A Suggestion on Improving Mainland

[animats]

Some of this is just an education problem. Many users don't know that their skyboxes should be way, way up there above 2000m. They may not even know how to get their avatar to 2000m. Users may not know about the many ways to get some isolation for their parcel without building an eyesore visible for a long distance.

We need garden clubs. Aggressive garden clubs.

[Extrude Ragu]

I see too-low skyboxes as another issue that has arisen from a lack of design.

SL needs to move on. It's not the wild west anymore where we are discovering what works and what doesn't, we've had 20 years to identify the problem.

People want to see skies clear of skyboxes from ground level, and want to fly their planes.

LL need to design their game to enable that. That means preventing people building in public right of way in the sky. It also means telling the viewer not to render objects that are too high up relative to the camera so that we can have long draw distances without also getting the skyboxes.

Yes I recognise there are probably some landmarks on the mainland that are very tall. Exceptions for those should be made on a case by case basis.

[animats]

54 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Yes I recognise there are probably some landmarks on the mainland that are very tall. Exceptions for those should be made on a case by case basis.

It it's below 2000m, it should have some connection to the ground, with no big gaps. Otherwise, turn on physics.

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, animats said:

It it's below 2000m, it should have some connection to the ground, with no big gaps. Otherwise, turn on physics.

What about floating islands though? Or balloons? Or clouds?

I think old mainland and private islands can allow for these kinds of fantasy builds, while a new kind of mainland could apply the kind of structured controls that have made Bellisseria so popular, and in doing so could refresh interest in owning mainland.

[Coffee Pancake]

Improving mainland is easy, the problem is 20 years of "who cares it's mainland" governance debt. Nothing we suggest can ever be actioned as LL are unwilling to enact policy that means they have a huge amount of content to police. Let alone the need to reeducate people about the change.

There are very few suggestions that don't involve some kind of covenant.

It's honestly difficult enough to get someone to come out and move a linden bush or remove a fence to get road access. What makes anyone think they will stand behind sweeping changes to remove spite walls, low flying junk, bot farms, breedables, adboards, exercise eminent domain to reclaim waterways or micro parcels or full bright just to name a few things.

 

Full bright is especially fraught .. people who set everything they have that way do so because SL is dark if they don't. So either no lighting and old computers or actual vision issues (not uncommon!) 

 

The only thing they can do is collect empty regions and redevelop them with roads and parcels that can't be cut. Which involves a brief and paying moles...

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[Ardy Lay]

5 hours ago, animats said:

We need garden clubs. Aggressive garden clubs.

I know where to get those.

[diamond Marchant]

3 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

 

The only thing they can do is collect empty regions and redevelop them with roads and parcels that can't be cut. Which involves a brief and paying moles...

Hmmm… The new mentor program reveals that Linden Lab is ok with turning residents into unpaid workers. Why not create the RDPW… Resident Dept of Public Works! 

[Love Zhaoying]

20 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

Hmmm… The new mentor program reveals that Linden Lab is ok with turning residents into unpaid workers. Why not create the RDPW… Resident Dept of Public Works! 

There is a difference between "volunteers" and "unpaid workers".

[Marianne Little]

15 hours ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

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.

The gardeners would have to be of "good standing" with LL. I do not mean linden pets, but somebody who has invested time and money in SL. All that will be wasted if we did something really bad and was banned. I know it sounds like I have a superiority complex because I have bought Lindens.

But what else than money spent, land owner, long time resident, or involved in SL in some other way can they pick? Not one who just created an account. Of course it could be an alt, and  LL knew who was behind it.

If we did something that's a minor transgression, LL can take away our powers and slap our wrist with some limited ban, if necessary.

They can't trust the mentors to not abuse their powers either...

Edited June 12, 2023 by Marianne Little

[Marianne Little]

6 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Improving mainland is easy, the problem is 20 years of "who cares it's mainland" governance debt. Nothing we suggest can ever be actioned as LL are unwilling to enact policy that means they have a huge amount of content to police. Let alone the need to reeducate people about the change.

There are very few suggestions that don't involve some kind of covenant.

It's honestly difficult enough to get someone to come out and move a linden bush or remove a fence to get road access. What makes anyone think they will stand behind sweeping changes to remove spite walls, low flying junk, bot farms, breedables, adboards, exercise eminent domain to reclaim waterways or micro parcels or full bright just to name a few things.

