Do you think the SL world is a flat plane or a round planet?

[Raspberry Crystal]

I think that not being able to travel over the borders is a political decision actually enforced by Ebbe's magical cat.

If we were able to dig a shaft straight down we would find world of warcraft players on the opposite side of a somewhat elastic sphere

[Stephanie Misfit]

I love this question! I've always thought of it as flat, like the map view, seriously never gave a moment's thought to the alternative........ doh.

[Odaks]

20 hours ago, ChinRey said:

It's a rectified 5-orthoplex.

Does that come with batteries?

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

I think SL is flat and square. The SL planetary system is neither geocentric, nor heliocentric, but has a barycenter instead, somewhere between the sun, and at a distance of ½√2 Astronomical Units above the SL surface. Either the SL grid orbits this barycenter (tidally locked) once every 4 hours, or the sun, the moon and the stars do--or both--resulting in an unusual 3:1 hour day/night cycle. At least, that's what I can come up with, based on my own, in-world astronomical observations. Note that the grid and the apparent sun's orbit aren't drawn to scale here. Future study of the sun's parallax based on angular measurements of the sun's azimuthal position on either side of a Region may shed further light on it's distance and diameter.

Edited March 14, 2020 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

10 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

... and probably on fire too.

well of course. Maddy lives here.

[Amina Sopwith]

10 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Viewer dev here. SL is flat. Totally, mathematically flat.

If you start trying to pretend it's spherical the size of the world, apparent gravity and differing day/night cycle would make us all dead. Totally, mathematically dead ... and probably on fire too.

MADDY!

ETA: Bitsy beat me to it!

Edited March 14, 2020 by Amina Sopwith

[Lindal Kidd]

I love the creativity shown in this thread!

Especially the Donut SL (does it have Bavarian Cream filling?)

As well as the odd and unbalanced night/day cycle, the SL world does present some interesting anomalies.  One that has always amused and frustrated me is the two-dimensional nature of land.  Despite appearances, land has no depth.  You cannot dig down into it.  It's more like a bedsheet...you can create wrinkles in it by terraforming, but there's no "underground" that you can excavate out and create a tunnel or a cave.  In fact, it's really only half-there; the surface texture is applied to only one side, and if you look at land from underneath, there's nothing there at all!

[Conifer Dada]

I like to think that the SL grid is a small part of the surface of a round planet.  So although the planet is round, the grid is such a small part of it that it's almost flat but ever so slightly convex although we don't notice that from ground level. A bit like Earth, really, except we don't know anything about the geography of the rest of the planet beyond the grid.  Presumably the various OpenSim grids are somewhere on this imaginary planet too.

Edited March 14, 2020 by Conifer Dada

[Alwin Alcott]

21 hours ago, BelindaN said:

It's a Borg Cube.

And we have all been assimilated.

/me wonders who's the queen  .. ( if needed i can come with some suggestions :)  )

Edited March 14, 2020 by Alwin Alcott

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Odaks said:

Does that come with batteries?

No but it does add an extra dimension to the SL experience.

[Madelaine McMasters]

I don't think of the SL world as having a shape at all. I've flown in real airplanes, and once flew them myself. It's difficult to tell if the horizon is curved, even at airliner altitudes, because of optical distortions in the passenger windows, and the limited field of view. Even from the cockpit it's not easy to be sure. However, one thing that's always clear is that the horizon is always out there, and gives every impression that things beyond it exist, even though they are not yet in view.

SL feels quite different. It gives the impression (because it's true) that most of it is in hiding, and only snaps to attention when there's someone there to see it. It gives new meaning to the "if a tree falls in a forest..." idea if there isn't even a forest. Since childhood, I've entertained the fantasy that elevators are vehicles of deception. We get the impression that they're moving us from floor to floor within buildings, but they're actually shielding us from the reality that the universe vanishes when the doors close and rearranges itself to look like the expected destination just before the doors open. Unlike SL, which can't get its act together fast enough to escape detection, RL pulls it off flawlessly.

When flying, as I watch the horizon lay itself out in fits and starts as I advance on it, I sometimes think of a train laying its own tracks, and pulling them up behind...

https://cdn8.dissolve.com/p/D245_1_046/D245_1_046_detail.mp4

The SL universe extends only to the draw distance, and is centered on me.

Edited March 14, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Lindal Kidd]

10 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

...The SL universe extends only to the draw distance, and is centered on me.

Clear evidence in favor of solipsism!

[Madelaine McMasters]

3 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Clear evidence in favor of solipsism!

Yeah, but my solipsism has you being a nihilist.

\o/

Edited March 14, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Lindal Kidd]

g'wan, you figment you!

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

Or was that just a region restart?

[Amina Sopwith]

20 minutes ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

Or was that just a region restart?

