Tag: Simulator User Group 2026

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 15, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting by Pantera is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

• The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
• The “Leviathan Office Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
• Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator Deployments

• The Nectarine update is due to be deployed to the BlueSteel RC channel on Wednesday, September 16, 2026 providing it encounters no issues during it time with QA.
  • This  will include the server-side support for game_control, but may not have full LSL support, due to last-minute bugs.
• The next update after that is codenamed Olive – details still TBD.

General Updates

• Rider Linden is working on the last of the known bugs with the latest version of the VSCode plugin.
• Leviathan Linden (via proxy in the form of Rider Linden) indicated there is a new test version of the game_control viewer (note this link will have a limited lifespan, pending the next update).
  • A request was made for game_control to include separate Flycam input for gamepads/controllers around axis control. A request was made for this to be formally filed via Canny to ensure it gets responded to.
  • This led to a general discussion on camera control (or lack thereof, depending on your point-of-view!), with the acknowledgement that “post game_control” scripted support for camera movement will need to be expanded.
• Harold Linden (Lua) is working through a major refactor to hopefully ensure that following the upcoming update (which will break existing Lua scripts, requiring they be recompiling / resetting), there will be no further breakages with future deployments.
  • This led to a general discussion on Lua support interwoven with the discussion of game_control / controller / joystick, etc., support.
  • Kyle Linden noted there will be a new Lua portal on the SL Wiki “soon”.

General Discussion

Please refer to the video for details on the following:

• A call for feature requests led to two region traffic-related requests which amounted to much the same thing: a new traffic metric that didn’t reward accounts standing in place 24 hours a day / only counts avatars that move. Together with a suggestion that “traffic” as a metric is done away with in favour of an “engagement” metric.
  • Another request was for a specific Group role for posting links to Group chats (as a further means of defeating phishing spams). Rider indicated there were “a few things coming” with regards to link posting, but did not have the details to hand.
  • The above led to a lengthy debate among users at the meeting on how to handle / mange links and the ability to post them in Group chats.
• A general discussion of region / simulator restarts – particularly with regards to LL not running them during geographic peak hours of use (i.e. the Tuesday / Wednesday restarts run during the peak used of SL in Japan).
  • Monty Linden reminded people that the restarts are simhost server-based, not purely the simulators / regions running on it, and are required to also restart all underpinning services as well.
• Inventory and storing items / use of inventory links and outfits manage also came up for user-led discussion / debate.
• llStartObjectAnimation() & llStopObjectAnimation() no longer works on Animesh characters has been raised and is under active investigation.
• Further confusion between water exclusion surfaces (which hide Linden Water when viewed from above, and water exclusion volumes, which would (if they existed) hide all Linden Water and its properties when seen from above and under water.

Date of Next Meetings

• Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, September 22, 2026.
• Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, September 29, 2026.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 8, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting by Pantera is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks to her for providing it, and to Erik Mondrian for the chat transcript after my ISP suffered issues and disconnected me from the world.

Meeting Overview

• The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
• The “Leviathan Office Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
• Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator Deployments

• No deployments this week, but all simhosts will be restarted.
• The Nectarine update now looks like its deployment to an RC channel will not be for another week as it continues through QA.
• Simulator support for Lua looks like it will be part of a simulator update after Nectarine
• The next two simulator releases after Nectarine are currently referenced as Olive and Plum – with Olive possibly being the vehicle for Lua release, but this is still TBC.

Game Control

• Game_control has a new pre-release viewer version, but further work on the viewer code is required.
  • One element of this is that there are now two code elements for flycamming – the SpaceNavigator support and now game_control support. Leviathan would like to reconcile these into a single code set for both options.
• There was a reminder that game_control is not grid-wide on the Main grid (Agni).
  • So anyone using the pre-release viewer must disable the “Send GameControl Data to server” option in the game_control preferences – or face being booted from any region sans game_control support.
  • The above will still allow use of a controller for general movement (avatar and camera (including flycam) and the mouse.
  • The full UDP message set required for game_control should be part of the Nectarine simulator update (so no need to disable anything once this has been fully deployed to the Main grid).
• Leviathan also noted:
  • That game_control should support any controller that is supported by SDL3 (simple direct layer).
  • Full documentation on game_control has yet to go to the SL wiki.
  • It’s not clear how game_control will interact with SL Experiences – although views were expressed that in terms of movement, etc, it should work.
• Leviathan would like more feedback on the game_control work, but understands this is difficult given the viewer is only available as a pre-release, and simulator support is limited to the Beta grid (Aditi).
• The latter two points led to some description of the control options and modes, control semantics, etc., and a more general discussion on game_control through most of the rest of the meeting – please refer to the video.

