Tag: TPVD / Open Source Meetings 2026

2026 week #42: SL Open Source UG Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source User Group (OSUG) meeting held on Friday, October 16, 2026.
  • The video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera and embedded at the end of this article. My thanks to her for providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programmes.
  • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

    • Default viewer 26.4.0.37384746592, October 13 – NEW
      • Lua scripting support (on regions with Lua scripting enabled).
      • Improved communication between the Viewer and the newly published Second Life VS Code extension.
      • Offers an experimental Linux viewer build.
      • Includes the latest WebRTC Voice and viewer-maintenance updates.
    • Second Life Chat Modernization viewer 26.5.0.38448248489, October 16 – NEW.
      • Seamless integration of IM histories between clients / devices.
      • Camera and Travel improvements.
      • Create an account from within the viewer.
      • LEAP Camera API.
      • Portable viewer storage.
      • And more.

Viewer Notes

  • 26.5 in now the Chat Modernisation viewer, currently in RC / Beta, per the above list.
    • No word on whether or not game_control will make it into 26.5 or be its own viewer at some point.
  • The work on vcpkg work (under-the-hood viewer packaging to replace the current Autobuild process used to build the viewer) remains stalled due to other priorities.
  • LL is current looking to rewrite their viewer deployment flow – figuring out what can be public and what needs to be private on that given it touches a few internal systems. 

General LL News

  • The Nectarine simulator update is now grid-wide and stable.
  • Pepper Linden’s region crossing updates remain on a dedicated RC channel called “Breeze”.
    • This includes “almost all” of the Blake Sea regions on the Main grid (Agni).
    • The request is for people test the code as much as possible, particularly corner-to-corner crossings between regions.
    • Feedback can be presented via this Canny.
    • If all goes well, these updates will likely be included in the next simulator deployment, code-named Olive, and which is currently in development.
  •  WebRTC:
    • Roxie Linden has been addressing issues related to Bluetooth devices with the aid of the Firestorm team.
    • Cosmic Linden is working on transcription capabilities, but it will ” still be a while before we have anything definitive on that, but we are making headway.”
  • Callum Linden has been working on restructuring the CEF plugin system to allow use of a mode in CEF that will allow faster launch of CEF pages. There are also updates to allow for better spatialisation for Media on a Prim (MOAP) via CEF .

General Discussion

  • A short general discussion on some experience gesture sounds at extreme vertical distances (e.g. hand clapping on the ground heard at 2,500m altitude).
  • Further requests for LL to make viewer stats available.
  • A general discussion on the plethora of communications channels used by SL users (Reddit, Primfeed, Flickr, Twitter, Blue Sky, Discord, Prim Network, Facebook, etc.), and why they are used.
  • Please refer to the video below of the rest of the meeting comments..

Next Meeting

2026 week #40: SL Open Source UG Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source User Group (OSUG) meeting held on Friday, October 2, 2026.
  • The video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera and embedded at the end of this article. My thanks to her for providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programmes.
  • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer  26.3.0.31203661088, August 10, promoted August 17 – quality of life improvements; performance improvements; bug fixes – No Change.
  • Second Life Lua Editor RC / Beta viewer with Linux support 26.4.0.35914774337, September 24 – NEW.
    • Lua scripting support (on regions with Lua scripting enabled).
    • Improved communication between the Viewer and the newly published Second Life VS Code extension.
    • Offers an experimental Linux viewer build.
    • Includes the latest WebRTC Voice and viewer-maintenance updates.
  • Second Life Chat Modernization viewer 26.3.0.35248298254, September 22 – NEW.
    • Recent conversations follow you seamlessly: a direct message you receive on SL Mobile can also be available when you return to desktop, and vice versa; Recent direct message history will be available on logging-in; existing desktop chat logs are preserved – previously saved local history isn’t being replaced or removed; conversation history feels continuous: on desktop, your existing local history and newer message history are brought together into a single conversation.