It was and is my favourite episode ever, and I don't think it's ever going to be bettered.

Don't blink.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

Cats would had a field day.....

[Lyssa Greymoon]

51 minutes ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

Or was that just a region restart?

 

[Selene Gregoire]

Empyrion: Galactic Survival is a 3D open world, space survival adventure in which you can fly across space and land on planets built on Unity. The planets are spherical and vary in size and environment. They've fairly recently released the galaxy so now you are no longer limited to just the one solar system. Wish I could still play because I loved being able to explore and build on the different planets.

https://www.youtube.com/user/EmpyrionGame/videos

The point is it can be done and it doesn't have to be Unity. LL could create a new SL (2.0 since Sansar was not) and instead of regions we could have planets to chose to live on. There are Empyrion servers that actually sell planets to players (Eleon doesn't have a problem with it) so it wouldn't be an issue for LL to sell planets instead of regions. Just think, if you have the money, you could own a whole solar system! 

Edited March 14, 2020 by Selene Gregoire

[Madelaine McMasters]

Okay, now that we're discussing time...

I've binged all but the last two episodes of the series' four year run. Unless they really screw something up, I feel fairly certain this will become my favorite television series of all time. I admit I don't watch a lot of TV, but I've seen some wonderful storytelling over the years. Nothing before has affected me like "The Good Place".

[BelindaN]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Okay, now that we're discussing time... I've binged all but the last two episodes of the series' four year run. Unless they really screw something up, I feel fairly certain this will become my favorite television series of all time. I admit I don't watch a lot of TV, but I've seen some wonderful storytelling over the years. Nothing before has affected me like "The Good Place".

Any chance of a short synopsis?

[Madelaine McMasters]

3 minutes ago, BelindaN said:

Any chance of a short synopsis?

The show is a hilarious, absurd, deeply philosophical, complex, endlessly surprising, and relentlessly optimistic look at the afterlife. It handles ethics and morality head on, citing works of philosophers from Socrates to T. M. Scanlon. The show's creators are on a voyage of discovery and it really feels like they want us to learn along with them. One of the Chapters (episodes) features Scanlon's moral theory of "contractualism" and is named after his book (now on my reading list) "What We Owe To Each Other". I can't imagine a better salve for the aches of current events than this show.

Dad and I sometimes had philosophical discussions while sitting together on the beach, and we sometimes have them here in the forums, in our messy way. It's wonderful to see such discussions done with wit and heart on TV.

I have read only one book in my life (The Book Thief) that produced characters I truly missed upon closing the cover. It was both a matter of losing characters I'd grown to care for, and of losing the care they'd shown for each other. I'm now just 90 minutes from the end of The Good Place, and I truly dread the impending sense of loss.

Whether it's a Second Life, or an afterlife, The Good Place advocates for our ability to improve, and has reinvigorated my hope for all of us.

How's that?

[Odaks]

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

No but it does add an extra dimension to the SL experience.

Excellent! I'll take 2, please...

 

[Lindal Kidd]

17 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

...I have read only one book in my life (The Book Thief) that produced characters I truly missed upon closing the cover. It was both a matter of losing characters I'd grown to care for, and of losing the care they'd shown for each other. I'm now just 90 minutes from the end of The Good Place, and I truly dread the impending sense of loss.

Only ONE?  I have so many.  It's why I go back and re-read favorite books, even though I know how it's going to come out.  It's also why I love certain long-running series.  by the twentieth book, I pretty much know the outlines of what's going to happen, but I don't care, because I get to be with my old friends again.

Now I'm going to have to put both The Book Thief and The Good Place on my to-do list.

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Only ONE?  I have so many.  It's why I go back and re-read favorite books, even though I know how it's going to come out.  It's also why I love certain long-running series.  by the twentieth book, I pretty much know the outlines of what's going to happen, but I don't care, because I get to be with my old friends again.

Now I'm going to have to put both The Book Thief and The Good Place on my to-do list.

I don't read much fiction, so that's the primary reason I recall only one book.

I was profoundly affected by Richard Feynman's passing in "No Ordinary Genius", but he was already gone and I'd been listening to audio and video recordings of him for years. The Book Thief introduced me to new characters. I was not ready to let them go by the end of the book. It was the same for The Good Life, which I've now finished. The finale was beautifully done and I will truly miss the characters.

Also, as I get older, I think it's becoming easier for good stories to affect me. Were I to reread some of my old favorites, I might now shed a tear at the end. Like the characters in The Good Place, the growing realization that my time is finite amplifies the importance of the connections I make, and the effect I have, here and now.

I might rewatch the show in the future. It was so densely packed with thoughtful (and very funny) touches that I'm sure I missed a lot. I won't do that for some time, though. The journey I just took feels important, and I don't want to diminish it.