Second Life™ Technology Updates: October 2025

This report synthesizes verified technology updates, new features, and releases for Second Life™ from October 1–31, 2025, drawn by AI exclusively from specified sources. Focus remains on platform changes, viewer enhancements, grid stability, and related tech announcements, excluding non-technical content.

As I learn more about AI this criterion gets updated. This is an initial summary of the month. I may post updates.

Official SL Platform Updates

  • October 16: Mobile App Performance Overhaul – Linden Lab rolled out a major update to the Second Life Mobile app, reducing avatar and world loading times by up to 80% in tested scenarios. Key fixes include proper outfit updates on change, consistent name tag displays, and shortening the “silhouette” loading phase from 5 to 2 seconds, improving device battery life and responsiveness.[1]
  • October 31: Marketplace Product Listing Enhancement (PLE) Billing Fix – Resolved a billing system glitch that failed to process PLE charges from October 8–28, resulting in batched charges on October 28; implemented safeguards to prevent recurrence and enhance transaction reliability.[2]
  • October 30: RC Channel Scripted HUD/Attachment Investigation – Ongoing probe into script malfunctions in HUDs and attachments on BlueSteel and Preflight release channels; potential region restarts deployed to mitigate impacts on user scripting functionality.[2]
  • October 27: Peer-to-Peer Voice Call Resolution – Fixed outage affecting direct voice communications between residents (October 24–27), traced to Vivox provider issues; local and group voice unaffected, restoring seamless audio interoperability.[2]
  • October 21: Homestead/Openspace Region Outage Recovery – Addressed provider-induced downtime impacting Homestead and Openspace regions; full functionality restored, bolstering grid reliability for estate owners.[2]
  • October 21: Destinations Page Service Restoration – Corrected outage on secondlife.com/destinations due to external service disruption, ensuring uninterrupted access to featured virtual locations.[2]
  • October 31: YouTube Embed URL Compatibility Update – Investigated and partially resolved errors (code 153) for non-iframe YouTube embeds, likely tied to YouTube policy shifts; iframe usage confirmed as workaround for media integration stability.[3]

Viewer Releases

No new official Second Life Viewer releases occurred in October 2025. The current default version remains 7.2.2 (18475198968), with no documented updates or patch notes specific to this month.[4] Simulator-side updates included:

  • October 29: Main Channel Simulator 2025-10-23.18761318114 – Deployed rolling restarts to incorporate backend optimizations, focusing on script execution efficiency and region synchronization.[4]

Third-Party Viewer Enhancements

  • October 19: Lumiya Viewer Revival – Developer Kaleaon announced near-completion of the Lumiya mobile viewer rebuild, introducing a browser-based webapp component for cross-device compatibility (Android, iOS, and web browsers). Supports Second Life grid, beta grid, OSGrid, and Hypergrid, addressing prior compilation issues for broader accessibility.[5]

No updates reported for Firestorm, Cool VL Viewer, Black Dragon, Aperture, or Kokua during October 2025 from checked sources.

Grid/Performance Fixes

Routine rolling restarts were conducted across channels to apply stability patches:

DateChannelDescription
October 30RC BlueSteel & PreflightScheduled restarts from 6:30 AM PDT for performance tuning and script issue probes.[2]
October 29RC ServerRestarts from 7:00 AM PDT to integrate simulator fixes.[2]
October 28Main SL ServerRestarts from 6:00 AM PDT for general grid maintenance.[2]
October 22RC ServerRestarts from 7:00 AM PDT enhancing rendering consistency.[2]
October 21Main SL ServerRestarts from 6:00 AM PDT post-outage recovery.[2]

Additional support maintenance (e.g., October 23 phone/chat downtime) ensured operational continuity without user-impacting disruptions.[2]

User group discussions via Inara Pey’s summaries highlighted scripting and viewer performance talks but no new feature rollouts.[6]

Sources Overview

  1. Mobile Update October 2025
  2. SL Grid Status
  3. YouTube Embed Forum Thread
  4. SL Viewer Release Notes
  5. Daniel Voyager Blog
  6. Inara Pey X posts: [post:12], [post:13], [post:16], [post:22], [post:24], [post:26] (via Modem World)

Second Life Technology Updates: September 2025 – Revised

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.

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Second Life™ Technology Update Summary: September 2025

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. ☹

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