"Why don't you have a private island?"

Okay, so, I've gotten this question before, maybe other people have. There is a lot of appeal to owning a private island, but for me there's just not enough yet. I visit private islands frequently, as probably everyone does, and they're usually nice, typically way more beautiful than most mainland sims. They're also fast, because they're usually better controlled and you're only rendering 1 sim or a few sims...

...but they're tiny! Tiny you ask, incredulously? Okay, so 65536sq. m. SOUNDS like a lot of space, but it really doesn't feel like a lot of space to me. I fly around a private island and even with normal flight you bump into the sim edge in a few seconds, and there's the disconcerting visible edge at the sim borders where it really makes it look like there's an invisible wall there instead of just ocean spreading out to the horizon. As troublesome as the mainland can be, it doesn't make you feel like you fell into the bottom of a well. It feels cohesive and open. Freedom!

Several months ago, I came across Proposition 404 by Rickard Roentgen and immediately stuck all my votes on it. I'd been thinking about something like this for a while, just never put it into writing. Thanks Rick, you rock! Now everytime I see a post by Rick and see his sig with this proposition, I think 'OH GOD YES, PLEASE.' Essentially, it boils down to having sims that are 512x512m instead of 256x256m, but keeping the same prim limits.

Personally, if this became an option I'd be calling LL and ordering a private island the same day. It'd be interesting to hear some feedback from a technical Linden on whether their software architecture could handle this as an option for private sims. The obvious limitation that comes to mind is that it'd have to be connected to other sims of the same size, but the rest depends on whether their code is written well or not, I'd imagine. (hardcoded X,Y limits == WTF, mate?)

What about you? What would make you pony up for a private island if you don't already have one, or buy additional private islands if you do? Excluding the 'make private islands cheaper' option, as it's both obvious and unrealistic, since there's a minimal cost for paying for the server hardware at least. The poll is gear towards Proposition 404, but please post if there's another feature that would make you whip out your credit card.

and I really need to learn to read the whole post first, but anyway

I'd probably get an island if 2 things happened, if they did away with the $1000 up front charge, no way I can justify paying that big of a chunk of money at this stage in my life, and 2 if they lowered the tier to around $100-$125 a month, because $200 is a lot of money to me currently. I could do a lot of really cool things with a whole sim, but it's too expensive for me to own one right now.

No. Islands ruin my immersion. I can't walk or fly to them and I feel completely cut off from everyone when I'm on them. As someone else said recently, they are more like an IP address as opposed to a "place" in the world.

Weee. Yeah, that'd be swell, but LL is a for-profit company and stuff. They can't pony up the money to buy everyone private servers for free. Hardware costs money! And I did ask that we skip the money aspect of it, since everyone would like that and it's not very realistic.

I edited my post, I haven't had enough coffee yet this morning, I know it's not very realistic, but would be nice, so don't be condescending kthxbai

Assuming the price wouldn't change, I'd still be very unlikely to. It would make it more attractive, but it would still take a lot more than that.

I don't think I'd buy one - it's too much money. Besides, I figure if I haven't got the skills to earn island tier in L$, then I haven't got the skills to build anything worthwhile on the island. And if I just need practice then, eh, I'll get the practice done first and keep my $1000.

I can't justify the costs. I think you do get what you pay for. You get a server and a fast connection to that server. Which is great!!. Yet I feel that we shouldn't need all that to own our own virtual space.

It's like Linden Lab saying:- "Okay, you pay us $20000 and you get a cray super computer to run a sim." Woah! YeSh!, A supercomputer! Awesome!!. But wait a minute, why do we need a super computer to run our own little virtual island?

Hmmm...


Exagerated, but you get the idea.

Nice.

Heh, paying for tier with L$ can be thrilling, but being able to make the L$ for it and having the skills for building a private island can be mutually exclusive. I mostly make my way by scripting games and gadgets. I'm an amateur architect when the occasion strikes me, but my photoshop skills are immensely lacking for cooking up textures and stuff on my own.

Anyway, this thread was mostly about what features would make a private island worthwhile to you, regardless of how you choose to pay for them. I agree, though. I wouldn't own as much land as I do if I wasn't making the L$ to support it. I'm currently at the half-sim tier level, and just can't convince myself it's worth going any higher right now.

Well.

I had to go with 'badgers are awesome' - though I *love* the idea of a larger area, prims or no.

Because I *did* get an island.


Silly me, I'm a pauper myself on it; I can't afford land for myself. I hold the path - yes, just the path on the island. And some lamp posts, street signs, the ducks flying around and such. Less than 3.5% of the island.

I have nearly 2000 prims worth of land in Alice, but West Trade Imports is there - take prims from my place of business? Eep!

So I am on a blank platform in the sky 700m over Alice, or wandering around like the village idiot in Caledon fixing stuff for people. But I'm having fun regardless!



Someday after I get a few sims going I may indulge in a small office... perhaps I could rent a spot in old Nova Albion? For the sparse few who have *any* idea what I'm talking about, it would likely resemble Julius Deane's office...

