EOTB: New Linden Viewer - 2025.06 "Inventory Favorites"

 

In the official Second Life blog a few days ago, Linden Lab announced a new official Second Life viewer had been released, one with some features as a result of inventory feedback.

 

The newest Second Life Viewer release is here, and this one is extra special because so many of its features come directly from community feedback. Thanks to the requests and contributions shared on GitHub and through our feedback portal, this update delivers improvements you’ve been asking for.

 

Second Life Viewer 2025.06 adds an Inventory Favorites system, improves avatar behavior, restores full mouselook pitch, enhances chat and mesh upload tools, and refines environment controls. It includes various bug and crash fixes. Read on for more details! 

 

Named 2025.06, the viewer promises new features, including "Inventory Favorites," hiding the Linden Dollar balance (intended for video streamers), a "zoom in to self" option, improved privacy options, the option to timestamp photos, mesh inspection tools, chat and voice enhancements, fixes to allow avatars to move more smoothly, environment and rendering options, and more. 

 

As a reminder, these changes to not yet affect the Firestorm viewer, which is the preferred viewer by the majority of residents.

 

To read more, Click Here.

 

Firestorm Viewer Update Soon

 

For those who haven't kept up with the Firestorm blog, on https://www.firestormviewer.org/, they say "The wait is nearly over" for their next viewer update. 

 

On May 21, the team leader explained they delayed a new update, "This was initially a deliberate choice as we were seeking stability rather than just cranking out another update, having had three updates in the 6 months prior," and there were complaints  "I wanted to ensure that this next update was not just bug fixes and tweaks; it wasn’t all about PBR but offered real, tangible benefits for people." 

 

In Part One, they talked about AO enhancments, iintegration with the Primfeed social network, ("Firestorm has no affiliation with Primfeed beyond our technical collaboration"), Phototools V2, Avatar and Animesh Poser, "photo goodies" in the form of Faming & Composition helpers and Depth of Field for Hi Res photos, and water and sky Legacy environment rendering improvements. 

 

In Part Two,  they discussed "Digintally signed builds for Windows, an anti-phishing measure that allows you to see the full adress of a URL before clicking on it, Inventory management, SLAPPS "a special kind of SLURL that perform a special function," VRAM control, Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing, Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing, Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, a tonemapper option, ambient lighting re-aligned, and some features for builders and creators, as well as qiality of life. 

No date has been given for the new update. It may be today, tomorrow, or next week.

 

For more information, check the Firestorm blog.

 

Bixyl Shuftan

 

New Firestorm Update Released

 

A few days ago on Tuesday March 22, Jessica Lyon of Team Firestorm announced the release of their latest version on their blog: 6.5.3.65658. She would also announce it in their inworld group.

A new update with some GAME CHANGING FEATURES!
Grab it before the servers cook!

Firestorm 6.5.3.65658 is finally in the wind! Wow—it’s been a struggle to get this one out, folks. But the wait is worth it, as this release comes with a couple of groundbreaking new features we’re really excited about. It also brings us to parity with LL’s 6.5.2, quite a jump from our last release, which was AGES ago. This is a major update.

As stated, this latest update brings Firestorm up to parity with Linden Lab's latest viewer, and there's two notable new features. One is the option to take 360 Snapshots, which Marcel Mosswood wrote about last month when it was in a test viewer. 

Another noted feature is the Performance Floater and Autotune, which can help in telling you what around you is causing the most lag.

The Performance Floater shows you in real-time what parts of the scene are taking the most time and slowing down your graphics (lag). In particular, this first release focuses on avatars and allows you to see which avatars are truly lagging you, and also allows you to examine your own attachments to see how they perform.

The FS Performance Floater is loosely based upon a project viewer from LL, released last June. We have completely revised the metrics behind the floater to make sure that it offers a realistic account of the rendering costs that you personally observe.

Autotune. This is the first look at this new feature. Wholly developed by Beq Janus, Autotune allows the viewer to automatically manage some of your graphics settings in order to give you the performance level that you request, and keep you there. It’s like autopilot for lag! You set the target FPS (frames per second) you want, and Autotune will do its best to keep you there by dynamically adjusting your settings from scene to scene! However, it cannot work miracles, if your computer is ancient—it can only do so much.

When TPing to a social island with a number of avatars most, of the viewer's time was spent drawing them. Clicking on avatars nearby will show how much processing time is spent on each. It also shows your avatar complexity in detail, how much time the avatar's parts are needing to render, It shows the impact of any HUDs on you, and a shortcut to looking at and edjusting your graphics settings.

There are known issues with the Mac and Linnux versions of the viewer. Also, the "Starlight Skins," an appearance option for Firestorm viewers (SL wiki link) will soon no longer be supported. 

As per their deal with Linden Lab, Firestorm 6.4.12.62831 will be blocked from accessing the Grid in three weeks.

