has resumed on the new viewer UI for the Project Zero SL Viewer, and the first iteration, featuring very small changes should be released “pretty soon”.
Firestorm Zero
A core focus has been on the Firestorm version of Zero (Firestorm Zero, launched in March), running through bugs and issues reported with that. Some issues include:
People purchasing time and having issues launching a session.
People being locked-out of Firestorm Zero after a session (or even during) – most likely as a result of Cookies being corrupted, thus requiring Cookies to be cleared from the browser & the browser restarted.
It’s also been suggested that using a private / incognito version of a browser works better, as this should clear all Cookies on exiting.
Note: I have experienced multiple “locks-outs” (one both “public” and “private” browsers – Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Brave) and have found that clearing / resetting Cookies within the browser does not work, and it requires LL to bang on things (indeed, as of this moment, I cannot access Firestorm Zero!). If you encounter the same, please file a report.
General to Both
It was acknowledged there there is a degree of confusion around Project Zero and Firestorm Zero, and the fact there are differences between them:
Project Zero is effectively the official viewer, offered on a limited capacity basis, with the focus more towards incoming new users / returning users.
Firestorm Zero is the “paid” service utilising the Firestorm viewer and focused more towards current users.
Some aspects of this confusion might be seen in:
The link found at the top of the Second Life Dashboard (Launch Second Life in a Browser) will launch Firestorm Zero.
The fact that at the WUG meeting, people conflated issues of logging in to Project Zero which were likely due to the limited capacity / new user focus more than anything else, with a discussion on specific issues those attempting to use Firestorm Zero were experiencing.
As a result, Sntax Linden noted that there should be more / better differentiation between the two.
Shortfalls with both Zero and Firestorm Zero were (again) noted as:
Lack of ability to directly upload (mesh, textures, etc.) to your account.
Lack of ability to save snapshots, etc., to a local disk.
The noticeable latency in camera movement (and similar) for those more distant to the host computer running the viewer. [It has been hinted that this could be address by relocating host computers for Project Zero / Firestorm Zero in additional Amazon GameLift end-points such as Éire.]
A feedback request to Add marketplace policy regarding AI generated content sparked a request for clarification on what people would like (e.g. disclosure of the use of AI generated content / listing images; outright banning of anything related to the use of AI tools; filtering out content made purely with generative AI (as opposed to content which has been created by someone and which happens to use some AI elements), something in-between; limiting some forms of AI content, etc.).
Within the meeting, disclosure (e.g. clearly indicating a item uses AI generated content / the listing images are AI generated, etc.), was preferred by most.
It was noted that using purely AI-generated images (e.g. created using Midjourney) as a non-representative means to promote / sell content on the MP is already against policy (misleading advertising) and so can currently be reported.
Kali Linden indicated LL are looking to add reasons for flagging content, and something along the lines of “violates LL policy” might be considered, to make such reporting easier.
It was acknowledged that those using generative AI tools (e.g. Meshy) for content on the MP probably are not going to self-identify through marking check-boxes etc.
It was also noted that some people using generative AI images for advertising on the MP are not doing so with intent – but rather because it is the New Shiny for them to play with, and so some allowance should be made for this.
There’s also the issue with people who may take images of their creations and then heavily post-process them to the point where they are no longer fully representative of the item it promotes – so what should be done in these cases? Or with those using art pulled from the physical world?
Part of this conversation inevitably rolled over the idea of AI “companions” / bots and an expressed desire to “ban everything” about AI – including bots, despite there being nuances – such as with the latter (e.g. in-store CSRs, more dynamic role-play NPCs, etc.).
In Brief
Please refer to the video for details on the following.
[Video: 1:32-4:44] General discussion on the Second Life booth at the 2025 Games Developer Conference, which some at the meeting felt to be underwhelming based on the photographs posted to social media, etc.
LL also appear to have received feedback from the SL creators who attended the event, and it appears lessons are being learnt for future possible events / appearances.
[Video 17:32-18:50] Further discussion over the lack of a visible-by-default chat bar in the official viewer.
[Video: 22:03-35:15] Discussion on use of the in-viewer browser vs. using an external browser – most preferred the external browser option.
However, most browser-based shopping stats the Lab has for the Marketplace point to the viewer’s internal browser being primarily used for purchases.
Sntax Linden noted that as the internal browser is the only option for accessing the web from within Project Zero / Firestorm Zero, LL do want to improve on it – such as making the responsive MP not only work on small device screens, but also work better within the in-viewer browser.
Traditionally, the in-viewer browser has been avoided due to concerns of general security (e.g. clicking on phishing links and opening them within the in-viewer browser). This led to a discussion on ways to block “bad links”.
A grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments, VWBPE attracts 2200-3500 educational professionals from around the world each year. Its primary goals are to foster discussion on, and learning about educational opportunities presented through the use of such virtual spaces, a defining core values and best practices in doing so, including:
Helping to build community through extension of learning best practices to practical application of those ideas and techniques;
Providing networking opportunities for educators and the communities that help support education; and
Offering access to current innovations, trends, ideas, case studies, and other best practices for educators and the communities that help support education.
