ocean areas

there are large expanses of ocean in SL. but, as near as i can tell, there's no ability to operate sailcraft beyond the immediate vicinity of development. so, i have two questions.

first, are there any expanses of ocean that can be used for sailing in this manner?

second, what's the status of ocean areas? are they owned? can they be owned? what would be the rate? can people build homes under water?

i understand the need to have open areas for people to develop new islands and such, but it would be nice to zone areas for recreational purposes. i mean, that's what SL is about, essentially.

Lotka, if you mean the space on the map between private sims, it is just that, space. You can't go there because there is nothing to go to.

There are "void" sims though. These are the same as normal sims except they run 4 per cpu rather than one. This means greatly reduced performance for the same sim load and greatly reduced prim allowance.
Void sims on the main grid are used to fill spaces in the landmass and are mostly water for sailing. You can't buy land in them.
You can buy void sims in groups of 4 if you already own a private sim. This allows you add lots of open space, either water or land to your private sim but they are NOT intended for building/living in. Bare minimum of builds are supported to make it functional and look nice, but that is it.

i'm interested in sailing. how do i find some of these void spaces on the maps?

and also, i guess then the only way to avail myself of them is to pack up my boat in my inventory, TP there, and unpack.

so, there's no possibility, without extraordinary expense, of having a "vacation home" with a sailboat docked that you can take out anytime you want?

My favorite place is also the best area for sailing in SL - the island archipelago on the north side of the southeastern continent with the korean sounding sim names. The Lindens did a wonderful job creating an interesting and natural looking the landscape here, with is a lot of protected water, and a couple protected islands. I usually start sailing from Sanchon, then head through Jinsil, Haengbok, Joseon, Toedamgol, Cheongdam, Sandeulbaram, Banpo, and Jilseo. Both the casual sailors and serious yacht racers frequent this region - there are also occasional pirate battles.




The trouble with builds in the vicinity of sailboats is the builds tend to lag the boats, and and its hard to steer well when things get laggy at times. Also, the animation overrides a lot of people wear contribute mightily to the overall lag.

Most of the Linden protected water is run on servers with less power than normal sims, which makes the problems worse. While some people buy 4 packs of underpowered sims to have a lot of water, the experience is less than stunning if there are many boats sailing at the same time. For sailing in large groups or racing the best compromise seems to be to have a full powered sim for the start/finish and take advantage of the fleet's tendency to spread out once the race is going and then run the course through the underpowered sims later in the course. That is what we have in Sanchon. One of my groups (Vagabonds Yacht Club) sails out of Sanchon.

Another couple places to try are in Torch and in the ANWR sims. All of the places mentioned have windsetters and start lines for the Flying Tako sailboats.

One last piece of advice: see the http://www.slsailing.org/ web site. The Second Life Sailing Federation has pitched our tent there due to the ill-advised coming demise of the forums. YOu can also register a sail number at slsailing if you are interested in racing.

See you on the water!

Look for "Rosedale" (yes, as in Philip) on the map, use the search function. That is a void sim, mostly water and one of two connected together. So lots of water to sail in. There are others but I don't recall their names.

I wouldn't say that. Depends on what you mean by "without extraordinary expense." You can buy waterfront property with a dock, etc, for a decent price. You just have to be sure that the property will "stay waterfront".

As for sailing, there is often sufficient space to sail your boat in the waterfront portions of the sim. You just can't go for an "ocean cruise." There's no ocean, most places, to cruise.

Some sim owners purchase void sims to border their islands to increase the amount of water coverage.

Additionally, I believe there are a goodly number of void sims between the main continent and the northern continent (Heterocetra?).

Yes. They're called void sims or Openspaces. You can find them scattered around the map.

In order for any space to exist in Second Life, there has to be a server (generally referred to as a simulator, or sim) running that space. Most sims are purposed for land in SL, and that can include water, depending on how it is terraformed. Land that is located along the coastlines of continents tends to be low lying enough that portions of it are sunk underneath the water level, providing the appearance of a bit of usable ocean off the coast. In actuality, it's not "off the coast" at all; it's just that the coast is underneath the water.

The ocean you see in the distance surrounding continents and islands is not real space. It's nothing more than a client-side graphical effect. To make wide open, fully sailable oceans would require thousand upon thousands of servers to generate the actual space involved. That would obviously be a tremendous waste of hardware and resources.

Void sims tend to run 4 per server, and they're usually dedicated to running ocean, or in some cases, undeveloped land. Take a look around the map for regions that are named but have nothing in them.



Some ocean areas are owned by residents; some are resident owned. Again though, most of what you think you see as "ocean" does not really exist.



In most cases, it's the same as any other land.

