Walking tour of Mainland?

I had an idea to get a different perspective on the metaverse. I'd use an alt and try to walk the length and breadth of the continents just to see what diversions there are. I started this on the northernmost continent. It must be the new one as there's not much to see but sand.

I got bored and moved on to one of the older ones. I don't know the names, but this one is shaped like an atoll and is tenuously connected to a larger mainland by a thin line of water sims. I started on the north shore and I'm trying to head generally south. In two nights I've walked about a third of the way into the atoll continent.

My impressions? What a mess! Right at the start I encountered an almost unscalable mountain range that puts you right up there in skybox territory. There are no paths or roads anywhere. The land just chops off at unruly angles. Abandoned cars lie stuck halfway up tree trunks. Cul-de-sacs are everywhere. Ban lines cause considerable backtracking to find a work around. (I'm not allowing myself to fly unless I'm really stuck.) Several security systems have me running so as not to be TP'd home and lose my place.

I have to admit there's a certain wild charm to the chaos, but it feels unwelcoming. Did the ability to teleport bring this about? Do people just not care about infrastructure? About designing the environment? Is this what anarchy would look like?

Has anyone else tried this form of hiking and is it like that everywhere? I feel sort of exhausted.

What a fascinating idea and quest. Yes teleports and ban lines have made a mess of things.

Did you read the book "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson? You should write a version of this experiment.

have a look at "De Haro" region, unbelievable as it`s old mainland and only a few sims from ahern!
use the place once in awhile to calm down and enjoy the simple life

Back in the day, Cubey Terra used to gather folks together to walk across the grid....I always wanted to go but never got around to it.

For sh*t's and giggles:

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Sounds cool... I'm game!

[Edit: Do I have to wear sensible shoes?]

I also like to go hiking across continents. I totally agree with you, it's very messy and the ban lines really break the flow. I've found running around the coast line a little better because of the higher land prices and better quality houses. There's often nothing but crap inland.

It's quite fun to go running through gardens while the residents are boinking by their pool. I can almost hear them thinking "WTF!" as they see Forest Gump go running through.

"Second Life is like a box of freebies. Ya never know what ya gonna get. "

- "GET THE F*CK OUT OF MY GARDEN! "

That's interesting. There's a link to a map in those forum entries. The world looked a lot different even a couple of years ago. I see that Cubey had trouble with ejections too. I can't find my way past an avid ejectionatrix's land tonight. Between her security system and the ban lines of surrounding properties I may have to give up and fly over that section.



No, but I REALLY want to read his "Mother Tongue: The English Language." I am currently reading "Snow Crash" that this virtual world is semi-based on, and it's -- strange. Some things are similar, but not many. In some ways Second Life is more advanced than the metaverse Stephenson envisioned. I'm not much of a writer, but maybe I could do a blog of this journey. Hmmm . . .

I was on Cubey's St Valentine's Day (or the day before it?) walkabout, but before he did it Hamlet walked the (smaller) grid. It took us hours and hours even way back then.

There are some loverly places in SL...... the creators have blown prims to get just the right look. they have landscaped the surrounding areas and pay use a 1024 for prim count elsewhere, so landscaped that are to make it nice.
There is also people who have created thier store and have worked really hard to give it a contempory look, both inside and out...certainly you can tell that thier products are going to be high quality due to the time they take to even dress thier products. We can see some beautifull gardens and architectural builds.
I think though for the most part SL is expensive, and people who invest in game may be pushed towards maximum use of land mass and pims. So we do tend to end up with boxes stuffed wih prims right upto parcel edges. Of course sky boxes are also an option... but I do believe that leaves the mainland floor baron and unwelcomming.
16sqm AD boxes spinning away... I bought 20 last night (becasue they were only 100 per plot) just to get rid of them in my sim, but maybe LL should do a max base price per meter to stop things like 16's going for 8k.
I understand the diversity in SL and believe that its a good thing. I understand the skill differences and abilities and of course new builders might make some ugly builds, but they have the time and inclination to learn so im 100% behind that. As for ban lines.... grrrrrrrrrrrr, I have one place behind my store to which I had an enterence.. its previous owner had made it quite nice and was used mainly for prims. then it sold.... was bought by something or other for "Club Portugal" ban lines were thrown up and a"for rent" spinning box rezzed up. All very nice... BUT if you are gonna build .... BUILD, if ya gonna sell it go ahead and if you are loocking for rent dont put up ban lines.... its not exactly needing security is it. We all understand a persons want to be secure and to a degree private but setting a security orb to ZERO so the minute you come near you are sent home is ridiculous, If I wanted to nose into your stuff I would remove camera constraints and just zoom in but it does take away from the ability to tour SL in a nice way... when flying you only see ban lines AFTER you bang your head into them 3 times and has essentially turn the sky into a maze which sometimes is very hard to navigate.

I would love to see a more attractive SL with a little less ban lines, LL removing crap on land that has been abandoned or the user is no longer in SL. Of course we have created many of the problems outselves and the 16m rules doesnt apply becasue yesterday I saw a 512 plot for sale with 117 adds on it for L$60,000 and they were pretty much spinning pictures of a woman with jizz on their face, off world casinos, XYZ Mall, Escort Services and more dirty pics JUST to really hit it home. p.s If you ARE a ad-farmer just think on this, if i buy all the plots around your adds and box it completly in, your add plot is then worth ZERO for as long as im in SL, so trying to extort money by asking unrealistic prices doesnt always work.... Mainland isnt a sandbox, if you own land and allow open access you are DEFINATELY gonna get griefed in some way or another ether intentially or not.

