Category Archives: Viewers

General Viewer Information

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

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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.
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Second Life News Summary of July 2025

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The is my second attempt at summarizing what has happened in Second Life™ in the last month. Last month and this month I used A.I. to find websites that cover Second Life™ technology. I’ve culled several of the June A.I. picks for source information and added others.

  • Mobile App Updates: The Second Life Mobile app, still in Beta for Premium and Premium Plus users, continued to evolve with performance enhancements and bug fixes. No specific July 2025 updates were announced. June 2025 updates highlighted features like the Lobby for quick access to chats, friends, events, and blog posts. Also Linden Reward Streaks for earning free Linden Dollars daily. These updates likely saw minor refinements in July.

Reward Streak Payout

  1. Day 1 =          L$15
  2. Day 2 =          L$20
  3. Day 3 =          L$25
  4. Day 4 =          L$30
  5. Day 5 =          L$40
  6. Day 6 =          L$50
  7. Day 7 =          L$70 – OR L$250/week

On day 8 the pattern starts over at L$15.

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Second Life News for June 2025

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I thought I would try some AI scanning to gather SL news on a monthly basis. This is what I found for June.

SL Mobile: Grumpity and Philip point out that work continues on the rendering capability of mobile devices. There has been a 10x increase in people signing up and onboarding via mobile and Project Zero. Nice.

Homes: A new neighborhood, Ridgewood Enclave, is planned for Premium+ members. The availability of commercial regions tied to the new homes is mentioned. Also, some refurbishing of existing home themes is planned. Some PBR updates to existing themes is mentioned.

Gacha: OK, most of us know Gatcha is back. Some of use think that is a good thing. I have my doubts.

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Firestorm Viewer Performance Numbers

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October 22, 2024 the Firestorm Team released a new version of their viewer: 7.1.11.

I am running 7.1.9, their initial PBR release. I’ve had a few minor problems and it is a little slow. But not so slow as to be frustrating. If I were still playing in SL’s combat games, I would probably be complaining. The FPS numbers and comparison to a previous version is here: Firestorm Viewer 7.1.9.74745 PBR.

I skipped the version 7.1.10. I wasn’t excited about it and… I have been playing with Alchemy Viewer.

The Firestorm blog is Announcing Firestorm 7.1.11. You can read more details there. And Inara has her review of the viewer up: Firestorm 7.1.11: DeltaFPS. So, I am only providing some empirical performance numbers.

LocationFPS v.11 DeskFPS v.9
Porch 512m30*51
Porch 128m45* 46
Green Room @ 2200m DD=128m112119
Nelsonia 4peps @ DD= 128m64
Arapaima 9peps @ 128m 55
Exhale Club 68peps @ 128m30

*Weird. Making measurements this time I noticed a difference. FPS numbers start low and S L O W L Y  build to a max. Getting to the max value took several minutes more than a couple of times. Also, when I switch away to another app the viewer gives up CPU cycles to the other app. A good thing… but coming back to the viewer I experience another slow build to the max FPS.

Also, one time I would get one set of numbers and another time a much different set of numbers. So, I got horrible numbers, OK numbers, good numbers, and better numbers. Also, switching away from the viewer app to another app had its oddities. Mostly the FPS would start recovering from the CPU conserving mode and return to something better. But on occasion I could not get the numbers to recover.

I was scratching my head on this oddity. I tried restarting the computer and running only the viewer. While I have a load of Windows background apps running that has always been the case. So, I think the change is in the viewer. Or… PBR sucks up all the performance… but that doesn’t explain the oddities I am seeing.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be experimenting as I play in SL. If I learn what is going on, I plan to update this article. And… there is an interesting new feature coming in FS. Scroll to the end. Look for the page 2 link…

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Optimizing Second Life Snapshots: Alchemy Viewer & Reshade Guide

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I don’t write often these days. A couple of things have inspired me. One is ValKalAstra posting an interesting image. You can see it here on the Second Life Forum or on Flickr. For me this was a ‘how did she do that?’

The Second Life viewers, the Lab’s and third-party viewers, have filters for the Snapshots. Those are easy to use. To change the active render one has to get into tweaking a huge set of settings. Not so easy. And the sort of wireframe look in Val’s image was something I know I could not do in Firestorm or Black Dragon.

For whatever reason I though this was done in the Alchemy Viewer. I didn’t know about Reshade. Reshade is an add-on app for video games. It used to add image filters to a game that does not have them. So, the wireframe looks of the image intrigued me. I though Alchemy had some new twist on wireframe mode. So… I got the viewer.

ReShade Image from Alchemy
Playing with ReShade in Alchemy Viewer

Alchemy Viewer for Second Life

Alchemy is a third-party viewer. You’ll find it listed in the SL Wiki’s list of Third-Party Viewers. See the Details.

I downloaded and am running Alchemy Beta 7.1.9.2492 (64bit).

Alchemy supports RLVa and uses version RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.5.0.2492.

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Firestorm Viewer 7.1.9 Problems

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The latest release is causing many people lots of problems. For others no problems. I find this version of Firestorm Viewer to be the most problematic viewer from Firestorm that I’ve used in a long time. But I remember the OLD DAYS when viewers were seriously buggy.

