Roads. Why are they there?

One day, just out of complete randomness, i was wondering why we have roads in SL. What purpose do they serve? I know there are probably a few people that want to drive their cars around on the roads( Yes thats right, and 7 of you). NO, I'm kidding, sometimes I drive the vehicles I have around for fun, but what purpose do the roads serve?

Comments? Suggestions? Flames?(Actually, dont mind that last one.)

They look cool..

I dunno, I can think of several...

-Much of Second Life seems to be based around a real world (usually modern US or other Western) setting. Roads add to and encourage this. Possibly it was intended to be reassuring to new users to see some elements of what they're used to seeing outside SL inside as well.
-They might have been intended to encourage exploration and some sense of continuity and/or community, rather than going from point A (your home) to point B (your favorite clothing store, for example) without any real knowledge of the immediate surroundings of either. P2P teleportation would seem to defeat this purpose, but perhaps the idea was to make such exploration/community building purely optional...
-As landmarks. I mean, since most of SL (most builds, ownership of land, etc.) can and sometimes does change suddenly, having something that always stays the same (at least more or less the same) can be both reassuring and an easy way for a person to orient themself.

I have to admit though, I seldom use the roads myself. But as a new user, I would travel along them sometimes, since I could be sure not to bump into anything or get trapped in a half-rezzed building when flying.

EDIT: Especially at first, and after someone hit me with a push weapon, it was reassuring to me to see the words "Linden Protected Land". It took awhile for it to occur to me that it was the land being protected, not me.

After we get Havok2 cars will function better and we'll need the roads. I skate and ride my bike on the roads all the time. The roads are pleasing.

Roads are sometimes the only public right-of way-through a region. Linden protected roads and waterways ensure the residents can move about as freely as possible on the ground, even if folks restrict access to their own parcels.

Course there's always flying!

It's bad enough when you have to stop and wait for the road to res with a brand new computer connected with premium cable, with maximum cache & network speed. That's not factoring in sim border crossings and some rather severe lag in road-based sims that exists anyway.

Even if none of these technical issues existed and driving were far more popular, it would basicly wind up like a multiplayer version of GTA. Especially since not everybody who uses SL drives on the right side of the road. Seriously, real life driving is horrible as it is without the anonymity of the internet.

Roads were more fun to bike, skateboard and walk on, as far as I've experienced. That deals with the res times a bit better. Don't get me wrong, I wish cars were more viable, but every time I try to take one out, I don't last 5 minutes without putting it in fly mode and skipping roads altogether.

I drive along them all the time. Matter a fact, there's both a road, waterway, and plenty of non-banline filled airspace to fly through in my home sim (wich is also Mature, talk about location location location ).

Roads started to be added just as vehicles were getting to be useful enough to use roads, this happened at roughly the time that the playerbase was growing fast enough to make the improved vehicles faster than the grid.

From what I hear Domani (sp?) motorcars are still enjoyable because they take to the sky when needed. There are still hiccups on sim boundary crosses because of hand-off time.

I did see one racetrack - I forget where - which was housed in one sim. Things seemed to work fairly well there.

Roads are good for walking, too. Especially when the land is otherwise blocked.

They also bring a bit of organization to an area, breaking up the sea of builds.

Second Life is a game. You are not the players. You are characters in the game, the Lindens are the players. They like experimenting with SL to see what will happen. It's like a giant ant farm.
Anyway, BackInTheOldDays[tm], a few people experimented with building roads and race tracks. Darkonin Midnight had a race track and Rathe Underthorn tried to build a highway IIRC? Route 66 / Americana had roads all over the place... Kazenojin was full of landing strips. I guess LL put two and two together and thought they would be a nice feature.

I use the roads sometimes as a way to slow down and enjoy the exploration of the sims. Many of the roads are fun. Granted of course they rez a little slow at times, but are still fun. Also there are a few racetracks around now on sims. These are popular and are fun. One such full sim racetrack is on the sim Enchanted. It also has anyone can use cars, bikes, and water craft available over a two sim area for your pleasure. I go there all the time, but I kinda have too, I live there. But really though, the roads can be fun. On roads I usualy use some form of hover, and not a car, as I find they perform better, and have less chance of getting eaten by the road.

Its Dominus. I own a Dominus Shadow, a customized one too (beyond stock options), and they are athe best cars I've seen. Even while driving it detects a problem with physics and re-aligns the car if you get stuck in the ground after crossing a sim boarder. Not to mension they're also the most detailed I've seen.

my dominus (pic 1)
my dominus (pic 2)
my dominus (pic 3)

The roads do seem a bit out of place to me, too. But I do like the way they kind of break up the parcels. They put some room between each persons shop/idea/home and give the area more of a neighborhood feel. PLus, it's kind of fun to fly over them real low and explore the area...

My parcel is by a river and a road, and I see traffic flying low along both all the time. Sometimes I see someone zip by on a motorcycle, or a boat on the river. I've taken the occasional road trip with a carload of friends, too.

Hey, it can be fun to get your car up to speed and see if you can get hung up on more than 50% of your sim crossings! Seriously, since they added Lost Lakes I do like to take a drive from Mowry up to the parking lot in Waterhead from time to time.

I think of the roads as a promise. Sure they break up the landscape nicely, keep neighbors at arm's length, allow unrestricted corridors across sims, etc. I've got a nice parcel next to the road in Mowry and I like having it there.

They also serve as a simple gauge of whether SL has reached the next functional level or not. When we can move at high speed across sim boundaries and not have to stop for the next sim to rez, we'll be looking at an order of magnitude improvement in the quality of SL. Did I say, "long term promise?"

Yes, someday we'll be able to use the roads the way we all long to -- driving at high speeds, looking for high point value targets a la Death Race 2000. "Well, what does she expect? You leave your navigator lying around, naturally somebody is going to run over him."

Try cruising on a country road at night on a motorcycle. It's totally beautiful, watching the roadsigns and terrain light up as you tool along.

http://artlibrary.vassar.edu/BRDS/indian.jpg

http://artlibrary.vassar.edu/BRDS/lastrada.jpg






The trains are pretty cool too.

Roads are more enjoyable if you use lower speed vehicles. Pedal bikes and unmotored scooters, for example.

Roads are a product of free basic Memberships and stipends.

Linden Labs: Eliminate the Free Basic Memberships and also eliminate the stipends!! We must work hard all day long to pay for being able to work all night long for the sake of the Linden value!!!!

....

Oh shoot...

Isn't this thread about the linden inflation and the evil welfare society also?

Without roads and other extremely high quality features quietly provided to us by the fine Linden content team the grid would look like this:

I use them to fly around (without getting kicked away by thoose horrible security scripts).. and explore SL... when i see something nice.. I leave the road and look closer.. then back again... I also have used my motorcykle.. tryed to - But its to fast... *smiles*...

/Tina

Hmmm...

I wonder if I could script a road follower bot.

have to find something it could reliably detect about the prims the roads are made of, and traverse them from prim to prim...

I've driven on the roads. It was alright. A bit too laggy at times, and the vehicles just aren't up to par yet. I spend more time traveling waterways by swimming/flying. Mostly underwater- wearing a giant shark fin

I got called in to participate near the end of a unique road pilgrimage.

In a yacht.

On a trailer.

I couldn't stick around, alas, but it looked like a pretty cool floating party...

I love driving my Dominus ^.^

I'd drive more if LL would ever fix that annoying sim-line-major-lag-spike-thingy.

~Jessy