A Suggestion on Improving Mainland

[Marianne Little]

1 hour ago, animats said:

The giant wall in the back isn't helping, either.

I happen to be working on trees in Sharpview at the moment, and it's amusing to see how it actually works. Each species of tree has a texture like this:

Bark, leaves, and impostor, in a texture atlas. This "Pine 1" texture is from the Other Simulator We Can't Talk About Here, for copyright reasons. The image used for SL is pretty much the same. Diffuse only, no normal or specular map. If built-in trees had materials, they'd look less flat. If terrain gets materials, so should trees.

Trees are put together from the bark texture and the leaf texture, using an L-system tree generator. This is a "move random distance, branch off branch of random size for random distance, recurse" generator. Each type of tree has different parameters that control the range of randomness. It's a classic technique, and works well for the branch structure. But when all you have for leaves is that one fuzzy texture at the upper right, leaves can't look good.

Beyond some distance, you just get the flat impostor picture in the lower right. From the complaint above, that's happening too soon.

Trees were supposed to sway in the wind. The code for that is still in the viewer, but apparently disabled as "creepy".

Legacy trees are not used much any more. Bellessaria uses mesh trees. Spending effort on terrain is more useful.

If terrain textures are getting attention, there's another useful trick. Texture randomization. Like this:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/20206840/174149327-fd6bbf22-9299-49f9-8f96-c043d90fdde4.mp4

As someone pointed out when I last posted this, it's "stupidly clever". You put in a texture of high-resolution dirt, grass, sand, or water. Anything that doesn't have visible large structure, like a brick wall. Now you have nice grass, dirt, etc., but it repeats too frequently. So this technique remaps the UVs in a pattern of randomly rotated hexes to hide the repetition. Now you can have huge areas of high-rez grass from a small texture image. And the GPU does all the work.

Theory: https://jcgt.org/published/0011/03/05/paper.pdf

Open source code: https://github.com/mmikk/hextile-demo (MIT license, so LL can use it.)

This is much simpler than procedural grass generation or custom shaders for each type of surface, the kind of thing Pixar and Unreal Engine do. Users can just drop in a texture, select "random repeat", and get something good. Easy to explain. Watch the video.

 

 

That texturing is genious!

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I agree that LL need a place with no rules where people can be as creative as they want.

But unused, abandoned land is a waste of money. So do not start with taking away peoples 0 second orbs and 64 m privacy walls. Start to work on the abandoned land. It is so many regions that are empty or have a single 512 or 1024 plot taken. Do it as an experiment. Make some inland lakes, with canals between, put down a new road that connect two others, update land with pockets of protected land with a bit of new trees. See if people buy land next to the new lake.

It would be a big surprise for the owner of the 512 m, to log in and see a lake and a road where it was empty land before. But not more a surprise than if a resident bought it to set up an adult club walled in. That can always happen, people can ask to buy abandoned land.

You never know what happens on land you do not own and you can't contol it.

If it is a demand for Mainland with rules, LL has the first generation Linden Homes they can make rules for.

Good ideas Marianne, it echo's what I have said. Make mainland more attractive, create more road front parcels, set them for sale at reasonable prices, and they will come.

Why make people submit a support ticket for land? Subdivide it and set it for sale.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

If they do create a mainland mk II, permissions could be set so that land can't be resold, and land can't be subdivided. LL makes it all pretty, carves out parcels in tier sizes, all roadfront of course and sets them for sale at $1 L each. People will buy the interior parcels to get more prims, or the interior can be landscaped common areas, greenbelts and such. People can buy as many parcels as they want, since its tier LL wants, not the initial selling price, and people can just abandon them when they no longer need them, because there was no cost involved in buying them.

[Marianne Little]

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

If they do create a mainland mk II, permissions could be set so that land can't be resold, and land can't be subdivided. LL makes it all pretty, carves out parcels in tier sizes, all roadfront of course and sets them for sale at $1 L each. People will buy the interior parcels to get more prims, or the interior can be landscaped common areas, greenbelts and such. People can buy as many parcels as they want, since its tier LL wants, not the initial selling price, and people can just abandon them when they no longer need them, because there was no cost involved in buying them.

I doubt LL does that. LL is not a charity, it want to make money. It is more likely that such land will be for those who are Premium, Plus or Premium plus.

And even if you say it is not allowed to sell land, that can be circumvented. The one who will abandon get money under the table, so he abandon in when the one who want the parcel stand ready to buy it for 1 L. It could be paid money through Paypal... no control.

