In between the Continents

Hi, I was wondering if the lindens could afford to run "Ocean" sims in between the Continents? It would be sooooooo cool for boating! and it would fill out the "world" to a more natureal state. These would be sims that no one can build in or change, just empty ocean???

Thanks for yer ears ;P

Love Ingie

EDIT: Oh, yah, then they could make storm cels, and change the weather in there, it'd be so cool! Maybe surfing waves? man... this could be fun! Can the boats "feel" the waves yet, I haven't tried it with wave motion on?? will the bob up and down???

Thanks, Ingie

How about filling in the area between the vehicle sims and the southern mainland with "ocean"? Consider it an extension of the vehicle sims. All nobuild/noedit, except for an island where boats and planes can be rezzed.

Aside from being fun in its own right, it would tend to speed up travel to and from Cardova.

Yes, and I'm wondering if it isn't "cheap" computing, with only a few people in there and no builds?? I mean, maybe one server could handle all the sims? or many??

Hope it comes to that some day? hee hee hee

Love Ingie

I'd love to have some open ocean to cross between continents. I'd prefer not to see the vehicle sims tied more to the mainland, though, because that would seriously cut into the "lag-free" factor in them.

Philip said at one of the town halls that it is totally possible to have a single server host more than one sim. Unfortunately I think you'd still be limited on the total number of av's you could have simultaneously in the server, but if they get it up to the point where you can stably have more than 50 I bet you'll see more "environmental" type sims like the vehicle park opening up, economized by hosting several of them out of the same machine.

For all we know, maybe they are already trying this out!

Edit: Just thought I'd shamelessly promote this and a bunch of related ideas:

Land and Group Suggestions

You know, I just love the idea of having more expansive "wild" areas in between things. If there's any way to pull this off, let's do it!

I guess currently the landmasses are laid out to avoid having spots where you can see into too many sims simultaneously. So there is that implication to deal with. Also, certain currently isolated spots like Elysian Island would see their character change a lot if there were sims filling in the ocean around them. You would be able to see the island from Gray, and it would appear to be just a short hop across a channel from Darkwood. The island aside, this would be a great thing to have. Large empty areas to wander across, the option to journey through wild places from one inhabited area to the next. More territory to go out "messing about in boats".

If you combine this well with the idea of weather, I think you have the makings of a beautiful way of pulling this off. Make the ocean or wildland crossings opaque, with fog, rain, heat mirages and the like. So, in crossing you would not be able to see the far shore until you were well into the wild sim, and from the inhabited sims on either side you would only see the weather off in the distance.

Perhaps the weather could be driven by the amount of lag being experienced in the wild sims. At times when the view and travel traffic is light, it is sunny and you can catch a glimpse of the far shore. Then as traffic builds up the view distance gets cut shorter and the weather gets more stormy. Finally, if there are too many av's trying to cross the ocean at once, view drops practically to zero and you've got a full-on hurricane. And a cute little "travel advisory" when you try to cross into the full sim.

Maybe these multi-sim servers would have enough room for a few isolated skerries and outposts. Tiny buildable islands that could only host 200 prims or so, dotted far out across the sea or here and there among titanic mountain ranges or in the middle of a burning desert. There's a lot of room for some great creative approaches to making the world a lot bigger.

I imagine these little skerries would command an enormous sum at the auctions, even if you could only get 200-300 prims in an ocean or desert or himalayan sim.

Still daydreaming...

Anyways, yah. A ocean sim would be a neat idea. If they had to put a little life into, a small island to rezz out boats/planes/etc. And keep it with sandbox rules of clearing it out every 24 hours or so lest joe/jane newbie come in there and leave a litter of items all over.

I second/third/fourth/fifth/sixth the idea

I would wager that the isolated spots like Elysian and Avalon could probably be shuffed around on the overall grid without too much worry.

I'd like to see buildable ocean, actually. We know that no-terraform land is possible, so making deepwater ocean sims that people can't raise would be great. You'd want to keep some Linden-owned land running through them as "shipping lanes" of course.

This would be cool to see.

Maybe have one or two that you're allowed to build/develop in and on their own servers, then the rest just be empty ocean on one or two servers. There isn't much open space for boaters, only a few lakes here or there.

Weather might cause more lag than it helps, not sure about that, but would be cool to see if it would help.

