Idea: True City Community

I love Olde London, what a wonderful job the Spellbound team has done once again!

In the spirit of using ideas that have come out of the Neverland experience, I'd like to propose something that will continue in what I loved about the creation of a virtual London city. The creation of a new city that can be inhabited, brought and kept living. I know Olde London is just a set, but I would like to see the town kept on in a new project, a true city region.

What would be needed are 4 simulator servers, with the city taking up 65536 sqm of space centered around the 4-corners region of those servers(where they all meet). This would allow the city to utilize 4 simulators worth of CPU power, and would allow the city to utilize 3-3.5 sims worth of prims (the other 0.5-1 sims worth of prims would go for forest, roads, countryside stuff in the remaining land).

London, Manhattan, San Francisco or an amalgam of major cities could be recreated, not only for looks, but could really be setup to be a living city. Skyscrapers that rented out floors, storefronts with actual shops, under-city sewars, a Town Hall, etc. Something like this would continue on as it would serve as the catalyst for the people who inhabit the town to fill it with new and interesting things. The town would be self-sustaining through rental of primspace by the residents, dwell, and other forms of income. (i.e. the group would have to pay nothing, with all L$ income converted on GOM to US$ to pay for the 4 sims tier)

I'd like to work with a group of people to bring something like this about. I've worked on a similiar idea with my MegaTower project, to provide sustainable, profitable, and usable structures in SL. I'm not the best builder in the world, and certainly not an artist or architect, but I love scripting and working on big projects. I'd love to see many of the talents in SL (builders, artists, scripters, organizers, players, etc) come together to create a new city in the spirit of Olde London so that we can provide a sustainable, true city in SL.

(Sorry for crossposting this from another thread, wanted to get this idea out on it's own)

That's an awsome idea Hank. I hope it can be made to happen.

Latonia

Good idea Hank!

I know that you have quite a lot of experience with large projects of this nature with the work you have been doing at the MegaTower and previous incarnations of large scale builds in Phobos. You have posted information in the past that shows how you can make builds like this self-sustainable.

The basic idea you posted sounds like a good way to make a small town that is packed with a lot of processing power. The city area would be about the same size as one Nova Albion neighborhood (like Grignano). And having countryside surrounding it would be nice.

One could also make a medieval city using the same setup. Castle in the center with the town and countryside around it.

I, personally, would not be interested in recreating existing cities here, like New York or San Francisco. Completely new and original cities with thier own identity and history would be more my desire. But, I think this is a good opportunity for anyone who would like to help build something on this magnitude.

I was working on a Manhattan in Hawthorn (though only 1/4 of a sim). I think it would rock to see the big apple in SL

-aimee

EWWW! Not the big apple! Do downtown Philly!

/me runs from a knife wielding Aimee...

I'm interested in this Hank. Let me know if you decide to proceed.

It would be very cool if I could do the Space Needle proper justice

Yes, the "Chase's Manhattan" build is excellent! I love the subway you've added, and the detail in the builds. I'd love to see something like that, but with enough prims and CPU processing power to bring about a truly large city where all of the buildings can be inhabited (rented from the builder/management group) and utilized to the fullest. Basically, you'd have 4 boroughs, 1 in each sim with a size of approximately 16384sqm per borough.

Why recreate, when Second Life gives us the opportunity to explore new urban concepts? Sure, a themed build like this can borrow from existing cities -- and I'm thinking of Tokyo and Hong Kong as relevant models -- but why not use the capabilities and lack of certain limitations in SL to do some real exploring? I'd be very interested in such a project, if we could agree on some innovations to existing urban themes -- then we could get away from a toy city and do some real work.

Which is not meant as a criticism of anyone's current work or vision in SL.

edited to add last line

One question that begs asking is how would this different from the current city sims, and their failure?

It'd be interesting to investigate new structures which communicate a ideas rather than shelter people from weather.

Good question.

My thoughts...

1. The City Sims still held onto the concept of land ownership. You owned the land, and had to build the buildings. Problem I see with that is that you build a beautiful building, but don't live in it. The buildings are there to look at and marvel, but they aren't necessarily functional.
2. The City Sims were not enough to make a dense city possible as they don't have enough prims or processing power.
3. This idea would bring together builders, scripters, artisans to build and ever expand and improve the city. In addition, the buildings would be setup to be inhabited by renters who don't want to have to deal with land tiers or building their own buildings. They can concentrate on living, making a workshop, creating, shopping, whatever.
4. It pools resources that a single person couldn't possibly do by themselves.

One BIG difference is that four physical servers would be supplying the processing power for one 65536 sqm area. Instead of one server per 65536 sqm area like in the four neighborhoods of Nova Albion (Grignano, Sistiana, Barcola & Miramare). The size of Hank's city would be the same size as one Nova Albion neighborhood, but would occupy the four corners of four separate sim servers. So 1/4 of Hank's city, a 16384sqm-sized "borough," would be dedicated to one server. The remaining area of each server would be countryside.

