Where am I?

[Tarani Tempest]

I am not entirely new to Second Life, started here over a year ago.  I am, however, new to the subject of Land in SL.   I have been trying to cure my curiosity by doing research....but seems it has made me more confused than before o.O.  I know there are 'mainlands' and umm other places, I suppose.  How do I know where I am in relation to these regions?  How do I get to a mainland? How do I know if I am there...and is it important that I even know if I am? lol, ok....soooo yea.  Completely lost on the subject.  Ive looked at the SL wiki regarding ..mainland....and I see maps, and all sorts of decriptions.  I do not see how to get there or how one knows if they are there.

I would really love to find some info.... in one place maybe :) lol , that would make some sense out of all of it.

Really after all this time... just wondering where ive been, where I am at in here.  There is this huge virtual world that I have been hanging out in, making friends, shopping... doing w/e........like some of us do :P   Now, Id like a bigger picture, so to speak.

[Thinkerer Melville]

To go t oa place on a map, click on it and then click teleport or doouble click on it.  Big land areas on the map will usually be mainland.   

Here are some articles about land

Where am I?

http://virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com/2011/01/kit-where-am-i.html

Land and houses

http://thinkerer.org/SLintChan/SLiHoboKitonWeb.htm#Land

TKR

[Linda Brynner]

Hi,

I will try to keep it as simple as possible.

The most simple way to find out where you are is opening the big map and zoom out. The map shows about 7 large chunks of land, those are mainland. All scatters around it are estates. To make sure where you are, find and open the "About Land" window.

Once you have the About Land window open, click the "Covenant". If the name is "Mainland" well then you are on mainland, otherwise it is an estate.

What is the difference between the two.

Well, SL has about 30000 regions in all, and each region is 256x256 meters wide. Mainland regions have been brought online by Linden Lab.. An estate is a region bought by a RL private person in LL's land shop (SL website) first, and then brought online by LL for the person who bought it. 

Now, each region can be subdivided into parcels by the owner.

An estate is entirely privately owned region, the entire 256x256 is in the hand of 1 private person although it runs on LL's hardware servers. 

A mainland region runs on LL's servers too, however subdivided parcels here are directly owned by private owners. Of course estates can be subdivided too into parcels by the estate owner and everyone can rent a parcel too there, but for services you will stay in the hand of the estate owner (the one who privately owns the estate). On mainland you actually buy a parcel directly from LL (rent a 3D space directly from LL without a private owner in between).

To buy an entire region from LL (that would be an estate) you need to have be a premium SL membership, pay the purchase price in SL's land shop (at SL's website) and a monthly user fee (tier) to LL. Or you can rent a parcel on an estate from the owner, no premium is needed for that and you can pay weekly tier with L$. But if the estate owner has a mood swing you can be kicked off without questions asked and no refunds. Estates do have covenants depending on its owner. Covenants do put restrictions on tenants like what is allowed and not.

To buy a parcel on Mainland, you need premium SL membership. You can then start purchasing parcels on sale with L$ there. You can always put it up for sales again any time you want. Mainland does not have covenants usually, so you own it with all freedom without any restrictions. After the transaction, that parcel is totally yours and you pay monthly tier to LL withUS$ (not with L$).

(if you see mainland where you can pay weekly or monthly tier with L$ to a private owner be aware that it too is rent instead of a real purchase).

Linden Lab also offers "Linden homes" for premium member to experience about first land in SL. Small parcels (512 sq.m). They are free but you pay for premium membership of course. And they have a Covenant with restrictions.

If you see a mainland parcel owned by "Governor Linden", and it reads "Abandoned" it means the last owner gave it back to LL so it is in the hand of LL again. If you want to buy an abandoned piece, open a service ticket via SL's website and offer L$ 1 per sq.m for it. And usually it's yours.

Prims per sq.m: Mainland: to keep it simple: always 4.369 (a few exceptions).

Prims per sq.m: Estates: can be the normal (full) 4.369, could be half or could be double.

For estates it seems that LL runs more estate regions on one hardware server where as mainland regions are garanteed to run on one hardware server. The latter is not told to us by LL, but i am pretty certain they do since region crossings on estates are bumpy and performance seems less. Region crossings on mainland (to my 5 years of experience) are ususally much more smooth and overall performance of mainland servers seems much better and more constant.

I hope this shines some light for you. I'm so sorry that land in SL is very confusing indeed.

 

[Anita61 Anatine]

Very good answer! I just have one thing to add: A lot of abandoned land is set for sale at the moment at L$1 per sq.m. 

Just visit the parcel and buy the land, no need to raise a ticket!

To see parcels for sale on mainland, open your world map and make sure land for sale is ticked. It'll show up in yellow ith a pricetag.

[Linda Brynner]

Ohhh, i didn't follow that recently; great news, so LL finally have put them on sales, fabulous. It's even more easy.

