lifeless water

Has anyone else noticed there isn't anything going on in the water at all? No fish, No waves. No splash against a cliff at high tide. I have a piece of land by water and it is like a dead sea. Can someone tell me what feature category I should choose to suggest, with one of my "votes", that LL do something to create a little movement and life in the water areas of the grid? Some ripples from wind...a little white water at the shore as the waves come in...a splash against a cliff at high tide....a fish or two or a whale here and there...?????

They added a pretty dramatic new water effect in version 1.8 - it is turned off by default though. If your video card is able to handle it, you will have a check box in preferences to enable rippling water. The effect is stunning to see, here is an example of it - seeing a picture does not do justice to how beautiful it is:

Even before ripple effect, we had it good compared to There...in There water was just a dead, hard surface!

As far as life in the water - it's up to us to do that. The caves at Rua have lovely reefs. Other places, too, have waters with fish, coral, etc. Various places sell sealife - like the Gerstle Bay Boathouse. My little cave in Bodega is next to Bodega Bay, where I've tried to make things happen with fish, seaweed, and jellyfish.

Pic: Rua last week

That is a VERY pretty place in that picture there, Cristiano, what is it? It makes me want to go there and have myself a little virtual vacation! (Even though I can't see the water ripples on my computer!)

coco

It's not as lifeless as you think:

You can swim in it

Once you start swimming around and exploring - water suddenly becomes a lot more fun and you see a whole bunch of cool things.

One thing I would like to see eventurally is a more complex and interesting undersea texture for the older sims. I was blown away by the beauty of the northern seabed, which, of course, was ruined when people raised up the seabed to make islands.

Perhaps when a sim is settled and stays more or less the same, there could be a process by which owners apply to have a texture switch, payable with Lindens - within a very limited selection (even just seabed). I think it would be worth a lot of Lindens for this - which might be a nice money sink.

You can sail on it, too. Sailboat racing on the void sims in the Sea of Sighs.

That must be a "to each their own thing", because I have always thought the northern sim seabed texture was hideous, and much prefer the original.

I like it under the water - although I'm sick of seeing it now on the dry land. I wouldn't pick that texture, though - I'd like one that looks less tropical. Well, it's just a thought, anyway.

I thought the textures for the entire Northern Continent were absolutely horrendous, but I get the feeling I'm one of the few who think so. It reminds me of some diseased, murky, nasty little tide pool.

After a year, I've found boating to be the only recreational activity within SL that I've been able to keep enjoying. I guess mostly it's because the water is always there (res issues or not), and most of the available water has not and cannot be owned by residents, and thus cannot be built over.

Crazy people! I love the northern textures, specially the sea bed. Hence, you're wrong .

It took me a moment to get what you're on, but I think I know now.

This one? (Thanx Rathe!)

I'm developing living fish, not just models or textures that swim endlessly in circles. They feed, they breed, they die, they go wherever they want untill they hit water where the owner has turned off outside script permissions at which point they get washed up on the shore. They can't even self delete in this state as the scripts aren't running to delete them...

The Lindens once experimented with putting my fish into new water, but the moment the parcels were sold the fish were returned or deleted by the new owners.

If everyone wants living wildlife in the seas it is easily done, BUT there has to be an agreement by all water owners to allow it.


You can see my fish in Hypatia.

What ever happened to the rise-and-fall water effect? I loved turning that on and sailing around during SL night. I can't seem to see that effect any more: not on Radeons nor GeForce, neither on Mac nor Windows.

This sounds fabulous.

There is also an Orca available somewhere that breaches and has splashy sounds. My neighbor has one and I love it.

Hi Kim,

I would like to invite you and anyone else to come check out our place, Caesar's Palace Wedding Resort and Spa, in Borden, anytime. We gradually bought up the sim over the past year, and enjoying the water is one of our favorite past times. We are on the edge of a huge set of void sims and the view is gorgeous, with a few vacant islands in the center of tons of water sims to explore. We only do one wedding a week by choice, and the property is kept open 24/7 for everyone to enjoy.

