Open suggestion to the Lab, double mainland terraforming limits

[Linnrenate Crosby]

Since the dawn of SL (or there about) mainland has been restricted to +/- 4 meters of terraforming (with some exceptions).  Isn't it about time  (as we see a lot of people that actually want to make their mainland pretty (and more usable) to double this old limit? I know i'm not the only one that could do so much different with a +/- 8 meter limit and i doubt very much that i'm the only one.

I hope more people agree about this and if we get enough posts maybe people like @Patch Linden and the higher ranking Lindens will take notice, maybe we even will get this change.

Fingers crossed

[Alwin Alcott]

45 minutes ago, Linnrenate Crosby said:

i doubt very much that i'm the only one.

I hope more people agree about this

the first, i think indeed that you're not the only one

the second... not so sure yet, it will also make many , if not more, horrible height differences between parcels

[Chic Aeon]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

As someone who has had many many lots (maybe 25) on mainland over the years and ended up with neighbors who terraformed so that I couldn't use all of my lot  ==== and those who just made things very ugly -- I would definitely vote against this.

 

If you want to raise and lower the ground more than the default look at the very old "color" sims.  They have much higher options. 

[Aethelwine]

it would be nice to be able to lower land a little more.

I have some land I can lower a part of so it is bumpy and sort of level with the water so it ends up with little pockets of water, would be nice to lower a bit more  so it was useful. 

I guess it is a slippery slope though, it might help my parcel but then someone else hopeful it improves theirs ends up the same situation as me and needs another extra metre.  

[kitten Mills]

yes, I can understand the lowering to have more water on your own property. I don't care whether I can terraform 4 or 8 m, because I actually always build over the land because I don't like the ground textures. Beautiful is different. It really is time to give the good old mainland some new textures, it can't be that hard and it would make so many things easier. 

The possibility to have a bit more leeway in terraforming would be then great, of course.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

I'd hate to see people be able to mess stuff up even more than they already do. Until we show we can all terraform without making ugly blunt drop offs, or jagged pointy things, I really don't want everyone to have the ability to make things even messier. 

Now, if there were a way to do it where you have to show you know what you are doing before you get additional privileges... 😛 

[Della Starlight]

The issue with the suggestion is no one will change their terraforming to conform to surrounding areas...so we will still have the "ugly blunt drop offs" (well said, Sylvia).

What about ban lines and these "mountains" that people now use as parcel dividers; not to mention the ongoing use of "privacy screens"; sky boxes and other sky debris less than 100 meters above the ground...perhaps the Lindens can rule against the use of these things like they did in Bellisseria??

[kitten Mills]

Well it's like in real life, there will always be people who don't care about good neighbourliness, but there are also more and more who are committed to beautifying the mainland. i am against applying the rules of Bellisseria to the whole mainland and that won't work either.

[Alwin Alcott]

14 minutes ago, kitten Mills said:

there are also more and more who are committed to beautifying the mainland

think i hear that from  2005 when i joined .. but....it's still a mess there, should be able to see something by now.

[Aethelwine]

5 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

think i hear that from  2005 when i joined .. but....it's still a mess there, should be able to see something by now.

From my perspective mainland has been slowly getting better ever since I joined.

I only go back 10 years, but since then impassable rivers and routes have opened up partly because the use of oppressive security is much rarer. Neighbours are more likely to build complementary styles, the low flying skyboxes and mega screens surrounding parcels more rare.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Aethelwine

[Feorie Frimon]

22 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

From my perspective mainland has been slowly getting better ever since I joined.

I only go back 10 years, but since then impassable rivers and routes have opened up partly because the use of oppressive security is much rarer. Neighbours are more likely to build complementary styles, the low flying skyboxes and mega screens surrounding parcels more rare.

I think so too!!! I think it’s way better than it was a decade ago. Sure, some people are grumpy jerk faces - but most people are super nice.

Example? I got a new neighbor in Emmelia and apparently one of my trees was hanging over on her parcel. She shot me an IM that was worded in a kind way, and I moved them first thing the next day. I actually squished the trees back further to give her more space to build too without my prims messing her up. 

My other two neighbors there (I think they may be Japanese based on land descriptions, etc.) have watched me rebuild this poor parcel about 5 times over the last 6 months, but they have always been super nice - they used to theme their builds so they all blended together too! But that was after build redo #2

I even had a neighbor that had a giant prim with default textures blocking views and he added a texture to try and make it look better when I sent him an IM! (It didn’t really help - but hey - it’s the thought that counts right?)

I add a lot of forests to my builds so I always leave spots open so my neighbors are encouraged to come over and say hey and explore and I see that a lot more these days.

This parcel I’m talking about, I own both sides of a beautiful private open mainland river that goes out to sailable waters - it’s the first time I’ve been hesitant to sell the land because I want to -ensure- the river stays open for all these neighbors nearby because they’ve been so awesome. 

