Theory on the Void sims.

Here's my guess. The 'void' sims are actually the processing power of ONE sim filling four squares. Which is why LL needs testers in there.

EVERYONE PILE IN!

Headin' over now!

-EDIT- Well, they seem okay, maybe a bit laggy. Glad to see them, though.

Do these void sims have names? And if your theory is correct, we shouldn't see any issues crossing their borders...hmmmm

Are they land or water sims?

Their names are Void12, Void8, Void7 and Void20. None have a rating. The two that I have been two are mostly water, partly land....the land part is just to match up the coast with the land in the neighboring sim.

If you look at the alt 1 stats, Sim CPU is actually varying. And the numbers are most telling. 0.24-0.25!

was just about to point that out They seem to run just fine (at the moment). Not many agents in them but a ton of child agents and they're doing good. My one and only gripe would be that I wish there was a few more spots of visible land in those sims. The reason being, usually when I see that much water, I automatically think that either the sim is crashed or I need to relog.

This must be what the Lindens were alluding to when they said they were going to start experimenting with ways to fill in the empty water areas that exist in the world.

If I just stated the obvious... forgive me for coming to the party late.

"On the road of Second Life, there are passengers, and there are drivers."

Would be nice to take a virtual camping trip at some of these "void" areas, go with one's virtual family and eat virtual marshmallows but feel the very real luv.

K, you're obviously a bit new 'round here. People have been asking for water-sims for boating and the like for ages now. LL gives us water sims, and you want land in them?

I'm all for empty nature space and boating areas. Going to a remote, countryish landscaped area to visit with friends could be great. Especially for meetings or vacations. That would be so neat.

We used to have De Haro... and later Green. They were beautiful, but LL released all the land :\

Oh happy day! I have wanted for so long to jump in my boat and sail west from the old forest coast of Stinson. Up until today I have had to hug the coast and make a round-about trip.

Today I set sail from the east coast of Stinson and headed directly west, through the brand new sea that appeared today. Smooth sailing indeed (as I was the only one boating at the time). I changed course and headed a bit north and landed on a strange new coast just to the east of Brilliant.

How cool is this!?!?

I've attached a shot I took during the return voyage of a never-before vantage point looking east toward Stinson and the old forest remnants.

Have fun all!

HOORAY!

1) Boating
2) Nice views across water
3) Not smacking into invisible walls

Yeah, you showed me what could be done au naturel -- if only the road didn't sink in on us. LOL!

So we're going to have the metropolitan cities, the farms and countrysides and more rural areas, and then the wide expanses as you described. In addition to all the wacky surreality that is a staple of SL, of course.

Here is a photo of the new map, including the new sims. It doesn't exactly look as if the pictures of the new sims and the vechicle sims match up exactly (in color at least).

Ah. Some blurring, shading, and we may be fine. Terraform megamix time! Unless the effect is intention since, after all, they are "the void". This kind of reminds me of one of 'dem Jack Nicklaus course designer games.

I would guess you are correct. A month ago I asked LL several questions about the possibility of getting a super-sized island running on a single server, and heard back that sometime after 1.5 was released it should be possible to put up to 4 sims on a single machine.

I since haven't had the time to follow up on the idea but I bet this is a test of that very concept.

They are actually all hosted on the same server (atleast it appears so), I went to Help - About Second Life and the sim number is 294 for each void.

My guess is that they are all on the same server with 4 different instances of the software running (or a version of the software that runs 4 different sims ).

Performance wise they seem to work great, crossing sim boarders is still slightly noticable, but not as bad as a normal sim crossing (I think this is also partly due to them being empty).

They look rather nice too, nice big ocean space!

The non-rating thing is a bit odd, I would actualy suggest to put a rating on them, maybe based on the average of the surrounding sims?

Non-Build is actualy good, keeps down on the clutter. And allowing outside scripts is also great!

Very nice work, keep them coming!

I'm in Void20 at the moment and it registers at the top of my interface as a PG area.

Hmm, yeah, it seems Void20 is the only void with a rating, the rest are Unknown.

Physics FPS is never exactly 45, it always varies. Crossing from one to another is also worse than in the neighboring vehicle sims.

Honestly I hope they don't put anything there permanently, unless there are no edge connections to non-vehicle-park sims other than Rizal. The big appeal of the vehicle sims is that they are empty and that you get really high FPS because you cannot see into (for example) Da Boom. Also you know that there's a pretty good chance that any runaway vehicles are likely to conveniently offworld themselves if you get dropped out of them.

Maybe two sims on one machine would be better than four, Idunno... the sims had only a few people between all four of them, and they seemed a little uneven in performance...

I'm riding my jetski in the new void sims. They get about 1000 sim fps.

If they keep these void sims, I sure hope they do a better job of terraforming them. Obviously there are restrictions given the existing terrain, but the sim borders don't have to be quite THAT conspicuous.

Look at the highlands in the northeast corner of Brilliant.They look ridiculous.

what is the benefit of putting multiple sims on one server?

when are we getting dual processor hyperthreaded?