Category Archives: Cool VL

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

by

0

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.
Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #36

by

3

General News

SL Travel

Ever wonder how the SL travel and places blogs find those awesome places?

It seems the Blogger & Vlogger Network has a list of them. (here) They also have a form one can fill out to add to the list. So, they find these places when people stumble-on or otherwise find them and add them to the list.

Only those who dream learn to fly

Only those who dream learn to fly

The list is titled Photogenic, Rezzable Sims. Rezzable? My first thought was griefers will LOVE this list. However, many of the locations require membership in a group to get rez-rights and a number of those groups have a Join Fee. About 20 of the 37 locations are listed as free. If there is a cost it is referenced in the listing. They also have the region’s maturity rating, PG, Moderate, and Adult. Nine are rated Adult, but not all 9 are hook-up places. And even those that are, look good.

The list apparently has some age. Several of the links landed me at places other than the obvious intended landing point but the correct region. However, a couple of regions were gone or repurposed.

I found Backdrop Cove (Map URL) in the list. Got some pictures. This place is not as crowded as Backdrop City. So, posing and setup was nicer. Also, you can rez stuff without having to join a group. They use a 60-minute return. It is a moderate region and the pose and animation stuff I saw was PG. Donations are appreciated. Please help out. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #32

by

0

General News

The Third-Party Dev’s meeting was a couple of weeks ago. We learned the BoM and Render viewers are very close to release. The EEP viewer was/is not quite ready.

So, file your JIRA’s on BoM.

The Render viewer would have released except for it being Linden Summit Week. But… it got an update this week and did not release…

No new rendering projects until the current ones are released.

Parcel Voice has some problems the Lindens are considering solutions for. See BUG-227350. The JIRA was accepted for its value as a problem statement more so than its presented solution.

Topless Cruisers has a new hangout, Eden Naturopolis. There are 7 boat slips for rent in the area. Also, this location is often the destination point for Tuesday’s cruises. Bouncing boobies parties.

Topless Cruising Map for August 6, 2019

A number of Lumiya Viewer users showed up at the Server-Scripting UG. You probably know the UDP turn-off for assets killed Lumiya for anything but chat text use. I expect they will show up at Oz’s Wednesday morning UG for Open Source.

There is a mobile viewer in the works. But, don’t expect a Lumiya replacement this year or probably not even next year. WAY MORE people are going to have to show up at meetings asking for help.

Servers

Last week the Linens were having their Summit Meeting. We don’t get to know everything going on in those meetings. There is usually a bunch of planning going on. I suspect we will hear a bit of that news in the coming meetings. Otherwise, there has not been much news.

There is no Deploys post today.

My Zindra region has not restarted as of 11:00 AM SLT.

Simon Linden told us at the Server-Scripting UG that we will get a new RC release next week, maybe two. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #25

by

0

Other News

Today, Tuesday, was the Server-Scripting UG meeting with the quarterly music thing with Tukso this quarter.

TP/Crossing Disconnects – Lindens think they have most of the problem handled. They aren’t saying much as they don’t want to influence the bug reporting. I think additional fixes are in Blue Steel, but I don’t have any objective information to say so.

The Le Tigre and Magnum regions have the EEP fixes for legacy viewers… the ones we are using.

SL16B – Second Life’s Birthday Party opens on 20th June and runs to 8th July.

June 24 – This is the last day you can renew at the old rates for Premium Membership. Last Call.

Voice Maintenance – June 19th the Lindens will be pulling maintenance on the voice system. They will start at 8:00 AM SLT. People may have problems while system maintenance is in progress. Watch Grid Status for an announcement of completion. You may need to relog after that to get voice working.

Facebook’s Bitcoin – Facebook is planning to get into the cyber-currency game. Their block-chain coin will be named Libra… free? Does anyone think they are providing a free service from the goodness of their heart? I don’t. The concerns being voiced are based on FB’s history of privacy invasion. Now, they will have access to your spending and earning information. A FB alternative is MeWe.com.