 

Full bright is especially fraught .. people who set everything they have that way do so because SL is dark if they don't. So either no lighting and old computers or actual vision issues (not uncommon!) 

 

The only thing they can do is collect empty regions and redevelop them with roads and parcels that can't be cut. Which involves a brief and paying moles...

 

Maybe start with improving textures? That is not a covenant thing. I know nothing of how to put in new textures, but surely it has to be much less work than LL spent on EEP, just to take an example.

So let us see how many that will scream and demand the old textures back, shall we? If it is improving textures, not replacing them with totally other textures like snow where it wasn't before, it will not ruin peoples land.

I do like the idea of snow if it was created a new mountain on abandoned land, just a small cap.

The best thing is that people will see that LL is doing things for Mainland. It will be very visible, it is not something that only forum readers will know.

I could never be a mentor. I am too introvert now. And in bad health. But not having to consentrate on chats, and interacting with a lot of people, would be different. It would not be a strain on my health, more the opposite. It must be LL that gives instructions, like "Lay a road between region x and y." ."Remove all old trees in regions a, b and c."

[Extrude Ragu]

7 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Improving mainland is easy, the problem is 20 years of "who cares it's mainland" governance debt. Nothing we suggest can ever be actioned as LL are unwilling to enact policy that means they have a huge amount of content to police. Let alone the need to reeducate people about the change.

The trouble is that not bringing the mainland up to modern standards is also very expensive as it is costing us an entire generation of new players who will seek the greener pastures available to them on newer platforms.

[Gabriele Graves]

9 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

What about floating islands though? Or balloons? Or clouds?

I think old mainland and private islands can allow for these kinds of fantasy builds, while a new kind of mainland could apply the kind of structured controls that have made Bellisseria so popular, and in doing so could refresh interest in owning mainland.

You are wasting your breath.  The people in this thread who have decided for themselves what is best for all Mainlanders will never be swayed by actual reasoned arguments that the rules they want to see are not only impractical but even if they could be enforced would only serve to destroy the ability for some to truly let their imaginations fly with their builds.  They really don't care if the baby is thrown out with the bathwater.

Thankfully they are in a minority though, loud as they can be.  How do I know?  If most Mainlanders thought like them then Mainland would already be more like their vision of what it should be instead of how it is.

 

[Marianne Little]

1 hour ago, Gabriele Graves said:

You are wasting your breath.  The people in this thread who have decided for themselves what is best for all Mainlanders will never be swayed by actual reasoned arguments that the rules they want to see are not only impractical but even if they could be enforced would only serve to destroy the ability for some to truly let their imaginations fly with their builds.  They really don't care if the baby is thrown out with the bathwater.

Thankfully they are in a minority though, loud as they can be.  How do I know?  If most Mainlanders thought like them then Mainland would already be more like their vision of what it should be instead of how it is.

 

I think you are very harsh, it is suggestions here, not demands. You have one single thing to critizise of these 4 pages. "They do not care if air balloons and floating islands have to go".

I for one, has talked about Mainland 2.0 and a covenant, and let people have Mainland. Are you not in favor of new textures on Mainland either? Or more roads and inland lakes, in abandoned empty land?

It is alredy people who find places on Mainland they like, even if they do not know the other residents there. They see no skyboxes, almost no privacy walls and buy or rent there. I belive that if we show people how Mainland can look like, they find each other. They know the difference between a sky castle and a box. I live by "x" and this is a year old photo. Many has lived there for years, and it is still much the same. There are 2 pretty air balloons now. It is some who has builds underwater too.

Too bad that you only see the negatives here. Yes, there are those who want bans on structures like 64 m walls and low skyboxes. We talk about it, we do not necessary think it will happen. It is more likely that LL will offer the option of Mainland 2.0 than make a covenant for Mainland.

In that Mainland 2.0, it would be up to LL to return what's against the covenant. Depeding of who you talk to, LL does a good or a bad job in Bellisseria. But they have not given up and let people do whatever they want.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Marianne Little

[Qie Niangao]

At least 15 years ago I argued (only partly tongue-in-cheek) for "prim rot" that would make older structures decay to ruins and eventually evaporate unless the owner took active measures to preserve and restore them.

The grid evolves constantly. Examine the original Linden Homes; those were pretty much state-of-the-art back then. Sure there were more advanced techniques shown at SIGGRAPH or whatever, but that mix of prims and sculpts were new enough then to be timely in SL. (Roughly contemporaneous: the scene-setting builds of Nautilus City that were widely lauded at the time.) 