Region Crossings

• Pepper Linden’s region crossing improvements will not be formally included in the next simulator update (Nectarine).
  • They will therefore be ported to a subset of simulators running on the Snack RC channel as previously reported.
  • Update: at the Content Creation User Group meeting, it was indicated that the Snack Channel deployment will likely be be in the next 1-2 weeks, and will include Blake Sea regions.
• These updates do not, contrary to rumours, make region crossings “faster”;  they do, however, make them more stable and predictable.
  • The above means that if you are using an avatar with many scripted attachments and on a complex vehicle – you will likely complete region crossings in good order rather than crashing (or something), but it may take as long as prior to Pepper’s stability fixes.
• Making region crossings “faster” remains a separate area of work the Lab will at some point start poking at.
  • One hope here is that the  implementation of Lua scripting will help over time (once live) could help speed things up due to its (rumoured) faster serialization/deserialization of scripts.

General Updates

• This was a light meeting, as the past weekend was a long weekend in the US (Labor Day), so many LL staff were out of the office on either side of it.
• Leviathan Linden indicated that the fixes for avatars moving more than usual when standing on moving surfaces and for “crouch-slide” will be in the Nectarine simulator update.
• There was a further discussion on variable walking speeds, with the following being noted:
  • It would require an an overhaul of the avatar locomotion graph and likely updates to game_control.
  • development of suitable animations and scrioted control capabilities to properly sync animations with walking speeds.
• A further request was made for a way to make general data on active / on-line regions available (e.g. via .CSV file) – the information being requested being region names, associated estate names, global grid coordinates, height map and aerial view (without sky-based ads). Leviathan indicated he’ll take the request back to the

Date of Next Meetings

• Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, September 15, 2026.
• Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, September 22, 2026.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 1, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting by Pantera is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

• The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
• The “Leviathan Office Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
• Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator Deployments

• No deployments this week, but all simhosts will be restarted.
• The Nectarine update is due to be deployed to the BlueSteel RC channel on Wednesday, September 9, 2026 providing it encounters no issues during it time with QA.
• The next update after that is codenamed Olive – details still TBD.

General Updates

• Rider Linden is still working on a new version of the VSCode plugin.
  • He confirmed that the next update to the Lua Editor viewer (with Linux support) should see it officially become the 26.4 viewer and upped to a beta / RC version (a pre-release version of 26.4 is available on Github, but not that this will have a limited lifespan).
• Leviathan Linden indicated that game_control is now “done” in terms of current development work:
  • Server-side support has been merged into the upcoming Nectarine simulator update.
  • The viewer-side code is now ready for merging into the main viewer Develop code base, although at the time of the meeting, this had yet to be done.
  • As a result of this, Leviathan plans to “get back to” his other workload – including a fix for the mesh face mismatch issue, the way avatars are now drifting more than should be the case when on a moving surface and the “crouch-drift misfeature” – see my notes from the last Leviathan Office hours for more on these latter issues.
  • Another item Leviathan Linden hopes to address is the Feature Request for llGetRegionWorldMapTile.
• Monty Linden, speaking on Harold’s behalf on Lua:
  • There has been a Discord discussion on robustness around yielding and other concerns. As a result, Harold has posted a PR to Github, and is seeking feedback / comments.
  • Outside of this, work is focused on trying to find the difficult bits that are still outstanding to give a smooth ride to release, and it is planned to mov up to Luau 0.732.
  • There is currently no new Lua simulator available, although one is in development.
  • This news was followed by a general discussion on Lua issues, experiences with debugging scripts, capturing error information, etc., – please refer to the video.
• Pepper Linden’s region crossing improvements should be (if not already) seeing a limited deployment to the Snack RC channel on the Main grid (Agni).
  • This sparked a general discussion on region crossings.

General Discussion

Please refer to the video for details on the following:

• Kyle Linden threw out a request to anyone producing Lua content: if they are willing to share their work with the Marketing team, they may get featured in a Spotlight piece.
• Leviathan Linden noted that whilst SVG/SVG text on a prim (see this Feature Request as an example) has been much-discussed in meetings, it is not something LL senior management is not particularly seized with.
• The request was (yet again) made for larger region sizes – there are no plans for any such work to be undertaken for the foreseeable future.
• A general discussion on programming languages which – outside of Lua /LSL had no major relevance on SL.

Date of Next Meetings

• Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, September 8, 2026.
• Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, September 15, 2026.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 15, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) off-week meeting (the “Leviathan Office Hour”). These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. They were taken from my chat log of the meeting. No video this week, as Pantera is on vacation.

Meeting Overview

• The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
• The “Leviathan Office Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
• Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator News

• On Tuesday, August 25, 2026, the SLS Main channel was restarted without update.
• On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, the RC channels will likely be restarted without any deployment.