Viewer Notes

  • The 26.4 Lua Editor / Linux viewer remains at RC / beta status, but the hope is to promote that to de facto release status in the coming week.
  • Work is going into the 26.5 viewer – currently, it looks like this will include the Chat Modernisation work currently at Project / alpha stage (per the list above), together with maintenance fixes and other items.
  • Leviathan Linden’s game_control work is currently held pending further server-side work, however the overall plan for this in terms of the viewer are:
    • Get a Project / alpha viewer out as soon as possible
    • Possibly go on to roll game_control in viewer 26.5. 

General Discussion

  • Chat Modernisation work:
    • There was a reiteration that this work is currently concerned with persistence of IM histories when moving between devices / viewer instances, rather than dealing with matters such as encryption (although it was noted that the chat history itself is encrypted end-to-end).
    • It was also noted that other improvements will be made as is feasible, according to roadmaps / resource availability.
  • Official RLV support:
    • This was a project started some time ago – with the assistance of RLVa developer Kitty Barnett – to add RLV support to the official viewer.
    • This project has been stalled for some time, however, Geenz noted there is no technical blocker for the project, and internal discussions are still going on at the Lab as to how best to progress the project.
    • There is also a Github thread for RLV/a discussions.
  • There was a general discussion of texture handling – decoding, options, VRAM management, consideration for better Mobile use, etc. See the video, 25:19-35:51 (note this runs concurrent with comments on the deletion of orphaned assets from the asset service and the opening of comments on RLV/a support as noted above).
  • Please refer to the video below of the rest of the meeting comments..

Next Meeting

2026 week #38: SL Open Source UG Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source User Group (OSUG) meeting held on Friday, September 18, 2026.
  • The video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera and embedded at the end of this article. My thanks to her for providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
  • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer  26.3 – 26.3.0.31203661088, August 10, promoted August 17 – quality of life improvements; performance improvements; bug fixes – No Change.
  • Second Life Lua Editor RC / Beta viewer with Linux support 26.4.0.34502396632, September 11 – No Change.
    • Lua scripting support (on regions with Lua scripting enabled).
    • Improved communication between the Viewer and the newly published Second Life VS Code extension.
    • Offers an experimental Linux viewer build.
    • Includes the latest WebRTC Voice and viewer-maintenance updates.
  • Second Life Chat Modernization viewer 26.3.0.33643480083, September 4 – No Change.
    • Recent conversations follow you seamlessly: a direct message you receive on SL Mobile can also be available when you return to desktop, and vice versa; Recent direct message history will be available on logging-in; existing desktop chat logs are preserved – previously saved local history isn’t being replaced or removed; conversation history feels continuous: on desktop, your existing local history and newer message history are brought together into a single conversation.

Viewer Notes

  • An update to 26.4 is in progress.
  • Work is going into the 26.5 viewer – no firm details on what will be going into it.
  • Geenz noted he is:
    • Hoping to put “a bit more time” into the Lab’s CI/CD in order to get more regular builds going for the various feature viewers in development – things like weekly builds.
    • Is working on the simulator-side PBR specular and emissive parameters in preparation for the upcoming Graphics Care Package (GCP) viewer. 

General Discussion

  • Kyle Linden noted that the simulator Nectarine update is now on the BlueSteel RC channel, and it contains the back-end support for game_control.
  • Henri Beauchamp (Cool VL viewer) has apparently found a crash bug affecting all viewers running on Windows within LL’s with LL’s precompiled version of zlib-ng and connected to a MSVC optimizer bug. Viewer developers should refer to the video at 7:20-8:40 for further details.
  • Questions were again asked on bot data collection – this has been doing the rounds at various meetings for some time, but no-one from LL is prepared to discuss in an open forum, some – such as members of the engineering teams who manage things like the Open Source and Server User Group – because such policy is outside of their purview.
    • Given the need for clarity on this matter it would be good if someone in LL management could attend a meeting to at least hear the reasons for asking, and suggest a means by which they could be addressed.
    • What is primarily being sought is some form of LL-supplied API which could deliver an agreed packet of information on regions.
  • In relation to the above, the request was further made for data on parcels set to restricted access (e.g. ban lines) be transmitted to the viewer via some means to aid those travelling across the grid (and particularly the Mainland). While some TPVs do this on the Minimap, it is more of a hack, and a supported feature would be preferred.
  • Roxie Linden indicated she has thoughts on making WebRTC Voice making attenuation tuneable – there have been concerns voiced about the way fall-off currently works (flat for the first 10 metres, then in theory falling-off through to 60 metres).

