Connect the Continents

[Debi Dastardly]

Sure someone has brought this up already,. But, would it be possible for LL to just move the continents closer together, to accomplish connecting all the sims? I'm not sure if that's possible how much that would cost. But, surely it would save them money on placing rarely used OS sims, because as much as i wish we were larger, the sailing/flying/driving/train community, is just not that large. Most SL people like to have a little home somewhere, go to a club, shopping, exploring, and every now and then they wonder into a sailing place, or an airport, ect. Before 2014, I wasn't aware sim crossing in vehicles was all that good really, I used to drive cars, or try to back in 2008, as well as a boat once. So for years i dismissed the idea of doing any of these things. Dare i say, the way i was before 2014 represents the majority of Second Life users. So LL would have to really see a benefit to people like I was before 2014, or it wont happen. Many people think, that LL is out of touch with their customer base, and I disagree! Majority of Second Life residents want a little world of their own, and not many bother with vehicles at all. this is why when you look at the world map, you see all  those private sims out there, that someone is paying for. Maybe if LL improved how vehicles and AVies can cross sims, than yeah, maybe more of the general population would jump on board. Also many land barons will fight this, for many reasons in some cases it will ruin their business. Look at this pic of the map below, all those dots, are private sims someone is constantly paying for. This proves my point, most people want a private little space of their own, and don't worry about moving from continent to continent.

[Fionalein]

2 hours ago, MeesterP said:

Alwin Alcott, we have the the impression that you are showing contempt for the people in this forum and their ideas.

You are insulting contributors of this forum by calling them "nearly nobody".  Just because you don't like them personally inworld, you come here to insult. That's uncalled for, and at least, we use our main account's name, not an alt. 

If this idea of connecting continents is so irritating to you, why don't you leave this forum, instead of trolling?  We have not seen any constructive contribution from you so far.

The appropriate thing to do is to apologize and then change tone.

No need to get rude, @MeesterP. Unless your goal was to ruin the campaign by acting unresponsible on their behalf, then please continue - you are on a good way towards that...

[animats]

25 minutes ago, Debi Dastardly said:

Majority of Second Life residents want a little world of their own, and not many bother with vehicles at all. this is why when you look at the world map, you see all  those private sims out there, that someone is paying for.

We could have Cubicle Continent - little parcels with ban lines on both sides, so no one can get in and no one can get out. Audio and looking restricted to the parcel. No object entry, even for any unused land. Almost like owning your own region, but smaller. If LL offered an additional checkbox for "show nothing outside parcel", then cubicle owners would see empty ocean.

Of course, that's what Sansar is - a bunch of disconnected regions connected only by a directory site. That's also what OpenSim is. Those didn't work out.

Edited June 19, 2018 by animats
Clarify

[Aethelwine]

22 minutes ago, Debi Dastardly said:

... Look at this pic of the map below, all those dots, are private sims someone is constantly paying for. This proves my point, most people want a private little space of their own, and don't worry about moving from continent to continent.

 

The map shows lots of private sims and it shows people do like their private spaces, but it doesn't follow on from that that they don't also like sailing or flying or using mainland roads from time to time. Many will have boating slips on mainland as well as their private homes and many more will just visit mainland to use the many airports and rezz areas to enjoy their vehicles.

The pattern of property values on mainland around roads, around waterways is the indicator of the added value people put on these areas and that Linden Lab should be factoring in to their decisions on how to develop and maintain interest in their platform.

[Fionalein]

2 minutes ago, animats said:

Of course, that's what Sansar is - a bunch of disconnected regions connected only by a directory site. That's also what OpenSim is. Those didn't work out.

Reality check? That's why mainland is so deserted and folks flock to walled in parcels on private islands, right? ...

[Aethelwine]

9 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

Reality check? That's why mainland is so deserted and folks flock to walled in parcels on private islands, right? ...

