Second Life Viewer 2 & 3

This is my collection of articles about the Second Life Viewer (SLV) 2 & 3. In 2013 I started to include information about the viewer in some Second Life News articles. You’ll see those articles mixed in with articles solely about the viewer.

Many residents detested the 2.x version viewers (V2) released by Linden Lab. As best I find out, sometime in 2009 the Lab decided a new viewer was needed to improve user retention. An outside consult was used to create it. Apparently the Lab wrote the specification for the viewer and the software house created the viewer. Unfortunately the programmers had no clue what SL was or how the viewer was used. This resulted in a user interface that existing residents found unusable. The change failed to improve new user retention rates.

The current viewer 3 (V3) is a revised version of the V2 viewer developed after the V2 release by Linden Lab.  After the rejection of the 2.0 viewer in mid 2010 the Lab took over viewer development. The SnowStorm Project was the Lab’s project in 2010 and 2011 to fix the viewer and reshape the user interface.

The Second Life Viewer has been undergoing continuous change since the start of Project SnowStorm with 4 significant versions released in 2010. Ending the year with version 2.4. In the Rod Humble as CEO era viewer development advanced at a rapid pace. Oz Linden, a pro open source manager at the Lab, over saw the change to a parallel Release Candidate style of development. We now see almost one new release of the Second Life Viewer per month.

As of February 7, 2014 we are on release: 3.6.13-285995.

Second Life Technology Updates: December 2025

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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 … Read more

Second Life Technology Updates: September 2025 – Revised

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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. Below is an actual comprehensive … Read more

Second Life™ Technology Update Summary: September 2025

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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 … Read more

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, … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

Catching Up in Second Life

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I have survived CoVid-19. It took me down for about 15 days. Still recovering, I easily tire. My four-mile hiking is down to a half-mile. What I learned about CoVid-19 is there is more confusion, contradictory information, and horrible reporting. The worst information and often deliberately injurious information is coming from California and New York. … Read more

Second Life: Moving/Positioning Avatars

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In 2013 Strawberry Singh posted a couple of articles (here & here) about positioning and moving avatars when setting up snapshots. This was needed for those areas where you do NOT have rez rights. Over time viewer upgrades broke those processes. Every so often I would check to see if the problems with those processes … Read more