Next Meeting

2026 week #36: SL Open Source UG Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source User Group (OSUG) meeting held on Friday, September 4, 2026.
  • The video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera and embedded at the end of this article. My thanks to her for providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
  • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • This list reflects those viewers available via the first four links in the LL Viewer Resources section, below.
    • Default viewer  26.3 – 26.3.0.31203661088, August 10, promoted August 17 – quality of life improvements; performance improvements; bug fixes – No Change.
    • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.3.0.32302693173, August 21 – No Change.
    • Second Life Chat Modernisation viewer 26.3.0.33643480083, September 4 – NEW.
      • Recent conversations follow you seamlessly: a direct message you receive on SL Mobile can also be available when you return to desktop (requires latest Alpha of SL Mobile for Mobile support), and vice versa; Recent direct message history will be available on logging-in; existing desktop chat logs are preserved – previously saved local history isn’t being replaced or removed; conversation history feels continuous: on desktop, your existing local history and newer message history are brought together into a single conversation.

Viewer Notes

  • The 26.4 viewer – Lua Editor and Linux support – is being prepared for beta / RC release during week #37 (commencing Monday, September 7, 2026).
  • the Chat Modernisation viewer (see above) looks like it will be classed as the 26.5 release once it gets that far, and might be the viewer release to include the game_control work – but this is still TBC.
  • Geenz Linden is looking at further viewer PRs, but the context (whether they are for the Graphic Care Package (GCP) viewer or something else – wasn’t made clear).
  • Geenz is also looking to get the work on vcpkg (under-the-hood viewer packaging to replace the current Autobuild process used to build the viewer) moving again. 

General Discussion

  • Callum linden is working on CEF – and part of this is keeping it outside of the viewer executable (Windows currently, and he plans to move on to MacOS and Linux as well).
  • General discussions on making internal building of the official viewer more visible / available to TPVs for code checking on things like backports, etc. This might see nightly builds of in-development viewers and upping alpha / Project Viewers to weekly builds.
  • A discussion on one user’s issues with chat logs from the official viewer and Firestorm (shared folder between the two). This led to a broader discussion on viewer installation, using SL on shared computers, etc. Please see the video for more on this.

Next Meeting

2026 week #34: SL Open Source UG Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source User Group (OSUG) meeting held on Friday, August 21, 2026, together with my chat log of that meeting.
  • No video this week as Pantera is on vacation.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
  • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer  26.3.0.31203661088, August 10, promoted August 17 – quality of life improvements; performance improvements; bug fixes – NEW.
  • Second Life Lua Editor Alpha viewer 26.3.0.32302693173, August 21 – NEW.

Viewer Notes

  • The Lua Editor viewer is now classified the 26.4 viewer in the release pipeline.
    • The Project / alpha version of this viewer was updated on August 21, 2026.
    • This viewer will be the first official viewer-in-flight will see the return of Linux support for the official viewer.
  • A caveat with Linux was given that LL will “be giving the Linux viewer as much QA love as Mac and Windows”.
  • Graphics Care Package:
    • Geenz has been bug fixing but still has “some work to do on getting mirrors into a good place”, particular around avatar rendering in mirrors.
    • Screen Space Reflections (SSR) also have some further updates, with some enhancements to transparent SSR.
    • The plan remains for the GCP viewer to remain a Project / alpha viewer for some time once available to allow for feedback. 