The deserted areas on mainland are the areas without transport access, because there is no reason to live there. In those areas mainland is just negatives to private estates...no estate owner to enforce a building code, greater limits on the numbers of people that can be there, no restraints on the neighbours use of security devices etc.

But, the areas connected by transport routes to more sims especially around waterways demand prices far in excess of privates sims, because despite those negatives still applying, they offer something that private sims can't offer.. and that is the connected continental transport routes. Transport routes that if they invested more in, would bring in a greater return for them.

Edited June 19, 2018 by Aethelwine

[Debi Dastardly]

1 minute ago, Aethelwine said:

The deserted areas on mainland are the areas without transport access, because there is no reason to live there. Just negatives no estate owner to enforce a building code, limits on the numbers of people that can be there, no restraints on the neighbours use of security devices.

The areas around waterways especially demand prices far in excess of privates sims, because despite those negatives that still apply, they offer something that private sims can't offer.. and that is the connected waterways and for roadside parcels, road access.

Only recently with the rise of the GTFO game has many of the roadside parcels as well as even some water frontage been claimed. These parcels have sat abandoned for months and years in some cases. Don't get me wrong, i am more than happy to see people returning to the mainland, but, even with all this happening, we are still a small minority.

[ariesviper Barbecue]

On 6/10/2018 at 4:04 AM, Jazzystaples said:

Hi. I had an idea for something, but it would require a bit of work on LL's end to make it happen.

Region portals. In plain terms, this is simply a region crossing that will send you directly to another continent. There are no giant ocean-bridges to worry about, and no land to move.

In my "expertly-crafted" examples, here's what I mean:

 

This is the coast of Satori. We need to get to Heterocera. So, we have a portal right over here marked by this purple arrow.

You simply sail or fly through this normal region crossing and you're there!

This could be done in a lot of locations to allow access.

 

PROS:
- No need to move land
- Faster than a water bridge (doesn't use up any regions either)
- Works like a normal region crossing
CONS:
- LL would have to actually program this into the game and I have no clue how difficult something like this is to do on a technical scale.

And that's pretty much my proposal.

Although i didnt post it in any forums, i had the same idea when the first connect the continents notice was sent out. In my opinion it is also the only viable option for connecting the continents.

When LL connected the continents before, they added at most, maybe 40 sims, and connected multiple continents with them. the bridges requested would take a few hundred sims at least. and LL is required to keep at lest a 1 sim empty space between a mainland sim and a private sim, unless the private sim owner wants to pay an additional US$500 per month to be connected to the mainland. so they would need to find a pathway that can actually be taken to keep the buffer. and even if they were open space sims, if i recall, those would cost about US$100 per month per sim for someone to own, and we are talking about a few hundred sims. the 80-90 sim bridge someone mentioned would be US$8000 to US$9000 every month to maintain, and thats for a single continent connection. toss in a few more connections and you are very easily exceeding the amount of money a well off middle class family earns per year, but as a monthly maintenance. yes LL is interested in increasing traffic for the mainland in hopes of people buying some land on it, but the cost of maintaining the bridges FAR exceeds any potential benefit they would provide. with the same number of regions they could make an entire new continent. so the portal idea is the only viable option, they could even add in a single sim on each end of the continents as the portal points, if they are to add any sims at all. and a fun thing to note that will support the portal option, aside from having the same benefits as the bridge in LL's eyes with none of the additional costs, is that LL has started looking into the sim connection code for the first time since linden world a couple months ago. meaning that the portals idea isnt out of the question. its just adding in an exception saying hey, t his sim border connects to this sim. and SL should by default see it as connected even if it isnt on the world map. it might not show properly on the minimap but i dont think it would have any real issues aside from the appearance on the map, but at most a small viewer update would fix the issue. i understand that people want the long cruising lanes of 90+ sims going in a straight line, but there is no cheap and low hassle way to implement the actual continent connections. if you manage to get LL to agree to making them, good for you, but IF LL does do anything, its probably best to accept that the continents can be connected seamlessly through portal sims, instead of trying to push for them to provide several hundred sims for free with almost no benefit to them.