FaceApp – This has recently become is a small thing in SL. It is an app for mobile devices to edit portrait images. It is quite fun. I just wrote a how-to on getting it to run on a PC or Mac: The FaceApp and Second Life  Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #22

by

0

We have not had a Deploys post since 5/6, 3-weeks no post. Some have speculated that since viewers have a new release notes system the server’s release notes will be updating. But… rumor is no. Also, the wiki release notes have not been updated.

Centaur Photoshoot & Parade

Centaur Photoshoot & Parade

Monday was a holiday in the USA, Memorial Day – remembrance of those Americans that died in WWII.

So, the Lab was closed Monday. Things may be a bit rushed and behind today. I didn’t really expect a main channel roll today, but we got one. Also, I suspect the server update sequence is likely out of pattern from the TP-Crossing Disconnects problems. Continue reading →

Second Life News 2019 Week #17

by

0

Since last Thursday my teleporting and crossing to other regions has deteriorated. Then today in the middle of the Server-Scripting User Group my Internet goes down. :/ I get disconnected from Second Life think I got bit by the SL bug. Then can’t relog. My computer can’t find SL… A little more troubleshooting and I realize I can’t go much of anywhere on the Internet. Call COX. They are on it. They know it is down.

Fantasy Faire : The Celestial Plain (1)

Fantasy Faire: The Celestial Plain – 2019

About 30 minutes later I’m back up according to the router diagnostics. But I can’t connect to much of any place. Oh… but my laptop can. It uses the default DNS servers and my Desktop uses Google and OpenDNS free. So, I change the DNS servers my desktop uses and all is great. SL works again and better than it has all this last week. Well dang.

So, are my disconnections from the SL server bugs or my DNS server problems or both? No way to tell.

Servers

This week the Deploys post tells us the usual server rollouts are changing. Monday, no changes. Tuesday RC Le Tigre and RC Blue Steel are to update to version 19.04.22.526534. I can’t find any release notes for this but it is very likely targeting the disconnection problem. On Wednesday the same version may roll to the Magnum and the Main Channel depending on Tuesday’s result. Thursday will depend on what happens Tuesday and Wednesday. Continue reading →

Second Life News 2019 w08

by

0

We have some news. Nothing too earth-shaking Firestorm did get their Animesh supporting viewer released. EEP server-side is behind expectations by another week. But better to fix before grid-wide release. The third-party dev UG  (YouTube video) was last Friday.

Servers

No roll to the main channel. We are staying on version #19.01.25.523656. They found an issue while the planned to roll version was in RC last week. So, there will be a new RC of this one Wednesday. But the regions reaching two weeks without a restart will be getting a restart.

Take over

Take over

An issue for some has come up. If the regions are restarted at different times their day/night cycle gets out of sync with adjacent regions. When the main grid is restarted for an update all those regions are pretty much in sync for daytime.  Regions that have been restarted at various times for some reason get left out of the two-week no update restart, at least I think that is what is being complained about.

Seems the Lindens are not deliberately trying to do a daylight time sync. It is just however it works out. They consider when daylight happens as up to the region owner. Continue reading →

Pages: 1 2

Second Life News 2019 w05

by

0

There is no Deploys thread this week. From the Server-Scripting UG we hear,

[12:05] Simon Linden: For server news, there wasn’t an update to the main channel today but tomorrow will see 3 different RCs
[12:06] Simon Linden: We’ll have a new maintenance update in one channel
[12:06] Simon Linden: Another that only has internal changes
[12:07] Simon Linden: and _maybe_ an update for the EEP servers, but Rider is going after a bug that’s blocking that from moving forward
[12:07] Joe Magarac (animats): The “time is stuck” bug?
[12:07] Simon Linden: exactly Joe
[12:07] Simon Linden: yeah that one is a show-stopper …. and he’s working on it right now

Server-Scripting Meeting

So, no roll to the main channels and 3 updates likely coming to the RC channels Wednesday.

*Ariel*

*Ariel*

Also, notice:

Scheduled – We will be conducting scheduled maintenance on our inventory system on Wednesday, January 30 from 6:00 AM until 7:00 AM PST. During this time, some residents may experience difficulty rezzing items.

Continue reading →