The Shape of this Virtual World

[Persephone Emerald]

The World Map is flat, but the sun goes around to the other side. Could LL do something to make the shape of the Second Life world seem more like a cylinder or even a sphere? What would it take to connect the Eastern and Western edges of the map, even by one region on each side, so people could sail or fly around the world?

Someone on another thread suggested a teleporter between Zindra and a far western region. Actually, anyone could make such a teleporter if they own a parcel on each side of the world, but I think it would be cool if people could sail from one side to the other.

[Sid Nagy]

The sun moves around the world.
Problem solved.
That was the theory of ancient humans too, who thought the world was flat and the modern time flat earthers.

By keeping the earth flat, the SL world can expand without limits.
50,000 new sims needed next year because of the new phone viewer?  No problem for the map, maybe for the Lab though to keep up.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Sid Nagy

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

The World Map is flat, but the sun goes around to the other side. Could LL do something to make the shape of the Second Life world seem more like a cylinder or even a sphere? What would it take to connect the Eastern and Western edges of the map, even by one region on each side, so people could sail or fly around the world?

Someone on another thread suggested a teleporter between Zindra and a far western region. Actually, anyone could make such a teleporter if they own a parcel on each side of the world, but I think it would be cool if people could sail from one side to the other.

 

I wasn't aware that you could drive a boat through a teleporter.

When you cross a sim boundary, your info is passed on to the "next sim" But, there is no need for that "next sim" to be touching, it could be 1000 sims away. We just think its a "sim crossing"

So "connect" a sim on the eastern most edge of Zindra to a sim on the westernmost edge of LL's respectable mainland in that way, separated by half a world, but directly linked in the sim transfer  and its just the same as if they were physically connected. In that way, you can sail or fly to Zindra,  but Zindra can still be LL's dirty little secret far off by itself.

[Persephone Emerald]

24 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

 

I wasn't aware that you could drive a boat through a teleporter.

When you cross a sim boundary, your info is passed on to the "next sim" But, there is no need for that "next sim" to be touching, it could be 1000 sims away. We just think its a "sim crossing"

So "connect" a sim on the eastern most edge of Zindra to a sim on the westernmost edge of LL's respectable mainland in that way, separated by half a world, but directly linked in the sim transfer  and its just the same as if they were physically connected. In that way, you can sail or fly to Zindra,  but Zindra can still be LL's dirty little secret far off by itself.

Generally, you can not take a vehicle with you through a teleporter,  - unless you're wearing it rather than sitting on it.

This is what I'm suggesting. Everything in SL is a digital illusion - water, sky, land, the transit of the sun and moon - everything is a program. So, why not give it the illusion of being a spherical or cylindrical world, rather than a flat one?  

A sphere would be more tricky than a cylinder because the regions at the North and South are all square rather than triangular. A cylinder seems doable to me. Maybe this would make it more tricky to add new regions?, but I think there are enough empty squares on the map that there is plenty of room for the next few years at least.

[elleevelyn]

is interesting this

the shape of the world is a torus. A torus allows square regions. And the size of the torus can expand up to the max. teleport range

i had a play with this on OpenSim back in the day. Where the top edge of the Map is stitched to the bottom edge, the left edge stitched to the right edge. Which means no matter what direction you go in a straight line you end up back where you started

the other interesting about this is that the sun is in the middle of the torus (middle of the hole) and doesn't move.  The torus doesn't move either. The surface of the torus rotates which explains why the sun (in the out-of-the-box environment) appears to follow the same fixed path across the sky on every region

add:. With the custom environment then there is one torus world and a myriad of suns - one for each region

Edited November 5, 2023 by elleevelyn
typs

[Persephone Emerald]

12 minutes ago, elleevelyn said:

is interesting this

the shape of the world is a torus. A torus allows square regions. And the size of the torus can expand up to the max. teleport range

i had a play with this on OpenSim back in the day. Where the top edge of the Map is stitched to the bottom edge, the left edge stitched to the right edge. Which means no matter what direction you go in a straight line you end up back where you started

the other interesting about this is that the sun is in the middle of the torus (middle of the hole) and doesn't move.  The torus doesn't move either. The surface of the torus rotates which explains why the sun (in the out-of-the-box environment) appears to follow the same fixed path across the sky on every region

add:. With the custom environment then there is one torus world and a myriad of suns - one for each region

Wouldn't the size of regions contract and expand as the surface of the torus rotates?