the question then becomes, what is more important for the forums goal. connecting the continents as the name suggests, or asking for LL to give you 600 free sims because you want to have un-interrupted flying/sailing for an hour every so-often

[Aethelwine]

22 minutes ago, Debi Dastardly said:

Only recently with the rise of the GTFO game has many of the roadside parcels as well as even some water frontage been claimed. These parcels have sat abandoned for months and years in some cases. Don't get me wrong, i am more than happy to see people returning to the mainland, but, even with all this happening, we are still a small minority.

With roadside yes.. to some extent although I have never found it easy to find what I consider roadside parcels, at least not without paying more of a premium for the land than I would like, but then I don't value roadside so highly. I had some roadside and waterside in Jeogeot... but it was unprotected water access and soon after I bought it the neighbours blocked it off, so I abandonned it rather than try and get my money back on it. Since then I had some road access in heterocera through a slither of abandoned land but that has recently been bought blocking me from my most direct route to the road, but actually now I explore more the indirect road access over abandonned land is much more fun.

For waterside access I got lucky a few years ago on a couple of places and paid reasonable prices for waterside on Zindra and near the Linden Village. But those were unusually good deals I spent hours scouring the map before finding them. For the main sailing area though, I don't think there has been a time in the last 5 years when protected water access to the Nautilus\Blake Sea water ways has not been prohibitively expensive (at least on my budget 50k L$ being about my limit on smallish parcels I like). That is certainly not a recent phenomenon.

Edited June 19, 2018 by Aethelwine

[Aethelwine]

2 minutes ago, ariesviper Barbecue said:

Tthe question then becomes, what is more important for the forums goal. connecting the continents as the name suggests, or asking for LL to give you 600 free sims because you want to have un-interrupted flying/sailing for an hour every so-often

The Seychelles channel is about as long as I can bear just sailing through a line of connected themed homesteads to get to the other end. The thought of going through 90 sims  to get to where I wanted to go.. all of them in a straight line and on the same template is far too much.

For this to work they either need portals, or to move the continents, such that the linking routes are way shorter and the journey is kept interesting.

[Debi Dastardly]

2 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

With roadside yes.. to some extent although I have never found it easy to find what I consider roadside parcels, at least not without paying more of a premium for the land than I would like, but then I don't value roadside so highly. I had some roadside and waterside in Jeogeot... but it was unprotected water access and soon after I bought it the neighbours blocked it off, so I abandonned it rather than try and get my money back on it. Since then I had some road access in heterocera through a slither of abandoned land but that has recently been bought blocking me from my most direct route to the road, but actually now I explore more the indirect road access over abandonned land is much more fun.

For waterside access I got lucky a few years ago on a couple of places and paid reasonable prices for waterside on Zindra and near the Linden Village. But those were unusually good deals I spent hours scouring the map before finding them. For the main sailing area though, I don't think there has been a time in the last 5 years when protected water access to the Nautilus\Blake Sea water ways has not been prohibitively expensive (at least on my budget 50k L$ being about my limit on smallish parcels I like). That is certainly not a recent phenomenon.

Yeah maybe not in Zindra, also Linden village is on Sansara. But laying all that aside, Sansara, and the atoll was heavily abandoned just a year ago, and yes even water frontage. This is what i refer to.

Edited June 19, 2018 by Debi Dastardly

[Klytyna]

5 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

The deserted areas on mainland are the areas without transport access, because there is no reason to live there

Really?

Kama City has roads all over the damn place, every region is bounded by 4, plus internal side streets in places, and it's bursting with empty parcels that nobody wants...

And again, you assume that the ONLY reason for having a home is as a base for driving and sailing, most people, simply, don't, they use their homes for crazy off the wall stuff like living in, receiving guests, entertaining, enjoying some privacy while working on their outfits, etc.

