Linden Home and Land Questions

Hi everyone, this is my first post here and I hope I am asking this in the right place.

I have some questions about the new Linden Homes and owning or renting land in general and would love to know what you think.

If you own a Linden Home, will you be able to keep strangers out of your home, like locking your doors, or will anyone and everyone just be able to walk right in? I have searched the wikis on this and could find no answer.

I love the look of the new homes but would like some privacy too.

I have also been thinking of owning or renting land and putting my own house on it. I have come across some land for rent that seems to come with owners rights. Would someone more experienced than me explain how this works if you are renting land?

Also in your opinions, what would be the best option: a Linden Home, renting land, or owning land?

I have been a resident for a couple of years now but am only now considering a house and land here.

Thanks in advance!

There really is no privacy in sl. Locking doors does not to anything. People can cam in, tp in, or sit on a box and move the box inside.

Welcome to the final days of the forum.

Owning your own land and putting a house of your choosing on it, that you can modify anyway you please is greatly superior in my opinion.

As far as privacy...

You can put up ban lines preventing others from entering your land, but they only go up to a distance of 50 meters or so, I forget the actual limit.

You can install a security device in your home but it will provide limited privacy. But all you are allowed to do with it is freeze and/or eject intruders from your property or send them home and then only if they are actually on your property.

Anyone can move their camera into your house from great distances away. And anyone within 20 meters of you will be able to hear anything you say in open chat. So they could be standing or flying just outside of your 512 SM property line and there would be nothing you could do to prevent them from looking in and listening to anything you say.

Putting a skybox up high in the air can improve your privacy and make it less likely that someone will intrude, but it can't prevent it completely.

Thank you for your responses!

So even with the Linden Homes, we will be able to lock or use ban lines?


I had no idea people could peep on you with their cameras, LOL.

The only main thing that I was concerned about was someone just walking in my home and "making themselves at home" if you know what I mean....

I believe they had been talking about putting a locking feature into the homes' panels, but I do not know if that feature has rolled out or is even gonna be implemented. You might want to check the covenant on ban lines and if they're allowed or not, as I don't recall.

As another poster said, locking a door will not prevent access from a determined individual, and ban lines will not likely prevent someone from camming in or, for that matter, standing near the lines and heaving conversation inside.



Some parcels do allow that. Also, there's nothing stopping you from buying your own parcel ont he mainland, especially now while prices are low. Then you can put up whatever access restrictions you deem necessary.



I have never rented (barring mall spaces). In my opinion, owning is the best way to go. You can do what you wish with the land and you can be assured that your rental partner is not going to sell the land out from under you or decide to up and leave, etc.

The home controls in the Linden homes are supposed to eventually allow you to lock the door, and to make the windows transparent or opaque. But that won't prevent anyone from using any number of truly trivial methods to move right through your walls and make themselves at home.

From what I gather, ban lines are, so far, allowed in the Linden Hones. But the neighbors frown on their use, since it means that for 50M above your terrain, right over your house, no one but those on your access list can fly through the open air above your home. And the neighbors have to look at ugly ban lines extending above your roofline to that 50M limit.

A slightly better solution is to use a security device, such as a "security orb". and set it to a rectangular area that stays within the walls and rooftop of your house. Anyone attempting to enter will get a warning (30 seconds to 1 minute is pretty normal), and after that, if not added to the access list, they are ejected off your parcel. Which may just mean tey end up angry and right outside your wall, since your parcel ends at your walls there. An option to force-teleport the intruder to their home is more effective. But do make sure you set the correct area of effect, and don't grief the neighbors by affecting everyone in a 96 Meter radius!

Neither ban lines nor a sccurity orb will do squat to prevent someone from standing right outside your walls, listening to you, watching by camming in, hurling insults at you, and possibly "attacking" with particle streams and other means.

None of these security methods will prevent someone from standing anywhere within as far as three sims away and camming in to watch what you're doing.

On normal land, mainland or private island, you can have a parcel that has edges much further from your walls. If the nearest parcel edge is at least 30M from your nearest wall, they can't stand outside the parcel and listen to your text chat. They can still send in a camera, and can hear voice chat from the camera location, if you use that.

Most mainland parcels allow ban lines, but they really don't work that well, as shown above.

Most private sims discourage ban lines, and recommend a well-designed security orb instead.

