Let's talk about borders. Of your land so to speak.

[archangel969]

How do you deal with your land's borders?

Especially on mainland, sometimes you can't escape masking borders, in particular when your neighbours' style is diametrically opposed to yours.

How do I deal with it? Well, I live in Earp and there are no rules there, it really is the wild west in terms of design. All sorts of things fly low through the air and towering ugly buildings and fences are commonplace. i certainly don't get discouraged by that. yes, I can move, of course, but I can also see it as a challenge. What do I do?

1. Masking the border. I place large privacy screens with images of forests at my borders. Before that and sometimes through it, I place three-dimensional groups of trees so you still get a 3D effect.
 2. Emphasise the border. I do that for instance by placing a wall there or a fence. But always surrounded by a natural-looking environment of bushes and trees so we feel as if the world does not end after the border. Well, my world does anyway, that's where the neighbour's world begins.

How do you do it on mainland? How do you shape the borders of the land?

Edited October 13, 2022 by archangel969

[Prokofy Neva]

I don't allow privacy fences, 2D trees or bushes, photo-real boards, etc. They have to put out 3D trees.

If you do put out a board of any kind, like a "privacy screen" or 2D trees, it's a courtesy to put it clear on the other side so your neighbour doesn't see a big board. To be sure, their build may be uglier than yours by far, which is why you are trying to screen it out! But you can set the tone in the neighbourhood.

You can uncheck "avatars can see me" which makes you invisible.

I think it's rare that a wall really works -- I also don't allow walls in my rentals except in a few areas where there is enough of an easement so that it doesn't make the other tenants feel cramped.

Usually closely spaced trees can achieve what you need to do. Plus, on Firestorm, you can use "de-render" -- which I don't use, but yet I still get along.

 

[archangel969]

19 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't allow privacy fences, 2D trees or bushes, photo-real boards, etc. They have to put out 3D trees.

If you do put out a board of any kind, like a "privacy screen" or 2D trees, it's a courtesy to put it clear on the other side so your neighbour doesn't see a big board. To be sure, their build may be uglier than yours by far, which is why you are trying to screen it out! But you can set the tone in the neighbourhood.

You can uncheck "avatars can see me" which makes you invisible.

I think it's rare that a wall really works -- I also don't allow walls in my rentals except in a few areas where there is enough of an easement so that it doesn't make the other tenants feel cramped.

Usually closely spaced trees can achieve what you need to do. Plus, on Firestorm, you can use "de-render" -- which I don't use, but yet I still get along.

 

Yes of course, the privacy screens are clear at the side of the neighbours!

3D trees I place for the privacy screen to mix it and have 3D effect (as in the picture on the left of my first comment). But there are no 3D trees that work that way, I've tried it. Derender doesn't work for some low floating islands in the neighbourhood. There is one that is always in sight - no matter what I do - and I have learned to live with. You win some, you loose some.

But it's not only blocking the view. It must also look good. The forest at the border must look like a pretty forest, not as a screen that blocks views. It must look naturally.

The same goes for walls. I use them just to emphasise that there is a border there, but exactly as there are beautiful old walls around gardens in RL. It should, again, look natural. It is a wall that has been there for decades, maybe centuries, not a wall that is there to blind the view. This is how it should look. The second image to my first comment is such a wall.

Edited October 13, 2022 by archangel969

[archangel969]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I think it's rare that a wall really works -- I also don't allow walls in my rentals except in a few areas where there is enough of an easement so that it doesn't make the other tenants feel cramped.

 

Speaking of walls, this is an example. One neighbour has a high wall, seems something like a gigantic metal fence. And I am lucky the fence isn't anymore in screaming yellow/black as it first was! You see here that putting closey placed 3D trees don't work. That is one example. Another neighbour has his land on a higher plateau so the foot of his trees are on the height of the roofs of my buildings, another new neighbour has recently put a sort of gigantic skybox on ground level with fluorescent colors. I all intvite them to tea or coffee :-). I don't complain. if I don't like it I simply can move to another place. I love it here and I also love to think of solutions. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But whitout some annoyances (second) life would be dull as hell.

Edited October 13, 2022 by archangel969

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, archangel969 said:

Speaking of walls, this is an example. One neighbour has a high wall, seems something like a gigantic metal fence. And I am lucky the fence isn't anymore in screaming yellow/black as it first was! You see here that putting closey placed 3D trees don't work. That is one example. Another neighbour has his land on a higher plateau so the foot of his trees are on the height of the roofs of my buildings, another new neighbour has recently put a sort of gigantic skybox on ground level with fluorescent colors. I all intvite them to tea or coffee :-). I don't complain. if I don't like it I simply can move to another place. I love it here and I also love to think of solutions. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But whitout some annoyances (second) life would be dull as hell.