This could help to make a city run less laggy since the load would be distributed across four servers. Which could make it a more pleasurable experience for visitors and residents.

It would be up to the residents to make their city compelling enough to live there and attract visiotors.

The magnificent buildings created by Aimee in Chase's Manhattan are functional. People (including myself) rent apartments and shops. There's an art museum (and another museum under construction, including a cafe), two clubs, a bar, and a speakeas -- er, tea room*. Chase the Evil Landlady and the Abused Tenants are always working on something new. Keep an eye out for announcements of the opening of the Manhattan Art & Wine Festival!

* nondescript door at the back of the l o t u s shop, password is swordfish

Heheh.

The Biggest mall ... ev-ah!

Seriously, though, I used to think this was a good idea, but I seriously question a client's ability to handle 40000+ prims within 128m of a central point. And we already know from four-corners style stages how "well" sims multiprocess agent and child agent load.

I don't know. I just think for technical reasons, as well as 'creative differences,' this experiment would be a trainwreck.

I think it's a great idea!

Side note: "Chase's Manhattan? Was that planned? (the bank name springs to mind).

I would be interested in helping with this project. Only thing that must be planned for is the eventuality that too many av's end up in any one corner of the city at once. Other than that it sounds like a winner.

One of my first SL memories was visiting Chase's Manhattan because it happened to be on the Top Picks list, and I was exploring through all of them, one by one.

Tired of walking and flying and preferring a more mechanical mode of transport, I came across a certain automobile which looked snazzy... so I tried to drive it.

Said car promptly ejected me into the sky with a stern message.

A bit peeved, I said to myself: "WHO IS THIS AIMEE WEBER AND WHY CAN'T I DRIVE HER CAR?"

It's funny how things have turned out.

An excellent idea. Count me in.

I've got a great vision of a city that's built not only built through space, but through time...

Basically, you start off with a town and what it would look like in the 1800's; brick-and-mortar, 2-3 story buildings, narrow streets. Then, build "on top" of those with more modern, sleeker buildings. Add in a few modern conveniences (traffic lights, paved roads) that are kinda retrofitted into the urban area. Finally, project into the future with what a possible large city would look like 50-100 years from now... gigantic skyscrapers, vertical skywalks, vertical subway systems, and whatnot... also grafted onto the main skyline.

The end result (hopefully) would be an organically grown city that looks authentic.

Just an idea.

LF

the crossover load of using four contiguous corners would drag our client frame rates down to 1.

actually, i'd build the burroughs in the four outer corners of the sim with a large lake in the middle and, of course, a road wrapping around the perimeter.

Tell that to those crazy people who want LL to magically split the load on busy sims by magically subdividing them into 4 sub-regions, on-the-fly, without any noticeable problem or performance hit arising.

Well, it's not a massive mall. It's a city, with commercial and residential space.


I'd like to hear from a linden or see if a test can be preformed somehow to see if this would truly be a problem. Since the city is 3-dimensional, there would be several layers to the city, so that would provide reduction of prims handled by the viewer, depending on their draw distance.

As for the four corner stage issue, the city would not try to pack 120 avatars into the area at one time. It would still be "sized" to handle 30 or 40 avatars total in all of them or so at a time in the long run.



Trainwreck? Well, mmm. Other big projects have created wonderful builds. I don't see how this would be any different.

Thanks everyone for the feedback, and keep it coming. It's just an idea that needs vetting before the money and time is sunk into actual construction/implementation.

Well, we still dont know what to do with some of the seventh circle's sims

hank, you build cubes , but you do have a handle on the planning aspects. I think the main point in favor of your idea succeeding is that you have the ability to plan and follow through better than most. I can do buildings, but in most cases it's not my chosen pursuit. I am interested in being a troubleshooter, and helping to build the park if you'd like help in that area.

A couple of suggestions. Plan out exactly how you intend the city to be used and market it. Otherwise you'll end up with another display city or giant mall. create rules and enforce them. require scripts to be examined and approved. Sign confidentiality contracts, hire inspectors, whatever it takes, but do it from the start and consistantly. I'd willingly help with this also.

I could get excited over an experimental, futuristic city that is created by people trying to either solve the problems of cities or make a new form of city suited specifically to our Second Life capabilities. An amazing field of flower-buildings, or buildings that move around ... something different ... we don't have to make things as they are in the real world, so why should we?

Hank, I like the idea too.... I knocked out a scale model of my vision when I got home from work. It's to the scale of 0.5m = 10m. You can see it at my place in Europa - next to that hanger of yours... Orange is retail, white is residential.

*Applause*

Hank what a fantastic idea! If it worked, perhaps it would set a trend an future cities would spring up....... I too would love to hear a lindens thoughts concerning this idea......

*Hands Hank a BIG plate of assorted cookies*