The Continents: Together at last???

[Drewski Northman]

So...several times in the last few weeks, this has come up in conversations with some of my friends: wouldn't it be awesome to have Sansara and the Atoll connected with the Blake, Satori, Corsica, and Gaeta? Shoot...while we are at it, why not connect the entire mainland continents? Forum denizens, what would that entail? Would there be any inconvenience on the citizen side? Or would it be more back-end work, just telling the system what sims connect to what? What would the pros and cons be for sailors, drivers, and pilots?

Now....discuss!

[Knowl Paine]

They're too far apart. It's too many Regions to have to add. It would take months to implement. The Pro is all for Residents. The Con, is that Residents will pay for it.

If we had a say, I would say no.

There are better things which could be done with the time and resources.

 

[Cerise Sorbet]

They would have to move mainland continents to make it practical. Landmarks would survive this, but the hundreds of estate regions that have been placed in between over the years, and would also have to move, might not like this at all.

There were supposed to be more changes related to region crossings that would (at least in theory) make a Portal style of region cross possible, but the work that would make it possible seems to have been on hold for a couple of years. So I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

In RL the continents are not connected by land.   It would limit the availability of waterfront land, which is the most popular type, and just make the mainland more of a wasteland than it is already.  I don't see this as desirable in SL.

The practical way of doing this is to provide corridors of sailable/flyable water sims between the continents.  LL has already done this between some of them.  If you look on the map you'll see them as chains of water sims one sim wide   A few years ago, when Michael Linden was CEO, during a developers meeting I attended with the Lindens they said their goal was to eventually connect them all either this way and by creating more oceans between them as opposed to voids, I have no idea if they still will, with so many changes in LL personnel.  My advice is don't hold your breath.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Its all just servers and numbers.

Servers are super cheap. But LLs is cheaper.

To do it wouldn't be hard. To move all the unconnected estates in between would not be hard.

You just swap the positions of a few hundred items in a database and push the change.

In any normal database - this should be a change taking only a few minutes. But SL seems to be put together using the worst possible of any available given solution to a problem - so it might take a bit more effort.

Pushing them up tight would not be good - but putting a half dozen water sims between them might be nice. Again servers are super cheap and these would be near empty sims so you could stack 8 to 16 of them per machine and throttle them on/off depending on presence of avatars in them - including a flag to sim toss anyone who's AFK in one for more than 20 minutes, or present in that same single water sim AFK or not for more than 2 consecutive hours (to prevent bot parking from the Tiny Empires people).

The checkerboard os estates between them could get tossed anywhere - where doesn't matter if they don't connect to another sim. If they do, just move them as a cluster. The end result is just coords on a grid.

[Perrie Juran]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

In RL the continents are not connected by land.   It would limit the availability of waterfront land, which is the most popular type, and just make the mainland more of a wasteland than it is already.  I don't see this as desirable in SL.

The practical way of doing this is to provide corridors of sailable/flyable water sims between the continents.  LL has already done this between some of them.  If you look on the map you'll see them as chains of water sims one sim wide   A few years ago, when Michael Linden was CEO, during a developers meeting I attended with the Lindens they said their goal was to eventually connect them all either this way and by creating more oceans between them as opposed to voids, I have no idea if they still will, with so many changes in LL personnel.  My advice is don't hold your breath.

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It would be awesome to see this happen.

As to why Knowl thinks we would pay for it I don't understand.

When I first saw the OP I was tempted to figure out how many SIMs it would require to provide corridors two SIMs wide between the continents but I have only so much time to waste. 

[Cerise Sorbet]

There would be no loss of waterfront if the continents were moved, just look at how Sansara and the atoll were connected. Moving the estates in between would still be needed to avoid making a connection incredibly tedious and dull, there is a lot of territory in between, and it's really extra wacky if Zindra is taken into account.

It's guaranteed that estate owners will scream if their regions are moved en masse, because it's a change and they didn't request it and there would be some down time.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Cerise Sorbet wrote:

There would be no loss of waterfront if the continents were moved, just look at how Sansara and the atoll were connected. Moving the estates in between would still be needed to avoid making a connection incredibly tedious and dull, there is a lot of territory in between, and it's really extra wacky if Zindra is taken into account.

It's guaranteed that estate owners will scream if their regions are moved en masse, because it's a change and they didn't request it and there would be some down time.