At our place, we have a cove with an island beach in the center that features a beautiful waterfall, gazeebo, etc. It is surrounded by marine life including sharks, fish, orca, and two new gifts from my husband: an incredible whale (I believe its the one that Gabe mentioned-please feel free to im me in game for the maker if anyone is interested) and dolphin that jump, dive and do flips out of the water and splash back down-they are a huge hit and we always have people relaxing on the beach in the hammock or on a floating raft we have in the cove.

Our newest edition: an underwater entrance with ruins in the water into a new underwater area of the palace. There is a party/reception area underwater with fish swimming and ruins. Above this area is a new wedding chapel, where the floor is water you can walk on and see the ruins and marine life below.

Although we are a romance and wedding venue, there are usally people there on the beach enjoying the view or jet skiing, surfing, or boating-we also love a good watermelon gun fight on the beach! Come by anytime. We love meeting people and are usually around


Another place to go for sports on the water that I love: Zouk's Extreme Sports. They have a great waterslide, surfboards, jetskiing and a very cool scripted wave you can surf.

Great topic choice-I would love to hear about some beautiful and/or fun water places to explore in game!

I'll definitely have to check out some of the water-fun places mentioned here.

One dissapointment for me is that I live on the edge of a vast sea, yet can't enjoy the water to the North of my home as anything other than a spectacular view. I'm right on the North edge of my sim. As far as I can tell, there are no sims at all to the North of my home. I can wade along the shoreline, still in my sim. I can get into the water in the creeks on either side of my home. But I can't pass the invisible barrier at the edge of the sim itself. I guess that is because the 'sea' there isn't a sim, but is just something to look at other than a void at the edge of the world? The sunsets and sunrises are spectacular. I just wish I could swim at least a little way off shore.

(Terraforming the land to make a cove to swim in is not an option. I wouldn't have any room left for my home.)

Blech.

Personally, I'm not very fond of the northern sea bed...

Being a mermaid, I do swim in it from time to time, but I generally stick to the older swimming holes...

Yes.

I went searching for your fish just he other day, Surina. Very, very cool! The most natural and interesting 'lifeforms' I've seen in SL. (Beside the actual people, hehe)

As far as having some more life and animation to the water itself, it might be possible to program something to simulate a crashing tide, or waves kind of rollin in on a beach at least. It'd be great to have a coastal environment that changed as much as a RL beach.

Thank you Siggy! I just bought version 1.1 of that swimming HUD gadget, and I have to say it's pretty cool! Turns out there is enough room in one of the two streams beside my home for some pretty decent swimming fun, and there is other usable water fairly close that I can swim in now.

Is there a way with that gadget to adjust your base swimming elevation? For example, if someone has a swimming pool, and the fake water plane that they use for the water in the pool is 15 M above the Linden water plane, is there a way to swim in the pool? Or does it only work in the 'sea level' base water plane of the sim?

How about controlling depth, for swimming below the surface?

Already there , so now people can swim in pools too. No messing around - no voice commands - just go into a pool and swim - get out and walk again.

With The Swimmer I'm trying to 'Keep it simple' - as simple as can be - hopefully to the point that you don't take it off - or notice its there 'it just works'.

A few people have made inquiries about 'neutral buoyancy - and It's something I am looking at adding - so long as it integrates simply and follows the 'Keep It Simple' guidelines I'm setting myself.

(I'm assuming thats what you mean - you can swim underwater just by pressing page down)

Sorry to sound like a fanboi, but Siggy's swimmer has really made me rethink underwater builds.

We started creating canals in Chaos to link everything together and I still need to do an underwater lair of dread Cthulhu. Swimming around the mainland I've rediscovered some great underwater goodies... If I ever get two spare minutes to rub together I will do a thread about them.

Keep me posted when you start working on that Surreal - I have a feature idea for (possibly) 1.2 that may go in perfect there - and be a good spot for me to work on it