Now, like it or not, Bellisseria looks much tidier and "fresher" than Mainland proper because Belli's builds uniformly use newer technology. Two points there: "newer" and "uniform". Both matter, but adopting a specific uniform stratum of build technology makes the bigger difference. The original Linden Homes, passe as they may be, aged much better than the Nautilus City builds now surrounded by a hodge podge of mesh.

(I'd say something here about how the new generation of glTF materials and advanced lighting will soon change what we consider acceptable texturing on builds, attachments, and avatars, but any mention of PBR arouses the K-hyena who, if sleeping, is best let lie.)

The point is, SL is now 20 years old, and is accommodating 3D graphics from that entire interval, and preparing for more. Mainland is a way of celebrating that, but it's inherently messy, and needs more tools to keep it viable without discouraging diverse expression.

• I already proposed parcel-based scene curation. The landowner should be able to control what of the surroundings are visible.
• I'd also propose a default (for Mainland anyway) render ceiling of 50m above ground level, from cam positions near ground level. This limit could be overridden by parcel-based curation, and maybe Moles would find reason for exceptions on some Governor/LDPW land. Also, it's 50m above the ground level of the object, not the viewer, so it follows the terrain in view. (Even when the cam is way above ground level, some default slice of visibility might be useful, not sure.)

The goal is to appreciate content of different generations (and styles, etc.) and to filter out common sources of distraction while encouraging individual builds to relate to their surroundings just as much as they choose—and to achieve this as mechanically as possible. It helps to acknowledge it as a fundamentally technical problem, rather than denigrate it as a "social" one.

[Gabriele Graves]

18 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

I think you are very harsh, it is suggestions here, not demands. You have one single thing to critizise of these 4 pages. "They do not care if air balloons and floating islands have to go".

18 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

Too bad that you only see the negatives here.

You are welcome to your opinions of course, as am I and as anyone else is.

Of course my comments were made generally about some of the wishes expressed here and about nobody specifically where as yours are very pointed towards me specifically with "You, you, you..."

Don't put words in my mouth and kindly keep your characterizations of me to yourself lest you stray into the area of personal attacks which is against the forum guidelines.  Thank you.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Gabriele Graves

[Sparkle Bunny]

6 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

The gardeners would have to be of "good standing" with LL. I do not mean linden pets, but somebody who has invested time and money in SL.

Yeah, restricting to premium accounts or even payment method used would probably work; but they'd still have to pay someone to set up the program and manage the volunteers, and I'm not convinced anyone at LL cares enough about Mainland to sink any more resources into it.

We're always getting told that regions are too expensive for us to have nice things like protected water around all the continents, so I never really understood why they don't attempt to consolidate existing mainland into a smaller area. I can only assume that, as with the original Linden homes, it's more cost-effective to leave all that abandoned land alone than go through the hassle of removing or repurposing it.

 

[Nukasa22]

5 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

The people in this thread who have decided for themselves what is best for all Mainlanders

You are bringing heat into this thread without any need because you feel attacked out of whatever reason. You're also misrepresenting what was said by many people, that any potential new covenants won't be forced upon existing mainland. So your claim that they have decided what is best "for all Mainlanders" is not only factually false but also tries to turn this thread about suggestions into a "we against them" fight. Not so pleasant.

 

5 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

will never be swayed by actual reasoned arguments

You blame people who are not of your opinion for not accepting that your arguments are better than theirs. How dare they.

 

5 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Thankfully they are in a minority though, loud as they can be.  How do I know?

Because you're convinced that your arguments are better than others' arguments.

 

And sorry, I don't think your argument " If most Mainlanders thought like them then Mainland would already be more like their vision of what it should be instead" is very.. good. Only because some pretty roadside house lives next to a skybox on the ground doesn't mean that this is their vision of mainland.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Nukasa22

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

"The LDCW (Linden Department of Cornfield Workers) volunteer gang, hard at work digging a new protected southern coastline for the continent of Satori."

" 'Volunteers', carefully selected from the SL Cornfield, are granted free accommodation, meals, clothing and laundry services for life! And for their service to Second Life, volunteers are gifted some attractive heavy-duty ankle jewelry!"

^ Only imaginary, but I quite like the idea of "LDCW Volunteer Gangs".