 

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I was referring to moving the continents to connect them as one large land mass.  The shores where they abut each other would lose waterfront then.  Just moving them closer so it wouldn't take as many sims to connect them wouldn't involve much if any loss and might even increase it if the connections were land instead of water and arrow.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Cerise Sorbet wrote:

There would be no loss of waterfront if the continents were moved, just look at how Sansara and the atoll were connected. Moving the estates in between would still be needed to avoid making a connection incredibly tedious and dull, there is a lot of territory in between, and it's really extra wacky if Zindra is taken into account.

 

 

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1. Nautilus and Satori are linked together and form a megacontinent (like Euroasia in real world).
2. Blake Sea is sometimes considered a continent, sometimes a subcontinent.
3. There are private-owned sims in Blake Sea and Eastern Sansara (Islands).
4. Many mainland continents are linked with a Transcontinental Channels, like Sansara-Heterocera, Nautilus-Blake Sea, the two Corsica-Nautilus passages and Corsica-Gaeta 1.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/List_Of_Continents

 

List of transcontinental channels

1. Sansara - Heterocera (ANWR)
2. Nautilus - Corsica (West passage, Castle Valeria)
3. Nautilus - Corsica (East passage, Sunrise Islands)
4. Corsica - Gaeta 5 (Gaeta Channel)
5. Nautilus - Blake Sea (very large, but still a passage).

Note: Nautilus and Satori are not linked together with a transcontinental channel. They form together a supercontinent, like Euroasia in real world. However, before the creation of Nautilus City, they were two separate continents, linked with a channel.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Transcontinental_Channels

 

Some of the Continents could use some additional water ways or protected land along their shores so they could be traveled around such as in this map of the south edge of Corsica.

 

So what is needed is a channel from Sansara to Jeogot and a channel from Satori to either Heterocera or Sansora.  However if the continents were not moved together it could make for a long trip.

See also:  http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Grid_Map_And_Dimensions

                 http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/List_Of_Microcontinents_And_Sim_Clusters

 

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Cerise Sorbet wrote:

It's guaranteed that estate owners will scream if their regions are moved en masse, because it's a change and they didn't request it and there would be some down time.

 

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So?  Like the grid hasn't been taken off line before? 

If everything was preprogrammed it might actually go very fast.  But then again we are talking about LL

[Drewski Northman]

Wow, lots of good responses here.

I would not advocate smooshing the land masses together and ruining a lot of waterfront property, noooo. But maybe moving the estates out of the way, and inching Sansara close enough for a channel between that and the Nautilus regions, doesn't have to even be long. As for estate owners raging, the move would have no discernable affect, would it? Just the coordinates on the grid, as someone up-thread pointed out. 

I know this is one of those huge pipe-dreams, but it's nice to think "what if..." So many sailors and pilots ignore Sansara, yet there is so much to see from the air and roads.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Moving them all such that you could sail between them - that would be gold.

I would say... move Zindra too. We're far enough out from the adult content policy change that it'd be ok to have it closer.

Just put about 15-20 water sims between it and the far coast of one of the old continents. Far enough away that if my map is showing M or G mainland, it could never show some place that says;

"big [**bleep**] momas [**bleep**] dumpster [**bleep**] [**bleep**] your [**bleep**]"

on the map...

 

 

And then we have the linden home continents...

I personally would love to see somebody hit a bit ol' delete button on them. But knowing that is off the table, at least make them into full islands that don't end suddenly, and maybe move them together with sailing between them. There are 4 or 5 complete continents of them - each such continent is about 2/3rds the size of one of the old continents.

They are much larger than most people realize - and this is why I wish they could be deleted... but in a controlled way. I'd want to give every person on them a 'free voucher' to claim 1024m of mainland that is abandoned or linden but not protected or built on - anywhere on mainland, in whole or part. That way they would have enough to rez an even better home, and still have prims.

But that's another different pipe dream. Just being there, make them connect by water to each other - with boat launch rezzing spots.

 

[Cerise Sorbet]

The trouble is that many region owners have paid LL to have their regions moved to specific spots on the grid. Even if the effects would be insignificant, there would be screaming. IT would have been a different story if LL didn't charge for region moves in the first place, or at least didn't charge US$150 for the service.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Cerise Sorbet wrote:

The trouble is that many region owners have paid LL to have their regions moved to specific spots on the grid. Even if the effects would be insignificant, there would be screaming. IT would have been a different story if LL didn't charge for region moves in the first place, or at least didn't charge US$150 for the service.

 

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Isn't that for attachment to specific other regions?  I don't think moving would disturb that.  Those clusters would be moved together.

I doubt any one asks to have a stand alone region place in a specific area.

