Monorail!

Hiya, residents of Second Life! Wanna buy a MONORAIL?

Hehehe, pseudo-"Simpsons" reference there...anyways, I was pondering about SL's future the other day, and I realized that modern civilizations tend to spread faster, and prosper more economically, by having a permanent mass-transit nearby.

So why not a monorail running all throughout SL? As our World grows, so can more track be added. If it can be added into the game that any monorail track running throughout someone's land does not add to their total prim allotment, that is...

Sure, people can teleport, but that takes a bit of the charm out of exploring. I'd love to be able to get into a monorail for a "tour" of SL...it'd be a great feature for Newbies!

Heck, we could even script in spray-cans, so people could graffiti on the monorail & support columns...the spin-off ideas are many...so many...

I'm an ok builder, lousy at scripting...but I'm damn, damn good at ideas, so have fun with this, SL Community, especially those of you who have been so helpful to me during my first month in Second Life! Thank you!

Zaxk




P.S. Next idea in my BrainQueue for everyone to use: Fully Ambulatory Gary Coleman Androids that say "watchootalkinbout" and explode when touched. E-mail me for more ZaxkIdeas, please...my brain bursts...IF ONLY I COULD ()@*_# SCRIPT!

i always thought that flying shouild b earned thru expierience... eg... ppl can only fly when they have a spacific high score or something to that effect lol

Actually the obvious - no cost to consumer - method of dedicating land for a monorail already exists ---- each and every non-privately-owned sim has Linden land and 90% (or more) of those have roads in various states of upkeep.

These roads are at a minimum routes that could be used for a monorail system - or a train system that would serve teh general public. While the Kazenojin represent a group that runs an entire sim dedicated to fllight ops and while the Abbotts Aerodrome group does a similar thing on a less than complete sim basis, land transport, by definition, is inherently different, absolutely requiring physical space on land - or just above a specific set of physical land plots. Airplanes/fllight vehicles are not similarly restriced.

It seems to me that a public monorail system could use the land routes designated by existing roads without any additional land ownership overhead - provided LL would support the idea.

I heard, and there remain remnants of, a previously popular tram system in early SL history. It no longer functions apparently. Why not? Did flight operations render it moot as a transport method? Roads certainly haven't as they are seemingly universally deplored as unreliable and vehicles not specifically scripted to drive on roads are seemingly difficult to control over a long drive - as opposed to teh wide open spaces of the vehicle sims.

So where does that leave us with this monorail idea?

Well, a monorail, like a train, is limited to the track. SL'ers/LL has already proven that a tram system can work here in SL. The recent addition of the ski lift further illustrates the feasibility of the limited route concept.

Why not, as Cubey has proven is possible, use a temp rez vehicle - rather than limiting it to a specific number of vehicles on specified routes running on announced schedules? Though some of the "charm" or appeal of a monorail system is arguably the opportunity to "create a sense of community" by meeting others also riding on the monorail system, the monorail itself could combine both - a scheduled multi-passenger vehicle running specific and published routes AND a "on-call, temp-rez" car capability. You'd get the best of both worlds!

A few people have said that the introduction of trleportation/telehubs was a huge influence on the demise of the tram that used to exist. Maybe so. However, other than the prim load necessary to support the rail system itself, and the scripting/cpu resources necessary to support this public system, I don't see a real problem in actually making this feasible.

So, I second the thread originator's point.. Why not?

I'd use it. I like ground transport.

Monorail would be a cool idea. One disadvantage I could see is that the Land Barons would buy up all the property on either side of the right of way and extort massive amounts of money for it... not that they don't do the same thing already.

-Ghoti

Hah. Yeah right. You've never visited the west half of the continent, have you? The roads are a post 1.3 thing.

Anywho, there's already a train in game. It connects several sims, but the number of sims have expanded far beyond what the owners of the group could keep up with. Fly to the north end of Slate to see the middle section of it. I think the group that runs it is called GSLR.

I remember there was an attempt at building a monorail back in beta. Was it James Miller who proposed that? That was before the scripting language had any vehicle support. I think the idea has been revisited/reinvented regularly since then.

Monorails, regular trains, subways all need land. Something in short supply in SL. Why not make a bus system. Ask land owners if you can put 1 prim bus stop signs on their land. Have the buses follow preprogrammed routes along the roads to the next stop. Charge a little bit to ride. Face it, this will be a novelty more than a means of transportation.

im with al on this one. that would be pretty cool and have it kinda hover above the buildings.

Roads may be a post 1.3 thing. However, I did say that in every sim that is non-private, there are plots of Linden controled land. Toegether with the establisehd road system in other sims, there should be an ability to connect all sims via monorail. All the Lindens need to do is to authorize the land to be used to do this.

As for as how feasible it is, that's another question (and having been revisited a few times does not render it invalid; rather, it seems to me that means it ges revalidated each time the topic is revisited).

But if you want specifics, here;s a possibility - consider placing the monorail at a height of 10meters above existing roads. Expressways and bridges routinely use double-decker construction like this. Two methods of land transportation at the cost of a minimum of prims - 1 for the road/asphalt, two (1?) for the road railsm(these are already in place) - and 1-4 for the monorail above it depending on the existence of a vertical support. The one additional cost would be the stairways and platforms from the ground level to the monorail.

Now consider the networking aspect... how many telehubs are over 500 meters from people's ultimate destinations? Why not raide the telehubs to 20 meters, connect them to a roadway below (on ground level), and have the monrail in the middle level? Subway systems do similar things - especially at airports and seaport terminal areas.

