Unpopular Opinion. Redo the mainland from scratch?

[Sid Nagy]

What about watermelon canons?

[animats]

57 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

How about roads? Roads are by far the most efficient kind of sim filler we have.

Yes. The abandoned interior of Corsica, which is about 10 regions, needs more roads. All the development is near roads.

Unfortunately, the potential value of that area has been destroyed.

World of ugly low-altitude skydomes. And no, you can't just derender them. They have large numbers of objects. This is part of what could be a large, pretty valley.

LL needs to offer isolated regions for people who want isolation. The people who want walls, skydomes, and other stuff unrelated to their neighbors should be able to buy parcels on a non-continent, rather than messing up mainland.

I'd like to see a deal where LL offers a land swap and a free move to an isolated region to anyone who has a walled off or domed area on mainland. Then apply something like the Bellesaria covenant to mainland. It would be a win for the isolated users.

In an isolated region, the viewer isn't trying to get info about neighboring regions, so it goes a bit faster. So this is a win for the walled-off parcel owners.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2021 by animats

[Coffee Pancake]

Sub letting mainland is a blight.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Yes. The abandoned interior of Corsica, which is about 10 regions, needs more roads. All the development is near roads.

Unfortunately, the potential value of that area has been destroyed.

World of ugly low-altitude skydomes. And no, you can't just derender them. They have large numbers of objects. This is part of what could be a large, pretty valley.

That's such a good example of what I'm talking about.

[Feorie Frimon]

3 hours ago, animats said:

World of ugly low-altitude skydomes. And no, you can't just derender them. They have large numbers of objects. This is part of what could be a large, pretty valley.

I wish more people agreed with you on this - I know I do.

Someone was actually telling me the other day that 'you can just derender' anything you don't like...but that's really just not the case. I take the roads around the Atoll all the time looking for Abandoned Land that might have a good view and there are -so many- poorly textured massive sculpt mountains from over  a decade ago right on the water that are so huge. Don't get me wrong - I'm all about doing what you want on the mainland, but jeez.... they just crush the view for an entire sim with huge plots behind them of abandoned land behind them. Derendering the mountain itself won't get rid of all the prims inside of the object. It's so sad. 

[Rabid Cheetah]

5 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

and roads. and bridges. No octopuses, no lollipops, no kittens. 

 

WHY YOU NO LIKE KITTEHS?!?!?

 

[Mollymews]

8 hours ago, animats said:

LL needs to offer isolated regions for people who want isolation.

Linden do this indirectly thru the private estate programme

can either get a whole region from Linden, or rent a parcel from an estate. AnsheX for example provides small parcels down to 144m for this purpose

[Rufferta]

Result of unofficial survey of abandoned land. Spent about an hour* jumping from one continent to another looking for abandoned land and trying to figure out if there was a common denominator. I checked at least one plot on each Mainland Continent - there were none on Zindra that I could find.

Size of abandoned parcels - Parcels were mostly large - 9072 to 65536. Some were odd-shaped, but most were more-or-less regular-shaped.

Date of abandonment: Many of them state abandonment dates in 2021. I found one abandoned in 2017.

Road access: Four.

View: Two.

Water access: None

Terrain: One smooth light green sand, two rock, one snow, one 'rumpled' green, rest relatively smooth green. (I took a quick glance at the rock in Corsica and there seemed to be more but I didn't want to spend more time - perhaps some Continents have more abandons than others?)

Lag - two had minor lag.

All had sky junk, from 200 meters on up.

Most had at least one ugly neighbor with large black or full-bright build or ban lines.  

I had not expected that so many would be on roads. I also wasn't expecting the fact that there were large parcels of Maintenance Land that seem to have been set aside since 2004. One had a 'forest' of system trees. 

I don't know what conclusion to make. It bothered me that many of the largest parcels seem to have been abandoned fairly recently - but I'm also wondering if those dates were changed somehow when the maps were fixed. Definitely having ugly neighbors and skyjunk visible were factors, but there are large stretches of Mainland with the same blight that have not been abandoned. 

Wonder if Linden Lab could do 'exit interviews' to ask people why they are leaving. 

*So you know this is an in-depth survey.

 

 

[Marianne Little]

11 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

If every sim attracts only one griefer volunteer during the volunteer action (and that would be an amazing low number) harm is higher than the gain.

Oh, that can be avoided by only allowing those with payment info, and who has spent a few years and money in SL. I do not dare to think about all the money I have spent on my hobby, and if I am shut out of SL I have lost everything.