Game_Control

• Leviathan Linden is “almost done” with a revamp of game-control.
• A pull request has been cut to the server updates, and the hope is that this will be added to the upcoming Nectarine server update. This will likely include a new UDP message for game_control so that all simulators will be aware of it before the viewer-side code is released.
• The viewer updates should similarly be going into the viewer Develop repository in the near future.
• Leviathan is changing how game_control event is accessed for scripts: scripts now need to llRequestPermissions(PERMISSION_GAME_CONTROL) to get game_control events, similar to how control events work.
  • He also noted that with this change, attachments and seats permission requests will be auto-accepted (the scripts will need to ask for the permissions, but no pop-up will show on the viewer for those objects).
  • The main benefit of this latter change  is it will be possible to remote-control objects with game-control input (but disconnected objects will cause the pop-up, and it will have to be accepted manually).
  • It was noted that this change might have to be included in the llRequestExperiencePermissions() protocol.
  • These changes are not currently live on any simulator.

Region Crossings

• Pepper Linden’s work on improving region crossings should be seeing a limited deployment to the Main grid via the Snack RC channel, most likely alongside the upcoming deployment of the Nectarine simulator update is deployed to the other RC channels.
• This test deployment is the result of concerns that the updates might result in a need for a roll-back should they might impact other region crossing changes which have been made.
• If Pepper’s updates work on Snack without any roll-back, then a broader deployment to RC channels can be considered.
• More information on this will be provided at the next Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, September 1, 2026.

Avatar Movement

• Leviathan has been working on Avatar movement, one outcome of which has been the “breakage” of the ability to “crouch-slide” (crouching and then tapping the forward/rotate keys to cause an avatar to couch and slide along the ground).
  • He notes he is sympathetic to the complaints this has caused (presumably primarily from within the combat community), and indicated he is going to revisit the changes.
• Alongside of this has been reports that avatars are sliding a lot more when on a moving surface than used to be the case. This might also be related to Leviathan’s updates, so he will be looking at this issue as well.
• A general discussion on holding down the spacebar being used to slow an avatar being bump-pushed caused Leviathan to mention he would like to find a mans to enable an avatar “slow walk”
  • The use of spacebar to slow an avatar being bump-pushed only works if the keyboard is not prioritised for text input rather than also being used for movement (e.g. using the WASD keys for movement); it also sees the avatar appearing to “walk” at a normal pace whilst being pushed.
  • It was noted at if a “slow walk” option was introduced, it would be useful to a) have a means of varying an avatar’s walking speed based on factors (e.g. avatar height), and b) have walking speed accessible to scripted control.
  • Leviathan acknowledged both of these point but if he is able to work on the idea, the initial focus would be on developing an option for a slow walking pace, noting that this would be useful for game_control, given this currently uses the existing locomotion graph.

General Discussion

• No updates on issues such as the mesh face count mismatch, new LSL commands, network improvements, etc.
• The multiple issues experienced on Sunday, August 23, 2026 appear to have been related to a significant database outage.

Meetings

• Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, September 1, 2026.
• Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 18, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. No video for this meeting – Pantera is on vacation.

Meeting Overview

• The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
• The “Leviathan Office Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
• Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator Deployments

• No deployments this week, but all simhosts will be restarted.

General Updates

• Rider Linden is focused on the next version of the VSCode plugin (for which he’s asked for anyone willing to help document to contact him)  and a further update to the Lua editor viewer.
• Leviathan Linden has been focused on anti-griefing / crash mitigation work.
• Monty Linden is hoping to get back to his work on EventQueueGet.
• Kyle Linden repeated his call for those wishing to help edit the SL Wiki to contact him.
• Harold Linden (Lua):
  • Is working on migrating most of the Luau-specific interruption and script serialization logic from the closed server repo to the SLua repo.
  • Is also , taking the time to re-engineer things in a way that makes script bytecode-sharing and improving our garbage collection strategy easier.
  • Hopes this work will make individual server releases less bound to particular SLua repo versions by moving the “hairy” parts of the integration to SLua itself, so keeping a nice interface.
  • Those who want to do benchmarking / local running of scripts will find this work “extremely useful since you’ll be able to implement a runtime environment that’s much closer to how your scripts actually run on the server”.
  • Once this work is done, Harold plans to cut a new Lua simulator release.
  • Simulators running the Lua code are still “remarkably stable”.
• Pepper Linden continues to work on some region crossing code, and the hope is to move their work forward as a project simulator, and progressing it through the release mechanism.