[elleevelyn]

36 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Wouldn't the size of regions contract and expand as the surface of the torus rotates?

interestingly no.  Is impossible to visually represent this torus accurately in a seamless sense.  As the circumference of the hole is equal to the circumference of the outside edge of the torus. Yet it works mathematically in terms of movement/travel

is a simllar representation issue when we unwrap the world globe to a flat plane (map). The visual representation is inaccurate, but the math in terms or movement across the globe is accurate

edit add: just to show what it looks like in a non-seamless way. (where each ring is a strip of regions) and the math distance between each ring and its neighbor is the same no matter inside or outside - even tho visually the distance looks greater on the outside

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by elleevelyn
seamless

[Love Zhaoying]

I hope the evidence doesn't lead to the conclusion that the Second Life Grid is "flat"!

 

[Love Zhaoying]

I like the idea of the Second Life world being "on the inside of a sphere" (or other shape), with the sun occasionally obscured by an invisible, opaque object in the center of the sphere.  This could explain how it can be "daytime" in multiple areas at once. 

Or, maybe that works with the "cylinder" shape too (if the world is on the outside).

Dum lion doesn't know asshofyzzysticks.

 

[elleevelyn]

11 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I hope the evidence doesn't lead to the conclusion that the Second Life Grid is "flat"!

 

a world is flat when we are on edge of the map and we can't go any further in the same direction. If the northern-most strip of potential regions aren't stitched to the southern-most strip of potential regions (same east and west) then SL is flat

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Generally, you can not take a vehicle with you through a teleporter,  - unless you're wearing it rather than sitting on it.

This is what I'm suggesting. Everything in SL is a digital illusion - water, sky, land, the transit of the sun and moon - everything is a program. So, why not give it the illusion of being a spherical or cylindrical world, rather than a flat one?  

A sphere would be more tricky than a cylinder because the regions at the North and South are all square rather than triangular. A cylinder seems doable to me. Maybe this would make it more tricky to add new regions?, but I think there are enough empty squares on the map that there is plenty of room for the next few years at least.

In real life, If I bought 10 acres of land just a bit north of the south pole, it would still be square, it would still be 660 ft by 660 ft.

So in sl, no matter how far north or south  one goes, the sims will still be square.

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by BilliJo Aldrin
typo, added words

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, elleevelyn said:

interestingly no.  Is impossible to visually represent this torus accurately in a seamless sense.  As the circumference of the hole is equal to the circumference of the outside edge of the torus. Yet it works mathematically in terms of movement/travel

is a simllar representation issue when we unwrap the world globe to a flat plane (map). The visual representation is inaccurate, but the math in terms or movement across the globe is accurate

edit add: just to show what it looks like in a non-seamless way. (where each ring is a strip of regions) and the math distance between each ring and its neighbor is the same no matter inside or outside - even tho visually the distance looks greater on the outside

 

The distance between the loops *is* greater on the outside than on the inside of this torus. It doesn't just look greater.

Space isn't warped in SL. It's a simple 3 dimensional mathematical construct.

Relative to observation, all regions are the same standard size "North to South" and "East to West". There is no actual defined top, but there is an actual defined bottom of each region. Adjacent "physical" regions have exactly the same length or width and height at which they're adjacent. ("Non-physical" regions have 0m length, width, height or depth, however.)

I think I'm attempting to project a flat rectangular model into a simple 3 dimensional space. If the SL world were projected onto the surface of a cylinder, however, the top of each region would be stretched wider, while the bottom of each region would be compressed. 

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

There is a globe of SL in the Newbrook Community area.  Proof that the land bits making up the surface of SL are curved.