Personally, I wouldn't WANT to live near a Madlands road, but then, I normally think of Madlands roads as "LL Protected Griefer Prim Access Strips"...

 

[Aethelwine]

6 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Really?

Kama City has roads all over the damn place, every region is bounded by 4, plus internal side streets in places, and it's bursting with empty parcels that nobody wants...

And again, you assume that the ONLY reason for having a home is as a base for driving and sailing, most people, simply, don't, they use their homes for crazy off the wall stuff like living in, receiving guests, entertaining, enjoying some privacy while working on their outfits, etc.

Personally, I wouldn't WANT to live near a Madlands road, but then, I normally think of Madlands roads as "LL Protected Griefer Prim Access Strips"...

 

Well I am not all that kean on having land in Kama City either, the layout is a step back from the other continents. But I don't see any abandoned land there, the yellow for sale parcels littering the map are Life property and other rental companies advertising rentals, they seem to be doing fine & Linden Lab are getting their tier on those sims more so than most of mainland.

I don't assume that at all. I said people like their private spaces in the post I made immediately before the one you quote. The reason I am saying the areas of mainland without roads or transport links have no attraction is precisely because private sims offer everything they do and more.

A rather odd perception to have of mainland roads. The griefing you get on them (I don't recall ever seeing any) is much more limited and trivial compared to what you get on private sims with roads that attract the idiots acting out their 1%er fantasies, something I have heard and experienced much more of.

Edited June 20, 2018 by Aethelwine

[IceCold Skytower]

10 hours ago, animats said:

We could have Cubicle Continent - little parcels with ban lines on both sides, so no one can get in and no one can get out. Audio and looking restricted to the parcel. No object entry, even for any unused land. Almost like owning your own region, but smaller. If LL offered an additional checkbox for "show nothing outside parcel", then cubicle owners would see empty ocean.

Of course, that's what Sansar is - a bunch of disconnected regions connected only by a directory site. That's also what OpenSim is. Those didn't work out.

Thats also what High-Fidelity is too, and VRChat

I do have the impression that most people want to live isolated, thats what changed about SL since its golden years, its not the platform thats changed, the people and the whole global mentality. Could blame all the smartphones for it, or blame whatever you want, things changed by whatever reason. People are like this in real life too, less social, more sheltered in their social media bubbles.

[MeesterP]

13 hours ago, Fionalein said:

Reality check? That's why mainland is so deserted and folks flock to walled in parcels on private islands, right? ...

Actually Mainland is not deserted at all, there are lots of people living there. I live on Mainland, and I see a lot of green dots around me all the time.  Am I hallucinating?... Maybe  lol 

And there are also lots of people flying or driving inland everyday, not just on the sea sims.  None of that would ever be possible in standalone sims.

Edited June 20, 2018 by MeesterP

[MeesterP]

21 hours ago, ariesviper Barbecue said:

 and we are talking about a few hundred sims.

By  reading the previous posts, one can easily see that the longest bridge would be at most 90 to 100 sims. And that would not even conflict with any existing sims in it's path.

I'm not even keeping into account that individual sims can be easily repositioned, as there are no technical obstacles to that.

As for the costs, many great ideas are being thrown in this forum, which would make the costs sustainable. Many such ideas are all listed in previous posts in this forum.

About the proposed region portal, well... if that can be built, I am all for that. But until it becomes reality, we can't party, I suppose...

Edited June 20, 2018 by MeesterP

[Qie Niangao]

10 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

11 hours ago, Klytyna said:

[...] Personally, I wouldn't WANT to live near a Madlands road, but then, I normally think of Madlands roads as "LL Protected Griefer Prim Access Strips"...

[...] A rather odd perception to have of mainland roads. The griefing you get on them (I don't recall ever seeing any) is much more limited and trivial compared to what you get on private sims with roads that attract the idiots acting out their 1%er fantasies, something I have heard and experienced much more of.

