Request: Big City Mode

Mostly going by JimVideo I started calling BBSs in the mid 80s and into 3d world in the late 90s. Second Life is a place that I think that I'm going to be very happy to explore, make friends, and build in. I greatly appreciate the Second Life that I've see so far.

The city levels in new console games are incredible. When I play Burnout or Gotham Racing I want to go explore the city, like I do frequently in Midtown Madness.

I would love to see Second Life City, a city punctuated with many different skyscrapers, parks, apartments, suspended roads/walkways, pavilions, and other metro things. Users can get around regular ways, or jump on public transportation. To keep frame rates high, almost all of the user builds would be inside.

By making large building with low polygon count users can see farther. Huge landmarks, like a bridge or a coliseum, can be strategically placed around town enhancing the scene of community. AI cars and avatars can tool around town. Most the tricks that professional level builders can be used if the whole city uses consistent building rules.

Each building would have open and public places, like lobbies, halls, and stairs, that would lead people through buildings to each floor. Each floor, segmented into shops, apartments, or something else, would have one way windows, looking out into the city. Each outside window and balcony would have a corresponding inside window, one that lets users see clearly into the city where they are.

Special events would spill out into the streets or take over parks. Imagine next year's Easter egg hunt! A city center can have several looks, depending on the event going on there. People would be closer to get to places, and letting them have their own 'world' entrances inside buildings makes things computationally inexpensive.

sounds excellent! other than the mammoths are there any AI's in the SL world????

actually idwait till they fix the server crashing issues and sim crossing problems.

I love the idea of a large city as described by you! just think, a penthouse apartment overlooking Centra Park! deparment stores to shop in, lol
A trolley to ride, ~~sounds like a great idea!

Nova ALbion. 3 sims West of Ahern.

Check it out when the grid comes back online.

LF

You have odd ideas about cities then. I'd be hard pushed to fit a village in less than 10 sims.
Novo-Albion is nothing but the equivalent of a street...

We could scale everything reeeeeeealy small?

That's what they did, lol.
Superstores with one or two rooms...

Maybe if we all used chibi avatars? (See animations thread....)

We still have the "large buildings use tons of prims" problem due to the physics engine restriction on prim size, and that could be a stopper right there, if you want a build of any size, even if you own the whole sim. Maybe after Havok 2. But I would expect something like this to need a *lot* of land to really work. Maybe a themed/zoned sim for a start. (Do that many people really want to "live" in cities?)

And part of the city experience really should include crowds, which of course means about 35 people in the sim at once.

neko

In game programming your colision detection map is far simpler then the visual map. A building that has hundreds of visual ploygons could have one box to provide solidity. Two VR cities that I think are cool are in "Jet Set Radio Future" and "Superman: The Man of Steel". My favorite level in JSRF is the Fortified Residential Zone. A place like Metropolis from the Xbox game would have multiple places for cool views in almost every building.

SL does not precompile BSPs or anything like that so "inside/outside" doesn't matter for framerate. It draws everything within the frustum. You can have nothing but a huge wall in your FOV and still get low FPS because it is still drawing everything behind the wall.