Second Life Technology Report – June 2026

This is a busy month with Pride celebrations and SL23B. Lots to see and do.

Official SL Platform Updates

  • June 8, 2026: Linden Lab announced fee adjustments, including reduced land tier prices for many Private region types (effective June 15), lower minimum L$ purchase fees, changes to LindeX transaction fees, and increased Premium membership subscription fees (effective for new/renewed subs from July 8). These aim to make land more affordable while expanding membership value.
  • Ongoing: SL23B celebrations (June 18–July 19) highlighted platform aspects through “Meet the Lindens” sessions, including discussions on engineering challenges like performance/rendering, OpenGL-to-modern API transitions, region crossings, WebRTC voice, and upcoming Lua scripting.
SL23B - Funky Monkey Temple
SL23B – Funky Monkey Temple

Simulator / Grid Updates

  • June 12 & 25: Simulator releases with routine maintenance and rolling restarts.
  • Grid Stability: Multiple rolling restarts. L$ transaction issues around June 25–26 (investigated and fixed). World Map region name display issues in some TPVs addressed.

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Second Life® Technology Report – April 2026

Tech-focused summary for April 1–30, 2026
Here is the update on last months activity in Second Life.

Official SL Platform Updates

  • April 1, 2026: Voice service disruption reported (connection issues and audio drops). Incident tied to ongoing WebRTC transition testing; highlighted need for full rollout improvements.
  • April 25, 2026: Unscheduled inventory maintenance affected login, rezzing, avatar display, and inventory access. Issue resolved same day; users advised to clear cache. – NOTE: If you are not having issues, don’t. I went through the outage and recovered without clearing my cache.
  • Throughout April: Continued WebRTC Voice testing on RC channels with maintenance sessions (e.g., April 22). Full grid rollout announced for May 5.
New Second Life Tech
My New Home Computer… NOT

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KIRSTENLEE Viewer Lives?

Long ago (2013 and before) KirstenLee Cinquetti made the KirstenLee Viewer. The S19 version was about the last in the series. Until the updates stopped KirstenLee’s Viewer was the photographer’s viewer of choice. It was my daily-use viewer.

KirstenLee Viewer April 2017

I suppose the Black Dragon Viewer could be said to have taken over a similar position in the community. Firestorm Viewer is now my choice for photography.

However, back in 2013 there was a bit of a controversy in June 2013: S19 Viewer Controversy. There were also some health issues in KirstenLee’s family before the controversy that I thought were the primary reason for discontinuing the viewer updates.

KirstenLee is again compiling a viewer. See: KV SPRING CLEAN… You’ll find the viewer in SourceForge under Kirstens Viewers. I am not endorsing the viewer nor have I used it. But, I do find it interesting that it still lives.

Also, this viewer had an Anaglyph 3D feature (the middle image in the image), which would be a good reason to try it out.

Anaglyph 3D: The 3D that uses Red-Blue glasses to see 3D. A problem with anaglyphic viewing is distorted color.

I have my Samsung VR Gear and an S8 in process… woohoo!

S19 Viewer Controversy

For some time I have covered Henri Beauchamp’s Cool VL Viewer and KirstenLee Cinquetti’s Kirsten ‘S’ Series Viewers. So, I am bummed to find out something is not right and we appear to have another viewer scandal.

KirstenLee Viewer
KirstenLee Viewer

Henri’s viewer uses a V1 interface, which I gave up on some time ago. But the viewer is a solid viewer made mostly of V3 or, at least, V3 adapted code. Probably more accurate way to say this is to say Henri has adapted a V1 user interface to run on new V3 code. Henri has been contributing viewer code to the community for a long time, well before I came around.

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KirstenLee Viewer S19 (407) Released

KirstenLee has posted an announcement about the release of a new version of the viewer: S19 (407). See: What dreams may come! In this post KirstenLee explains why version S19 is being used. Basically because this is the version of the viewer KirstenLee likes working with and using.

KirstenLee Viewer S19 (407)
KirstenLee Viewer S19 (407)

This is not a cutting edge viewer. Basically it is a V1 viewer being adapted to V3 three features and recent SL system changes. It is easy on hardware. So, I would class it as being in the same field as Singularity and Cool VL Viewer; V1 interface viewers.

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KirstenLee Viewer S19 (404) Blackbird Released

A new version of an older KirstenLee Viewer has been released, which is surprising. The news comes from KirstenLee’s blog. It is a short one sentence announcement. I show the blog page as this first image.

KirstenLee Blog Page 2013-17
KirstenLee Blog Page 2013-17

KirstenLee’s last release was in September 2012 and a version S22. In December of 2011 Kirsten had to stop viewer development when his (RL)/her (SL) family was dealing with health issues. See: The End of Kirsten’s Viewer, which describes the failure of a ‘CrowdFunder™’ effort to save the viewer.

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