So why dont I buy an island and make it just the way I want..... becasue IRL I cant throw that much money down the LL toilet. But to a degree im Lucky my neighbour is a photographer so has an eye for what looks totally rubbish so has made his main parcel very functional if a little black box.... however he also owns a parcell further away with a 1024 worth of BIAB in a shak. I think the MAIN reason that SL looks pretty ugly in some respects is that land is a premium commodity and people like to get the MAXIMUM return either with the prims or just the purpose of use... (i.e add plots going for 20k).

This ultimately leads to the removal of TeleHubs... wth PTP telepoint .. who cares what the area looks like.. and people make black boxes to keep the adds outside, the linden road and rail network needs to be undertaken again. There is a post on here as to that subject and for one would be happy to make the road in my sim for LL. So not only do we have a "I dont care what it looks like outside" but neither does the lindens.

Anyway .. good morning to you all for sunny UK *grin*

Marty

I *think* this is an AR-able offence.

Anyone else?

A small group of us have put a bit of work into making as much of our sim attractive as we can. Even though we have a few shops, they are not the dominant features and we have set aside space for nothing but looks. Almost all of the banlines are gone now, except for a couple of holdouts and several that bought, then apparently left SL after putting the lines up.

I would be willing to build the road in our sim too. If the Lindens would allow it, I bet they could find at least one person per sim that would be willing to complete the roadways in their own sim.

Anyone that wants to, is welcome to walk around our area and there is at least one tower open for visitors to view. Just look for the Jsindo sim, and TP in somewhere in the southwest section.

I have to admit.... my store is HUGE but unfortunately becasue its a floor and light store it tends to mean i need high ceilings and large floor space, having it all outside would uglify the surrounding area, BUT I also have land space outside.... I have a nice courtyard with a water wheel and a BEAUTIFULL little olde english village in Foyle Gully. I like many have to try and balance beauty with need and function. BUT last night tripped into 125 tier so I guess I can now open things out a bit more should the land be available.

BUT.... my shop is still only one story, has a brick effect at ground level and its a SHOP inside.... not just a box.... i.e there are displays etc, even starting building a nice little recording studio setup in there too

Our Store is Large also (About 1/6 of the sim but has fountains which flow into a stream underneath the building and my wife, Bonita Popinjay has landscaped a park down the other 1/6 of the shopping side of the sim for ppl to enjoy...There are many nice places in SL...Always fun to explore them...



Kurt Ludd
"The Gesture Maker"

Well ... the Foyle Gully part is about an 8th but the Pischeria part is now over a quarter of a sim. Maybe there would be nicer parts of SL if people could experiemtn more ... or maybe we would just get more ugly builds and malls

I've spent a lot of time doing that as well, though I started at the lower right corner of the main central continent. My impression was this is some of the older land. And there is a large lake that has some nice build around it (as well as some large yellow boxes that seem to relate to some sort of French political dissent). Compared to the Estate I live in it did look a lot messier. And yes, a lot of it did seem unwelcoming, there were some stores that made use of the road access, but some were just blank walls. And yes, there was a lot of strange trash left about in a lot of places. Definitely gave me a different impression of SL than I'm used to (which is not a bad thing).

Yes, this is what anarchy looks like. Some people care about designing the environment, some people don't seem to care at all, some people bought land, left build on and autoreturn off and for some reason have never been back. There are places where the residents have gotten together to create a coherent theme, but in general the Mainland is the ultimate expression of your world, your imagination.

I'm glad there are both private estates and the mainland. There are definitely uses for both and they are very much different environments. I look forward to the day as well when the server code has gone open source and non-linden sims join the grid. I'm curious to see what some of them will look like.

ok this made me seriously laugh, toinks

I have wanted to do a version of either the Amazing Race, Around the Continent in 80 Days, or The Great Race for a long time. I really hadn't thought about just hoofing it, because i wanted to fly all around the 'hard to see spots' up above.

Ewwww! No way!

I've wanted to do this, but prefer to "walk" the land on my horse. Haven't been able to do that yet.

I tried going by car, but people kept crashing when I went by car. Now I will try by horse-back.

I enjoy wandering across the grid as well. Along with the ad-farms and disarray you can stumble upon some awesome places and interesting places.

Something I've just tried recently was following linden land roadways. There's a linden road (unpaved, just grass and trees) that crosses the corner of my home Tipton. It runs nearly the entire lenght of the continent which makes it a great places for galloping along on my horse.

If anyone knows of any other linden roadways I could go exploring, I'd love to hear about them.

Yeah, all of the continents have some sort of roadway. On the older ones they are actually paved...just watch out, I've fallen through holes a few times....

We've been in discussions over at Metaverse TV to do a show based on travels on foot like what everyone has been describing. If anyone is interested in teaming up and creating a sort of video "documentary" on the interesting foot travels in SL, drop me an IM.

The last time search and TP got borked, I started walking from my home (a lounge chair in Hanson). I saw a lot of garbage, but I also found a little old English village that someone had set up, complete with a little church (Dear Lord, please guide the Lindens in fixing the damn search and tp function...). It was beautifully done. You definitely see some gems by walking around, but you have to sort through a lot of garbage.

A Walk in the Woods was a fantastic book. If you liked it, you might like A Walk Across America. The author's last name is Jennings, but I'm blanking on his first. It is an absolutely amazing book. I have this dream of thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail someday. Complete pipe dream, but books like that really get me going.

Define sensible. I always found 3 in heels to be sensible.

Or the Continental Divide trail, or the Appalachian Trail...

Dang it, what the Lindens don't get is that their continents are all jacked up. They should hire a geologist to plan them... put in some decent mountain ranges, some oceanic plate volcanic chains, some rift valleys...

Now THAT would be a dream job (or at least a dream hobby.)

I've done some hiking on the Appalachian Trail in New Yourk.It really is great.Last year I did some hiking at red Rock Canyon . Awesome.