What is the allure of owning Mainland vs Private?

[Jennifer Boyle]

I have lived at the same place in Danim in Zindra since it opened in 2009. The front of my house and one side face Linden roads, and the back faces Linden water. There is little lag. I enjoy having random visitors. I think of private islands as similar to gated communities IRL---cut off from the larger community and having less than a full experience. In my case the size of the accessible Linden water is small; I wish it connected to larger bodies of water. I do occasionally have a disagreeable visitor, but not many. The ban list for my land contains less than 100 names.

The main disadvantage that I experience with mainland is the clutter in the sky that is ugly if I am at the right height with the right draw distance. I wish it were technically impossible to build something unconnected to the ground below 2,000 m.

[Leora Greenwood]

I have lived all over the 23 regions in the Gulls Wing Sailing Community http://www.gullswing.com/rentals.php  since around 2011 and have loved every area there.  You can rent lots, houses, boat slips and even a whole region if you like.  I currently rent a half region there and have for quite a while.  Great people, a great blues club, another music venue, weekly fizz races and many annual events.

[Cali Souther]

1 hour ago, Leora Greenwood said:

I have lived all over the 23 regions in the Gulls Wing Sailing Community 

That's where I know you from!!!   Your name was SO familiar ... haha ..      I used to hang out @ Gulls Wing a LOT.    I don't get over there too often these days.   It is a very nice place!

[Leora Greenwood]

Hi, there!  It sure is and I love that Toby's Juke Joint http://www.gullswing.com/tobysmusic.php  is back in full swing!

[Lewis Luminos]

7 hours ago, Exocet Kungler said:

Everyones reply has been amazingly helpful thus far, and I appreciate everyone whom has weighed in on the topic. You all have me debating now far more than I ever was before 😋 haha. Let me ask you professionals this. I have a great list of private sims that offers all the nice things, water view, "affluent looking", privacy, basically ticking all the bells.

 

Water view is a nonsense selling point. Basically everywhere in SL is "water view" because that's all that you see beyond your own draw distance. A parcel that is adjacent to protected (i.e. Linden-owned) water is much more desirable, because then you can actually sail out of it. Be wary of "water-land" - parcels that are wholly underwater but not adjacent to any Linden-owned channels. They may look sailable but they are locked-in by the neighbours so they are not.

Check the other parcels on the same region. A lot of abandoned space might be a good thing at least in the short term, because abandoned land doesn't have ugly crap built on it, and it also gives you an easy way to expand later (you can submit a support ticket to buy abandoned land and the Lindens will carve out exactly the size and shape of parcel that you want, and sell it to you for L$1 per square metre). Long term though - its likely to get auctioned off or bought by others and you never know what will be built next.

Look for parcels with clubs on them or lots of breedables and avoid regions where these are present.  Breedables in particular are lag-factories. A club might not necessarily be an issue if they have few events whilst you are there.

Raise your draw distance and see what horrors get revealed.

Scout out the sky above the parcel. Are there dozens of stacked skyboxes as neighbours?These are more likely to be on another region so they won't be a great source of lag but they are an eyesore if you are planning to build a skybox.

Nicely landscaped parcels as neighbours are not easy to find but when you do, its a big plus because when the neighbours parcels look nice, everyone else tends to build nice as well. New sheep follow the flock.

Don't rule out parcels that are not flat squares of grass. A steep slope is a challenge to build on and rock terrain isn't as pretty as grass, but such land is often much cheaper than flat square grassland. 

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

3 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:

Don't rule out parcels that are not flat squares of grass. A steep slope is a challenge to build on and rock terrain isn't as pretty as grass, but such land is often much cheaper than flat square grassland.

As a bonus for putting your house on a steep slope, you get to have a large basement.

[Lindal Kidd]

12 hours ago, Cinos Field said:

And to illustrate how tastes and needs differ, this is a negative for me - as you go too high up, your attachments start vibrating, which I find absolutely infuriating even if it's barely noticeable. Ideally I want my skybox *below* 1000 meters since I adjust and modify stuff a lot, all the time.