[Cerise Sorbet]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Cerise Sorbet wrote:

The trouble is that many region owners have paid LL to have their regions moved to specific spots on the grid. Even if the effects would be insignificant, there would be screaming. IT would have been a different story if LL didn't charge for region moves in the first place, or at least didn't charge US$150 for the service.

 

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Isn't that for attachment to specific other regions?  I don't think moving would disturb that.  Those clusters would be moved together.

I doubt any one asks to have a stand alone region place in a specific area.

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No, it is for any move. Some of these arrangements were just to get a region near another, even though they aren't connected, and even though there isn't any technical benefit to that. People paid to have their regions put where they are, whether you think the reasion is worthy or not, and they should get what they paid for.

 

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Cerise Sorbet wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Cerise Sorbet wrote:

The trouble is that many region owners have paid LL to have their regions moved to specific spots on the grid. Even if the effects would be insignificant, there would be screaming. IT would have been a different story if LL didn't charge for region moves in the first place, or at least didn't charge US$150 for the service.

 

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Isn't that for attachment to specific other regions?  I don't think moving would disturb that.  Those clusters would be moved together.

I doubt any one asks to have a stand alone region place in a specific area.

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No, it is for any move. Some of these arrangements were just to get a region near another, even though they aren't connected, and even though there isn't any technical benefit to that. People paid to have their regions put where they are, whether you think the reasion is worthy or not, and they should get what they paid for.

 

 

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I agree they should get what they pay for.   There may be some stand alone's that asked to be in a specific location.  Absolutely their privilege.  I just find it doubtful that a stand alone would ask for this. 

But then there is the subject of Eminent Domain. It is a touchy one but LL may have the right to exercise this.  That is something I don't know.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

Its not Real Property nor a government action - eminent domain does not apply. But I get what you're getting at.

Its a service, and the terms and nature of a service are 'subject to change without notice'.

I'd just move them all in a huge clump to the left or right, move the continents in a like manner, and then offer folks one month to submit a ticket for one free move to some other spot - first filed first served, processed over the following 3 months.

- A smart database could instant check that 'that spot is already requested, please select another' the moment you moused over it on the map or entered some coordinate. But again history has shown that if possible to make a database the wrong way, they did - so they'd probably have to make people enter 5 alternate choices and then have some cycling back for the ones who's choices were ALL already taken.

 

I've always been of the opinion that in a choice between 'hold things back' and 'break it to improve it' - its better to break it more often than not.

And I think the number of side benefits of a more unified continent mass vastly outweigh anything else. I feel it would help make SL seem more appealing if it seemed to be a 'world' that was 'cohesive' - and while you cannot do that with the estates, you can do it with the mainland.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

A few years ago, when Michael Linden was CEO, during a developers meeting I attended with the Lindens they said their goal was to eventually connect them all either this way and by creating more oceans between them as opposed to voids, I have no idea if they still will, with so many changes in LL personnel.  My advice is don't hold your breath.

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As much as we all hated M. Linden at the time, he was the last Linden who understoof that SL was a world, and not "just" a video game shopping mall.

His vision of what that world should become was not shared by its users - but he recognized that there was a world there to begin with, that he then wanted to shape...

 

In today's LLs, the product is Marketplace, and SL is a side effect used to drive us to Marketplace...

 

[Knowl Paine]

SL has operated at a profit for many years, all the bills paid, plus extra. Nobody is pulling money out of their pockets to "help" us. If they have, they have been repaid several fold.

If I sound snippy, I don't mean to be. "Your World, your Imagination", is an accurate statement from LL.

I have been an avid map viewer for a long time. I support adding water Regions, but advocate strategic placement, to fill critical gaps across the grid.

On the suggestion, or question of connecting all the continents, I would guess that the LL might need to add 400 Regions. It's just a guess. I'm thinking 2 regions wide, a road on one region and water on the other, 3 regions wide in some places.

I haven't put much thought into SL construction projects. I've visited a number of the works created by the LDPW. I know that there are many things which need to be fixed across the Inworld grid, and that some of those projects are complicated by heritage builds, and private land holdings.

I think Residents are due a LL renovation project, and I'm sure the Moles wouldn't mind; if we still have moles. Many projects have been completed, and almost every project has added value to SL, the surrounding Regions, and Resident experience.

I still think it would be a massive project. idk :smileyhappy:

 

[Qie Niangao]

Don't know that it would be a big deal, but there are scripts that reference global coordinates of mainland locations, so sliding around the continents would break those scripts. 