[animats]

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

Linden do this indirectly thru the private estate programme

But not directly. And if you're renting out a stack of skydomes, you don't want another landlord upstream of you.

Corsica is an interesting case. By buying only part of a region, building a skydome stack, and making the domes so ugly at ground level that nobody will buy anything else in the region, the skydome operator gets the compute power of a full region at a fraction of the cost.

Edited June 19, 2021 by animats

[Candide LeMay]

3 hours ago, Rufferta said:

I don't know what conclusion to make. It bothered me that many of the largest parcels seem to have been abandoned fairly recently - but I'm also wondering if those dates were changed somehow when the maps were fixed. Definitely having ugly neighbors and skyjunk visible were factors, but there are large stretches of Mainland with the same blight that have not been abandoned.

The dates in the land description change when the parcel is subdivided, i.e. when a chunk goes to land auction or someone requests it via a ticket.

[ChinRey]

17 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

If LL own the entire region, they can reparcel it up and make the land "double prim" by putting an empty Linden owned border around parcels and blocking subdivision.

Here's a slight variation on this: Change an empty mainland region to homestead, section off slightly less than a quarter of it for sale with the same prim quota as full regions (or slightly less than an eight with "double prims") and use the leftover prims to fill the rest with a good surround/buffer landscape.

I think this is what I would have done if I was Linden Lab.

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, Rufferta said:

One had a 'forest' of system trees.

There are at least two such regions, one with spruces and one with palms. Those are not "fillers" in any way though, they were made as showoff features. Back in those days being able to have such a lavish amount of plants at all in a simulation was spectacular enough in itself and possibly even a unique feature for SL.

That brings me to a second reply to one of Ingrid Ingersoll's post:

14 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I feel like if they ever decide to work on the mainland again, they need to stop adding content unless it's just rocks, trees an plants.

I said something about it in my first post on the thread but maybe I should elaborate a bit on it. Even today, to use plants on a scale like that you'd either have to save on the number of assets with copy-and-paste building the way it's done in those forests and on Bellisseria or use vegetation far more efficient than what any currently active SL content creator can deliver. I suppose copy-and-paste vegetation ad nauseam is better than large stretches of emptiness but it's still rather dull and I have to point out that even the relatively sparse and monotonous vegetation of Bellisseria is rather laggy.

Edited June 19, 2021 by ChinRey

[Rufferta]

10 hours ago, ChinRey said:

 

I said something about it in my first post on the thread but maybe I should elaborate a bit on it. Even today, to use plants on a scale like that you'd either have to save on the number of assets with copy-and-paste building the way it's done in those forests and on Bellisseria or use vegetation far more efficient than what any currently active SL content creator can deliver. I suppose copy-and-paste vegetation ad nauseam is better than large stretches of emptiness but it's still rather dull and I have to point out that even the relatively sparse and monotonous vegetation of Bellisseria is rather laggy.

I went and looked at two different Belli trees and yes, they were made of from 25 to 30 prims and had high download rates. In contrast, I'm looking at Cypress Tree 1 from the Library and it has 1 prim land impact and download weight of 0.1. * 

Perhaps there could be some compromise. 

I believe that outside plants are as important to a home as the furniture inside. Why have a 'Homes & Gardens' interior when your outside looks like the landscaper hasn't shown up yet?

*Using it as background filler and also because it matches the trees next door.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Rufferta

[ChinRey]

1 minute ago, Rufferta said:

I went and looked at two different Belli trees and yes, they were made of from 25 to 30 prims and had high download rates. In contrast, I'm looking at Cypress Tree 1 from the Library and it has 1 prim land impact and download weight of 0.1. * 

Perhaps there could be some compromise.

Well, here is a comparasion between a Belli tree and one made by a skilled mesh tree maker, I can't mention their name for modesty reasons:

https://opqmesh.blogspot.com/2020/03/whats-so-special-about-opq-meshes.html

You can click on the image to scale it up.

Pretty much the same visual quality I'd say but only a fraction of the load both on server and client. Even a tree like that one is a bit too heavy to be used in the quantities we're talking about here but once we start talking forests rather than individual trees, there are quite a few extra techniques we can use to lower the load further.

Take a look at this:

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/462249-what-second-life-could-have-been

16 SL size regions of forest using 2% of the server resources assigned to a full region and with load time and lag comparable to an empty sandbox. Those trees are a bit too simple but double the load and it's still very very low - way below anything others are making and selling for SL.

