New Land Types?

It seems that the majority of SL mainland is either some variation of green land or beach-- and I've noticed very few lakes and rivers. There is a relatively small section of continent that is snow land and the land prices there are insane. Do you think LL will create more snowland? It would also be cool if there was a Glacier continent or maybe a desert with Linden cacti all over. A Grand Canyon continent would be awesome as would one with active volcanoes and lava flows(not built with prims-but actually part of the land). Is there a market for that? Are such things in the works?

Wow, I had an image in my mind of a Grand Canyon sim with 'waterfalls' of lava and everything... too many cups of tea on my end.

I love the idea of different areas and schemes. I love seeing new areas opened up and all full of trees and plots for sale that all look like the perfect place for a mountain retreat. Its easy to forget that a week later, that same place will look like the red light district of Bangkok or Vegas.

As I understand it, though, this is down to the people who own the sim - which for private islands and stuff is all them. Nothing to stop them painting the snow texture everywhere etc. On the mainland and sims LL set up though, sure. I didn't think the snow sims were as popular though, I'm sure they look at how quickly new areas fill up.

I'm trying to think of other ideas LL could use to make new sims more unique, but I still think its mostly down to the people who set up their land. Maybe LL could look at more private sims for ideas, private island owners such as Azure Islands really seem to know what they're doing with this.

Take Care,
Lorna.

A mainland sim with a minimum 512 meter lot size and a ban on advertising would sell in SECONDS1

Good point. The only way a Grand Canyon sim would work is if it were completely vacant. Houses and businesses built within it would kinda ruin the charm I suppose.

There is so much more variation on the oldest parts of the original continent. There is even a deep canyon just below a dam (the name eludes me). The rest aren't completely homogenous, but I agree that the artistry of sim design no longer seems to be LL's main concern.

On the bright side, the newest continent (Nautilus) has a gorgeous new sand texture. Which of course matters nothing to anyone but me, who spends a great deal of time underwater.

It's nice right now to visit the red desert part of Azure Isles as it's not yet all populated.

Perhaps it's the 'why bothering with serious terraforming when the sim gets to be a mixture of ad farm, waste dump and Las Vegas in no time flat?' attitude?

They'd just get covered with megaprim casinos and spinning spam signs anyway.

You thinking of Sutherland, where Prok has regular meetings inside the dam?

Broccoli

If you take a look at all the new sims popping up, it seems that they are experimenting with a few newer land textures. I ended up with a pretty coral colored rock textured plot the other day from a good friend, and I like the new sand texture they have been using. It's a bit more realistic looking than the old. As for snow, my experience has always been that it's a bit harder to sell. I personally have never been very fond of it with the exception of a snow texture on some very old school sims that have pretty blue shimmer ice patches here and there.

Yep, that's the place. I know it's just the one sim, but that's the biggest canyon I know about.

Good point guys. Sad, but true.

Durango has a deep canyon and waterfall next to it also.

A lot of sims have seasons. Caledon's ground textures go through spring flowers, summer grass (happening soon!), fall leaves of various densities, snow, then back to spring... lots of sims do this, it's not just us.

With Windandlight coming, we'll probably do the sky to match, as well...

Ooooo... I'm gonna go check it out tonight!




Okay, that sounds really cool. Do you manually change the textures in the Region/Estate window, or is it somehow automatic?

One needs to change a texture or two per sim, so by virtue of flying around, doing the estate ground texture control thing, rinse and repeat for 15-20 sims and it takes about an hour to change.

Once Windandlight comes on board I'll be changing the skies a bit, too.

OOOoooo it would be nice to have LSL control of these!!!

I'm developing a 5-sim project for a client that includes snowy mountain peaks, and has a gorge that runs the full width of one sim, 50 M deep and with a 70 M long suspension bridge crossing it. 4 of the 5 sims are low-prim sims - Openspaces. They can be used quite well to terraform a land area like a canyon.

It's easy enough to create dramatic landscapes in SL, but you need far more than a small parcel to do it in. It takes multiple sims to do it justice. Bear in mind that you could lose the entire world of SL in the real Grand Canyon, and still not come close to covering the surface area that the Grand Canyon covers. A sim is only 256 meters on a side. Comparing that to the real world, it's puny. I did a calculation several months ago and realized that the entire land area of SL's world at that time was smaller than Easter Island. Everything that exists today in SL, including every single sim, is still an area less than the size of any of the smallest states in the USA.

I've noticed that too. I have plots in the southern part of the southern continent and in central Nautilus continent (far north east mainland). I checked, and they are only 20 miles (31 km) apart!

So basically the mainland, including the intervening space, is about the size of a large city and its immediate suburbs. That really surprised me because it just seems so big!