Does anyone USE the big map? Is it just TM,TM,TMI?

... and Halo ... does anyone use the map? YES - many of us use it daily.


It is a great tool, and I suspect you will value it more as time goes on.

The question didn't come out the way I meant. I find the big map so complicated that I wondered it it was really useful. I've tried to use it a little.

I always use the big map. I can use it to jump to friends for one thing. Also, when going to an event in a place I have never been, I use it to see where the people are; I keep the mini-map zoomed in and use it to walk around people that have not ressed yet.

The only LM's I use are the ones I keep in the Mystitool, which brings up the big map for teleporting. In my inventory I keep a couple that are to two places on my land. I keep them to give out as needed. Other than those two I do not keep LMs in my inventory at all. Most of the LMs will either be duplicates or outdated anyway.

Yes Yes Yes!


I like knowing what our whole universe looks like...where the old settled areas are, and the new developments. I go to Yadnis to look at the maps. I go to the history museummy of SL thingo to see how it all grew. I really like that sense of "did this just spring up, or it this the middle bit where it all began"?

A sense of place (surreal, huh?)

i love the big map... use it all the time and when i dont use it . i look at it and it gives me a visual idea of my surroundings

I've been looking for land, so I use it to find parcels for sale.

I've used when I've been out exploring to see what else is around.

After all these answers I've thought some more.

I didn't think that sims were next to each other for any reason. I thought each sim was separate, like each one was on a different computer and they had nothing to do with each other. I read things here where people complain about their neighbors.

I'm not sure if you know what I mean, but I thought that there was no big plan. If you went from sim A to sim B you could go from one extreme to another.

Having a big map of unrelated things didn't seem worthwhile to me.

So, are sims related? Can you go on a sort of walking tour of SL?

I would hardly call it "blind teleporting".

I don't need to look at the map to get a sense of the world. I've been here since there were less than 45 sims or so on the total grid, and now there are something like 20,000.

I don't care to see them all. I have no need to wax nostalgic about the grid or immerse myself in the idea that it is all one contiguous world because it is not. You cannot fly from mainland over the oceans to other sims, you have to teleport, and flying from one end of the mainland to the other is rather useless for me. I also generally avoid mainland for a plethora of reasons mentioned repeatedly by others in the forum.

Also, this is not 2005 anymore. The majority of people do not let you map them and prefer to not have you drop in on them unexpectedly, yet another reason the map for me is useless as I no longer seek out groups and such to drop in on.

Besides, if you use an actual tool to manage your landmarks, there is no "blind teleporting" since it brings up the map for you to see where you are going anyways (like Mystitools does).

For me, the SL Map is a waste of time and has been since 2007, and i doubt that will change anytime soon unless i win the Lotto and buy myself a continent.

Sure, if you make time for all the ban line property you will be navigating around.

Why would you want to discourage a new resident from getting out there and exploring the mainland on foot or in a vehicle?

I use the big map a lot. I use it for work (real estate). So many people have checked off that option in preferences so that they don't accept TPs from people not on their friend's list, which is annoying when I want to TP someone to show them a property. So... I open the map to copy the SLURL to the location and then paste it to them in an IM.

The mainland is made of of several continents that are each hundereds of sims all attached to one another. They have roads on them, that are owned by Linden Lab and are open for anyone to use. Some of the continents are connected by water sims.
So... yes. You can do a walking tour. It's a great way to explore SL and you will run across a variety of interesting places.

There are two sorts of land in SL, mainland and estate (sometimes called private regions or islands). Mainland is made up of lots of contiguous sims arranged into continents. These have road networks and waterways and are fun to explore. Estate land is mostly arranged as separate islands with no way to travel between them except for teleporting, although a few people have built large estates of contiguous regions.
There are some great maps of the continents available inworld - one set is by Carl Metropolitan (are these still available at NCI?) and another is by Yevad Doobie (search for the Greenlaners group).
Travelling around the mainland can be frustrating, especially in a vehicle, as there are banlines and other obstacles to avoid and crossing from one sim to the next is often a rough experience, but it's good fun too.

I could careless. I am not encourage or discouraging, i am stating a fact.