I've never experienced this "vibration" problem you describe. You actually want your skybox over 1,000m, because ground textures are not rendered by the viewer above that height. This increases your FPS performance amazingly. I get 3X the FPS in my skybox than I get at ground level.

[Polenth Yue]

Another mainland thing is that unless you're in a really popular mainland area, you have more options for changing parcel size. I used to own a lot more of the land in the region I'm in, but finances changed, so I downsized to my included tier level for premium. Then as things improved, I got a bit more land again. It means there's flexibility to shift around parcel size and shape without needing to move and change landmarks.

[Ziggy Starsmith]

Mainland= To me IS what SL is all about. Walk out your front door and walk or whatever for "miles" especially on roads and constantly changing horizons, unexpected horrors and beauty and characters you may meet and never forget. I found living on a private sim unbearably stiffling and boring and at first I loved old, early-days Bellisseria with the undeveloped land to explore and the characters like the cats and Slenderman etc and Lindens and Moles everywhere but now it is turned into endless sameness and emptyness.

I even enjoy the occasional griefer. They disrupt and hassle but if looked at with humour and understanding that it is temporary and they move on. I LOVE mainland.

Sometimes you come across a breath taking new build that had not been there the day before. Mainland is more for imaginative people I think. The history of mainland alone is wonderfull.

[Lewis Luminos]

5 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I've never experienced this "vibration" problem you describe. You actually want your skybox over 1,000m, because ground textures are not rendered by the viewer above that height. This increases your FPS performance amazingly. I get 3X the FPS in my skybox than I get at ground level.

I have experienced it only once, and that was when my alt was trying on the demo Legacy body. This body preforms really badly at high altitude for some reason.

Under every other circumstance, I've had no issues at all, even at near 4000m 

[Cinos Field]

7 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I've never experienced this "vibration" problem you describe. You actually want your skybox over 1,000m, because ground textures are not rendered by the viewer above that height. This increases your FPS performance amazingly. I get 3X the FPS in my skybox than I get at ground level.

If you're curious regardless, there's a thread that explains why and how it happens here on the forums.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Cinos Field

[Claireschen Hesten]

8 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I've never experienced this "vibration" problem you describe.

Up to the max build height it's more of a quiver, definitely noticeable. The higher you fly the worse it gets. Go up to 50-100k meters and beyond and it becomes this. My mAlt is wearing the Lelutka Alain head

[mikka Luik]

Mainland *is* SL to me. Our little 3x group land is home. Nice neighbours too, all doing their own thing. Plus one day might make it a teeny square and that will be another premium =^^=. And I rent two lots from the best landlord there is. Still cheaper than going up another tier level.   Even the OS grids that make it recognise that isolated we can get anywhere - the sense of connection is better.

[Exocet Kungler]

Wow, you all bring on such amazing aspects of Mainland that I had never thought about at all before. As many of you have mentioned at least mainland i can grow and shrink. I think however due to the house from Maven that I'm using it would require pretty flat to be able to accomadate it properly or just large enough parcel, that part of its flat. Now, correct me if im wrong, I can't terraform Mainland right? Its a what you see is what you get, scenario?

[So Whimsy]

Mainland to me feels like an open, populated world just waiting to be explored. A private seem feels like an isolated island.

[Fortyniner Beck]

You can terraform mainland, maybe not as much as a private island ( but that depends on the island settings ).  I think I’ve only ever had two mainland parcels that I had a problem terraforming in nearly 15 years of mainland ownership and in both cases it was still workable by moving bits around.

[Rowan Amore]

48 minutes ago, So Whimsy said:

Mainland to me feels like an open, populated world just waiting to be explored. A private seem feels like an isolated island.

While I agree that it's open, I would disagree with it being populated.  I spent 2 days driving around mainland.  Checking the map from time to time, I saw almost no one.  Plenty of nice builds along the way, some eyesores but hardly a soul to be found.

