Stupid ? about Space

I'm just curious, I know that Second Life has what you call orbit and apparently nothing can really exist there, it's just a infinite void of nothing. I'm a new player to Second Life coming from "There" and one thing I liked about it was the fact it was a planet with space surrounding it, what i'm curious about is if it's possible to perhaps script a planet with surrounding space and then add land to that planet? I'm not sure if this is possible in the grids as the land and water would probably interfere. Perhaps some experts would know more about this? Thanks.

No.

But the Lindens just might do that in the future. Who knows?

That'd just be awesome. We could design spacecraft, have a mission control, and like have apollo accidents and everything.

Really. All that has to happen is someone has to get a big sphere up there.

Sims stacked in three dimensions, how cool would that be?

Actually you could create a planet above the build altitude limits but you'd have to um... wear it.

It would be rather cumbersome I imagine, though intrepid SL explorers have inhabited space stations in this manner in the past.

somewhere above 3.5 million Km you lose all attached prims. so if you had a planet attached to your person, you would lose it.

around 4 million your avatar goes flat.... and sdtarts to become distorted, over 5 million its prettly much nothing.

5.25 million km is the higest i've been yet.

It may sound complex but couldn't you technically build a large building with textured black spaces building upwards (not sure of the limit) and build a very large earth like planet revolving in the center? I mean yeah it'd probably take a very long time if you could do it and whos to say it's even possible but wow that would be a neat feature. What are these space stations you speak of?

But it would have to be pretty big to appease the 'flat earth soc'. And you would have to invent some kinda gravity boots to be able to walk around it

True, I doubt anyone would take the time or money to develop a system within a system in Second Life like that though I was just curious if it was possible, however that Garden of Eden Eco Environment was pretty interesting.

Possible if you don't mind a planet that's under 500m in diameter and gravity all acting in one direction ... down. A 500m diameter planet with about 100m of "atmosphere" will occupy 9 sims minimum. I'm not about to count the prims needed to pull this off but it will certainly be a big drain on the sims allotment

If you try to make a structure 4000m tall (with juggling that's near the maximum for any building) non-physical objects above 768 meters will disappear once moved. Also that's nearly 300 prims just to make one 10m wide wall.

Oh I would love it, but the no. of sims to do it convincingly would be immense, and there is the 3D problem too: you can only build 'up' so far before you start hitting problems :/

This is interesting, what about scripted gravity like someone mentioned gravity boots? Also would it even be possible to use the current grids and implent them in a planet form (if Second Life decided to do this)?

In SL, the flat-earthers have it right. If you could penetrate the void above, you would end up in the mens room at Linden Labs. If you go down far enough, it's just like Tron.

You cannot script avatar rotations right now. That would mean all the avatars in that world will need a sit-on movement simulator. Those are the "gravity boots."

If you're asking possibility? If you had enough sims at your disposal and keep the planet size really small, then it might be possible. You're talking a sizeable real-life expense to maintain those sims. For the nine-sim planet that's close to US$1,800 a month.

The more important question is will it be worth it in the first place? That's a lot of effort, cost, and prims for a planet that won't look flat at all. Meanwhile a sim looks more realistic when empty (zero prims used).

My understanding is that it would be impossible, at least in the SL we have now. You could use a combination of cleverly placed prims and an animation to give the appearance of you walking around a globe, perhaps, but that's about it.

you should visit Spaceport Alpha in SL. it is very close to what you are discussing.

You could terraform and texture a whole sim, or a collection of sims, to appear to be the surface of some other type of planet. You could have anyone in the sim wear a scripted device to affect their movement, simulating odd gravity. But a sim is only 16 acres. It's a piddling small area, compared even to a terran city, let alone a whole planet. The cost of simulating more than a tiny piece would be, appropriately enough... astronomical.