In the context of the conference, a “virtual environment” is an on-line community through which users can interact with one another and use and create ideas irrespective of time and space. As such, typical examples include Second Life, OpenSimulator, Unity, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and so on, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest or any virtual environments characterised by an open social presence and in which the direction of the platform’s evolution is manifest in the community.
Every year, the event has an over-arching theme. For 2025 this is Transitions, which the organisers describe thus:
Transitions, like pivotal shifts in a story, capture the profound changes educators and students have faced in recent years. These shifts highlight the need to adapt and redefine social dynamics within virtual environments as education evolves to meet new challenges.
Join us as we all share experiences and successes in how virtual technologies used in the classroom have helped shape education for the better.
VWBPE 2025 Gateway
Programme
As with previous VWBPE conferences, this year’s event includes speakers, workshops, presentations, social activities and more.
The best way to find out what is going on over the three days of the conference is through the VWBPE programme page, However, here are some of the highlights of major events (note: all times SLT and held at the main auditorium unless otherwise stated):
08:30-09:00: VWBPE 2025 Kick-off event at the VWBPE Gateway.
09:00-10:00:
Lecture Area A – VW Illustrations and AI Avatars Enhance Engagement, presenter: Kayako Mayako (RL: Kay McLennan, Tulane University, School of Professional Advancement).
Workshop Area B – CyberX: AI Personalized Learning in Virtual Worlds, presenter: Ran Hienrichs (RL: Ran Hinrichs).
16:00-17:00: Lecture Area A – We Stand in the Middle, presenter: Jenaia Morane (Jena Ball).
Saturday April 5th:
07:00-08:00: Workshop Area B – Immersive AI Companion Design, presenter: ErlinaAzure (Helena Galani, TESOL International).
08:00-09:00 Lecture Area B – Navigating Transitions Through Community Learning, a roundtable discussion with host: Rhiannon Chatnoir (RL: Joyce Bettencourt, Avacon, Inc.).
10:00-11:00: Workshop Area A – Round the Campfire on Student Agency, presenter: Bluebarker Lowtide (Vasili A. Giannoutsos, VBCPS).
12:00 noon-13:00: Lecture Area B – Go Ahead, Accept Failure, Fall Forward, and Fly, presenter: Zinnia Zauber (Renne Emiko Brock, Peninsula College).
14:00-15:00: Lecture Area A – Transitioning from Virtual World Student to Pro, presenter: Kreatya Shannon (Shannon Broden, Graduate, San Jose State University).
If you cannot get in-world to attend any of these or the other major talks and presentations at the conference, note that you can watch them via You Tube – check the VWBPE Livestream Guide for the full schedule of events streamed to the VWBPE You Tube channel.
WWBPE Wetlands Visitor Centre
Region Themes and Facilities
For 2025, the conference continues with its Earth build, with each region representing a different terrestrial biome, including wetlands, desert, badlands, grasslands, and forests. Conference attendees will be able to explore 3D immersive virtual representations of these biomes.
The VWBPE Gateway
At the VWBPE Gateway you can find information on the conference – including the schedule for the day, a Swag Bag which includes the conference teleport HUD for easy access to all locations and venues, information on the biomes comprising the conference regions, and more. And, of course, VWBPE volunteers are on hand to answer your questions!
The VWBPE 2025 Swag Bag (from the conference gateway) includes a Teleport HUD for hopping around the conference more easily
Core Facilities and SLurls
Within these regions the following core facilities for the conference can be found – but please refer to your conference Swag Bag (and teleport HUD!) for full information on all locations and facilities at this year’s conference.
The Quieting, April 2025 – click any image for full size
I’ve covered the region design work of Elo (WeeWangle Wumpkins) a number of times in these pages, both in terms of regions she has landscaped on behalf of others (such as Persephone Smythe (LeriaDraven) – see here) and in her own right, perhaps most notably – but by no means exclusively – with The Forgotten, which I originally blogged in April 2022 and again in January 2024.
While The Forgotten has since closed, its memory, in some ways at least, is carried on within The Quieting, a homestead region design by Elo which opened in March 2025. It abuts the home of Aardvark Animesh Pets & Animals, the store operated by Elo’s SL partner, Dash Phantom, with whom she landscaped that region.
The Quieting, April 2025
Although I’ve not met Elo, we appear to have a lot in common: a slightly whimsical / crooked sense of humour, an love of cats, books and fantasy, and an adoration of nature and natural settings. In fact, such is the beauty, whimsy and humour of The Quieting, that a simple description of the region just is not enough; it is a place deserving of careful exploration and observation, because it folds so much into itself. In this, it carries on the spirit of The Forgotten, and the words I used to describe that setting hold true here as well:
This is a place that offers itself as a book; the landscape seamlessly flowing from shore to shore … leading the visitor through vignettes and elements which stand as chapters to a story, each one unique unto itself but also joined to those which came before and which follow after, their tales combining to draw the explorer onwards as the words flowing across written pages draw the reader deeper into their narrative.