It can also be bought up by a scripted bot that zoom in and buy for 1 L faster than anyone can react. The bot owner can then offer to release it, for a "compensation". It is business, right? As long as LL can't find out what happens with payments out of SL, it will be exploited.

It is better to have parcels on the land page and they are claimed the same way as Linden Homes.

[Nukasa22]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

and buy for 1 L [...]  claimed the same way as Linden Homes.

I don't think this is feasible. If a long term possible outcome is that existing mainland shrinks and the prettier mainland grows, and you remove the option to sell your parcel for an amount that is up to you, you are pulling an incredible amount of L$ out of the SL economy. If I want to buy a parcel for 6,000L$ I have to come up with that money somehow. Either I earn it inworld and add value to SL by doing so, or I buy Lindens.

[elleevelyn]

i think has reached the point that the only thing that would drive mainland occupancy up, would be a pretty massive reduction in tier

alternatively Linden could remove mainland regions until mainland tier receipts covers the full commercials (services/support/profit) of hosting the regions. But I am not sure that this is the actual problem (that mainland isn't paying its own way). Even with large swathes of mainland currently unoccupied it may already be meeting the full commercials with the tier it does generate now. And if so then mainland could tick along as it it for quite a long time

[Marianne Little]

37 minutes ago, Nukasa22 said:

I don't think this is feasible. If a long term possible outcome is that existing mainland shrinks and the prettier mainland grows, and you remove the option to sell your parcel for an amount that is up to you, you are pulling an incredible amount of L$ out of the SL economy. If I want to buy a parcel for 6,000L$ I have to come up with that money somehow. Either I earn it inworld and add value to SL by doing so, or I buy Lindens.

No, I was thinking that pretty Mainland with a covenant could be offered instead of Linden Homes. So those who go to the Linden Homes page, can select either a themed house... or an open plot instead. We pick and abandon Linden Homes. We could pick and abandon parcels for premium, plus and premium plus users.

It would be 512 m parcels for plus, 1024 m parcels for premium, and 2048 m parcels for premium plus.

It was BilliJo who said it could be sold for 1 L per plot and could not be resold.

I said it was a bad idea.

Those who pick a parcel instead of a house, will have fewer Li to decorate with, since they need a house. That could be solved... the Mole built houses are Li heavy. If they are not included, there are a lot of Li on the region that can be used on other things. The open parcels could come with added bonus prims. If LL want it to happen, they can make it happen.

[Persephone Emerald]

11 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

One specific example of somewhere really sad that could perhaps do with some love is Frostar, on the east edge of Gaeta iV.

It quite possibly is a monument to the end of an era when mainland was being expanded, a rushed ugly expanse of "Palm tree 1"s that don't properly resolve unless you cam to within a few metres of them.

I might have previously blamed the moles for this but looking now it looks like a Governor Linden build. the structures are frugal and rundown but not so bad it is the expanse of those ugly palm trees that makes the area an eyesore.

Arguably I suppose the austere, rushed lack of love is indicative and a monument to its time and therefore worth preserving because of the way it portrays that, but really even that considered.... please just do something with it instead. Maybe the library palm trees can be universally replaced with something that has a lod factor that works beyond 2 metres, or send a mole there to rip them out and redecorate, put in a park or just nicer trees and some shrubbery, just deleting those trees would be an improvement.

It is a glaring exception to the high quality Linden and Moles builds elsewhere.

These Linden beaches could easily be stripped of their sculpted trees. The new terrain textures could be added to some, though the existing sand textures are fine for most of them. Turn some of them into short-term rez areas, with a few mesh plants, a picnic table and a couple beach chairs. ⛱️  This way people who don't have a water-access parcel of their own can still easily use the Linden water.

Where there is non-coastal abandoned and Linden owned land, add a few lakes and roads, but mostly just upgrade the terrain textures and add a few nice mesh rocks and plants 🌳,  like in Bellesseria.

These areas don't all have to be removed from potential land sales. Look at how The Wastelands regions handle their land and rentals. They have both public roads and spaces and rental parcels. When rental parcels are not rented, they have buildings and other structures on them, so they don't look barren. When a parcel is rented, the tenant can choose to leave the existing items or return them and rez their own. Maybe the LDPW can auto-generate a few rocks and plants on empty land. When it's sold, the new owner can choose to either keep these or return them. The current auto-generated grass on mainland is nearly impossible to grab and return, I assume because it's sculpted.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

6 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I doubt LL does that. LL is not a charity, it want to make money. It is more likely that such land will be for those who are Premium, Plus or Premium plus.