As far as simulating a space environment, you could set one or more whole-sim builds to always be 'midnight'. No sunrises and sunsets, and always night. Flatten the sim completely, and texture the flat terrain with a starfield. But the practical range for building remains 768 Meters. Makes for a pretty small area of 'space'.

Doing it in less than a whole sim? Not very convincingly. Best you could likely do is to build one or more staionary 'spacecraft' with fake windows looking 'out' onto scripted video displays...

Here's a technical article about this type of stuff. Check it out some time.

I would love to be able to travel from one world to the next. Who wouldn't?! The thought that someone lives on another virtual world virtual lightyears from you is just one cool feeling. Hehe.

Oh shit I want to do this now, starfield on the ground, stars up above, and a giant spaceballs style deli in the middle with a starship enterprise and battlestar galactica taxi'd into the take out window.... a winebago parked on the landing strip.....

Or you could use like a sim corner to recreate a chunk of death star o.o

You can get an object up above 750m using physics, to the point of about 4000m or so.

Would it be possible to use scripted rockets and use them to launch prims to about 3500m, and then slowly assemble a station at that height?

Well, you come up with $1250 USD to buy an island sim, plus $195 USD per month to maintain it, and hire me to do the sim design work, and I could build you something along those lines. Maybe not with all the copyrighted specific spacecraft, but something pretty close! With a little planning, we might even figure out a way to make it self sustaining, at least for the maintenance costs each month. (Like having berthing slips at that space dock where people could buy a berthing slip and build custom, wacky spacecraft to live in, have a mall that sells scripted spacesuits with 'rocket packs'...)

In Second Life your most important limits are often both your imagination and your wallet. Setting up a sim isn't cheap, nor is running it month to month. There are some things you just can't do, but there are a surprising nimber of things that you can do, if you can throw enough time and resources at it.

As I understand it, the problem is that as soon as anything causes the build to move, it falls apart above 768M. You can build it lower, unrez it, fly way high, and rez it there. But bump it, and it breaks... I've flown way above 768M, but have never tried to build higher than 750, for that reason.

Precision rezzing can be used to build at 4000m.

I liked that about THERE. I just recently sold my house in Tyr, cuz i wanted to live in either space or Frosty but i couldnt find a way to do them hehe. It's not exactly easy to get to, it requires finding a book that gives you a link as i remember. Plus no land is for sale in either zone hehe.

I remember quarks bar. The first time i went there they had a arcade room with flash based games. 2 months ago i took another trip there and they removed those. I like THERE a lot. The only thing that prevents me from playing is the chat system. I hate bubbles. I prefer a steady stream of chat like in SL.

hehehe, infinate or finite space would be cool to have in SL, the ability to break out of the atmosphere, travel to a space station or another world would be just killer. Considering a lot of my favortie games had more freedom as to where you can go (Homeworld, Decent Freespace types of games). It would seem that one of the necessary components are in place to allow a migration to this ability , 3D Vector space. Buildings etc are already built in 3D space, would just need more of it and more that can allow normal building. It would be cool that instead of paying for a sim, you could pay for a planet or lower tier could hold you a spot in the orbit of a planet. Even if the worlds themselves may never look like a proper spherical shape, some of it could be texture tricks where as you are a certian distance away, the textured wall boxes make it look like a spherical planet but as you get ready to enter the atmosphere of that planet you get suddenly popped to say 4000 meters or so in altitude on that planet, perhaps in a designated "entry window" and it turns into what we are used to. Heh, even have a requirement that the vehicle has to be flagged in the vehicle type as a spaceship in order to break out of the atmoshpere and travel into space or any avatar that enters this space without the proper gear instantly gets TPed home. The space slots for space stations etc could be configured and restricted to a 3D grid such as 30Mx30Mx30M, currently the available space per land plot say a plot measuring 30Mx30M is 30Mx30Mx768M in useable building space and 30Mx30Mx4096M counting the physical object "living" zone above. In theory you could join spacial slots in the manner of land plots using a special 3D editing tool.

Ok, I am done talking now