There are a lot of people out there like me - we just don’t do a good job or knowing about each other or collaborating to work together. We just…. Do stuff. LOL

I still have a lot of hope for the mainland and the kind and creative residents there. 

Edited January 10, 2022 by Feorie Frimon
Typos galore

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/8/2022 at 10:32 AM, Linnrenate Crosby said:

Since the dawn of SL (or there about) mainland has been restricted to +/- 4 meters of terraforming (with some exceptions).  Isn't it about time  (as we see a lot of people that actually want to make their mainland pretty (and more usable) to double this old limit? I know i'm not the only one that could do so much different with a +/- 8 meter limit and i doubt very much that i'm the only one.

I hope more people agree about this and if we get enough posts maybe people like @Patch Linden and the higher ranking Lindens will take notice, maybe we even will get this change.

Fingers crossed

I believe it was Simon Linden who said that anything in SL that does not have limits becomes a vector for griefing.

So terror-forming as it was dubbed in the early years or "lake-simming" as it was called in some settings was a real bane of the Mainland, and led the oldbie FIC in particular to battle these evils on sims that then went up or down 40 m.

So it's rare for a sim to have more than 4 or 5, and some have less. And I'm happy with the Lindens leaving it this way, because otherwise, people will terror-form to harass their neighbours, that's certain. These kind Japanese people that Feorie invoked are a true phenomenon, but they aren't replicated across every sim. 

The problem also is that while in theory your terraforming cannot affect any land near it you don't own, in practice, despite the message "You are not allowed..." it does affect it slightly, and if for no other reason, in blocking the view, making it impossible to keep a nice garden or drive out of the lot or whatever. 

I also basically believe in the decency of human beings and most people do behave decently. But that 5-10% can really cause havoc, and the only solution is the rule of law and restraint on the criminality of human nature. Many people want to vex their neighbours, not get along with them IF they have been crossed in some way early on in their relationship. 

Example: I usually try to IM a neighbour to ask them to pull in an encroaching piece of landscape or build rather than returning it and upsetting their build. I have gone years on one sim with an even annoying encroachment so as not to ruin the look of that neighbour, who must have paid a year in advance and hasn't checked in. The other day with a new piece of land, I IM'd the owner of landscaping that spilled on to the abandoned land likely for years, then the land for sale for 6 months. She came right out and instantly moved it away. Great!

Except then she stated firmly, "There, now all the landscaping is behind the parcel line." Well, it wasn't. I could return some of it still. There is an optical illusion that occurs at some parcel lines. You really need to stick up a prim board to work it.

If someone has put no-access on their land, or orbs that teleport people home, I feel all bets are off and I return their huge encroaching rocks in a heartbeat from abandoned land I purchased which they treated as their own for years. I totally get why they did that. Likely I can be found to have done this somewhere. If you put no-access or a TP-home orb, you have already signaled aggressiveness that will only understand force used against it, which is why you need to ban them and return their content.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/8/2022 at 1:11 PM, kitten Mills said:

yes, I can understand the lowering to have more water on your own property. I don't care whether I can terraform 4 or 8 m, because I actually always build over the land because I don't like the ground textures. Beautiful is different. It really is time to give the good old mainland some new textures, it can't be that hard and it would make so many things easier. 

The possibility to have a bit more leeway in terraforming would be then great, of course.

I wish that when you make a cave or tunnel it really hollowed out. This is very hard to do without then having to add mesh terrain forms around it or mesh rocks, or sculpties that work better sometimes. Land doesn't hollow out. You can't leave some of it to "stay put" on top, and hollow it out underneath. I guess it's not possible to code this, practically.

I personally feel there is way too much heavy use of terrains now that take up a lot of land impact and which in fact aren't beautiful in some areas but create an "overstuffed" feel, especially by contrast with neighbours. So if the Lindens developed new textures, that would be great, but they wouldn't put it on existing mainland. They could never enable us to change textures per Mainland parcel as we do on islands. I don't see a solution here, sadly.

[Feorie Frimon]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I wish that when you make a cave or tunnel it really hollowed out. This is very hard to do without then having to add mesh terrain forms around it or mesh rocks, or sculpties that work better sometimes. Land doesn't hollow out. You can't leave some of it to "stay put" on top, and hollow it out underneath. I guess it's not possible to code this, practically.

I personally feel there is way too much heavy use of terrains now that take up a lot of land impact and which in fact aren't beautiful in some areas but create an "overstuffed" feel, especially by contrast with neighbours. So if the Lindens developed new textures, that would be great, but they wouldn't put it on existing mainland. They could never enable us to change textures per Mainland parcel as we do on islands. I don't see a solution here, sadly.

Hollowing would be amazing. I’ve only ever see it in one video game - No Mans Sky. 

[Rufferta]

I just sold my last two parcels in Mocha because I was tired of looking at the results of some of my neighbors'  +/- 40 terraforming. There are other areas of 'the color sims' that still look nice, but the area around Mocha is a mess.