As for rippling water the closest we're going to get is what we have most likely. Philip said in a forum post on SLUniverse.com (shameless plug), that when SL was first made it was water that would ripple and you could watch the ripples continue on, and had wave patterns, totaly dynamic. However it was too bandwidth consuming so they had to ditch it untill we all get to faster connections. Can't wait till that day, I'm thinking it'd look like something like the water in games like Spyro Enter The Dragon or Virtua Fighter 4.

the dynamic water must be back, then. I don't remember what setting I used, but I turned it on, and the next thing I knew, Venice was being flooded It was pretty cool. If anyone knows the settings, please post em, thanks, Love Ingie

I totally love this idea. Lindens, PLEASE DO THIS.

You know, there used to be "watery" sims, but people bought the land and raised it.

a couple of oceanic sims between slate and umber would be awesome. it would be okay to have land in them if it were just a couple of islands.

the lindens could lottery them to people who wanted to live on a small island that would never end up being surrounded by anything but water...

...and a lot of happy boaters!

the waterways in the very north are already completly useless. we can still sail from slate from teal, but the land owners in teal have now blocked the thoroughfares.

the vehicle sim water is nice, but open ocean sims would be nicer. much nicer. good idea here.

Can you imagine being on a boat at night, far out in open sea, rocking gently on the currents, only stars above and waves below? Ah, matey, THATS the life.... or in a whopping big storm with the boat tossing up and down and great waves crashing over the deck?! Wahooo!

Hee hee, glad the idea is popular! By the way, does anyone know if a scripted boat with buoyancy is on the water, with the waves turned on, does it move the boat up and down??? Wouldn’t that be just awesome if it did?

Love Ingie

I'm 99% sure ti doesn't. The waves are a client side only effect, and probably even look different to different people (the peaks aren't at the same place I bet). Its a part of the continuity - you can't have the boat going up and down on one players screen when its sitting still on the others I think.

I would love to see this. I am building a submarine, but unfortunately, there is no water deep enough for it. It would be great to have all ocean sims (with a few small islands) to travel in.

I'd love to create a small cruise ship and take people on cruises to all these little far out tropical islands.

This is great. I was just about to start a thread about exactly this!

Set it up so that the "ocean" goes out a kilometer or two in all directions from the furthest north, south, west, and east simulators. (A bounding box, if you will.) Make the ocean no-build, no-edit, and set it up as a sandbox, with rezzing areas. This way people could rez boats and whatever else and pilot them out somewhere for a get-together, and be able to stand up (i.e. release the controls) without the craft being automatically returned. This is the model currently used in the vehicle park, and it seems to work very well.

You'd have to ask the owners of Elysian and Avalon whether they wanted to be within the "ocean." If not, they can be moved out beyond the perimeter. Within the ocean, you could have new island sims for people who wanted the idyllic "Pacific Island" lifestyle.

Technologically, there are a number of ways it could be done.

First, you could have one machine run a bunch of ocean sims. This would be made easier than usual since the sims would be of the sandbox variety. However, if something happens to peg one of the sims, the others suffer as well. This could probably be addressed with 'renice' or something. You'd probably want to run "ocean" on a more powerful machine than a regular sim.

Second, you could design a simulator that could be an arbitrary multiple of 256 square meters in size, with the ability to have normal-simulator-sized holes cut into it in any configuration. You cut a continents-shaped hole in the middle and bingo, there's your ocean.

Both of these designs could be scaled in roughly the same fashion. The second is probably a little more efficient since you don't have as much task switching going on, and is kind of nice since you don't get all the annoying "vehicle pause" and "attachment pause" that you would get with the first design. You could have one "big iron" machine running the whole ocean, or two for hemispheres, or four laid out as quadrants, and so forth.

This might be something to consider when Havok 2 arrives, particularly if something like the second design were to be used.

I want fishing!

I could do that. What do you want as the reward for catching something? Fish? Or something else? I could open a shop that sold poles and bait and bought cought fish.

Assuming I had more faith in the permission system I could at least. A fishing animation would help too.

Just to add my voice to the others. I think it would be a *great* idea, and I do hope it is given priority by the development team. Jim lad.

Sailor Selador Cellardoor

Count me in too... Oceans would be cool.

For planes, baloons and boats.

bumping to ask for a linden to reply please

re-bumping for same purpose

I am all for it! The empty void of water is really a tease to the boaters of SL. The waterways are really tight these days, vast amounts of water would be amazingly awesome.

I love the submarine idea too.

Maybe, just for the fun of it, make some of the ocean damage enabled to make it a little risky out there and make you look out for pirates!