Geography of Zindra

[4lice Cerise]

So I went looking around for a forum topic about Zindra geography, maps, travel routes, and/or history and I didn’t find anything suitable, so here it is. As a disclaimer I don’t own land in Zindra nor ever did, and I don’t particularly like it for travel and exploration. (Too much spam and poor building, more than Mainland usual, and the roads in Kama City were terribly designed!)

[4lice Cerise]

Ursula: the hidden parts of never-built Zindra

@SarahKB7 Koskinen suggested that I create a map to illustrate this, so here it goes:

There are 131 “ghost regions” around Zindra’s southwestern and eastern coasts. These cannot be visited and inworld they are fully indistinguishable from actual grid voids on the map, but some web based grid maps, incl. LL’s official and https://maps.eddyofarrel.com/ (my fav, thanks @Eddy Ofarrel!), allow to see their names.

Unlike the “ghost regions” that make up the lost Gaetas, these are all individually named — mostly from "Ursula 15" to "Ursula 528", a naming scheme that refers to Zindra’s early planned name and gives sequential region numbers (from west to east, north to south): There are 14 actual regions east of Ursula 15, so it can be presumed that Nelsonia was once Ursula 14 and so on.

These 131 “ghost regions” are of roughly three types:

1. (23: marked in blue) Coastal rims, either isolated regions or in single-region corridors, likely meant to be protected land for beach and sailing lanes, much like those actually created (Zindra regions such as Harkey, Faroumier, or the whole North Shore “estate”, from Pedrow to Fishergate).
2. (88: marked in white) A large area filling up the southeast quadrant. It could have been planned as open water or cays (like in the area southwest of this) or solid continent (like at north) or any combination there of — depending on how the coastline glimpsable from Zoxen to Marafi was meant to be.
3. (19: marked in pink) The missing area within the Trinoo-Xegul-Lierminster triangle. This was likely meant to be island/coastal, althought it’s not clear whether the incomplete island areas on Ixunda, Starcroft, Lierminster, and Leuran-Popke were meant to be one single island or several.
4. (1: marked in gray "TX") "TestCrossing": one region immediately north of Vortex Adult Sandbox — apparently unrelated to the Ursula project.

Interestingly, it seems that these areas were planned and put on hold before northern expansions of Zindra were built, namely the large Horizons “estate” (60 regions arranged as an “andean cross”), the 5 adult sandbox regions  (2×2 from Sandbox Goyer, plus Vortex Adult Sandbox — the only unconnected region anywhere near Zindra, by the way), and the Arapaima Safe Hub, on the tip of a three region spur jutting off the mostly square general Zindra area.

@Patch Linden, any plans for these missing areas?

[Rowan Amore]

It would be nice if they moved Horizons closer to mainland.

[animats]

53 minutes ago, 4lice Cerise said:

@Patch Linden, any plans for these missing areas?

Good question.

I'd really like to see the southeast corner filled more. It looks awful. There are land edges with roads that just end in midair.  U2-81, U2-82,  U2-83, and U2-84, especially.

[Lucia Nightfire]

6 hours ago, animats said:

Good question.

I'd really like to see the southeast corner filled more. It looks awful. There are land edges with roads that just end in midair.  U2-81, U2-82,  U2-83, and U2-84, especially.

It would have less abandoned land than any other continent, too.

[Kelsey Bluestar]

 

I can say Zindra is unique but not valuable as it should be. There are so much parcels for sale and LL is adding more regions if those numbers are low and insufficient. Well, it doesnt seem aesthetic but LL has no reason to add missing part of Zindra. I have got another suggestion for them: Horizons 2. Two years ago 1024m parcel of Horizon price was around 20k-30k and it increased after covid pandemic. People wanted to buy a parcel that side of on the continent as spending their time in home, conditions has changed and they are not logging in but prices are same. So trading is not healthy for Horizons right now and new Horizons gonna solve this problem.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 5/20/2021 at 7:51 PM, 4lice Cerise said:

So I went looking around for a forum topic about Zindra geography, maps, travel routes, and/or history and I didn’t find anything suitable, so here it is. As a disclaimer I don’t own land in Zindra nor ever did, and I don’t particularly like it for travel and exploration. (Too much spam and poor building, more than Mainland usual, and the roads in Kama City were terribly designed!)

Interesting. I didn't realize they were there, but not there.

I personally don't need the Lindens to finish continents or add to continents or link continents.

There's enough there already.

They need to fix search.

[4lice Cerise]

Southern bypass finally paved!

Last week, on the 21st, animats Resident announced in the group chat of Drivers of SL (secondlife:///app/group/402f2af0-fbe2-8b0c-d394-06532bc83437/about) that the Southern Bypass had been finally paved, no longer being just an empty corridor made of LL-owned parcels («Protected Land, Not For Sale») stretching along the eastern edge of regions Leening and Old Hen.

(A few months earlier in that very same group chat there was light discussion and idle musing on the possibility of paving that right-of-way with prims encroached from adjoining percels, many of which were for sale at the time.)

The ends of this old/new road are:

• http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Leening/249/231/65
• http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Tariah/247/246/70

There is a private rezz zone at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Old Foxwood/205/5/65, near the northern end of the road.

This bypass, of course, exists to uniquely offer a connection between the Zindran Central Highway and the Southwestern Bypass — which were planned to naturally join in a road fork further east/southeast, in the never built region secondlife://Ursula%20281/146/249

[animats]

Yes. It's a nice drive, too. You can start in Kama City, in northwest Zindra, and cover about half the continent.At last, a road connection between north and south Zindra.

North of the river is Kama City, which is urban, and then things open out as you reach the Southern Bypass and go diagonally southeast.

The northeast part of Zindra has a good road system and some nice large builds you can visit. The northwest part, west of Kama City, is water-oriented, with boat slips, yachts, and a ocean large enough for sailing. You can go around the northwest edge in a boat and all along the north coast. You can even get to Horizons that way.

You'll need a rez zone map. None of the public rez zones in Zindra are marked.