But this is all about what Second Life could have been. There is no market for optimized content in Second Life and Linden Lab certainly isn't interested i it. So, as Ingrid Ingersoll said in the first post in the thread, it's not going to happem.

[Polenth Yue]

Mainland provides a space for projects that don't fit anywhere else, which isn't a benefit I want to see removed. Whenever this comes up, people start talking about things that many people might agree on, like updating the road builds. It quickly moves on to things an individual person doesn't like, regardless of whether other people do or not. Previous examples include getting rid of fantasy builds, shops are a blight on the landscape and no more general regions. I mention those three because I have a fantasy shop on a general region and I'd be the first to be kicked out under a lot of the rules I've seen people suggest.

What I did see improving things the most in recent times was simply giving premium account members more tier. Suddenly more abandoned land was bought up by existing residents and rolled into existing builds. An additional tier increase that's a bit above what's needed for a Linden Home would encourage more people to get a little space on the mainland. If they ever do premium plus, it'd also make sense for that level to have even more tier.

You're never going to stop people building things you find ugly unless the rules get very restrictive. What you can do is at least make sure the land is being actively used.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

4 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

You're never going to stop people building things you find ugly unless the rules get very restrictive. What you can do is at least make sure the land is being actively used.

We're not talking about "getting rid of the mainland" and removing resident built stuff. 

We're talking about re-terraforming the mainland to add more water and roads so that it gets used as opposed to sitting empty. The only time I mentioned getting rid of anything was referring to some of the old ldpw content from ten years ago that wasn't great then and isn't great now. 

By reterraforming, reparceling, adding road's bridges and green space, LL would be adding some marketable features to empty parts of the mainland that it doesn't have now. 

I also suggested that scrapping it completely and starting from scratch which is pretty drastic. 

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

Mainland provides a space for projects that don't fit anywhere else, which isn't a benefit I want to see removed.

I absolutely agree that there should not be more restrictions than the inevitable legal and technical ones for what can be built in SL. But if it's something that doesn't fit anywhere else, wouldn't it make more sense to place it on an island sim? Alternatively, how about having one "free" continent, perhaps with even fewer restrictions than mainland has now?

There certainly is a need for that kind of regions and that need should be filfilled. But there is no demand for several thousand of them. If there was, mainland wouldn't have been as empty as it is.

[animats]

My suggestions for mainland:

Mole work

• Roads through some of the big empty areas, such as Corsica's interior.
• Finish unfinished land edges in a few places, such as southeast Zindra.
• A few more water sims so that the continents, now connected, allow sailing.
• Fix road potholes where less advanced vehicles fall through. A few bridges, and the standard Zindra road corner and road, need overlapping prims extending into the next region.
• Fix excessive break angles on a few roads and bridges, mostly in Heterocera.
• Fix the two broken bridges (one on Sansara, one in Satori) where you're supposed to jump at high speed. Many vehicles can't make that  jump.
• Find all ban lines that touch Linden water or roads, and put up can buoys or traffic cones to mark them.
• Mark all Linden rez zones, using the standard signs and the Bellessaria road and water markers.
• Buoys at region corners at the outer limits of sailable water, like Bellessaria has.
• Fix the derailed trams in Hyperion.
• Fix daytime being too dark by default. (Ambient lighting level needs a boost.)

New user related

• Overhaul new user areas, getting advice from Firestorm, New Residents, and Caledon Oxbridge.
• Take a look at Cocoon, the cyberpunk roleplay sim, for how they ease new users into the experience. Cocoon used to just have a huge info dump on new users, but now they have signboards, NPCs, and things to do to teach you their complicated roleplay.
• Maybe use Hyperion on the Sharp Continent as a large new user welcome city. It's not being used much since the Teen Grid shut down. Add explanatory stuff to discover. Not all in one place. Like, have a free restaurant that serves meals, with a clear explanation of how to use it. Have a vehicle rezzer, with an explanation of how to drive.
• Areas near new user entry points need to be well curated. Not just the Linden owned part. New user entry points should have businesses near them, well-chosen ones. Some are very bad. Social Island 10 and the Ungren Safe Hub are particularly bad.

Policy

• Bellessaria covenant rules on allowed altitudes for skyboxes.
• Bellessaria covenant rules on security orbs.
• Offer a free land swap and move to an isolated Linden owned sim for anyone who doesn't like that.

[Feorie Frimon]

👆- Animats for President, folks! 
 

These are all fabulous ideas. 

[ChinRey]

51 minutes ago, Feorie Frimon said:

👆- Animats for President, folks!

We don't have a president in SL, we have a governor.