I would use alirium "dwarf trees" which are like a thicket on this, or some enlarged Hayabusa hedges, or maybe put some low-prim Yugen trees. Even take some old school plants or Linden plants. There are a few trees that don't look so bad, Cyprus is one (the smaller one altho the bigger one isn't so bad). 

 

[Aethelwine]

I will use walls, flat alpha plant textures or this privacy pine grouping on some occasions. What is acceptable and appropriate is really a judgment informed by what the neighbours are doing. On a small parcel you don't have the luxury of space for putting out full trees and bushes. 

I use the Heart Bamboo alpha textures to help mask a view of a full bright prim built bdsm building. The texture looks 3d even though it isn't and I have used it regularly for years ever since I bought it.

Here is the view to neighbours:

and this shows what I am masking:

I use a texture from the same pack to improve the view of my bar from ground level. The massive military bunker overlooking my parcel in Zindra is a flat grey texture so I have tried to make it look a bit better from my side with solid rock textured prims (alpha transparent on their side so they don't see what I have done at all. When I first put them out it had been plywood textured for about a month and it was about a year before they made it a flat grey texture.

at the back there you can see the privacy pine grouping. It is old school plant textures on multiple flat prims but made in mesh, so only one prim. it stretches pretty flat and works out okay as a back drop and alternative to a flat texture at a boundary edge just to add some interest or give some sense of privacy. (Alpha masking the texture prevents alpha sorting issues too).

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Aethelwine

[Aethelwine]

In an ideal world we wouldn't need to resort to flat textures, but I think there are times where they are justified and so long as done with care unobtrusive enhancements. 

[Anicha Heartsong]

I find it baffling when people put up these 2D walls and barriers. They look terrible from each and every side and angle and make the entire neighborhood look skanky.

Why do people want to wall themselves in? Live inside a box? If you're going to do that, why not just go live at 4,000 meters up and leave the ground level alone?

It's a 3D world we've made here. Make the most of it.

[animats]

Here's my border solution, for my workshop in Vallone. This is in what's supposed to be an urban area, but with all the vacant land and a neighbor with a very nice pastoral build, it looks rather rural.

There's a special problem in this area of Kama City. All the parcels are multiples of 512 m^2. To make this work out, parcels have little bites taken out of them.

The paved area shows my parcel boundaries. Note all those cutouts along the left edge. This creates a landscaping problem. This is five small parcels. I can't combine them, because that's locked out in this part of Kama City. The neighbor to the left has a nice garden and house. South is a Zindra monotrail track, not shown.

 

So, I put in a row of low-LI boundary trees. This is from my side. It's just landscaping, not a solid wall. You can see through, a little, and walk between the trees. The low perimeter walls show the parcel boundaries. The low walls were originally built to keep my NPCs and vehicles from falling off the edge. The NPCs no longer need them, but they're a big help when Drivers of SL come calling.

 

Screening trees, from the Linden sidewalk side. The grass is a prim to bring the ground up to just below sidewalk level. Texture (almost) matches Linden grass.

My whole place used to be surrounded by a city area built to resemble a bad part of Baltimore. Then the Baltimore people abandoned the land, and the new neighbor just has their one house and a park. So I upgraded my side and put in a fountain. Gentrification has come.

 

[archangel969]

2 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

I will use walls, flat alpha plant textures or this privacy pine grouping on some occasions. What is acceptable and appropriate is really a judgment informed by what the neighbours are doing. On a small parcel you don't have the luxury of space for putting out full trees and bushes. 

I use the Heart Bamboo alpha textures to help mask a view of a full bright prim built bdsm building. The texture looks 3d even though it isn't and I have used it regularly for years ever since I bought it.

Here is the view to neighbours:

and this shows what I am masking:

I use a texture from the same pack to improve the view of my bar from ground level. The massive military bunker overlooking my parcel in Zindra is a flat grey texture so I have tried to make it look a bit better from my side with solid rock textured prims (alpha transparent on their side so they don't see what I have done at all. When I first put them out it had been plywood textured for about a month and it was about a year before they made it a flat grey texture.

at the back there you can see the privacy pine grouping. It is old school plant textures on multiple flat prims but made in mesh, so only one prim. it stretches pretty flat and works out okay as a back drop and alternative to a flat texture at a boundary edge just to add some interest or give some sense of privacy. (Alpha masking the texture prevents alpha sorting issues too).

 

 

 

Looks good! The trees and plants give it a natural look. And natural loking solutions are mostly the best.

[archangel969]

1 hour ago, Anicha Heartsong said:

I find it baffling when people put up these 2D walls and barriers. They look terrible from each and every side and angle and make the entire neighborhood look skanky.

