Sky Tax

I know I sugested this before but I really want it to happen:

Less tax when over the cloud layer!! Building in the sky should be ENCOURAGED, to reduce ground clutter! Kazenojin wants a starlight lounge, and I personaly want to get some space stations up! NO HEIGHT TAXES OVER 200 METERS!

Who's with me?!

Me! If I ever did did a big place, I'd prefer it floating way up haig.

So then we'd have ground clutter AND sky clutter over 200m. (and nothing in between)

sounds cool to me

Seems logical to me, since the tax is suppose to represent server strrain. If an object is higher than normally an avatar can see, it should cost less than ground level, since it causes less strain.

well if everyone goes the sky then it costs more server time and then the ground would be cheaper so that doesn't seem logical. Besides the server still has to do the physics and scripts even if no one is looking.
But still I would like to see the *same* taxes as on ground for the sky.

I vote for repealing the sky tax! Perhaps there could be an arrangement where taxes rise up from the ground (to keep the flight zone clear), but as soon as you get above the cloud layer, they dive back down again!

If you guys aren't careful this is going to lead to a discussion on 3d land plots. Currently land plots are 2d - your owned area extends up 'forever'. If you really want people building up in the sky, we need 3d land plots where you have to specify not only width and breadth but also height, and have nieghbour discounts work for people above and below you.

But its true, the sky should be cheep now cause no one goes there. As people go there more, the price of the 'land' should automatically adjust to be more expensive, and where people do not go, should get cheeper. OH IDEA

This would be great to be worked into the Dwell System! The more people go to and stay in an area, the more costly it gets to own that land (since it is high traffic - high visibility - high demand). The Dwell system will pinpoint busy and non-busy places in the world and land prices should reflect that data

I should clarify that I mean no further tax above 200 meters in the air.... But how's this: only this rule on certain sims? Like to designate certain sims as high rise or something, like it's done for expensive regions.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

In themed communities or on designated sims, give us a chance to explore vertical space without penalties!

i don't get the problem with 2d/3d land plots. i don't think anyone's suggesting you have people building in the sky above your land. the way i read it the point is you buy land then build way up in the sky and leave the ground clear..that's what reduces ground clutter. did i read it wrong?

Well the people up in the sky don't want clutter either, Daminia, and you can only get up to 500 meters.... remember, I've been to 3,000,000 so 500 meters is nothing.

Building huge primmed structures int he air still puts a strain on the server.

I imagine it's a database driven system or something (based on unique object id's and such), and if you suddenly add in 3000 prims in the sky, the database still has to be updated to reflect that.

Not to mentino rendering time.

Lordfly

i thought the height tax was created to give the world a semblance of gravity. to try to keep things more on the ground instead of floating all over the place. i think its a good idea to encourage building on the ground but i also would like for their to possibly be some kind of compromise. there are times when building in the air is very desired, and not just to create an eyesore. kazenojin had to totally restructure and build a mountain under our station just to alieviate the taxes. as a result it has limited what we could build on the ground underneath it, and i think even taken a bit away from the look of the station itself.

i really like darwins suggestion about removing the height tax at a very high height. above the clouds would be perfect. it wouldn't be in the way when your flying around and depending on your distance setting you prolly wont see much of it from the ground. i know theres a lot of us who would love to make some sky buildings. me included. an alien doesn't belong on the ground

please loosen the chains a bit lindens. how bad could it be?

Problem with sky tax removal lies in the popularity of the sky--if everyone started putting castles in the air, that combined with server resources would leave the ground empty. Then... would land-dwellers be a sort of alien race and the rest of the population would be in constant sky-high flight?

I think their algorithm just starts looking for prims to send you at ground level and goes up from that. So if all prims are closer to the ground, the server will never have to look above a certain height for prims to send you and will thus be faster.

I agree with Daemioth you'ld be creating two seperate worlds, one at ground level and one at 200m. Though there are good and bad things about it. I kinda like the idea of building a floating castle or giant steam-powered mansion tethered to balloons, but certainly only if it was out of range of the highest render distance from the ground. I don't get good vibes from what this might do to the community, but it's hard to turn down new creative enviroments.

lol, makes it sound like us ground dwellers are primitive earthlings or something. "Ohh look! The sky people!"

Anyway...maybe a better way to segment ground/air would be to have a few sims have "space" or "sky" sims above them, as has been suggested...somewhere else (I think). So if you go up a certain height, you'd actually cross into a sim that has no ground at all. But don't ask me how land ownership and all that would work. Or showing it on the map...gah...

I guess you'd have to buy huge 3d "air plots" and maybe add a toggle to the map to show the "high plane" sims or something...

Maybe a better idea for version 5.0...

Or just tack on a normal sim with a 100% alpha texture on flat terrain set to it's lowest level. There could be air docks along the edge of the neighboring sim. (Should be only one connected edge, though.)

The only problem using it is trying to tell if your prims are inside the borders. But this can even be hard with the current setup. Especially when doing things like boats in deep water.

I'd suggest shooting a beam up from each corner of your "land" much like the "Object Beacons" option in the View menu does for objects. Maybe even a bit of a grid glowing between them, volleyball net-like, close to your camera height (like the object edit grid) so that you can tell when a small object is a little too far out.

Or maybe some key combination that lights up any of the objects you own that aren't over your property, since it's the center of mass that counts, not the extents of the prim, and that you can't see with the naked "eye". That is, a 10x10x10 cube can stick 4.99 meters off the edge of your property and still be considered "on" it.

How about a sim that only has limited islands, but with unrestricted building both below the surface of the water and above the cloud layer / max non-assisted flight cap?

This way we might be able to kill three birds with one stone.
Give those who want sky castles a place
Give those who want an (almost) open sea to sail ships in a place
and
Give anyone interested in making an underwater themed area all have a place.

The only thing that really needs to be modified are the build taxes (which would remain the same, if not higher, in the 0-180 meter range, but be lowered both below the surface and above the clouds.) and a standing order that raising new sections of land above the water's surface, beyond the small areas already availible, would be prohibited.

Place it between any of the "old world" sims and the new ones to ease the tan bottleneck, and it's just be icing on the cake.

any takers?

I think the Tan bottleneck is purposeful... some sort of stress test on the servers. Plus it creates a strategic point for shops and stuff.
You wont see it go away any time soon.
How about a cloud-textured ground with lots of fog?
Since collision detection usually fails when ground height is zero, you could have a big central hole for inter-sim travel, and in the rest of the sim you would walk on clouds. Put it above kazenojin and let the space elevator serve its purpose. You could even have two sims above kazenojin, one for sky castles and another above it for space stations.
With regards to the land ownership I think we can safely keep the current system.
When suggesting new features you must keep in mind that the more work it will be to implement it, the less likely it is that you will get what you asked for. So its important to try to make things fit the current system as much as possible.

The thing about stacking sims is that it will stop those of us who already use the 200-500 meter area from doing so... unless you place the new sim above 500 meters, but then that's a whole new can of worms.

While it's a good idea, especially for those who love walking on clouds, for people fly or who build castles out of floating hunks of rock, it kind of spoils the effect.

I've worked around this by having my place scripted to sit in the water until I decide to raise it, but it would be nice to keep it airborne all the time.

the Sky People would block out the sun! And I'm getting tired of these rickets.