General Discussion

• The subject of a scripted means to toggle Animesh objects on/ off and enabling attachments on Animesh objects raised at the previous CCUG meeting was raised here, as requested at that meeting.
  • This included referencing New LSL llAnimeshEnabled(integer enabled); Toggle Animesh Property on/off.
  • Rider Linden indicated he was broadly in favour of the approach – with the caveat that care would have to be taken if how it works due to concerns of object return if enabling one or more Animesh objects via script (thus increasing their Land Impact by around 16) could trigger parcel object return.
  • The suggestion was to have a switch in the function so that if enabling an Animesh object (and thus increasing its LI) which would cause any start-up of an Animesh object to fail if the change in LI risked triggering object return.
• The above triggered a discussion on the additional LI penalty on Animesh and its need & validity, together with the ordering object return.
  • There was some confusion on the subject of attachments – with it initially being mistaken for avatars being able to wear Animesh attachments (which is supported) and the request for Animesh objects supporting their own attachments via their skeletons.
  • The latter was proposed for “Animesh 2.0” (aka Project Muscadene) which also promised body shape and  physics support for Animesh, but this died before fully implemented when attention turned to updating Avatar complexity  / Land Impact calculations – which also subsequently died.
  • The discussion on object return related to exceeding a parcel’s Land Capacity. Currently the last object(s) rezzed will be returned if the limit it exceeded. However, if the limit is broken whilst editing an object (because it crosses between accounting models and it’s LI increases), then there is an argument to say it is the object being edited which should be returned, not the last item(s) rezzed.
  • These discussions continued through most of the rest of the meeting with no firm decisions made.
• Folded into part of this was a question on synchronising inventory on Aditi (the beta grid) and the Main grid. This should be a matter of logging-in to Aditi and then waiting for the next automated synchronising process, run (IIRC) at around 02:00 SLT each day.
• There was also a general discussion on scripting which, given I’m not scripter, I’m not even going to attempt to translate!

Date of Next Meetings

• Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, August 25, 2026.
• Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, September 1, 2026.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 11, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) off-week meeting (the “Leviathan Office Hour”). These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. They were taken from my chat log of the meeting. No video this week, as Pantera is on vacation.

Meeting Overview

• The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
• The “Leviathan Office Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
• Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator News

• As noted in my week #32 Simulator User Group meeting notes, the hot fix for some regions failing to grant capabilities correctly to the viewer (and thus crashing it) resulted in issues of its own, and so was rolled-back in week #32.
• This means that while the more recent issues have been reverted, the original capabilities failure issue is again active, and people may find themselves being disconnected from regions and the viewer crashing.
• Until a new fix for this issue can be deployed, if you are impacted by the viewer crash / disconnect issue  and wish to log back into the same region, the advice is to wait a minute or two before attempting a log-in, as this may help.

Game_Control

• There is unlikely to be much new for game_control during week #33, as Leviathan is the simulator on-call engineer, so dealing with general issues are his focus.
• Leviathan noted that whilst game_control does allow an avatar to walk / run, depending on how much the control stick is tilted, however, it doesn’t (yet) have analogue directional input.
• As has been previously noted, PromptFont is being used for the game_control preferences UI.
  • However, as Leviathan has modified a number of the PromptFont glyphs, the work falls outside the license for use under the name “PromptFont”. As a result, LL will need to provide an attribution (and payment) to PromptFont, as will need a name for the viewer implementation.
  • “PunctualFont” was suggested to reflect the improvements Leviathan’s improvements; but this (or something else, and several other suggestions then followed) has yet to be officially agreed upon.
• In the meantime there is potentially more font work to be done with game_control.

Region Crossings

• Pepper Linden is continuing to work on region crossings using Aditi (the Beta grid), apparently with a focus on double region crossings (stated by a user at the meeting, as Pepper was not actually available).
• Leviathan noted that Pepper is working to make incremental improvements to region crossing, but their work is not, as yet, ready for merging into upcoming Main grid simulator code.

Lua Update

• A surprising crash which appeared to be related to Lua and the Interest List was identified, but investigation revealed the issue probably the result of data corruption from a recently fixed Lua bug (the binary that crashed predated the Lua fix).
• As a result of this, the Lua team are checking through Lua crashes to see if there are other issues lurking as a result of recent fixes.

In Brief

• Leviathan noted that a side-impact of his work to optimise script runtimes has resulted in Temp attaching above script danger height now causes scripts to not run, which is under investigation.
  • This issue might fall into the same vector as Objects crossing parcels disappear to sensors, scripts, uuid becomes invalid.
• Due to being on-call, Leviathan hasn’t had time to look at the llGetMapRegionTile(), face-count-mismatch bug, as he had hoped he would be able to.
• However, as the on-call engineer, he has been directly involved in fixing potential exploits and griefing vectors, one of which is related to the use of a crasher within the Blake Sea regions and around some sandboxes.
• There was a discussion about the UDP message template in the viewer potentially missing some messages sent by the simulator resulting in problems. This came as a surprise to Leviathan, and the issues has yet to b confirmed.

Meetings

• Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, August 18, 2026.
• Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, August 25, 2026.