So, what problems are people seeing with the Firestorm Viewer?

Slow render/rez – I see a bit of that. While I think Firestorm is generally faster at rezzing scenes often something just doesn’t rez. And it never rezzes or I don’t have enough patience, which sucks. But there are two quick fixes… or may be that is two steps to a fix… Press Ctrl-Shift-R twice to pop in and out of Wire Frame mode. This will usually cause everything to render correctly, scene and avatar.

Once in a while changing to Wire Frame won’t cause the avatar to render fully. Some times everything but the avatar rezzed fully. In these cases or just to restore the avatar Rebake the Avatar: top menu Avatar->Avatar Health->Force Appearance Update (Rebake) or Ctrl-Alt-R.

One or both of these steps should get you easily rendered and avoid restarting the viewer.

Viewer Crashes/Freezes – These are difficult to pin down. Before you start trying to troubleshoot the problem make sure your computer is in good shape and working well.

First, run the System File Checker built into Windows, 10 and 11. Do that by opening a command window and running the SFC command as an administrator. See the images on this page. Also, you can search for Windows 10 System File Checker for more detailed information and step by steps.

Open Command Window

Enter the command: SFC /SCANNOW. This will take 5 or 10 minutes to run. It will find any problems with the Windows System Files that may be causing problems. It will end and tell you; all was OK, it fixed things, or is could not fix the problems. If the problems are such it cannot fix them, then you need to search for: fixing Windows [10/11] DISM. This is a bit more complicated but it is still only a couple of commands and Windows does the work. The result is almost as good as a reinstall of Windows without the annoying need to reinstall apps.

Make sure your Windows install has all the updates installed. Type: Windows Update.

Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date. You can search for: how to update Win[10/11] graphics driver [your card’s brand name].

Click below for more…

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Firestorm Viewer 7.1.9.74745 PBR

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Released on June 20, 2024 – Thursday. We now have a new major update to the viewer. The Firestorm Viewer’s Project website has a long article on the viewer. Inara’s blog has more ‘explanatory’ article here. Between the two you should get all the tech info you could want. So… I’m not going to repeat it.

My take after a couple days…

Performance

The SL forum is popping with love and hate… The Luddites that long ago lost touch with reality and sing their perpetual poor me songs with choruses about how bad, stupid, and tyrannical the Lab is and how awful it is they are being forced to update their computer. And there are, as usual, a number of people rolling their eyes.

I like to check performance. I do care about appearance. But performance often decides how much appearance I’ll give up or upgrade. I want to be able to fly and sail. I’m not much of a driver. I run off the road… a lot.

So… the previous version 6.6.17 was what I ran until Friday. You can see the stats from my practical but technically lame testing here (12/19/2023).

This year I live in SL in the same place. Also, I have not tweaked the viewers setting after installing 7.1.9. Except for Draw Distance.

My new measurements are:

LocationFPS v7 DeskFPS v7 LapFPS v6
Porch 512m5118.6
Porch 128m4610.340.5
Porch 128m w/snowSnow Melted37-48
Green Room @ 2200m DD=128m11923.4150
Nelsonia 14peps @ DD= 128m5370-74
Arapaima 20peps @ 128m 63*50-55
Exhale Club 57peps @ 128m4148-52
Performance Numbers

Performance is mixed. Some areas seems better and some worse, as in slower. The oddity in in Arapaima’s Safe Hub is from the avatars being spread out all over the place. In Nelsonia the avatars were clumped together on the landing point. So the number within the field of view probably accounts for the difference.

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Firestorm Viewer 6.6.17.70368

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It has been some time since I checked the performance of my Firestorm Viewer. The last check was 9/2022. So, over a year.

This year I had some trouble running the tests. My house in Bellisseria was not rezzing. I mean floors and walls were missing. After a couple of three logins, I got the floors and walls but had to wait for the textures to fully render.

My House 2023 – Render Fail

I checked and found Windows again used 100% of my hard drive’s capacity when a region was being difficult. The viewer used little CPU, GPU, and network resources while it waited on the hard drive.

Ever since the release of Windows 11, my Win-10 has been having this problem of 100% disk use for 5 to 15 minutes. Occassionally more. Very annoying.

Firestorm Hot Fix v6.6.17

Porch 512m18.6 fps
Porch 128m40.5
Porch 128m w/snow37-48
Green Room @ 2200m DD=128m150
Nelsonia 17peps @ DD= 128m70-74
Arapaima 37peps @ 128m 50-55
Exhale Club 28peps @ 128m48-52
Performance Tests

With this version, I am getting almost the same numbers as in 2022 with v6.6.4. You can use the link above if you want to compare.

Second Life Viewer

Porch 512m18.6 fps
Porch 128m40
Porch 128m w/snow52
Green Room @ 2200m DD=128m60
Nelsonia 16peps @ DD= 128m58
Arapaima 34peps @ 128m 60
Exhale Club 48peps @ 128m37
Performance Tests

The FS and SL viewers are similar. Except for my Green Room. This is the recent PBR-enabled SL viewer.

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