Land textures?

How about the ability to add a texture to land you own? It would be nice to have grassy fields, mud, marshes, etc.

I strongly second this!

Covering a natural hill with prims just to make it mossy is no fun.

I absolutely love this idea, Driftwood! I wouldn't have to lay out objects to simulate landscaping... and landscaped ground would have a lot more altitude variety! (8

I love this idea and hope the Lindens will consider it. Even it just to adjust the land you have alittle greener? Or sandy. If you make a mountain be able to make it snowy... some kind of variation would be nice.

I love this idea too Would save on the prims!

Yes, I love this idea too! Lindens, do this!

The reason i said yes to this, was that i had the opportunity to play DAOC recently (not comparing it to SL at all hehe). But i noticed how much 'prettier' the ground was, because it was textured.

I would LOVE to see that in sl, it would make themed areas even more interesting

This a great idea! I hate how all textured land has to be flat

Ninthed!

This would absolutely rock for those of us who have gardens and/or outdoor installations.

1 word:

DO IT!!

(oops, it was 2)

While the idea of a pink alien landscape doesn't necessarily offend me, there are other things to consider.

SL only allows one texture per "face". How do you define a "face" where land is concerned? Think carefully, if it's too big, you'll have to make a custom texture for any "face" that you don't want to be all grass/sand/whatever.

When every landowner in the world has their own custom texture(s) for their land, in addition to all the custom textures we have now for builds, what do you think this is going to do to the lag? I mean the max cache size is only 1GB, after all. Not to mention that LL has a limited bandwidth, high though it may be.

Well if you notice, there already is a repeating texture on the land, so the face issue is not huge apparently (if the texture is made right).

So an amendment to my original suggestion: Allow us to choose different land textures provided by LL. In other words, when we edit land we could have a dropdown with the options "Grass, meadow, marsh, sand, mud, snow..."

This way we get some land variety, but LL controls the actual textures so they look even and professional throughout SL. Problem solved.

That sounds workable. The real problem I was thinking of didn't really have to do with the quality, more the quantity of textures that would be floating around. This solution addresses that issue, as well.

But then we still, to an extent, have the whole "faces" question. Do you want the land type to apply to the whole lot, or do you want to apply it on a more controlled scale?

For instance, I have a basement that's open to the shoreline. It would be nice to set that section of shoreline to sand/beach, but I wouldn't want to have to set the rest of the hill that the house is on to sand/beach in order to do that.

Would we have to buy each 4x4 plot individually to do this? If so, in some cases, even 4x4 is larger than what you may want.

How do you handle a smooth conversion from marsh to grass (on the edge of your property, where it butts up against public land.) Or marsh to desert (if your neighbor butts right up against you, and is rebuilding Giza.) I think (I could be wrong) that the current textures are based on a combination of elevation and individual face angle. If you do a steep cut, it will always be dirt. You have to have relatively smooth surface or small rolling hills to have "grass." The art involved to support this would have to allow for smooth transitions from any one land type to any other (or any combination, for corners.)

Because of the transitions, you would also have to live with the fact that you won't have 100% control over the edges of your property. If two properties butt up against each other with different land types, some of both will have to be sacrificed for the transitional textures. (Think about it, it just wouldn't be right to have a marshy meadow suddenly and starkly turn into a desert.)

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. It would add some badly needed landscape variety, and allow for better theming of property. Not to mention (as some have) reducing prims used to do "prim" landscaping. I'm just saying that there are more things to consider than just "hey, that would look good! I want it!"