Roads - Why?

Can anybody tell me the benefit of the Lindens laying roads? We had a great piece of land in a new sim with what looked like to be protected Linden land on two sides which was full of trees. Logged on this morning and now there is road on two sides of the property. Hardly anybody uses the roads as roads to drive vehicles on. Just can't see the benefit of laying road. The property now does not look anywhere near as beautiful and tranquil as it did.

Manuel.

Obviously, it's so the fire engines can get to your home...

I've seen people use the roads, and I've personally used the roads myself. I like them, but I find sim crossings to be the main obstacle to using them regularly for vehicles. If/When the Lindens manage to solve the sim crossing issue, I believe road use is going to spike massively. Once that happens, the demand for roads will likewise increase. If the Lindens hadn't already been building roads, there would be a massive part of the grid without road coverage.

Others have also said that they dislike roads. You are definitely not alone. However, there are definitely people who use the roads, and I think we should accomodate them as well. Given that you can always move to road-free land in another sim or in a private sim, I'd say that the imposition of a global road system is not too great of a burden.

Roads are in a good percentages of sims and they are used somewhat. I believe as new revisions of SL pass on roads will be used more once they iron out the physics of border crossing. As you probally learned if there is a strip of land that is Linden land that stretches across the sim about the width of a road it will probally be one in the future.

I follow the roads when I can when flying to avoid getting punted out of my airplane by people's crappy security scripts. I can't see protected land without 'em.
They have their uses.

I believe another reason for roads as well as other 'Protected Land' is to reduce the prim usage of a sim in order to improve performance. Since each sim supports 15,000 prims, one could expect all 15,000 to be used if residents owned all the land in a sim. By setting aside land for preserves and roads in each sim, the object usage for the sim is reduced. In city-sims, which have a double-prim allotment, my understanding is that the sim still only supports 15,000. But they structure the land usage so that the 15,000 are used by resident-owned land. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

I used roads all the time when flying. I follow the road, then I know I wont fly into a building.

I guess Anshe and I wont be lonely anymore on the sim now that a road goes through the middle of it she might be able to sell some of that land she has there. I guess another sim will be added as well as the road goes off the end of the world.

I'm probably a little upset because there is no way of knowing what the lindens will do. Even my RL street directory has marked in it "proposed freeway" on empty land. Especially when the land was fully tree'ed up before the bulldozers came through.

Manuel. (Now living in suburbia)

I agree with you completely on this point. It seems completely wrong for the Lindens to change Protected land after lots have been sold. After all, if a resident ever asks for protected land to be changed, their response is always that it can't be done because it could unfairly affect the value of land around. They shouldn't break their own rules!

Yea. Roads are the only real way to wander around exploring without actually crossing somebody's property. If you explore anywhere, especially in a vehicle (although I use roads to fly along without a vehicle as well), you'll get hit by a SAM launcher eventually.

...I actually wish the road was closer to my house sometimes...

I think it is misrepresentation bordering on fraud to sell land then install roads after the land is sold. It is wrong, plain and simple. If you bought it directly from LL I'd ask for my money back since they clearly misrepresented the land. If you bought it through a baron, talk to them and ask if you can trade for another lot. Turn around and sell it yourself if that fails as it will likely be worth more for comercial property.

Although I like roads, I can sympathize with those who see them coming in after the fact. If you think that was bad, though, you should have seen that huge bridge road! If there was something saying on the land buying tabs or something - "caution: lindens reserve right to add roads in this sim" or whatever, that might help. Although I would hope they would never add another like that bridge. Most roads, at least, are flat.

coco

I like the roads, even though I only walk on them occasionally and don't use vehicles. But they help give some perspective and sense of place to the buildscape, and break it up into chunks. They can also help orient the facades of buildings to one direction so things look a little less haphazard.

Linden infrastructure is a necessary evil. They likely don't enjoy having to deal with it any more than we do. "Protected Land" was incepted to maintain the lay of the land when we had the ability to terraform several dozen meters. Our limitation, at the time, was that we could only terraform up to a forty-five degree angle from the neighbors land so that we didn't end up with suddenly deep holes or walls of stone. We either had to purchase a lot of land or get several owners to work together to raise a mountain or build a lake.

It was a good system that forced a little neighborly cooperation or, at least, prevented anyone from destroying the appearance of a natural landscape. It made sense then for the Governor Praise Be to the High Linden Account to retain ownership of waterways and hilltops so the entire landscape didn't end up being flat.

Because a huge issue at the time was water thoroughfares for boating, the idea to lay roadways on protected "land" seemed a natural progression. Then it hit the fan. We demanded that the angle rule be abolished so it was. We further demanded that terraforming be turned off so they limited it to four meters up and down. We changed our minds and demanded (I would say "asked" only we didn't ask, we demanded) that it all be put back like it was SO they reverted the original (core) sims to forty meter terraforming, have left everything else at four and, come to think of it, only kept building infrastructure (roads) because we demanded that too.

It's our own fault. I think we thought that vehicles would one day be useful. Now that we know that quick border crossing in speeding cars will never be a reality, it does seem a bit silly. Well reducing the number of available prims in the simulators so that they can function well is still a good reason. You and your neighbors can petition LL to retain the land but remove the roads from your sim. They just might do it.

I have noticed that some sims with definite protected land for roads have had those roads built, whereas a lot of the snow sims, including Moen, have no roads, though it sure looks like there was was planned. Maybe it was actually designed a tree line, but have you notice how laggy the Linden trees are?

Dunno. I would love to have a working railway, monorail and road system in SL. Don't know if its feasible, but I would love to see it work correctly.

The protected lanes in the snow sims are reserved for snowboarding, skiing and other snow related activities. That's why there are no roads there.

The Linden trees are generated and motioned by your client so you can control how well you render them in your preferences. But even at the lowest setting, too many of them moving around at once can noticeably reduce your framerate. Speedtree code will be integrated into 2.0? and will vastly improve the rendering speed of winded trees in the client as well as accomodate hundreds of textures.

Fate Gardens are, of course, examining diversification feasbilities.

Hey, that's what we need to move us closer to RL in SL - easements and platting. LL should mark government easements in any new sim and implement real platting features that they or private developers would use to propose and publish improvements before they occur. A structured process might improve the in-SL experience for everyone, esp. landowners on public sims.

I'm only partially joking - I think many people would enjoy getting involved in that kind of large-scale planning activity - SimCity or Transport Tycoon players, for example.

Never thought to use them for this! Thanks I hate flying into buildings as they are coming into view, and getting stuck inside.

I, for one, don't like the roads either... but apparently 'realism' was requested once before and people still push for the roads, despite them never even being used? Ah well.