😜

Edited June 12, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Ardy Lay]

Once upon a time, avatars were restricted to a region called The Corn Field as a punitive measure.  A thought that amuses me, and I am taking a story from elsewhere, I am sure, probably a movie I have seen....  A mature avatar is restricted to the new arrivals' region until the mature avatar teaches the new avatar how to do things, resulting in a basic working knowledge of Second Life, after which time they are both allowed to leave the region.  Please don't take this as a serious suggestion.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Ardy Lay

[Tamara Adored]

16 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

What about floating islands though? Or balloons? Or clouds?

I think old mainland and private islands can allow for these kinds of fantasy builds, while a new kind of mainland could apply the kind of structured controls that have made Bellisseria so popular, and in doing so could refresh interest in owning mainland.

I saw some beautiful builds with floating islands & I certainly wouldn’t have a problem living near them. Same with balloons, floating lanterns etc. I’ve built on land myself with clouds, lightening etc. My issue is the ‘junk’. Half built creations that are never worked on, floating debris, low hanging skyboxes. I agree that a new sort of mainland may be the only answer as beauty is in the eye of the beholder & my eyesore is someone else’s much loved creation. I saw an amazing Statue of Liberty in my travels. Would I want to live next to it? Probably not but I can appreciate the skill & work that someone put in & I don’t want to lose  that uniqueness that randomly appears as I fly around. It would be nice if we could reach some middle ground without anyone feeling they are being attacked (not a reference to the quoted poster).

[Gabriele Graves]

3 hours ago, Nukasa22 said:

You are bringing heat into this thread without any need because you feel attacked out of whatever reason. You're also misrepresenting what was said by many people, that any potential new covenants won't be forced upon existing mainland. So your claim that they have decided what is best "for all Mainlanders" is not only factually false but also tries to turn this thread about suggestions into a "we against them" fight. Not so pleasant.

 

You blame people who are not of your opinion for not accepting that your arguments are better than theirs. How dare they.

 

Because you're convinced that your arguments are better than others' arguments.

 

And sorry, I don't think your argument " If most Mainlanders thought like them then Mainland would already be more like their vision of what it should be instead" is very.. good. Only because some pretty roadside house lives next to a skybox on the ground doesn't mean that this is their vision of mainland.

You only seem to be proving my point with your mischaracterisations about me and my motivations by getting so worked up by my post.

If nothing expressed in this thread had resembled anything I posted, there would be nothing for anyone to get so upset about.

Obviously, I hit a nerve.

Lastly, please refrain from issuing diatribes against me personally.  It isn't allow here.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Gabriele Graves

[Quartz Mole]

Friendly reminder that a detailed and lengthy debate with an individual poster in the thread about particular points of dispute is, if it must be pursued, probably best carried on outside the public forum.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Quartz Mole

[diamond Marchant]

I have started my own Mainland be-you-tification project, specifically on Route 8C in Satori. The parcel was abandoned... repeat... roadside parcel was abandoned. So far things are going well. Only thing I would eliminate are some unattractive unoccupied poddy things that patrol the routes regularly. This is a public roadhouse. Our signature cocktail is "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer". Martinis and margyritas also good.

Edited June 12, 2023 by diamond Marchant

[Marigold Devin]

5 hours ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

Yeah, restricting to premium accounts or even payment method used would probably work; but they'd still have to pay someone to set up the program and manage the volunteers, and I'm not convinced anyone at LL cares enough about Mainland to sink any more resources into it.

We're always getting told that regions are too expensive for us to have nice things like protected water around all the continents, so I never really understood why they don't attempt to consolidate existing mainland into a smaller area. I can only assume that, as with the original Linden homes, it's more cost-effective to leave all that abandoned land alone than go through the hassle of removing or repurposing it.

 

That would make sense.

I sometimes wish I could be a fly on the wall at Linden Lab, because I can remember when I bought land at Quek and that was the most easterly region on that part of the mainland, and then some more regions were added to the east of that.

The rockier-textured land always seemed the least attractive and would have "For Sale" signs on certain parcels for absolutely ages as the owners wanted too much money for them, but still there were (are) never any completely vacant regions, and maybe that's the reason mainland isn't consolidated, although I just don't know for sure. 

 

[diamond Marchant]

15 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

There is a difference between "volunteers" and "unpaid workers".

You are correct. For normal people, unpaid workers, such as interns, tend to be motivated by career advancement. Comparatively, volunteers tend to have diverse "do gooder" motives. For labor lawyers, it is complicated (as expected) and I would have to charge you a high hourly rate to explain it.