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Exocet Kungler said:

Wow, you all bring on such amazing aspects of Mainland that I had never thought about at all before. As many of you have mentioned at least mainland i can grow and shrink. I think however due to the house from Maven that I'm using it would require pretty flat to be able to accomadate it properly or just large enough parcel, that part of its flat. Now, correct me if im wrong, I can't terraform Mainland right? Its a what you see is what you get, scenario?

You can generally terraform  +/- 4 m on mainland.   

[Sid Nagy]

I'm premium because I want a Belli home. That brings in my L$ because I make and sell add-ons for these houses.
To live in it, I think Belli is a bit to boring. Most themes only have 5 different houses, and that repeats often sim after sim.

I find mainland not very attractive. 90% is either empty or full with clutter. There are nice patches, but there the prices for land sky rocket most of the time.

In the 15 years that I'm in SL I always have my land on private sims.
Less griefers, less eye sores. Always enough nice plots available in all kind of sizes.
I always lease my land with long term successful land barons.
And if I want to use my boat, I TP to a rez space in Belli and off I go.

[Lindal Kidd]

4 hours ago, Claireschen Hesten said:

Up to the max build height it's more of a quiver, definitely noticeable. The higher you fly the worse it gets. Go up to 50-100k meters and beyond and it becomes this. My mAlt is wearing the Lelutka Alain head

Oh, that. But, nobody actually lives at those extreme altitudes. I'm talking about the range 1,000 - 4,000 m, within  the buildable range. I don't see the "quivers" you mention, and the improvement in viewer performance absolutely IS noticeable.

[Persephone Emerald]

3 hours ago, Exocet Kungler said:

Wow, you all bring on such amazing aspects of Mainland that I had never thought about at all before. As many of you have mentioned at least mainland i can grow and shrink. I think however due to the house from Maven that I'm using it would require pretty flat to be able to accomadate it properly or just large enough parcel, that part of its flat. Now, correct me if im wrong, I can't terraform Mainland right? Its a what you see is what you get, scenario?

As has already been stated, you can terraform +/- 4 meters on mainland. You can also use ground prims to create flat ground, either a simple box prim textured to blend with the setting you want or a mesh ground prim. This wooded area was my previous mainland parcel near the central lake in Heterocera. I used a combination of box ground prims and mesh forest pieces from Studio Skye. The sharp edges in front show where my property met Linden road property. The weird rounder edges are from mesh forest floor and flattened sphere prims. The rock-textured square behind is a neighbor's, an example of the kinds of "ugly" things one might see on mainland, though it could be easily derendered. I had a large open skybox at 1000 m, which is where I usually was. No general ban lines or security orbs for me, just a skybox and a small ban list of griefers for privacy.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Exocet Kungler]

3 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

As has already been stated, you can terraform +/- 4 meters on mainland. You can also use ground prims to create flat ground, either a simple box prim textured to blend with the setting you want or a mesh ground prim. This wooded area was my previous mainland parcel near the central lake in Heterocera. I used a combination of box ground prims and mesh forest pieces from Studio Skye. The sharp edges in front show where my property met Linden road property. The weird rounder edges are from mesh forest floor and flattened sphere prims. The rock-textured square behind is a neighbor's, an example of the kinds of "ugly" things one might see on mainland, though it could be easily derendered. I had a large open skybox at 1000 m, which is where I usually was. No general ban lines or security orbs for me, just a skybox and a small ban list of griefers for privacy.

 

You're right that was mentioned!. My apologies, so much information!. Ok mainland searching it is for me it looks like for a little bit. See what kind of trouble I can get into 🤪

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Exocet Kungler said:

You're right that was mentioned!. My apologies, so much information!. Ok mainland searching it is for me it looks like for a little bit. See what kind of trouble I can get into 🤪

If you really want to get in trouble, search double prim / 2X land. It costs L$$$ but you get 2 times the prims!

[Rowan Amore]

52 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

If you really want to get in trouble, search double prim / 2X land. It costs L$$$ but you get 2 times the prims!

Gotta admit, it's kind of awesome!

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Rowan Amore said:

Gotta admit, it's kind of awesome!

Loving my 2x so far!