Bixyl Shuftan
 

SL Video: "What The Heck Is This?! Jelly Dolls In Second Life"

(Click here if the video fails to play)

From Alicia Chenaux on August 13 - "Hi guys! I've seen a lot of people recently asking what "jelly dolls" are in Second Life, so I thought I'd make a very short video just showing one and talking a bit on what they are. I don't know all the things, as we all WELL know, but hopefully this helps just a little!"

Alicia has a blog, "Ch'know," on: https://chknowstyle.wordpress.com/

Hat tip: Hamlet Au 

Review of World of Warcraft's "Mists of Pandaria," Part Two

Last week, we had the first half of our review of the latest expansion of World of Warcraft, "Mists of Pandaria," in which we described the new player race and continent. Today, we look at other features in the game, such as the new Pet Battle System. We also look at the response the expansion is getting and how well it's been doing for Blizzard in it's first few days.

Read the second part of the review in Extra.

Eye on the Blog: “CEO Rodvik Humble Shares What's New in Second Life”

On Monday, Linden Lab’s CEO Rod Humble/Rodvik Linden personally posted on the official blog, “It’s been a little while since I last updated folks on Second Life. Earlier this year, I noted several areas we would be focusing on. Let me update you on each area and share with you our plans for the remainder of the year. But first, we’d like to give a warm welcome to our newbies! August was the biggest growth month for Second Life in nearly four years! I hope you all take the time to try out the many different activities in Second Life — there’s everything from clubbing to boating. You might even to want to try your hand at making something new. As a side note, one of the easiest ways to find new things is to check out the Destination Guide in the log-in screen of the viewer.”

Rod then brought up Viewer 2’s Basic mode, which he called really helpful in “getting newbies up and running.“ But recognizing its limits, such as being unable to buy & sell and build, stated the Lab would soon “merge the Basic and Advanced modes.” He also stated there would be “continued investment and focus” in response times to problems including more support staffing.

Rod also mentioned “over the next few months,” there would be new advanced features that would allow for easier and better “creation of artificial life and artificial people.” Among other things, the creatures and beings would be able to navigate about more intelligently, “Imagine being able to create advanced pets, creatures or even a living town where non-player characters are walking about. Combined with the experience tools I mentioned above, it should soon be possible to create more advanced MMORPG’s or interactive experiences which use AI right within Second Life.”

Hamlet Au wrote some about the last set of improvements. He felt they would soon lead to “upheavals” in the virtual pet industry as old scripting systems are taken offline and the companies rush to keep their creatures and other goods updated. He also predicted Second Life’s gaming areas, or “mini MMOs” ae he called them, would both become more advanced and more popular. Finally, he called these upcoming developments a solution to the Grid’s “crowded empty” problem, lots of residents inworld, but most sims empty or nearly so, “Adding NPC features will be an easy way to fix that problem, giving land owners easy tools to make their place seem less empty.”

Checking the thread on the forums, many people posting were looking forward to these developments. This included Jo Yardley of “The 1920’s Berlin Project,” who felt the use of these “robots” would make a lot of difference in making her sim more lifelike, “Yes I'd rather have 100 real avatars running around my city 24 hours a day, but it won't happen and if it did the server would blow up with lag overdose.” There were however some dissenting opinions, “So one CEO gets rid of the bots, numbers plummet, lag doesn't get any better, and the next CEO decides to bring the things back.”

Sources: Linden Blog, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Eye on the Blog: “New Premium Membership Features”

Last month at the Second Life Community Convention, among the commitments Rod Humble made was that there would be improvements to Premium accounts. A few days ago, Linden Lab announced a couple ”new exclusive benefits.” They were offering gift items just for Premium members, and sandbox areas for the exclusive use of those with paid memberships.

For their gifts, Linden Labs offered what they called the first of their reguarly available items just for Premium players, a set of furniture.



Premium members will regularly receive exclusive virtual items that you won't find anywhere else. The very first gift is a stylish set of furniture crafted by Colleen Desmoulins of The Loft. The set features a sofa, tables, plants and lamps to enhance your home’s cozy factor. You can change the look of most of the furniture to fit your home’s unique style and decor — whether you live in a Linden Home or elsewhere. This customizable furniture collection is the first of many Resident-created gifts Premium Members will be receiving regularly. Premium Residents can visit a virtual inworld kiosk to claim their gift now.


The sandboxes they advertised as being quieter than those for the general public.


Explore your creative side or just get down to the business of creating without the distractions of a more public space in one of the many Premium-only Sandboxes in Second Life. There are four new, exclusive Premium-only Sandbox Islands you can access right now to give you more room than ever to bring your creations to life. Members can visit right now.



Comments by residents seemed to have a small majority feeling these new features were a good idea. Not many were interested in the furniture set, some saying there were already lots of freebie sofas on the market. The exclusive “griefer free” sandboxes were liked by many. A number however expressed disappointment, saying what would really increase Premium level memberships were things like teir discounts, not “baubles” as one member called the first Premium gifts.


Linden Lab stated this would be only the first of their added bonuses to Premium acounts, “keep an eye out for even more surprises in the future.”

The blog post can be read in it’s entirety Here.

Bixyl Shuftan