In my opinion, radical terraforming is only useful when you have large blocks of land to work with - when there are smaller parcels there is more risk of ending up with peaks and craters. For small parcels it is also harder to work around the edges without affecting your neighbors.  

I envision the base land in terraforming as a somewhat flexible horizontal sheet whose altitude points can only be moved up or down - you can terraform to make slopes or holes, but the surface can't be moved sideways. Where you see arches and caves they are the result of clever landscape add-ons. I don't know if there are computer programs that could allow you to terraform to make caves or overhangs on virtual land.

 

[Aethelwine]

9 hours ago, Rufferta said:

I just sold my last two parcels in Mocha because I was tired of looking at the results of some of my neighbors'  +/- 40 terraforming. There are other areas of 'the color sims' that still look nice, but the area around Mocha is a mess.

In my opinion, radical terraforming is only useful when you have large blocks of land to work with - when there are smaller parcels there is more risk of ending up with peaks and craters. For small parcels it is also harder to work around the edges without affecting your neighbors.  

I envision the base land in terraforming as a somewhat flexible horizontal sheet whose altitude points can only be moved up or down - you can terraform to make slopes or holes, but the surface can't be moved sideways. Where you see arches and caves they are the result of clever landscape add-ons. I don't know if there are computer programs that could allow you to terraform to make caves or overhangs on virtual land.

 

Mocha has probably the best examples on mainland of why the +40m height allowance was a bad idea. I hope you have found somewhere better to move to. 

[Linnrenate Crosby]

I just had to teleport to see Mocha, i have to agree... that sim look like a egoistic dump where everyone owning there think they are on their own sim not caring at all about the person living next to them.

So yes, maybe my suggestion is a bad one If we at least could have the grids monkeys come and do some terrain changes beyond the terraform limits for us that would be good. I had to do this 2 times since i started to owning mainland, and both times it was just a matter of them lowering the land (on linden owned parcel) so i could connect my driveway to the linden road.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

12 hours ago, Rufferta said:

I don't know if there are computer programs that could allow you to terraform to make caves or overhangs on virtual land.

Several games/platforms have implemented voxels as a solution to generating user editable terrain.  Arguably the most well-known of which would be Minecraft which obviously has a very distinctive blocky aesthetic, but with the addition of a smoothing algorithm you can create some very nice realistic terrain.

 

[NardweBones]

I think we should provide an Algorithm to Auto flatten/align/edit terrain based on the surrounding terrain. I am personally attempting at coming up with a solution for this, and it would be neat for Abondond Land to Automatically do this given some people abondon some pretty nasty looking terrain. An increase in percision would be nice as well..

As for the migrations for such an update im sure it would be a pain (Not sure how the backend code works VS front end and if any changes or what changes may need to be made to eitherr to get higher percision editing to be allowed/possible)

 

++ Id love to see this though

[Mollymews]

6 hours ago, NardweBones said:

I think we should provide an Algorithm to Auto flatten/align/edit terrain based on the surrounding terrain. I am personally attempting at coming up with a solution for this, and it would be neat for Abondond Land to Automatically do this given some people abondon some pretty nasty looking terrain

 

just a FYI

Linden revert mainland parcels to their original state, so that potential buyers of Abandoned Land can see that original state before they buy. The original state is that which conforms to the region's heightmap, which we can see when we use the Revert tool on the Edit Terrain dialog

[NardweBones]

2 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

just a FYI

Linden revert mainland parcels to their original state, so that potential buyers of Abandoned Land can see that original state before they buy. The original state is that which conforms to the region's heightmap, which we can see when we use the Revert tool on the Edit Terrain dialog

Except iv seen many portions of land that appear to not have reverted properly or automatically at least. (Iv seen some land that is very Spiky looking and not in uniform that is Abandon Land) thought didn't know it was intended to reset!

[Mollymews]

4 hours ago, NardweBones said:

Except iv seen many portions of land that appear to not have reverted properly or automatically at least. (Iv seen some land that is very Spiky looking and not in uniform that is Abandon Land) thought didn't know it was intended to reset!

is not automated no. A Land Linden goes round and does it manually inworld, while also joining up small parcels to make larger ones. And yes is true that some region heightmaps are really spiky looking

[Eirynne Sieyes]

On 1/14/2022 at 9:31 PM, NardweBones said:

Except iv seen many portions of land that appear to not have reverted properly or automatically at least. (Iv seen some land that is very Spiky looking and not in uniform that is Abandon Land) thought didn't know it was intended to reset!

Somewhere on these pages. a resident seeking abandoned land was disappointed that the prior owner had left the parcel ground ugly and craggy. One of our beloved moles informed us that the land had been reverted to its original map. Ouch!

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

Unfortunately big terraforming limits doesn't work out too well. Visit some of the old + - 40m sims like Tan and you'll see why.