😁

Edited November 6, 2023 by Cinnamon Mistwood

[Persephone Emerald]

22 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

There is a globe of SL in the Newbrook Community area.  Proof that the land bits making up the surface of SL are curved.

😁

Hey, but if one sets their draw distance to maximum, then watches a boat sail away from them, does the bottom part of the boat disappear from view first?

[animats]

It's not entirely a silly subject. I've done a bit of work on this, because, in my experimental Sharpview viewer, I want to show more of the world than just the draw distance, so you have more of a sense of where you are. When you want to show the big world, this stuff matters.

A few years back, I turned the SL map into a slippy map, so you can pan, tilt, and fly over.

Above Second Life. (I have this online, but because of BUG-226430 I have to front-end the map content delivery network with a proxy, and it doesn't work reliably because the free proxy has bandwidth limits. You can try it but you get cut off before the whole map loads.)

This lets you see the entire SL map, which is helpful when flying. This would be turned on for mainland and big estates, but off for isolated regions, so they see the usual infinite water. This models a flat world with an infinitely far away horizon. That's stage 1.

At ground level, you need distant objects to have some elevation, or you can't see them. It's possible to get elevation data for a region and project the map data onto it. Someone did that at SL20B, and others, including me, have done it. This lets you see hills. It's possible to do better, but the SL map painted on elevation meshes is a good starting point for test purposes. A more advanced system might use Open Drone Map to make low-rez region models from pictures of mainland taken by drone bots. (Only mainland and big estates need this. You can't see isolated regions from off-region.)

With this flat world, you'll see the tallest terrain in SL from everywhere. Being able to see Mt. Campion in Heterocera all the way from from southern Bellessaria would look wrong. Plus it adds overhead.  So some kind of horizon would help.

So it's useful to apply some curvature to the world. That's stage 2. At normal eye height, the horizon is about 5 km distant. Of course, if you get on top of something tall, you can see further.  Curvature would only be applied to distant region impostors. Wherever you are, within draw distance and a bit beyond, would be completely flat. Distant mountains would be be partly below the horizon, and completely hidden at some distance. Above some height, object elevation doesn't matter too much and a flat ground map is good enough. It's not a perfect illusion but it will give a sense of place.

Juggling curvature, draw distance, and impostor management is an interesting technical problem. More on this in future months.

[Katherine Heartsong]

Sillys ... It's definitely not flat otherwise cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now.

[elleevelyn]

12 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

The distance between the loops *is* greater on the outside than on the inside of this torus. It doesn't just look greater.

Space isn't warped in SL. It's a simple 3 dimensional mathematical construct.

 

yes, but it doesn't work in the way we would normally think about it

when the top and bottom (and left and right) of a 2-dimensional map are stitched together then we get a torus. If they are not stitched then the world is flat

working with the idea that the map is stitched (a torus) then to make it work we use the zerospace axiom - the distance between any two points in zerospace is zero. And the distance between any two points in realspace immediately on both sides of zerospace is zero

the image represents a side view of a torus world made from rectangular parcels. Where the blue rectangles are 256m wide by 4096m high in realspace. The red triangles represent zerospace

so whether we at the top or the bottom of the diagram, the red distance is zero

blue 2 + red 0 = 2

from a math pov (and a use pov) the blue rectangles (realspace) are next to each other - there is zerospace between them. So when we run a tape measure around the bottom then we find that the realspace distance is the same as the realspace distance around the top

 

edit add to clarify: zerospace is not the same as voidspace. Voidspace (void region) is in realspace

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by elleevelyn
tidy up

[Lewis Luminos]

On 11/5/2023 at 8:52 PM, BilliJo Aldrin said:

 

I wasn't aware that you could drive a boat through a teleporter.