It's more just out-of-date. Years ago, there were griefers who used the Linden protected road, rail, and waterways to spread scripted self-replicating prims because all those parcels allow object-entry. (Some early autonomous vehicles were sometimes churlishly called "griefer prims" too, and vehicles need object-entry unless ridden by an avatar.) Weirdly, most of Zindra's roads and waters do not allow object entry, except a few in Kama City to enable a small scale Yavascript pod loop somebody got special permission to set up at one point.

[Klytyna]

5 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

It's more just out-of-date. Years ago, there were griefers who used the Linden protected road, rail, and waterways to spread scripted self-replicating prims because all those parcels allow object-entry.

10 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

A rather odd perception to have of mainland roads.

I recall one attack, took place in the wee small hours of a Sunday morning SL-Time, when there were hardly any Lindens on duty, and those were probably reading paperbacks or napping (3 am in the morning at the weekend and your supervisor's at home in bed...).

I checked the SLoogle Earth SLattelite Map, to see if the destination I was heading to was crowded or not, and...

The Map appeared to have this sort of bright red cancer growth sprawled across it, following the lines of the road network, across about 20 odd Madlands sims.

Some asshat had rezzed a physical self replicator in a "rez your car here" hardstanding by the Griefer Prim Access Strip, and they had multiplied and tumbled out of the rezzing area, and along the access strips, until they found more rezzable, enterable areas, where they would establish secondary breeding nests, and so on.

By the time a sleepy Linden noticed there was a problem, the sims were un-usable, and un-enterable, even for a Linden, and the only fix was a hard reset/rollback of each region to a state before the griefer prims invaded...
 

[Fionalein]

42 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

It's more just out-of-date. Years ago, there were griefers who used the Linden protected road, rail, and waterways to spread scripted self-replicating prims because all those parcels allow object-entry. (Some early autonomous vehicles were sometimes churlishly called "griefer prims" too, and vehicles need object-entry unless ridden by an avatar.) Weirdly, most of Zindra's roads and waters do not allow object entry, except a few in Kama City to enable a small scale Yavascript pod loop somebody got special permission to set up at one point.

Wait Zindrans cannot use truck trailers? Why would someone want to drive there?

Edited June 20, 2018 by Fionalein

[Klytyna]

10 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

But I don't see any abandoned land there, the yellow for sale parcels littering the map are

We're not discussing abandoned land, but EMPTY land...

MegaFlip Properties, buys a 1024 for $4 US, then they do the whole Marketing Sith "Price Inflation for the Gullible" thing, like so...

Land Cost $4.00

Griefer Access Strip multiplier 1.5 = $6.00

View of Limbo Ocean multiplier 1.5 = $9.00

Not G-Rated multiplier 1.5 = $13.50

Not M-Rated multiplier 1.5 = $20.25

A-Rated Surcharge multiplier 1.5 =  £30.38

"3 Sims by Griefer Access Strip from the abandoned ruins of the Phil Linden Memorial Sports Arena" = $45.57

Profits! = $68.35

Allowance for Lindex Fees, Cashout charges, and mystery sundries = $80.00

So they put the 1024 on the market for sale at $80 US, and then pay $1 US a month tier for it for THREE YEARS, before finally finding some gullible dingbat who's willing to pay that much for a 1024 on Zindra, because they fell for that horse manure about "Land not near water of roads is useless".

$4 to buy, $36 for tier, costs $40, sale price $80, profit margin?

100 %!

There's a reason large parts of the Madlands are owned but empty. The reason is most people do not want to live there, and the current system allows MegaFlip Properties to make money off keeping empty land for years waiting for some fool to allow them selves to be scalped for "non-useless land", based off FirstLife land logic, not SecondLife land logic.

A mountain side plot in RL, with no road is useless because you can't get to it nor can you get materials and labour to it to build on it.

The same plot in SL, is only a TP away from everything you need to make it a perfect home.