[Love Zhaoying]

57 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

We don't have a president in SL, we have a governor.

Governor Linden for President! * waving sign *

[Always Incognito]

 

 

On 6/20/2021 at 6:51 AM, animats said:

My suggestions for mainland:

Mole work

• Roads through some of the big empty areas, such as Corsica's interior.
• Finish unfinished land edges in a few places, such as southeast Zindra.
• A few more water sims so that the continents, now connected, allow sailing.
• Fix road potholes where less advanced vehicles fall through. A few bridges, and the standard Zindra road corner and road, need overlapping prims extending into the next region.
• Fix excessive break angles on a few roads and bridges, mostly in Heterocera.
• Fix the two broken bridges (one on Sansara, one in Satori) where you're supposed to jump at high speed. Many vehicles can't make that  jump.
• Find all ban lines that touch Linden water or roads, and put up can buoys or traffic cones to mark them.
• Mark all Linden rez zones, using the standard signs and the Bellessaria road and water markers.
• Buoys at region corners at the outer limits of sailable water, like Bellessaria has.
• Fix the derailed trams in Hyperion.
• Fix daytime being too dark by default. (Ambient lighting level needs a boost.)

New user related

• Overhaul new user areas, getting advice from Firestorm, New Residents, and Caledon Oxbridge.
• Take a look at Cocoon, the cyberpunk roleplay sim, for how they ease new users into the experience. Cocoon used to just have a huge info dump on new users, but now they have signboards, NPCs, and things to do to teach you their complicated roleplay.
• Maybe use Hyperion on the Sharp Continent as a large new user welcome city. It's not being used much since the Teen Grid shut down. Add explanatory stuff to discover. Not all in one place. Like, have a free restaurant that serves meals, with a clear explanation of how to use it. Have a vehicle rezzer, with an explanation of how to drive.
• Areas near new user entry points need to be well curated. Not just the Linden owned part. New user entry points should have businesses near them, well-chosen ones. Some are very bad. Social Island 10 and the Ungren Safe Hub are particularly bad.

Policy

• Bellessaria covenant rules on allowed altitudes for skyboxes.
• Bellessaria covenant rules on security orbs.
• Offer a free land swap and move to an isolated Linden owned sim for anyone who doesn't like that.

This. And remove Ban lines for good. I HATE THEM! 🧐

Edited June 21, 2021 by Always Incognito
-

[Rabid Cheetah]

You won't get consensus on any of this.  For example, banning ban lines.  As a parcel owner, my lands have always been open.  I've never used ban lines.  I've never used orbs.  But as an explorer, I'd much prefer ban lines, which I can turn off showing up in pictures or whatever, to security devices that instantly tp you halfway across the grid to your home three continents away from where you were exploring.  Too many times have I seen something cool, like a carousel, checked the About Land - Access tab to see if it's set to allow access to everyone, only to be told I have one whole second to go to hell or else just because my avi crossed a parcel boundary by *gasp!* a whole millimeter.  Ergo, I will never support a ban on ban lines.  Sure, they're ugly as can be, but viewing them can be toggled off.  Ban security orbs, ban those darn objects that put up visible "PARCEL BOUNDARY" markers, or change the TOS to force folks to have open lands.  But if you're gonna allow folks to close off their parcels (and you damn well should offer such an option for those who want privacy), keep it done by the user interface/About Land - Access tab and get rid off the other garbage.

So.  That's just one person's opinion on just one thing.  And my point is not to start a side discussion about "blah I hate ban lines" versus "blah I hate orbs".  That's been done ad infinitum ad nauseum.  My point is that you're never going to get everyone to agree on everything.  @Polenth Yue is right:  "You're never going to stop people building things you find ugly unless the rules get very restrictive." [emphasis added]  Excessive rules are hardly in the spirit of a community celebrating 18 years of unrestricted creativity.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Rabid Cheetah
me hate typ0s

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

3 hours ago, Rabid Cheetah said:

@Polenth Yue is right:  "You're never going to stop people building things you find ugly unless the rules get very restrictive." [emphasis added]  Excessive rules are hardly in the spirit of a community celebrating 18 years of unrestricted creativity.

Again, the thread isn't about content, it's about making the empty featureless land more appealing so that huge areas aren't sitting empty. This would include reducing tier, adding to prim limits, teraforming, water, infrastructure. I know it's always tempting to advocate for creativity because that's an awesome and noble thing to do on the forums but no one is arguing against creativity. 

Edited June 22, 2021 by Ingrid Ingersoll