What would you build if you had all the money and time in the world?

My head is bursting with ideas for sims, all of them historically themed as that is my passion.
I have Lindens but not enough time to build all my plans!
So far I have build one sim, the 1920s Berlin Project and I love building and maintaining it.
But if... if...

Soooo... if you had plenty of lindens and time, what would you build?

I'd create a neighbourhood in Victorian London, not the fancy romantic bits we see in SL, but the East End, Whitechapel, the backstreets.

Perhaps in this thread you find people with the same sort of ideas and you work together

You missed one attribute out. I have the money, and the time, and the desirable imagination. What I don't have is the will. In other words, I can't be bothered to do something like that.

So you don't want to build anything?
At all?

Not a static build, but "Time-Lapse Times Square"... about one historical year rezzed per minute.

That conclusion doesn't follow. I can't be bothered building anything along the lines of what you said.

Ah I think Jo's question was along the lines of what would you like to build, Jo gave Whitechapel as an example of something Jo would like to see, but the question is pretty open ended.

I'm equating this thread with his other one - big sim-size builds.

The things I would most like to build in a scenario like that, where money and time were no object, would be things so large and complex that they would be impossible in SL.

For example, I wanted to build the Roman Colosseum. It would take 4 sims just for the footprint of the site, and I could most likely manage to get in enough detail to make it worth doing before I ran out of prims. But with current limits on how many people can be in a sim at a time, why bother to make a venue that seats thousands?

Just about any huge, multi-story structure becomes rather pointless, with prim limits, limits on access controls and media controls that can't differentiate between floors in a building, and the like. Why build, for example, a full-scale replica of the Empire State Building, if most of it has to be a hollow shell, and it has to sit at the intersection of four otherwise empty sims to provide enough prims to build it?

The one thing I probably _could_ do in that scenario would be to make a large, multi-sim continent with seriously realistic terraforming. The biggest one I have had a chance to do so far was a natural coastline island that required 5 sims, and that was still pretty limiting for making realistic terrain. Being able to make one with 100 sims of more would be lots of fun, with decent mountains in the middle, high lakes, and finding some way to make good rivers and streams and waterfalls across the whole area.

I liek the whitechapel idea. My great grandma lived in whitechapel when she was little. I kinda fancy being a street girl back then and some toff taking me home to cook his supper.

I'd make a good street prostitue. Hal always says I make him think of that kinda girl when he gets all maudlin' and romantic.

Um. Complete with a Jack the Ripper bot?


An EXTREMELY cool idea. I'd pay Lindens to see that.

I'd do one of the really elaborate and "literary" formal eighteenth-century gardens, like Stowe. These were all about perspective; the best of them were designed so that the symbolism employed, and hence the "meanings" of the garden changed as you walked through it, and were presented with new vistas, so the 3D rendering would enable one to understand the garden in a direct way not possible through a merely literary description.

(Now I think of it, there IS a 3D rendering of Stowe somewhere online, but not in SL . . .)

As we still don't know who Jack the Ripper was he probably wouldn't be part of the sim, except of course in the police posters on the walls.
My main motivation to build Victorian Whitechapel is to show the more realistic side of that era.
Most people lived in poverty, for most life wasn't about large houses, big dresses, dancing, drinking tea and being lovely.
And that seems to be the Victorian life we find most in SL.

That's an entirely laudable aim. SL tends to one of two extremes in its depiction of urban environments of any kind: it's either impossibly squeaky clean, or over-the-top disgusting. In the former category, I'd include Virtual Harlem, a sim that I love, but that doesn't even begin the communicate the gritty reality of the inner city ghetto in the 1920s. In the latter, you can include most of the urban "rape sims": even ignoring for a moment the provision for some highly questionable simulations of violence at such places, they are revolting beyond any reasonably realistic measure.

Berlin 1920 is, I think, I pretty good compromise, and I am sure that YOU would do a superb job of it, but I'd be willing to bet you that, in most hands, a depiction of Whitechapel would end up as a Victorian version of The Crack Den or Stepford, complete with pose balls permitting visitors to slaughter and gut young prostitutes.

Wow Scylla you shock me. Wait till I tell Laurin.

What? WHAT?

Thank you for the compliment, the main goal of 1920s Berlin is indeed to show the backstreets without going too far.
I have seen the dirty sims and yes, they overdo it.
My idea of Whitechapel would be to show a nice Victorian street and behind it the narrow streets of the slums.
There would be some prostitution, you simply can't leave that out, but I wouldn't add any silly poseballs.
In a way Whitechapel would be a lot like my 1920s Berlin sim, except of course a different era, different country.
Although I 'might' build some of the famous places that are part of the Jack the Ripper story, simply because I'd like to see them in 3D.
I did visit a 'Ten bells pub' in a semi victorian sim, but this was a fantasy sim and sadly you couldn't walk around without being attacked by goblins and vampires or something like that.

I guess Whitechapel will go on my list of to do.... nr 289472387565

Talking horrific poverty. A broken comb was among the few possessions one of the Ripper's victims had. Most traded their company for a penny to be able to sleep in a pest-ridden flophouse for one night.

Whether or not you incorporated any type of roleplay with your sim, if set in Victorian Whitechapel, it would be a bleak one.

1. I'd buy a sizable number of Bay City plots, and rent them to retro/vintage creators at low prices, just cuz.

2. I would donate a sim to the folks who do Camp HardKnock

3. I'd start work on a "space-age retro future" region.

Aren't you going to be busy???

I agree that Whitechapel would have to have prostitution -- and probably "real" (i.e., SL) prostitutes. And I don't think it should be without evidence of the violence that underscored life in such places. What I wouldn't want to see is the opportunity to "role play" Jack the Ripper.

Could be handled any number of ways including almost a light parody. There are western sims that do not have gore.

I was thinking something along the lines of CARP. With what happens once someone is caught, between the two people.

Men would have the opportunity to role play a Victorian 'client' - the most famous Whitechapel client not being forbidden.

I don't know that anything too visually explicit is even possible. It would all be in chat IM. Visually, just a London back street with some gamey streetwalkers, and various grim, Dickensian characters.

I'd like to show both sides, the contrast.
Look people here is the Victorian life you like so much, you see in the movies and books, the wide streets, the big houses, the lovely dresses...
Now walk into that narrow street.... welcome to reality!
Tenants would rent one room apartments and would have to share a outside toilet, streets would be narrow, courtyards dark, etc, etc.

Don't forget rats and other vermin.

The streets were pitch dark. Artist Walter Sickert loved to prowl the back streets of London, and drag horrified friends along (literally.) They reported being unable to see the hand in front of their faces.

Victorian London slums, in a realistic portrayal, would also make a nice Halloween sim.

I wouldn't add prostitution to the sim myself but would allow tenants to make money that way.
And I would only allow someone to be Jack the Ripper if they could prove 100% who Jack really was

every location I've had repeat in my dreams.... there are several... like Phil I lack the motivation though.

There is one other requirement that I am currently lacking -- the actual ability to build.

Oh, so many things! Here are two:

> Arches National park. Two sims, one a very realistic one with trails between recognizable arches, and the other a fantasy version ... what Mother Nature would do at Canyonlands if gravity didn't get in the way!

> Granite, Oregon. Not only the small ghost town community (in its entirity it would fit in a single sim), but also its high lonesome site. http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/or/granite.html

As for ones that already exist, how about Mont St. Michel sim? It is beautifully done.