The most low cost "true privacy" is to rent an entire homestead sim that ius not attached to any other sim, and set it to non-public access, and allow only your land group (and the sim owner) to enter the sim. Then only those people (and any Linden) can access that sim, and no one can look into it from outside the sim. It is not possible to buy JUST a homestead sim. You must rent one from a private sim owner that also owns at least one full-purpose sim. And a Homestead sim can only have 20 people max in it, has lower prim count than a full sim, and I believe also has limited script resources.

Best way to get privacy on the cheap is to buy your own land and then do this:

1. No banlines. Sounds crazy... but people who invade you -on purpose- look for banlines and then start messing around, fly above them, and bother you in the sky, or try and push objects into your land, and so on. A banline is an invitation to jerks. It only keeps out the polite people.

2. Don't live at ground. Build way way up in the sky - minimum of 1000, best above 2000. But in so doing make sure there is no other build within at least 100, if not 200m of where you go.

3. Put something -inviting- at ground... Again, this is reverse psychology. If you leave ground empty, people will want to find out why, so they will fly up until they find your build, and then start bothering it. If ground is attractive and inviting... people enjoy your ground plot, and don't care to look further unless they have some motivation.

- And at the end of the day... very few people have a 'motivation' to look further. I've had all of 1 stranger, ever, show up at the door of my skybox (of course now that I've posted this... I'm sure I'll get more... but see point 4).

4. Get a security orb and put it up in the sky, and another copy at ground. Configure the one at ground to not do -ANYTHING- except to the specific people you put on its 'blacklist.' Now try not to ever need to put anyone on that list, but keep it there just in case you need to protect random guests down there from some known jerk - without needing those attractive nuisance ban lines. The second orb, in your sky-build... TP home anyone not on its access list. Give them however many seconds warning you think is fair, and then -goodbye-. People can still cam in on you... but honestly... when you've given them no motive to go up there... they rarely will bother. Only people ever booted from my land with my security orb were my own alts, when I was testing it, and a neighbor once when I accidentally set up the ground one wrong.

I recommend the Hippo orbs. They are copyable so you only need to buy one. And they have a 'parcel' setting that will stop them at the end of your parcel, even if you set the area wider (note that they will -NOT- stop at the edge of a sim - that's how I managed to evict a neighbor from her own plot once. When we found that out, I had to go in and measure it all in detail for that orb).




Yes, there is no absolute privacy... but you can use psychology to your advantage and get practical privacy.

Which, unfortunately, is not allowed within the Linden Home continent of Nascera. "Skyboxes" are disallowed in the covenant.

Which is why I started with 'buy land.'

Living at ground is always a bad idea if you want any privacy. You're open to pretty much everything, and every method to stop it only invites more of it. Plus you're right there in the middle of everyone's lag.

And when the sky is cluttered, it makes no difference. The sense of perspective is such that someone on land several parcels away looks like it's right next door if built somewhere within draw distance. It happens.

I paid a visit to Nascera and found that the property lines around each house are right up against the outside walls of the house so they offer no real benefit at all, other then to annoy your neighbors if you turn them on.

The houses are so close together you can probably hear your neighbors talking a lot of the time.

The neighborhoods were visually cute but totally unworkable, unless you want to live in a commune with no real privacy.

It seems likely to me, speaking as an Architect, that the people who designed these "neighborhoods", never spent any time living in SL and have a very poor understanding of what it is like.

This is a real disservice to any new Residents who buy into a "home" here, not realizing how this neighborhood is shortchanging them on their introduction into SL.

Once again..."eventually". Will they ever implement something with all it's intended features ready to go, or is everything supposed to be rolled out unfinished?

Point taken. It was late.

That doesn't tend to happen though.

Even on busy sims. With 4096m to work with, you can find a low lag private spot.

No gardens was my first thought when I saw that. They don't even give you a front lawn.

And yeah, if its closer than 20m, you're going to hear chat. But even when its not - since its on ground, even if you turn your draw distance down, anytime you rotate your camera you end up seeing your neighbors pixel slapping the dog again...

If they did that, they wouldn't be able to claim they listen to the residents and made improvements when ever they add something that should have been done before the rollout.

BUT THEY NEVER ADD IT ANYWAY!!!!!!! *Shakes fist*