At one point long ago there was talk about a sort of region-on-demand capability -- sorta similar to the current "idle mode" but moreso -- where ephemeral all-water regions would sprout up out of the void as avatars passed through them, then disappear once all agents were gone. Would be too realistically tedious, though, sailing across all that empty sea.

[Karin Sixpence]

Even the connections are being blocked. Tonight I'm mad because some of the land around open passages from continent to continent have been bought up and blocked. Even a few meters protected land that allows boats and planes and people to move through is simple. For awhile, those long bunches of sims let us travel. If Lindens would protect even little passages, much less fill in all the empty places, it could be a friendly place - instead of greedy making in too hard. . Thanks to strings of Mystic Rental hearts, I can't even see the map any more. Looks like maybe those people will own the world soon and there won't be a map. Sheesh. I'm frustrated and don't know what to do. Maybe go bang my head on a ban line?

[Coby Foden]

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Karin Sixpence wrote:

 

Thanks to strings of Mystic Rental hearts, I can't even see the map any more.

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Yeah, those hearts start to be all over the map. It is very sad that Linden Lab allows such misuse of the map. :smileyfrustrated:

Maybe they should make a second layer for the map for all those advertizers who want to show on the map that "WE ARE HERE". And naturally put a monthly fee for the advertizers.  $$$

[Perrie Juran]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Karin Sixpence wrote:

 

Thanks to strings of Mystic Rental hearts, I can't even see the map any more.

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Yeah, those hearts start to be all over the map. It is very sad that Linden Lab allows such misuse of the map. :smileyfrustrated:

Maybe they should make a second layer for the map for all those advertizers who want to show on the map that "WE ARE HERE". And naturally put a monthly fee for the advertizers.  $$$

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The hearts are the most ubiquitous and annoying for sure.  I do have to give them credit though, their business model must be working because they continue to grow. 

Unfortunately the Ad Farm Policies state:

 

I have several mainland store locations with signs above them; am I affected?

No. This policy change is not aimed at personal advertising of this kind.

 

Some of those ads do get a bit obnoxious.

I will agree that the blocking of channels for travel is a big problem that LL really does need to address.  Going back to the Ad Farm policies the following is stated:

 

What are you doing about other forms of land extortion and harassment?

This concerns us very much, and we'll be doing all we can to remove this behavior. Deliberately misleading other Residents (for example, with donut-shaped parcels) is unacceptable. You can expect that any practices that negatively impact the Mainland will be looked at and stopped where possible.

If you're engaged in something that clearly has a negative and widespread impact on the Mainland experience, we will request that you stop.   (my emphasis)

 

I do wish  LL was more proactive about this.  Failing to secure the Channels that were clearly meant for travel in the same way the Roads are protected land was a big oversight (or mistake) by the Lab.

[Qie Niangao]

Although the hearts are exceedingly ugly blotches, I'm unclear: Are those owners, specifically, blocking what was once open waterway, particularly "continent to continent" channels?

It is a shame that some continents were designed without any protected circumnavigation route. What's a bit disappointing is that, even in this time of widespread abandonment, there doesn't seem to be much effort to correct that mistake. I mean, I can see why it's not worth the effort any more, but that doesn't make it less disappointing.

[Coby Foden]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

Although the hearts are exceedingly ugly blotches, I'm unclear: Are those owners, specifically, blocking what was once open waterway, particularly "continent to continent" channels?

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Yes, some do exactly that, blocking general continent to continent waterways. Rollo was once open waterway between two continents. Then Linden Lab sold Rollo (by accident?) to that person who uses the heart symbols all over the map. The owner blocked general vehicle access to Rollo. Kind messages were sent to the owner, but the owner refused to open it so that boats would be able to navigate through Rollo.

For a long time that sailing route was closed.

Luckily later on one person rented Rollo and the renter opened Rollo for general vehicle entry. :smileyhappy:

If that renter leaves Rollo will be closed again - unless new sailing friendly person rents it. :smileysad:

Linden Lab did do a mistake by selling Rollo. It should have been kept as protected land.

[ChinRey]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

Although the hearts are exceedingly ugly blotches, I'm unclear: Are those owners, specifically, blocking what was once open waterway, particularly "continent to continent" channels?

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I don't know about Heartless Land in general but I know there is one instance where the answer is a definite yes. Mystical Rentals have bought Montserrat and blocked it off with a security orb that teleports you right home so fast you don't even have time to react to the warning message. Other owners have done similar things throughout Pine Coast. As a result North Islands is no longer a part of Sansara and can only be accessed by teleporting.

 

(Edit: just fixed a typo)