 

An addition i'd like to add too:

Don't let somebody fool you with so called "class 5, 6 or 7 land" and asking different prices for it. Since of 2010-II class server type land ended. 

Also do not let you be fooled with so called  better servers like: Magnum, Blue Steel, Le Tigre & Snack. They are not different, faster or slower servers but different clusters in the server park through which server software updates are rolled out weekly. 

All hardware servers are the same. But the performance between mainland (better) and estate (worse) still exists due to different software server versions, different hardware server clustering, and channeling of rolling out newer software server versions, and more estates may run on 1 hardware server where mainland runs 1 region per hardware server.

 

[JeanneAnne]

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Tarani Tempest wrote:

I am not entirely new to Second Life, started here over a year ago.  I am, however, new to the subject of Land in SL.   I have been trying to cure my curiosity by doing research....but seems it has made me more confused than before

.  I know there are 'mainlands' and umm other places, I suppose.  How do I know where I am in relation to these regions?  How do I get to a mainland? How do I know if I am there

...and is it important that I even know if I am?

lol, ok....soooo yea.  Completely lost on the subject.  Ive looked at the SL wiki regarding ..mainland....and I see maps, and all sorts of decriptions.  I do not see how to get there or how one knows if they are there.

I would really love to find some info.... in one place maybe

lol , that would make some sense out of all of it.

Really after all this time... just wondering where ive been, where I am at in here.  There is this huge virtual world that I have been hanging out in, making friends, shopping... doing w/e........like some of us do

   Now, Id like a bigger picture, so to speak.

---

No, I don't think that it's important to know where you are in SL.

In RL I have a good sense of direction and like maps & like to know where I am. In SL I have found all of this to be unnecessary.

Use 'search' to find places you'd like to go then TP there. It doesn't matter where the places you're TPing to & from are in relation to one another. N,S,E,&W don't matter in SL (unless you are performing a ritual & invoking the Watchtowers). LM the places you like so you can go back to them quickly & don't worry about where they "are."

Keep in mind that SL isn't a "space." "Places" in SL are just binary code in a server. There is no length, width or depth in SL. No up & down. It's just code that gives the illusion of dimensionality on your 2D monitor. We suspend disbelief when we think of SL in terms of "land" (or of water or sky or of space in general). We have to suspend disbelief in this way in order to enjoy SL & to experience it as a virtual world. But it's best to stay aware, in the back of your mind, that the appearance of space & of dimensionality is just an illusion.

You forget this, start taking the illusion seriously, and SL has driven you crazy. Once SL has driven you crazy you get upset over things that happen "in" SL. Then you get your heart broken, you spend RL money on SL, you get really angry when someone griefs you or rips you off. You start acting like many do on these fora. Then you know you're nuts.

Jeanne

[Tarani Tempest]

Thanks so much for the reply   It deffinetely gave me a better over all view of how land works.

 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Linda Brynner wrote:

 

All hardware servers are the same. But the performance between mainland (better) and estate (worse) still exists due to different software server versions, different hardware server clustering, and channeling of rolling out newer software server versions, and more estates may run on 1 hardware server where mainland runs 1 region per hardware server.

 

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Sorry can't agree with this at all.  On the mainland people are allowed to do what they want with their land without restriction (except for a few areas with a covenant) thus people can run tons of laggy scripts or do other things that cause lag for everyone on the sim to say nothing of the fact you can end up with an undesirable businesses and eyesores surrounding you.. 

On a well run private estate, the estate owner does not allow you to use more than your fair share of resources, has the choice of allowing residential use, commercial use, or a mixture  If they choose to allow commercial use, they can specify what types of commerce can go on there.  This information is in the covenant, so you know what  kind of neighbors you may have even if you are the first to buy on the sim.  There is no guarantee on mainland what will be beside you in the future, even if what is there now is acceptable.

A private estate can restart the sim on a regular schedule for maintenance much more frequently that the Lindens restart mainland, and can restart it anytime they need to as opposed to having to file a ticket or contact support for LL to do it when they get around to it.

One server per sim  even if it is mainland, is a myth.  There are multiple sims on a server.  How many depends on the type of sim, full vs.. Homestead, vs open.  In fact LL actually has more sims on a server now than they did a couple of years back.

The only disadvantages of a private estate is that you need to choose the estate wisely,  You want a well run and stable estate, preferably one that has been around for a while.  Always do your research to be sure the estate is stable and talk to residents that  own land there to see if they are satisfied or had any problems, the same way you'd do if considering  property in RL.

If you are a premium member you also can't use your free 512sqm of tier towards your tier.  But then again, you don't need to be a premium member and pay a fee to LL to buy estate land so that offsets it.

[Irene Muni]

In the "About land" window, you can see the "Type" of the land: Mainland or ...