Terraforming problem

[Venetia Cazalet]

Hi,

I am a Private Estate Full Region owner. The region is primarily a residential sim. I have owned the sim for about a year now and have never had any problems with terraforming up until last week.  One of my new tenants sank a small part of his land by the sea to form a bay right up to his parcel boundary and this disturbed the land on the adjoining parcel in a small area by the sea. The land on the adjoining parcel became all peaked. Both myself and my manager tried to fix this but the land would not flatten in that area, it moved and waved but would not flatten and was not behaving in the normal way for terraforming. I dicovered there was a small boat on the tenants side and thought that must be causing the problem but we had the same problem when the boat was removed. The tenant said he was having the same problem on the other side of his parcel too. He has very kindly made his bay not too near his parcel boundaries but I know that is not how he wants it and I also feel certain he should be able to sink his land up to his boundary if thats how he wants it without affecting the land on parcels he does not own and has no permissions on.

I have obviously done a sim restart in the hope that might help but it has not. I have also looked for objects that should not be there and looked for transparent objects too and have found nothing.

Can anyone help, or has anyone experienced the same problem?

Many thanks

Venetia Cazalet

[Qie Niangao]

Not sure this is the problem you're experiencing, but: The terrain mesh will "ripple" some distance in both directions from a sheer cliff. The larger and steeper the cliff, the more extensive the ripples.

That's based on experience with regular terraforming, as opposed to defining a new .raw terrain for the sim -- and I honestly don't know if that works any better. (In fact, I suspect not; I believe it's a limitation of the terrain mesh, not only of terraform operations on that mesh, but I'm not 100% sure.)

[Edit to add: This part isn't correct: "he should be able to sink his land up to his boundary if thats how he wants it without affecting the land on parcels he does not own and has no permissions on" -- even on Mainland, parcel boundaries don't completely limit the effects of terraforming on either side of the border. The overall effect is generally limited to less than 1 meter into the neighbor's parcel, but again, those ripples can extend further.]

[Venetia Cazalet]

Thank you for your reply Qie. I had never had this problem happen before (or no one had ever complained about it before) so thanks for explaining that what I assumed was right, was actually wrong. Is there an explanation for why we were unable to correct the problem on the adjoining parcel, do you think it was it just the boat blocking the trraforming? 

Venetia

[Qie Niangao]

Seems unlikely.  I mean, you can terraform right through objects; the challenge is seeing what you're doing (perhaps by choosing not to render some types in the viewer).

Maybe this is more than just the usual edge-of-parcel condition that I described. (Perhaps PM me with coordinates, if you want me to take a look? I may not know what's happening, but I'll be happy to see if it looks familiar.)

[Buttacwup Float]

terraforming along parcel boundries is always a hassle, for those that cannot control both sides. You should have been able to fix it though if you are the regions owner. Sometimes the height of a parcel just gets out of whack after too much up and down. You might need to rebake the terrain on the region to get it flat. Rebaking basically resets the current levels to where they are at that time. As a test you could also adjust the amount by which the terrain can be lowered and try it again.

 

Happy to come take a look if you want.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

If the difference in the ground level between the land on the shore and the bottom of the bay is too stee you get the rough peaks.  It can be fixed by making the slope from the shore to the bottom of the bay more gradual.  Other than that, you can't do anything but hide it using landscape materials or prims.

[Venetia Cazalet]

Hi Amethyst

Thanks for your reply.

I will ask the tenant to make the bay more sloping away from the parcel boundary and we will try again, I think it was straight down before. I had already thought I might disguise the peaks with some planting of some sort.

Thanks for your help

Venetia

[Venetia Cazalet]

Hi seanabrady

Thanks for your reply.

As I have a sim full of tenants who have all terraformed in different ways I am very reluctant to do anything that might change the terrain of the whole sim. Thanks for the information and I will contact you in the future if needed.

Venetia

 

[CaptainJack Grauman]

Way back long ago in prehistoric times before the internet started, I had this problem at work in a university when fitting a smooth curve to data points. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curve_fitting

What seems to be needed is ability to "break the spline" at the property boundary.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spline_%28mathematics%29

[CaptainJack Grauman]

The shape of the SL land surface is likely made by spline-type curve-fitting to a pattern of fixed points. If one point is moved, the curve between nearby points then whips around. I have been fitting curves to experimental data for people for a long time at work.