Second Life Technology Updates: December 2025

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I’ve explained, I use A.I. to gather and summarize Second Life™ (SL) news for the month. I am interested in the tech updates and other news affecting SL. I’ve been using Grok. It is failing worse and worse each month. Researching and querying Grok to find out why…

It seems A.I. is more forgetful than I am. Grok gave me a ~300 word explanation of what is happening. Of course, since I am a skeptic and have my own ideas about what it is saying. Basically, my take is A.I., specifically Grok, is prioritizing efficiency and memory conservancy on its side. Accuracy and thoroughness are much lower priorities. For me and this report, that SUCKS.

I’ve spent some time today getting around Grok’s bad habits and poor logic. That gives us the information below. I am now looking at other A.I.s to try the task.

Report

December 2025 featured ongoing advancements in mobile performance and reliability, a major new scripting language beta, project viewer releases for specialized features, and a third-party beta incorporating upstream maintenance fixes. Routine grid maintenance ensured stability, with no widespread disruptions reported.

Official SL Platform Updates

  • December 3: SLua Open Beta Launch – Linden Lab launched SLua, a modern scripting language based on Luau, offering full LSL compatibility alongside significant improvements: faster execution, approximately 50% reduced memory usage compared to LSL/Mono, advanced data structures (tables), dynamic event subscription, multiple event handlers per script, coroutines for asynchronous operations, multiple independent timers with lag protection, and native JSON encoding/decoding. Testing is restricted to dedicated SLua Beta regions; a dedicated Project Viewer and VSCode plugin support development.
  • December 23: Second Life Mobile 2025 Year-in-Review – Linden Lab highlighted cumulative mobile improvements throughout 2025, including smoother rendering via variable texture resolutions and optimized asset downloads, smarter object loading priorities, increased network draw distance (avatars visible up to 75m), compact mesh formats reducing geometry memory by 15%, recurring integrity checks for object recovery under network stress, enhanced avatar loading with fewer render failures, voice support integration, persistent advanced settings, and multi-threading fixes for background stability.

Mobile Viewer Updates

  • December 12: Mobile Beta Update (Version 2025.12.1075 / 0.1.1075 iOS) – Focused on avatar loading prioritization and reliability; silhouetted avatars now limited to a maximum of 15 seconds before full render; added scripting support for llPreloadSound and llTriggerSound; ensured app settings persist across updates and sessions; resolved multiple bugs affecting teleports, logins, object visibility, session terminations, particles, and avatar disappearance.

Viewer Releases (Official Linden Lab)

  • December 2: Default Viewer Promotion (2025.08 – 7.2.3.19375695301) – Maintenance release incorporating bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and a new VHACD-based convex decomposition library for more efficient mesh uploads and physics hull generation.
  • December 5: Project Lua Editor Viewer Update (7.2.3.19911032641) – Alpha-stage project viewer updated to support SLua scripting development and testing on Aditi and beta regions.
  • December 12: Project Voice Moderation Viewer Release (26.1.0.20139269477) – New experimental viewer introducing spatial voice moderation tools for WebRTC-enabled regions, allowing estate managers to control voice participation.

Third-Party Viewer Enhancements

  • December 16: Firestorm Beta Release (7.2.3 / 2025.08 – Build 79946) – Early access beta integrating Linden Lab’s 2025.08 upstream changes (including VHACD library and maintenance fixes); added Omnifilter for improved search, chat range visualization spheres, sculpt upload fixes; resolved multiple crashes (image updates, hover handling, outfit UI); enhanced translations and stability.
  • December 13: Kokua Viewer Releases – Versions 7.2.2.58037 (no RLV) and 7.2.3.61786 (RLV variant) released, incorporating recent upstream fixes.
  • December 13: Cool VL Viewer Stable Release (1.32.4.13) – Updated stable build with upstream maintenance integrations; no specific new features detailed.

No other significant third-party viewer releases (e.g., Alchemy, Catznip) were identified in December 2025.

Grid/Performance Fixes and Maintenance

December included routine rolling restarts and minor maintenance with no major outages.

  • December 21: Unscheduled Marketplace maintenance resolved degraded checkout performance.
  • December 22–23: Scheduled WebRTC voice server maintenance for Preflight channel regions temporarily disrupted spatial and call voice.
  • December 23–24, 30–31: Multiple rolling restarts on Main and RC channels deployed server updates; users advised to avoid rezzing no-copy objects.
  • December 18–19, 23–26, 30–31: Planned reductions in phone and live chat support availability, including holiday periods; ticket submissions remained operational.

Sources Overview

Summary

After some work the A.I. gave me an adequate report. Still not something I am happy with. I focused it on SL Tech. So the BIG announcement that the Lab hired a new VP to push marketing was omitted. (See HERE – you may have to join but you can get to it for free)

I am undecided about what to do about that problem. While it a new hire is NOT new tech… it does have an affect on SL and the users.

So… I am figuring out what I want to do with the reporting. Check back next month and see what I’ve come up with.

Happy New Year! Nal

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