Why do people want to wall themselves in? Live inside a box? If you're going to do that, why not just go live at 4,000 meters up and leave the ground level alone?

It's a 3D world we've made here. Make the most of it.

Yes, totally agree! But we will still have to learn to live with this and find a solution to it. Especially when, in my case, you are surrounded by several neighbours who have either put up a high wall, and I mean as high as a five-floor flat, or another who put up a walled skybox on ground floor level with bright colours. I invite them to tea and they hear what I have to say about it. Not unkindly, mind you, as that one neighbour has changed the texture of the wall from bright yellow/black to more neutral grey. At least that's something LOL.

[archangel969]

On 10/13/2022 at 11:33 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

I would use alirium "dwarf trees" which are like a thicket on this, or some enlarged Hayabusa hedges, or maybe put some low-prim Yugen trees. Even take some old school plants or Linden plants. There are a few trees that don't look so bad, Cyprus is one (the smaller one altho the bigger one isn't so bad). 

 

Thanks for all these great ideas! Ah yes, those Alirium dwarf trees! I have them in my inventory for years but completely forgot about them, thanks for the reminder!  I have just put them here at the left side of the waterfront cottage. They are a great fill up for forest borderlines. They are 3 prims and one of the advantages for the fact that they are not mesh is that you can make them as big as you want but the trees still remain 3 prim. Although then you can hardly call them dwarf trees.😂

Edited October 15, 2022 by archangel969

[archangel969]

14 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I think it's rare that a wall really works -- I also don't allow walls in my rentals except in a few areas where there is enough of an easement so that it doesn't make the other tenants feel cramped.

 

 

This is the wall I erected at the backyard of villa Utrecht. It is not meant to obstruct the view, it is not high enough for that, the neighbours cannot even see it. It is meant to indicate that there is a border here (and there is, because after that my land ends), but in a way that feels natural. That you don't feel like there are all kinds of subterfuge to mask borders. But that here is just a wall that may have been there for centuries. Behind the wall I have put trees so it seems that behind the wall there is a park or woods. This photo shows the wall a little better.

Edited October 14, 2022 by archangel969

[Prokofy Neva]

5 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

I will use walls, flat alpha plant textures or this privacy pine grouping on some occasions. What is acceptable and appropriate is really a judgment informed by what the neighbours are doing. On a small parcel you don't have the luxury of space for putting out full trees and bushes. 

I use the Heart Bamboo alpha textures to help mask a view of a full bright prim built bdsm building. The texture looks 3d even though it isn't and I have used it regularly for years ever since I bought it.

Here is the view to neighbours:

and this shows what I am masking:

I use a texture from the same pack to improve the view of my bar from ground level. The massive military bunker overlooking my parcel in Zindra is a flat grey texture so I have tried to make it look a bit better from my side with solid rock textured prims (alpha transparent on their side so they don't see what I have done at all. When I first put them out it had been plywood textured for about a month and it was about a year before they made it a flat grey texture.

at the back there you can see the privacy pine grouping. It is old school plant textures on multiple flat prims but made in mesh, so only one prim. it stretches pretty flat and works out okay as a back drop and alternative to a flat texture at a boundary edge just to add some interest or give some sense of privacy. (Alpha masking the texture prevents alpha sorting issues too).

 

 

 

I agree that Heart bamboo is one of the few textures that works, but disagree about the pines. In general,  I agree with Anicha Heartsong -- much of the time, these solutions look skanky, and PS they don't provide privacy as anyone can cam over them, and PPS you can turn off "avatars can see me" or go up in the sky.

[Qie Niangao]

20 hours ago, archangel969 said:

yes, I can move, of course, but I can also see it as a challenge.

Some of my locations are geography-specific: they're more about where they are on the map than about their immediate surroundings, and those locations require taking up the challenge. Otherwise, though, I would not dismiss the option of moving. There's lots of land out there with more interesting challenges than coping with a (very likely temporary) neighboring eyesore.

It is very rare that I'll resort to 2D screens. I used to use them more, back when nearly all of Mainland was crowded with plywood prims right up to parcel borders, but that's much less common than it used to be.

Also, I learned from a time when I owned a very nice stretch of double-primmed Zindra shoreline with one big problem: it bordered a parcel with 2D screens transparent from my side. What's the fuss? I'm sure the neighbor thought it was fine because I'd see nothing offensive from my parcel—but it totally destroyed the view of my parcel from 180 degrees of cam alt-zooming. Sure, for photos I could just derender, etc., but it drastically eroded how much I valued and enjoyed that land. I dumped it for a different piece of double-primmed Zindra shoreline (not that easy to find).

Since then, I've had a simple rule: I try to make my parcels contribute to the neighbors' experience. Maybe they'll notice, enjoy it, and make a synergistic contribution.