I completely agree with you, which is why I keep harping on and on about some mythical competition that will one day rise up and give us our own 3D server software !

Having said that ... I've just taken the plunge and ordered an island using the Lindens I've made over the past months. I figure if I can keep it going even for a few months it'll be fun while it lasts. Hopefully it'll be easy enough for me to sell it or drop it if things go stale, after all it's only monopoly money really

I'd like islands to be bigger of course, you can buy a bigger one now if you have 5000 USD !

Some feature to back them up too would be cool, like preset backup buttons so you could store several different builds and recall them at any time.

oh, and you really need an island in order to be able to host those wonderful Starax creations !

I think private sims should get the option to have something like a button on the map that could be clicked to download all the content on the sim instead of streaming it, and that it should be possible to upload meshes to it. That would be useful for having lots of meshes and high-res textures etc. on the sim.

At this point the only thing stopping me is the upfront cost. And the fear that on the day I have $1250 saved up and fork it over for a sim, they'll pull the plug and SL will be no more and I'll be out over $1k.

heh, ya, I keep hoping someday the idea will catch on. Every now and then it does gain a few votes as some group or other discovers it . Thanks for the support . Glad to see this much of a positive response from someone !

That was me. I don't feel like they're "not a place", but I do feel like they're a _different_ place than the mainland, and I wish LL would offer mainland on the same terms as islands, and more islands on the same terms as mainland.

I really do like the idea of larger sims with the same prim limits, but I don't expect them... the cramped sims help sell larger parcels just as much as the prim limits do.

IIRC, some of the realtors like Anshe will let you rent-to-own an island. You end up paying more over the rental period, but you avoid the up-front charges.

You can't really ignore the money aspect of it, because the money aspect is inherent. The advantage a super-sized sim has is that it's cheaper than 4 sims, because you get less processing power (prims) than 4 sims.

What if a super-sized sim went for 2x the tier of a normal sim, so you got twice as much land for your money but the same number of prims? Or 1.5x? Or 3x? What's the cut-off point where you'd just say "hell with it, I'll rent 4 sims"?

That's true for the mainland, but I don't think it'd be true if it was just an option for private islands. Personally, I can't imagine the nightmare that would be converting the mainland to double sims. It could be offered as an upgrade for existing private islands, but on the terms of 'We'll throw the switch to make it a double sim, but it's all up to you to rebuild/reparcel it.' It'd be another incentive for people to buy islands, which seems to be something LL is keen on. You could argue they'd sell less private islands that way, but I don't think that's true for the most part. Especially in the case of island rentals, people are still going to want their prim limits, they'll just have a larger area of land to use it on, so you need the same amount of islands to support the renters as you do now, they're just that much more appealing than the mainland in addition to the zoning.

I'd settle for four sims running on two dual core processors. They'd be sharing memory buses, disk partitions and a multihomed nic; but that'd be okay if the whole block were limited to 15k prims and the new regional tools allowed me to treat them as a unit.

Fate Gardens earns enough to pay the tier. The upfront cost is still a barrier to me though. Does anybody still rent to own estates?

I certainly would have my own private island, I'm very fortunate in that I could afford it BUT I probably won't for several reasons. Even though I could afford it I cannot justify that kind of money going for sim.

Also, I would never logoff of SL to the point of losing my RL job and skipping showers and losing my fiance. The temptation to then build something with as much detail as I could cram into it would probably be enough to send me over the edge of insanity, which I'm dangerously close to now as it is, lol. I would be wearing kleenex boxes and have 10 inch long fingernails within a week.

* folds my arms and hides my feet under the table *

I'm not arguing in the slightest that it's chump change to buy an island, quite the contrary. It would be no small expense for me either. The point for me is that I just don't consider an island worth it. I understand that's inherently tied together, but the problem is that sims can't realistically get any cheaper, so to be 'worth it' to me they need more value added. I may eventually bite the bullet and buy one as they are, but I don't see that in the forseeable future as it stands. Just my personal opinion. The appeal of the 2x (or 4x, depending on how you look at it) sims is just the space. Some people build really nice dense builds that would only benefit by having some parkland arond them and will probably be frustrated they don't have a proportionate number of prims, other people like to spread out and get more of the countryside feel, plant some trees, have a nice lake in the middle, or whatever. I'm personally more of the 'spread it out, have some gardens and parks and a nice lake between your builds' kind of person, which is why this concept really appeals to me.

You do some pretty amazing work, what you could do with 15000 prims would probably be mind-blowing. I hope we get the opportunity to have our minds blown someday.

Edit: Ditto for Starax on that!

An option to get a normal sim or one with more prim allotment.

Also to be able to change the colours in the sky, water, look of the sun, moon. Even allow us to add an extra moon or something.

And the OP's suggestion would be nice too.

Those are great options Lash! What I need, more than anything though is just more land to display trees and flowers. That's why I'd settle for the currently doable void type set.