The Quieting, April 2025
In fact, it is not unfair to say that whilst having its own unique personality, The Quieting has enough about it – the over-large full Moon that seems to reflect the light and colours of the clouds passing below it, the ritual stone circle with its central glowing crystal, the use of ruins – that those who recall The Forgotten will immediately sense the flow of unity between the two settings, even as The Quieting unfolds its own delights and stories.
From the Landing Point, located alongside a body of water that cuts deeply into the east side of the region, it is possible to strike out in several directions. Eastward, across a log bridge, offers a path through cavern rich in crystals and a tunnel to the beach, or if you prefer – a path up to the headland above said cavern and southward to where a little bookstore / reading corner sits within its own terrace. From there it is possible to pass through an avenue of trees and reach aged ruins enclosing a garden – a place also to be reached by stepping westward from the Landing Point and then heading south across the grass.
The Quieting, April 2025
Further to the west, beyond the greenhouse kitchen (where there appears to have something of a mishap!), it is possible to reach a pair of little cottages and, close by, the remnants of anther ancient structure huddled in a bowl of land alongside the walled and flower-carpeted walk to the local chapel standing within a darkly humorous (Here Lies Lester Moore, Four slugs from a .44 – No Less, No More) as well as quite touching. Above both chapel and ruins, sitting on the crown of a hill might be found a large greenhouse and yet more ruins which sit well-like in the hill, thick mist filing its deep.
Meanwhile, south of the cottages, the land rises to woodlands in which the noted ritual ring resides, surrounded by an almost mystical fog, reached via paths from both the grasslands and the high walls and walkway connecting the setting with Aardvark.
The Quieting, April 2025
Each of these locations – and the all points between offer their own stories, touches and humour. Some of these – the mentioned greenhouse kitchen, the mandrakes of folklore finding themselves the subject of unwanted attention from an Eagle, the goofy / homely charm of the bookshop / reading corner (keep an eye out for the chicken having a frank exchange with a bespectacled mouse).
Others might be more easily missed (whilst you may spot the piglet taking to the air in a makeshift balloon basket – will you spot the red-coated (and red faced!) individual about to bring piglet back to Earth with – if not a bang, then certainly a rata-tat-tat?!). Or how about the hang-gliding mouse, or the snide-looking llama almost daring you to blame it for the broken state of the chair next to it; or how about the little beagle behaving like a virtual interpretation of Greyfriars Bobby? And that’s barely scratching the surface of all that is waiting to be seen here.
The Quieting, April 2025
The fact is, The Quieting offers multiple vignettes, large (such as the ruins and their garden, the chapel and its graveyard) to the very small which sit both within the larger settings and entirely on their own (again, keep your eyes open as you follow the path around the base of the hill covering the cavern and tunnel, for example, or the opportunity to take to the air by a whimsical means).
Marvellously brought together, rich in details (and I haven’t really mentioned much of the wildlife scattered around, The Quieting is a richly engaging visit.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 1st, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log of the meeting and Pantera’s video, embedded at the end of this piece.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Simulator Deployments
On Tuesday April 1st, the SLS Man Channel was updated with the Durian Scones update, which includes the SSL certificate renewal, making it grid-wide.
On Wednesday, April 2nd, the RC channels will be restarted without any deployment, other than a WebRTC update which will be deployed to the Preflight RC channel.
Planned Updates – LI Calculation Change (Recap)
Signal Linden highlighted a Feedback Ticket he has raised, proposing the removal of scale from Land Impact calculations.
This is being possibly earmarked for a simulator update after Durian Scones.
This essentially means that the LI of object should not dramatically change as a result of resizing (particularly when increased in size). It could also mean that some large objects in world could see LI reductions.
Understandably, this announcement led to a lot of discussion / debate throughout the meeting.
Please refer to the the video for details on the following.
A request was made for linkset larger than the current 64m limit. This would have to be “thought about”, although it led to an extensive discussion on the idea (including issues of linkset visibility / draw distance / limits on older hardware).
Arbitrary link distances sounds like a neat idea, however I suspect such a change would only exacerbate some interest list bugs. I wonder what would happen if two 1cm^3 cubes were linked at 256m. The “position” of the linked object would be one of the prims. Its measure of “visibility” should be… what? The size of one or the size of the linked set?
– Leviathan Linden
The above led to a broad conversation on prim / object types, physics, prim torturing, etc.
Signal linden noted on the status of SLua:
Updates on SLua may slow down as we got a lot of good information from the alpha. We need to make some changes and prepare for a beta and production rollout.
Rider Linden also dropped a request into the meeting:
I’m looking for someone to write an extension. When I open a script file using VSCode check the current workspace. If it finds a file with the same base name, “link” the two files. 1) Copy the file from the workspace to the SL script temp file every time the WS file is saved.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 