So, I think it is feasible. I spoke with someone inthe railway group - if there is more than one, I am unaware of it. He said that they had all but given up on the rail idea due to limtiations of the LSL, land tier and social system. That the railway still exists, and that the tramway still exists indicate LL may still have hopes that this will be revived.

Come check it out !!

Hoping to expand it across the 3 sims if I can get agreement from Higbee and Princess.

The cable hangs from the Stations which inturn are supported by the cables (This is SL, does it have to make sense!). Relatively low prim and automated, It stops for 20 secs at each station and if it gets stuck, will return to the station near the telehub.

I have to thank Ben for the original script which by now is edited beyond recognition.

In the early stages it was great at crashing the sim. but now it is just great !!

Come give it a try

And have you given any thought as to why that Linden land is THERE?

With the exception of the starter area sims, Luna, and other various themed areas, either all, or almost all of the Linden owned plots are waterways.

I'm going to assume you weren't around before 1.3, so I'm going to explain why that is. It's a global transportation system.

That's right. Way back when, people liked boats. People still do. The biggest problem with boats is that land owners typically don't like water. It's land that isn't useable. Everyone would eliminate any Linden created waterways and such. So the Lindens stepped in to create protected waterways that would remain unobstructed by objects or terraforming.

And now you want to build monorails right inside the rivers? Not only does that not make sense, it does precisely what the protected land was designed to not let happen!

On top of that, you're ignoring the fact that a train already exists. It just needs more user support to help it grow more.

GRRR i will fight to the death for the road system. No ripping up the roads.

On the issue of monorails... Have you seen the troll in the city? No? thats because it was stolen, off it's cable that it follows. I bring this up because keeping an object on a track is very difficult. All it takes for someone to break the monorail would be a prim placed in the right place...

Currently in the norther old sims there is a train project.

You know.. you remind me of a deaf person who IS blind and SHOULD BE mute! You hear and read what you want and respond without considering what others have written. There's a word for that... ah.. no, I won't stoop that low.

Your problem is you don't seem to give anyone else creidt for having two functioning brain cells. Go back and reread my posts again. I didn't say get rid of anything. Did I? No. I know I didn't.

Now, if you did reread my posts, you have to agree that I said to ADD to the function of public land... above the ground. Anyone with those two functioning braincells should easily be able to extend that idea, that miniscule concept, to ground=water... or public ground=pucli roadway=public waterway. So, what is the deal with using airspace above such public land for a public service system like a monorail?

As for Strife's thing about derailing the monorail, I am sure that no more than two lines of code could autoreturn anything that remains on a monorail line, a roadway, a waterway or a railway right of way for long enought to become a hazard to that transport method. IF the prim in question remains long enough and the designated public transport vehicle approches it within a certain distance, voila, autoreturn. That routine could be run via script within the public transport system - the monrail or train or bus or shuttlecraft - whatever - not included as part of the land parcel itself. Doing so would require a script to scan the "track"/route ahead - a known pathway - as it moves. This would save on resources as the script would only run when the vehicle was moving - or about to leave the station.

What's the big deal here?

It's feasible. It may not be "simple", but such systems are feasible here. That was my second point.

My first, simple. I like the idea of a monorail.

So who judges how high the rail is? What if 'my' boat is something that's larger? How is the rail suspended, SL magic? Where are the embarkation spots going to be? Every lake out there? They're the only plots that are large enough, with the exception of sandbox and starting areas.

Putting in a monorail will REDUCE the effectiveness of keeping CLEAR waterways. ESPECIALLY if the rails are held graphically tied to the ground in any way (and if they just 'levitate' in mid air, it'll look silly). Waterways are the ONLY Linden land that goes through multiple sims. Putting something over a waterway reduces the effectiveness of having the waterway protected from PRECISELY THAT. Your two brain cells didn't apparently figure out that that was what I was talking about.

As far as lines of code, no, there is no current way for anyone to write code to return objects. There -is- an auto-return timer that can be placed on parcels of land, but it's limited to being a minute in length at the smallest, which means someone could have 60 seconds to see a train coming and plop down a prim. No amount of code exists to remove that prim.

On top of that, it'd be a TON of work for something that hardly anyone would use. Why ride a train that could potentially fly apart at the seams at a sim border crossing, flinging prims across several thousand meters of land, when you have telehubs?

Actually, I decided not to quote the drivel you just spewed yet again.

This thread started by someone saying he liked the idea of a monorail I agreed. You don't like it. Fine.

You have such a closed mind that no real discussion is possible. Great. Anyone can poo poo any idea. You can raise all the arguments you want.. most of those you have seem to be "me me me" arguments, not something worth spending a single second considering.

A monorail IS feasible to do in SL.. that is a fact not an opinion. The scripting primitives are available; the prim load and shapes are available; the land rights are available if LL/private individuals want to dedicate them.. "..looking silly.." is a question of taste and perspective.. not a feasibility issue. I won't argue taste... even you might have some, though it certainly is likely not going to be similar to mine.

Like I said, Mole, you have ended any chance of discussion with your closed mind... so why keep posting? Is your middle name Troll?

And you haven't listened to a single word I've said. A monorail is a train. A train exists in SL RIGHT NOW. It can grow, if people want it to. You just have to support it. Search for the word 'railway' in the groups.

I thought the GSLR was half dead.

Sounds like fun.

-Ghoti
-Club Laura Dancer
-Artist/Graphic Designer