And even if you say it is not allowed to sell land, that can be circumvented. The one who will abandon get money under the table, so he abandon in when the one who want the parcel stand ready to buy it for 1 L. It could be paid money through Paypal... no control.

It can also be bought up by a scripted bot that zoom in and buy for 1 L faster than anyone can react. The bot owner can then offer to release it, for a "compensation". It is business, right? As long as LL can't find out what happens with payments out of SL, it will be exploited.

It is better to have parcels on the land page and they are claimed the same way as Linden Homes.

Would you trust a land flipper to release the land after you paid for it? I wouldn't

It was just a suggestion, your way works too

[diamond Marchant]

On 6/9/2023 at 8:06 AM, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Despite all the vehicle rez zones in Bellisseria, not a single person drives vehicles around Bellisseria either.

Well... I agree that they are rarely used. I occasionally ride a bicycle around or a Mad Pea Krazy Kart. My primary use of Belli roads is to provide a protected land path (free of orbs) when flying over Belli land (very useful in the Log Home regions). Note that orb avoidance is desirable even if you can beat the timer because orbs typically pop up a dialog that redirects the input focus, meaning you may lose control of your vehicle until you deal with the dialog. Roads are also useful for Bellibin trash collectors

Beyond transportation, Bellisseria roads are useful as buffer space between homes and as an organizing principle for laying out houses.

My only complaint about Bellisseria roads concerns the Stilt Home regions. As the Stilts are fundamentally water regions, we don't really need roads and low bridges connecting islands, as the low bridges are a hazard to navigation. And to make matters worse, the places one would expect to be able to use land vehicles.... ON THE PIERS... are riddled with invisible barriers that actually prevent you from traveling more than a few meters. This seems ridiculous to me. In  a RL marina, appropriate vehicles are allowed to travel on piers.... this is how you get your stuff to your boat or yacht.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

4 hours ago, Nukasa22 said:

I don't think this is feasible. If a long term possible outcome is that existing mainland shrinks and the prettier mainland grows, and you remove the option to sell your parcel for an amount that is up to you, you are pulling an incredible amount of L$ out of the SL economy. If I want to buy a parcel for 6,000L$ I have to come up with that money somehow. Either I earn it inworld and add value to SL by doing so, or I buy Lindens.

That is why people go to estates instead of mainland. On an estate you buy the land for $1 L.

Its kind of hard for $6000 L to compete with $1 L

[diamond Marchant]

23 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

What I'd like the most is a tier system that charged per actual area and doesn't go up in jumps.

I discussed this insanity here

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by diamond Marchant

[Nae Mayo]

14 hours ago, Teresa Firelight said:

I recommend that LL "invent" a new type of mainland that has some enforceable covenant rules... for example:  a continent where you cant have floating things above the ground (that are not clearly sim design) until 2000 meters... a continent where orbs have to give a 15 second warning and where planes can fly between 1000M and 1990M as long as the pilot/passengers are not explicitly banned. while we are at it, make a rule that the smallest parcel allowed is 512 sqM, and where there is a fair amount of protected waterways along the shores (so that any one owning partial/full water parcels can access a protected assess to lakes/seas, etc.

Those who do not want restrictions can continue to live on the original mainland and enjoy the unrestricted creativity that mainland can foster. But those who want some protection that their "new" mainland wont be "trashed" by an inconsiderate neighbor in some of the most basic ways that people have been complaining about in this forum.

Give people a choice in their mainland... total freedom or some protections. Then they can live in the mainland that works best for their needs.

While we are at it, please add a feature to "derender all by owner" that basically keeps the viewer from drawing any objects owned by the specified owner. That way people can quickly/easily "block" neighbor views that appear unsightly to them.

You nailed it. Mainland should have a Covenant and residents should be able to derender objects on some parcels.

I have left SL for 10 years and came back recently because LL have build a much better 'mainland' that I enjoy - the Linden Homes. It shows that a regulated mainland can be a better place to live in.

And because I have an extra 1024m2 tier, I tried to use it on the good old mainland. After searching for a while, I give up. Individual who build tall ugly building and privacy screen ruin the expensive coastal parcel. Yes, I can build a skybox. But why would I want to purchase a parcel in a beautiful seaside or hilltop yet end up living in a box?