Other Items

  • Game_control: Leviathan Linden has been engaged in other simulator work, so no further moves on this work, simulator or viewer, for reporting at this meeting.
  • Roxie Linden noted that “Some good work on evaluating models for transcription is still going on”.
  • Transparent Media on a Prim (MOAP) – the ability to have parts of a MoaP surface be transparent rather than the whole thing – this is still sitting with LL’s internal processes, so no updates in terms of security updates, etc.
    • However, there is a possibility this work could be included in the 26.4 GCP viewer; this appears to be dependent on resources and  – particularly – performance impact (so even if shipped, it might be disabled by default).
  • Callum Linden is working on Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) updates.
    • There was a general discussion on CEF and its associated Dullahan process – particularly the number spawned by the viewer (which can be a lot due to the nature of CEF) and reports that not all Dullahan process may be getting killed / culled when the viewer no longer needs them / has been closed.
  • There was a general discussion on SSR and rendering  which got into the long grass over approaches, options and performance. In short, Geenz is trying to enhance performance for a more general use of SSR (many have used it primarily to improve the look of Linden Water, although the moiré effect introduced with PBR rendering has tended to reduce this use in recent viewers).

Next Meeting

2026 week #32: SL Open Source UG Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Theatre: home of the OSD/TPVD meeting
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log of the Open-Source User Group (OSUG) meeting held on Friday, August 7, 2026, together with my chat log of that meeting.
  • No video this week as Pantera is on vacation.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Open Source User Group (OSUG) meeting is an open discussion of Second Life development, including but not limited to open source contributions, third-party viewer development and policy, and current open source programs.
  • This meeting is generally held twice a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre and is generally text chat only.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

Viewer Notes

  • 26.3 is to see a further RC / beta update prior to getting promoted. There has been an increase in log-out failures with the current RC, so LL is working on fixing that.
  • Viewer 26.4 is now confirmed as being the Lua editor viewer (with Linux support), and a further update to that viewer (currently alpha / project status) should be forthcoming in the next week or so.
  • Discussions are still continuing on where to place the viewer-side code for game_control. Per my SUG meeting summary notes, this in part rests on his API work semantic to help with naming controls, etc.
  • Geenz has resumed work on the Graphics Care package (GCP) viewer. 

Other Items

  • Transparent Media on a Prim (MOAP) – the ability to have parts of a MoaP surface be transparent rather than the whole thing –  appears to be moving forward as well. As a general heads up on this, Geenz noted it might bring a few security minded modifications along with it, but no details on this at present.
  • Roxie Linden noted that LL is still actively looking into transcription functionality, and the hope is to evaluate more technologies to make sure a good option for SL is identified.
    • Also being evaluated is transcription accuracy, to allow a fast follow-on for functional translation. Roxie reaffirmed that transcription / translation are being looked at is internal services, rather than utilising any 3rd party solutions, so as to maintain privacy.
    • However, Jerome noted that whether an internal service is created or there is a move to use an external service could come down to issues such as cost, maintenance, etc., – however, privacy will remain a priority either way.
  • A suggestion was put forward for a “decode once, use many” approach to the texture cache (e.g. decode the textures from the asset CDN once, then store them as something like KTX,  which can be streamed directly into the GPU).
    • Brad Linden noted this is actually done for SL Mobile, and that it would be good to standardise on an approach across both Mobile and all viewers.
    • Geenz noted that whilst this would be good, it could be impactful on client performance, noting:
It’s definitely an interesting direction, and one I don’t think would be bad – but I think the bigger question is gonna be how do we do this without decimating every single texture that has text on it?
  • As a part of the above discussion, Geenz noted that moving away from OpenJPG as the graphics API will likely that the initial direction will be Vulkan and Metal (Mac) to start, with the potential for DirectX 12 to be added-in as well (although if LL stick to using slang-rhi, DX12 should be supported anyway).
    • A caveat here was that if LL doesn’t have to directly support hardware outside of what Metal and Vulkan will run on, then they’ll constrain the work to just what is needed.
  • Geenz also hinted that things might be changing more broadly with the graphics pipeline, suggesting that in the future, deferred rendering may not by a part of it – and people should think more in terms of forward+ or clustered. Again, this is not to say this direction will be taken; the comments were more things Geenz is mulling, as was the case with musings on the potential for froxels potentially being something worth looking into.
  • The last part of the meeting was more specific to viewer pull requests (PRs), and bug reports, including:

Next Meeting