It's this RL Logic in an SL environment, that lies at the core of some of the worst ideas in this and other threads, such as building strip mall "communities, with 5-10 over crowded housing by a shipping canal "Flooded  Badlands Mesa Ghetto Housing" sims in a row, with a pair of "Mini Kama City Abandoned Urban Ruins" commercial sims, and a couple or three open water sims, to separate each ghetto strip mall from the next.

Read my earlier post where I pointed out how such a layout with "lots of water and lots of roads" would look on an inter-continental connection strip 1 sim wide and 100 long, to see just how bloody awful that idea is.

...

You want to connect the continents, fine, but do it the normal way, a strip of empty landscaping sims, with the occasional small "landscaping feature" island on them, like the ones in the Blake, where you can stop at a dock, and rest, or re-rez your boat when you want to travel again.
 

[Eowyn Southmoor]

Just did a quick bit of number crunching...

A yacht doing around 14 knots with about a 2 second sim crossing time would take approx 58 minutes to travel across a 90 sim continent waterway. Even a 60 sim waterway would take almost 40 minutes.

Are sailors really  going to make this journey on a regular basis?

Even flying in a plane / helo across you're looking at about 18-19 minutes of just endless water (perhaps with some occasional islands) sims.

I really cant see this retaining any long-term appeal even if it was possible. In this regard, if possible, the region portal idea would seem preferable, to me at least.

[Qie Niangao]

32 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

Wait Zindrans cannot use truck trailers? Why would someone want to drive there?

The reason the no-object-entry setting in Zindra ever came to my attention was that another early Zindran and I had it in mind to set up a self-piloting cruise between the Arapaima "safe hub" and the Port of Kama City in Mosh (then an infoHub), and around some of the other rivers and waterways, back when Zindra was new.

[IceCold Skytower]

1 hour ago, Fionalein said:

Wait Zindrans cannot use truck trailers? Why would someone want to drive there?

Why would anyone want to drive there? Sims run terribly poor there, viewers run terribly poor there, disgusting porn everywhere (Yes a furry says this) and the roads are rather boring straights. Theres no nice sights to see, and no enjoyment driving there in the sea of lag.

[MeesterP]

3 hours ago, Eowyn Southmoor said:

Just did a quick bit of number crunching...

A yacht doing around 14 knots with about a 2 second sim crossing time would take approx 58 minutes to travel across a 90 sim continent waterway. Even a 60 sim waterway would take almost 40 minutes.

Are sailors really  going to make this journey on a regular basis?

Even flying in a plane / helo across you're looking at about 18-19 minutes of just endless water (perhaps with some occasional islands) sims.

I really cant see this retaining any long-term appeal even if it was possible. In this regard, if possible, the region portal idea would seem preferable, to me at least.

I would make that journey, and I know others who would as well...

But if the "bridge" was actually made of inhabited clusters of sims, as it's been illustrated in previous posts, people would actually live in the "bridge" as in any other part of mainland.  That would provide places to visit for pilots/sailors, or they could just depart from there as their home.

I'm not against the hypothetical portal, of course, although it's not as fun to me as actually flying/sailing.

[MeesterP]

4 hours ago, IceCold Skytower said:

Why would anyone want to drive there? Sims run terribly poor there, viewers run terribly poor there, disgusting porn everywhere (Yes a furry says this) and the roads are rather boring straights. Theres no nice sights to see, and no enjoyment driving there in the sea of lag.

IceCold made a pretty accurate description of Zindra, I agree.

In my modest opinion, all that display of obscenity in Second Life is #deplorable and a stain on the image and the otherwise remarkable work of Linden Lab. But I guess I'm just being backwards, so I'll stop here. 

Certainly, if all those sims in Zindra were reclaimed and used to build a useful connecting continent between Satori and Heterocera, that would be much better, in my opinion.  

Edited June 20, 2018 by MeesterP