LL can sell those abandoned land cheap, but it will end up being abandon again if the ugly mess is not improved. This is why I think a covenant with a ability to derender objects on some parcels will help.

[Katherine Heartsong]

15 hours ago, Teresa Firelight said:

While we are at it, please add a feature to "derender all by owner" that basically keeps the viewer from drawing any objects owned by the specified owner. That way people can quickly/easily "block" neighbor views that appear unsightly to them.

This, or derender X parcel. Right click a parcel of land, select "Derender Objects", and everything on it vanishes from your sight. I'd far prefer to look at a block of empty land then some of the things I have stumbled across.

[Persephone Emerald]

Mainland is still used by many people who pay for Premium accounts and extra tier, so LL would be foolish to risk losing the money they get from these users by disallowing them to use it as they please. So even though the careful landscaping and covenant for Bellisseria make it hugely popular as a residential community, they can't just transfer the same kind of rules to Mainland. Maybe they can't afford to dismantle any of the mainland continents, because people are paying for land on all of them, and those people might be just as inclined to cancel their Premium accounts as they would be to move to a new location?

Maybe they can try a new kind of more structured, covenant-protected mainland though, once the old Linden Home regions are dismantled and sunk into the sea? Could we have some small town shop regions adjacent to Bellisseria residential regions? Could the rest of Gaeta be finished as a new kind of covenant-protected mainland? Maybe that whole continent could be reconfigured as such?

No floating structures below 2000 m. Security obs have to allow 15 seconds to leave the parcel. Moderate regions with no adult images or objects outside. Vendors would be ok, but breedables would be limited. No excessive particle emmitors or temp rez systems. In return for having all these restrictions, this continent could have connected roads, a sailible coastline, nice mesh landscaping and public rez zones. This would be a test case, rather than applying new covenant rules to all of Mainland.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Persephone Emerald
I meant Gaeta, not Corsica, whichever continent is only half finished.

[animats]

7 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

It can also be bought up by a scripted bot that zoom in and buy for 1 L faster than anyone can react.

Soft-close auctions, where each bid that raises the price extends the auction by 30 seconds or so, tend to reduce auction sniping. It's not a perfect solution, but it does help.

[Ineffable Mote]

The modern default shared environment setting on mainland is terribly low effort garbage. LL produced a lot better with Bellisseria, but that's more their cash cow.

Aside from that, I'd say the biggest problem with mainland(and especially its underappreciation) lies more with LL's target market, and relatedly LL's marketing efforts and priorities there. The only way to really improve mainland is to improve the overall user base, or actively seek out a better balance for it. Which isn't likely to ever happen at this point, it's not a winner $$-wise, the focus is all quantity over quality from here on out and has been the case for many many years now. I figure that's a large part of what's kept LL's real world lights on for this long, but everything is a trade-off.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Ineffable Mote

[BilliJo Aldrin]

14 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Mainland is still used by many people who pay for Premium accounts and extra tier, so LL would be foolish to risk losing the money they get from these users by disallowing them to use it as they please. So even though the careful landscaping and covenant for Bellisseria make it hugely popular as a residential community, they can't just transfer the same kind of rules to Mainland. Maybe they can't afford to dismantle any of the mainland continents, because people are paying for land on all of them, and those people might be just as inclined to cancel their Premium accounts as they would be to move to a new location?

Maybe they can try a new kind of more structured, covenant-protected mainland though, once the old Linden Home regions are dismantled and sunk into the sea? Could we have some small town shop regions adjacent to Bellisseria residential regions? Could the rest of Gaeta be finished as a new kind of covenant-protected mainland? Maybe that whole continent could be reconfigured as such?

No floating structures below 2000 m. Security obs have to allow 15 seconds to leave the parcel. Moderate regions with no adult images or objects outside. Vendors would be ok, but breedables would be limited. No excessive particle emmitors or temp rez systems. In return for having all these restrictions, this continent could have connected roads, a sailible coastline, nice mesh landscaping and public rez zones. This would be a test case, rather than applying new covenant rules to all of Mainland.

Yes for bad or for good, they need to leave existing mainland as it is, but instead of endlessly expanding belissaria, tack on new mainland to existing mainland, and provide the new mainland sims with slightly more restrictive rules. That could include disallowing land cutting, low hanging skyboxes, etc, whatever makes the place more livable to those that don't want a lawless wild west kind of experience.