You know what? Usually they do.

[Aethelwine]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I agree that Heart bamboo is one of the few textures that works, but disagree about the pines. In general,  I agree with Anicha Heartsong -- much of the time, these solutions look skanky, and PS they don't provide privacy as anyone can cam over them, and PPS you can turn off "avatars can see me" or go up in the sky.

Yes I wouldn't generally use them, but my point is that there are contexts I think they can be an option. Plants used to be two prims crossed with a alpha texture on them. I still have plenty of them in my inventory and still sometimes end up buying them like that in plant pots when not being careful. 

[Cate Foulsbane]

5 hours ago, archangel969 said:

Ah yes, those Alirium dwarf trees! I

One the absolute best items I have ever bought in SL!  LOVE them!

[archangel969]

8 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Since then, I've had a simple rule: I try to make my parcels contribute to the neighbors' experience. Maybe they'll notice, enjoy it, and make a synergistic contribution.

You know what? Usually they do.

Well, that's great that you have such a positive experience.

I always make contact and invite my neighbours to my home. My land is open to everyone anyway. That's my purpose: I want to make a land with a Dutch 'out in the country'- experience' and like to share it with everyone on SL.

Edited October 14, 2022 by archangel969

[Marianne Little]

The most important thing, is that a flat screen is alpha on the top.

[archangel969]

10 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Also, I learned from a time when I owned a very nice stretch of double-primmed Zindra shoreline with one big problem: it bordered a parcel with 2D screens transparent from my side. What's the fuss? I'm sure the neighbor thought it was fine because I'd see nothing offensive from my parcel—but it totally destroyed the view of my parcel from 180 degrees of cam alt-zooming. Sure, for photos I could just derender, etc., but it drastically eroded how much I valued and enjoyed that land. I dumped it for a different piece of double-primmed Zindra shoreline (not that easy to find).

Like I said, if I don't like it I simply can go elsewhere. I know that I live in the 'wild west' of SL. Always keep your good temper and humour, that's important with many aspects in (second) life.

Edited October 14, 2022 by archangel969

[Marianne Little]

My idea is not to hide 100%, but to obscure. 

 

[archangel969]

36 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

My idea is not to hide 100%, but to obscure. 

 

That's really beautiful!

[Marianne Little]

One of my places must be a great Mainland region. It is barely any walls, and those who use them, keep a polite height, and almost all are transparent on the outside. It is one pink/salmon wall on the left side. I am not sure if it is for privacy or not. The green forest wall on the right side is transparent on the outside. I have marked where I live. The lighthouse is mine, and the white build with grey roof.

Two who live here have walls that look like these privacy walls. But really,  it is one of the better privacy screens. They look something like this: Second Life Marketplace - Rock CLIFF SET for building complex rock cliffs or privacy wall, mossy, ivy, rock,snowy winter and are maybe 5-6 m high. It can not be compared to 64 m high plywood plates.

The skyboxes are high up. I have not snooped around, but they are not visible from the ground. I use draw distance 512 m here, I use 100. 120 m or lower normally. Amazing place.

 

[Marianne Little]

This is my second place. I could have more 3 D trees here, but I was greedy and placed the house close to the border.

It is 2 lines flat privacy walls. One with a line of cypress trees. Another with some common green trees and a few lilac/purple blossoming ones. And then a line of 3 D cypresses. It as all the same type tree, but I rotated them and edited them slightly different in the height. Finally comes the garden wall.

😃 I like what I have here. I must up over DD 150 m to see a very tall building. And for ordinary day to day around in SL, I very have it high. 

You must view it from an angle to see the difference between 2 D and 3 D.

What the neighbor see from the other side. Nothing hangs over the border, both the flat screens and the cypress trees are on my side.

 

I do not use any 2 D walls on the other sides, because I need a high draw distance to see any high buildings.

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by Marianne Little

[archangel969]

47 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

One of my places must be a great Mainland region. It is barely any walls, and those who use them, keep a polite height, and almost all are transparent on the outside. It is one pink/salmon wall on the left side. I am not sure if it is for privacy or not. The green forest wall on the right side is transparent on the outside. I have marked where I live. The lighthouse is mine, and the white build with grey roof.

Two who live here have walls that look like these privacy walls. But really,  it is one of the better privacy screens. They look something like this: Second Life Marketplace - Rock CLIFF SET for building complex rock cliffs or privacy wall, mossy, ivy, rock,snowy winter and are maybe 5-6 m high. It can not be compared to 64 m high plywood plates.

The skyboxes are high up. I have not snooped around, but they are not visible from the ground. I use draw distance 512 m here, I use 100. 120 m or lower normally. Amazing place.

 

Wow, this must be paradise 🙂