Any new resident can search this forum for the plethora of posts complaining about the problems of navigating across the mainland due to banlines.

Why do you care if i tell them the truth?

Eli, Spinster said the exact same thing, even more so by using negative adjectives to define what the experience is like, and all i said was "Sure, if you make time for all the ban line property". No where did i place a single negative adjective defining what the experience would be like.

So ya Halo, navigating the mainland USED to be great fun for ME as i used to take all the waterways from one end to the other as far as i could go. Nowadays however, many people build over waterways thus blocking water travel across parts of the grid and the roads that LL started making back in 2004/05 never became a complete road system across the continent so you will be taking roads, water, and basically off the beaten path walking - where you will have to deal with navigating around ban lines.

Nothing negative about that, it is just the plain facts.

In the past 2 years i have not run across anything on the mainland by accident worth seeing. Others have, i have not, and neither have many others. Each persons experience is his or her own and not to be universalized for the sake of romanticizing the mainland experience.

Absolutely. On Mainland. I often send Hal on one.

I use the map from time to time. I find it useful for

1. Traffic check before teleporting somewhere
2. Land browsing, by looking for the yellow
3. General overview of mainland, since mainland is laid out like big continents.
4. Navigation help when I'm in a vehicle tooling around mainland.

Yes you can walk/fly/drive/whatever around mainland.

But it can be frustrating. Because banlines are a constant headache. I was flying a biplane the other night and managed to get trapped in a banline corner. Nothing else to do but stand, and look for another place to rez the plane. THEN...when I stood up, I was also in a no-fly zone! I ended up TP-ing home and calling it a night.

For finding "things to do", I don't find the map very useful. Search is a much better tool. (Then you can check the map to see if anyone is there )

This is the only way i use the Map - and when my Mystitools pulls it up before i teleport.

I use the big map to have a look before jumping somewhere I've never been before. I'm not very brave

One thing that may help is to turn off rendering of some of the things you don't plan to use. I think I have infohubs and events turned off, at least, though I like to render avatars and land for sale. That will make it a lot less complicated. [EDIT - to turn them off, just uncheck the box next to them on the legend of the map.]

Sims next to each other may be run on different servers, but they are contiguous - I live on a sim border, and if my neighbors across the line build something, I see it and can walk to it (absent banlines...). They get my yard inflicted on them, too, poor people!

As others have said, the Linden roads span quite a few sims, though some are not finished as roads yet, just grassy roadbed. I've used those to go horseback riding, and if you can find a place to rez a vehicle, you can drive on them as well.

I did not use it a lot when I was newer, but as I've gotten more situated in the world, it's been kind of cool to look at the sim something is on and realize it's close to someplace I 'know,' even though I can teleport from one end of the world to the other in seconds and it has no practical meaning.

It's good to hear all sides. This is ALL very interesting to me.



"I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave."

After I finish all my less then 30 days stuff, I might try it.

Wouldn't it be great if we could design and build our own maps?

A map that showed banlines for example, before you set off on that walking trip from Sim A to Sim C, but could never complete due to banlines all over Sim B.

A map that provided as much info about the avis on it as landing there and turning on your MystiTool avatar scanner.

A map that showed street-level detail (think 3D Tom-Tom), and did not (as in the case of the minimap, get wiped out because someone thought it would be a good idea to place a sim-wide platform up at 1000m)

A map that could be projected, like a HoloMap, from a wrist device activated by touch.

A map that could have ground based buildings and objects bring up Info text when hovered over.

A map that could show you a viewport, with pan/tilt, to see what was down there first, before teleporting (restricted to public places of course)

Oh well, maybe in SL 2.0

Rock

I use the big map to see where I am, where I'm going and how many people are already there. Heck, if it was a little faster on the uptake, it'd be a great tool to see if a sim is up or down.

I use both and find them to be very helpful. The mini map tells me someone is on my sim that is not within reach of the radar. The big one so see how many is on a sim, to tp to a particular location. Also if you put the coordinates in, you should land exactly there. Unless it has a designated land point.

Okay. Maybe I read more into your statement than what you intended. I thought you were saying ban lines made the mainland not worth exploring.