Belessaria  might be a nice place to live, but who wants to visit it? It would be like going to a major city, but only seeing the suburbs.

Mainland is truly where its at.

 

 

[Nae Mayo]

17 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Mainland is still used by many people who pay for Premium accounts and extra tier, so LL would be foolish to risk losing the money they get from these users by disallowing them to use it as they please.

If there is a need, they will do it. Remember how they force the relocation of adult contents from mainland to Zindra.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Nae Mayo

[Sparkle Bunny]

On 6/10/2023 at 7:00 AM, Marianne Little said:

 I have become more and more an introvert so mentoring is just not for me. But I could tinker a bit with land, remove ugly trees, lay roads, get some updated landscaping details. Be just a wandering hermit. I often read on the forum that people love to garden and landscape. If LL can get unpaid mentors, I think they can get unpaid garderers too.

Yes, this is me. I don't have the people skills to be a mentor and I don't have the building or scripting skills to be a Mole, but I could manage basic land maintenance and improvement, as I imagine a lot of residents could. It's difficult to see how any kind of volunteer program would work in terms of trusting people with build permissions, though, since I can't see how they could be 100% sure you weren't a griefer before letting you loose.

[Tamara Adored]

I spent a few hours cruising around Mainland to look at land & see if I could find anything I’d like to change. The 2 biggest issues I have are sky junk & privacy walls. If everything in the sky was forced up out of ground view more places would seem more attractive. The worst example I saw was a property on a sea cliff. There was a narrow beach strip at the bottom of the cliff that someone else owned & they’d put a skybox level with the cliff top, completely blocking the view. I saw many examples of similar builds.

Privacy screens have been discussed a lot on the forums already but many I see are just petty. I saw a piece of land that was back one parcel from the Blake Sea. It was on a hill so would have had a beautiful view except the neighbors on 3 sides had put up huge screens. Why? Is just seems petty.

So, my two suggestions would be enforcing a height limit for the sky & making derender on the SL viewer available. Giving everyone the ability to derender would really help people to feel more confident in buying land & help with increasing sales.

[animats]

1 hour ago, Tamara Adored said:

I spent a few hours cruising around Mainland to look at land & see if I could find anything I’d like to change. The 2 biggest issues I have are sky junk & privacy walls. If everything in the sky was forced up out of ground view more places would seem more attractive.

The view from the vista point at the top of Mt. Campion in Heterocera.

After you climb the mountain, you finally reach the vista point, and this is what you see.

We need an incentive to get people to move their sky junk to above 2000 meters, the Bellesaria limit. Users doing this derive no benefit from being that low. Sky junk can blight parcels for a long way.

SL has some magnificent vistas. Climb the clacks tower in New Babbage and turn your view distance all the way up. Visit Mt. Campion. View the mountains of the Snowlands from a distance. It's a big world.

(One of the things I'm trying to do in Sharpview is support much longer range vistas, using standard game technologies. I want users to see far into the distance, like most AAA title games. I've posted on this before, with screenshots from GTA V and discussions of how this is done. But who wants to look at kilometers of sky junk?)

[animats]

As for privacy walls, many users don't know that you can buy rows of 3D trees that combine to make a solid wall. Those look reasonably good from both sides. Far better than some big flat surface with an irrelevant picture on it.

Like this. A good solution for a small lot. There are many options on Marketplace.

Many users don't know how to solve their landscaping problems. Anyone want to do a parcel aesthetics class? A useful and profitable project for someone who sells greenery. Send invites to people with landscaping problems.

Does SL have garden clubs?

[Ardy Lay]

Give everyone the ability to return anything they see that is between two carefully selected altitudes anywhere on the Mainland.

Now, what should those two altitudes be?

[Ineffable Mote]

The immersion ruining horses of blight aren't going back in the barn, and ugliness is both eye of beholder and part of life(running your draw distance at 200m+ on mainland is just asking for it, realistically speaking). But mainland's more than adequate for people who are here to be creative(which is more than just shop and plop), socialize and explore(not just standing in front of places posing taking selfies & similar). And there's TPV's and homesteads for the portions of the userbase being marketed to that can't accept this, as well as Bellisseria for awhile now.

What most people are pushing for here are less "improvements to mainland" and more "click+derender as the big and shiny new game to play" and "running a virtual land&homeowners association" to protect your own "investments". 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Ineffable Mote