Firestorm

Second Life: Avatar Shape Files

by

Keep Your Shape When You Switch Heads and Bodies

How to avoid shape disasters and simplify your Second Life® avatar customization.

This problem shows up in the Second Life (SL) forums all the time: someone buys a new mesh head, wears the shape that comes with it, and instantly destroys the body shape they spent hours dialing in.

Their perfect peach butt goes flat, or their tight athletic shape inflates into something like two blimps colliding..

Second Life Shapes

Whatever your style, having to rebuild your look after buying a new head or body is annoying and tedious, so let us simplify that.

To get you there quickly, this guide contains the simple, one-time “do this and you are done” approach and deeper technical detail if you enjoy tweaking under the hood.

I use the Firestorm Viewer, as most SL residents do (~75%), and this tutorial assumes you are using Firestorm too.

Read more

Pages: 1 2 3

Second Life Technology Updates: December 2025

by

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.

Read more

Second Life™ Technology & Community Report – November 2025

by

Another month… almost the end of 2025. We got a new Firestorm Viewer release this month. I’ve been too busy with RL work to have played much with it. Nor have been flying. So, I am not sure if there is a difference in region crossings… I hope.

Official SL Platform Updates

  • November 6: Main channel promotion of server version 2025-10-24.858241 – includes fixes for group chat delays, simulator crash fixes related to script memory, and improved region crossing stability.
  • November 13: RC channels (RC=Release Candidates for BlueSteel, LeTigre, Magnum) received server package 2025-11-08.860122 – adds initial support for upcoming glTF PBR material overrides on legacy prims and several memory leak mitigations.
  • November 20: All main channel regions updated to 2025-11-15.861005 – introduces experimental HTTP/3 support for asset fetching (opt-in via debug setting) and fixes several avatar baking failures.
  • November 26: Emergency hotfix deployed grid-wide to correct a regression causing occasional region restarts when large numbers of PBR materials were in draw distance.

Read more

Second Life Technology Updates: September 2025 – Revised

by

A reader, rhet0rica, noted that much of the previous September report was fake. Seems fake news is everywhere. But rhet0rica caught it. I went looking to see what happened. An interesting conversation followed with Grok about why it gave me a load of BS. I may write about that later.

Old Comuter
Created with Adobe Firefly…

Below is an actual comprehensive summary of Second Life™ technology updates, new features, and releases for September 2025, covering official Second Life (SL) platform changes, viewer updates (both official and third-party), and related tech announcements. The summary is based on verified information from the specified sources, filtered strictly to the period of September 1–30, 2025, and excludes non-tech topics like events or community news. The report is organized by major update categories. Notice the references: [web:1] and similar. These now actually do point to the subject discussed.

Read more

Second Life™ Technology Update Summary: September 2025

by

This month’s summary covers “Second Life™ (SL)” technology updates, new features, and releases from September 1, 2025, to September 30, 2025, focusing on official platform changes, viewer updates (official and third-party), and grid/performance improvements. Information is synthesized from official Second Life sources, third-party blogs, and relevant X posts, prioritizing factual details on announcements, rollouts, bug fixes, and integrations.

I am using Grok to collect and organize the information. Then I tweak and add to the text. Hopefully making it a bit more understandable.

Official SL Platform Updates

“September 3, 2025: PBR Materials Enhancements” – Linden Lab rolled out updates to their “Physically Based Rendering (PBR)” system, improving texture rendering for reflective surfaces and dynamic lighting. This update enhances visual fidelity in regions supporting PBR, addressing user feedback on performance lag [web:1](https://community.secondlife.com/news/tools-and-technology/).

There is an SL oddity apparently in all viewers. When capturing images, we residents call it photography, reflections are lost in the captured images unless the image and screen resolution are the same. I have not yet updated my monitor. So, I run at 1920x1080px. If I capture a higher rez image, usually 3000x1576px, the reflections are gone. ☹

Read more

Summary of Tech and New Second Life Features Announced or Released in August 2025

by

This summary organizes key technological updates, new features in Second Life™ (SL), and enhancements to SL and third-party viewers based on announcements and releases during August 2025.

There is some stuff for the every day not so technical user.

Second Life Core Platform Updates

Second Life Viewer Release: 2025.06 (Version 7.2.1.17108480561) – Released August 28, 2025

  • Inventory Favorites System: Users can now mark items (e.g., outfits, objects) as favorites for quick access, improving inventory management. This community-requested feature streamlines organization and reduces clutter.
  • Avatar System Improvements: Enhanced skeleton reset as a networked ViewerEffect for better synchronization; fixed hand size settings not saving; restored full 90-degree upward pitch in mouselook camera mode; resolved anti-flipping regression in mouselook.
  • Camera and Movement Enhancements: Improved arrow key movement description; fixed teleport history landing height issues; added “Disable Camera Constraints” and “Disable Minimum Camera Zoom Distance” options for greater flexibility.
  • Chat and Voice Fixes: Fixed empty conversation logs; enhanced emoji picker for correct insertion; resolved voice echo across regions (Vivox to WebRTC transitions); improved voice reconnection after tuning; fixed slider text truncation in voice settings.
  • Content Creation Tools: Mesh uploader now allows reducing material counts; detailed LOD (Level of Detail) information in Build Tools; better error messages for texture uploads.
  • UI and Text Polish: Automatic placeholder text selection in fields; fixed blurry thumbnails; resolved issues deleting links to worn objects; improved “Away” status handling.
  • Environment and Rendering Fixes: Fixed shadow FPS drops on Mac vs. PC; resolved stream toggle greying out; corrected viewer URI links for parcel maps.
  • Stability and Crashes: Numerous crash fixes, including those related to notifications, voice connections, and SD (Serialized Data) handling.
  • System Improvements: Enhanced performance for inventory finder floater; memory allocation fixes; OpenJPG and PBR texture panel improvements.
  • Impact: This release incorporates community feedback via GitHub and the SL Feedback Portal, focusing on quality-of-life enhancements. It builds on prior updates like glTF mesh import (from July) and supports ongoing WebRTC voice rollout. Download available via official SL site; full notes at releasenotes.secondlife.com.

Read more