 

You can't, unless it's the sort that is an attachment (there are a few, not many). If it's a vehicle you're driving/sitting on, you'll be unseated upon teleport and the boat will either remain stuck at the region where the teleporter is, or auto-returned, depending on the settings of the region where it eventually comes to a stop.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Lewis Luminos said:

You can't, unless it's the sort that is an attachment (there are a few, not many). If it's a vehicle you're driving/sitting on, you'll be unseated upon teleport and the boat will either remain stuck at the region where the teleporter is, or auto-returned, depending on the settings of the region where it eventually comes to a stop.

yep, thats why we need a portal and not a teleporter between Zindra and the rest of mainland 😁

Edited November 7, 2023 by BilliJo Aldrin
added words

[Aethelwine]

Vehicles can travel through portals to move within a region through interaction between scripts in the vehicle and the portal. I think Karyn amongst others have scripted them and I have used them on both roads and with spaceships.

I seem to recall Novatech working on experience portals that would transport objects, but I never worked out exactly what that meant and I presume there is some limitation to what they developed that prevents it working to move vehicles across region borders or I am sure we would see them in world.

Perhaps the experience system at some point can add in the ability to do that. I am not technically minded but it seems at least conceivable to me that they could.

[Aethelwine]

On 11/7/2023 at 2:37 PM, BilliJo Aldrin said:

yep, thats why we need a portal and not a teleporter between Zindra and the rest of mainland 😁

I already have an experience portal I use to travel between parcels on mainland and Zindra, but it doesn't work with vehicles that you sit on.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

19 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

I already have an experience portal I use to travel between parcels on mainland and Zindra, but it doesn't work with vehicles that you sit on.

the point i was trying to make was that when you cross a sim boundary, you enter the sim right beside the one you are leaving. But it doesnt need to be that way. Any sim can be directly connected to any other sim anywhere on the grid. So when you leave the sim you directly enter ehatever sim the one you are leaving is connected to.

Perhaps “portal” was a poor choice of words.

[animats]

5 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

Vehicles can travel through portals to move within a region through interaction between scripts in the vehicle and the portal. I think Karyn amongst others have scripted them and I have used them on both roads and with spaceships.

I seem to recall Novatech working on experience portals that would transport objects, but I never worked out exactly what that meant and I presume there is some limitation to what they developed that prevents it working to move vehicles across region borders or I am sure we would see them in world.

Perhaps the experience system at some point can add in the ability to do that. I am not technically minded but it seems at least conceivable to me that they could.

If the teleporter owner owns the vehicles, they could set up an experience where you seem to ride through a teleport, but you're really being re-seated in an identical vehicle at the receiving end. I'd like to see that for all those Japanese subway stations. Most of the Japan-themed sims seem to have a subway or train station that goes nowhere. They should connect.

Edited November 11, 2023 by animats

[Rabid Cheetah]

If any of you have read the excellent Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson, there's a part where Nirgal, a Martian-born young man, visits Earth, and finds looking at the horizon very disorienting -- Where's the curve?  He realizes Earth really is a bigger planet than Mars, and even notes that it finally made sense to him that ancient Earthlings thought the world was flat:  They couldn't see the obviousness of living on a giant sphere, the way you can, via the curved horizon, on Mars.

Ergo, I submit the Nirgal Hypothesis:  The Linden Lab colony takes up a very small portion of a huge planet --  A planet so huge that the horizon still appears as a flat line even from very high heights.

That said, an undergrad at the University of Bytes and Bits,  "Moody" Judy  Mehberg, has recently published a paper where she proposes that the SL map isn't a map of the world, but rather a map of the universe.  More specifically, it's a two-dimensional representation of four-dimensional space (at a given time in fifth-dimensional time-space), a giant tesseract of pocket universes strung together.  These three-dimensional universes, more commonly referred to as "regions", are of uniform size:  256 meters by 256 meters by 5000 meters.  They are, for the most part, linked to four other regions on the x-axis and y-axis, though there are many notable "dead end" regions that lack a fourth regional entry/exit point.  For example, you can enter/exit Lemontal from the North, South, or West, but not from the East.  Her paper doesn't go into much detail about these anomalies, much less the isolated island regions that lack any entry/exit point other than cross-dimensional teleportation.

Pictured:  An explorer enjoys the sunset on a nascent region

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

Just use an experience and have everyone who goes East of Zindra end up in the Cornfield wearing a straightjacket while the song "I don't want to set the world on fire" plays on repeat.