Owners of private islands can attach 4 regions worth of openspaces to their land for the cost of just one normal region, granting them 4 times the amount of realestate for the money, but since all 4 regions are running on one server, the total prim allowance and avatar capacity for the four are really low. In that respect, it's not really a bargain. It's just a way to increase the physical size of an island for "light use" in the new larger area.



Yes, but only if the water is actually over real land. There's no way to get over, under, in, or on the fake water that surrounds all the continents and islands.



That's why void sims exist. You hit the nail on the head. There aren't many of them compared with the amount of fake ocean that you think you're looking at when you gaze into the distance beyond the coastlines, but they do exist.


EDIT: Once again, I type too slowly. Looks like the conversation has progressed quite a bit while I was writing this post.

right, that is usually what people so. For some reason the scripts in the sailboats can get really messed up, so it can be a good idea to rez a new boat in any case.



its possbile to do this without extraordinary expense. I have some rentals by the water, in fact. If you are buying land you need to be very, very careful where you buy, since people love to build crud in the water and mess up the sailing possibilities... but there are spots that are mostly safe from this. By the way, having a a whole bunch of docked boats with scripts in them also - your guessed it - may add to the lag, so I'd be skeptical of big docks full of boats as being a good thing for actually sailing the boats. It does look nice though. The places that have large docks with lots of boats tend to concentrate more on having dances and social events rather than sailing and racing, in my experience. It all depends on what sort of expereince you want.

Take a close look at the map of SL. Look at the coastlines first. You'll see that the area of water near the shore is a lighter color than the void sims beyond those coastal waters.

Now look squarely between the Northern and Southern continents. At about the mid-point in the south shore of the Northern continent, there is a lighter strip, one sim wide, that connects to the Southern continent. That is navigable!

Look al all the large inland lakes on the main continents. They are navigable! And some are huge!

Look to the East shore of the Southern continent. See that smaller island to the SE? The water between it and the Southern continent is all navigable!

Now - one caveat. Most of the Linden-owned all-water sims are no-build. Which means you can not rez a boat in them directly. What you have to do is rez your boat in the costal waters of the sim adjacent to the all-water sim. Then you can sail from there into the briny blue.

yeah, well, i've tried out a couple of places, including Sanchon and shore near Cecropia, and both are "protected", meaning i guess, i cannot take an object -- my boat -- out of inventory and place it there to begin sailing. i've tried. says owner doesn't allow creation of objects.

so much for these opportunities.

i'll keep looking.

but so far, even for something as purely leisurely as sailing, SL promises much, but throws all kinds of hurdles and hidden rules and restrictions in the way. why would anyone want to bother with all this?

it's more fun going off and playing Sid Meier's "Pirates!"

strikeout on Cepphis on a lake, same reason.

tried a bunch of places... no go .... i'm gonna some pirates and see what they say.

and there's this Vulcan lifeguard lady under a fly saucer who's quiet and mean.

i'll try again. i think one problem is that my ship was way too complicated. it was very pretty. but i think vehicles need to be a lot simpler.

i found a nice sailing place at Boughton Village, but alas my ship got returned when i left because my ship, a brigantine, had cannons on it. BV is a "no weapons" zone. frankly, i completely forgot about the cannon. the water areas around BV are wide enough to sail a brigantine comfortably in.

i may need to make my own boat. but that won't be for a while.

i did join slsailing.org

do you guys hang anywhere in SL? would like to meet up.

Lotka? IM me next time we are both in-world, and I will give you several nice boats, for free. Reasonably-sized ones. I have a freebie yacht that is modifyable, a small sailboat, and a modern inboard runabout, the last of which I built myself.

You might check out some of the Dreamland sims, the price is very reasonable, ban lines are very limited, and they prohibit blocking the water anywhere in Dreamland -and mostly enforce it.

I still don't know the best way to advertise the area, and therefore it is not completely set up, but if you're interested in sailing in the Northern Atoll area I have some land (water) prepared for rezzing your boats. On the Eastern edges of Iris (location of the beautiful Moth Temple) and Bella you will find "Clubside's Dock in Iris"and "Clubside's Dock in Bella". Both should have more than enough prims to get you started.

Once in your boat sail East then North to find at least 10 open protected water sims. If you want more of a challenge, try following the circular water through the Northern sims. It can be tricky depending on the size of your craft, but there are some cool builds to see and navigation challenges. I used my "Flying Tako" ship to travel 28 sims before I got trapped!

Hey, the Papa sim has a nice bay, that connects to the Aich Lake sim, which is Linden Protected. Feel free to drop by Papa 52, 216. Rezz your boat on my dock and enjoy the sailing.

Oh, and every now and then we hold events out at the bar, search the Events listings for "Landfall"

Maximillian Desoto
Owner, DJ, Chief Cook and Bottle Washer
Max's Landfall

Sorry for the cheap plug, but I enjoy sailing on the Aich sim, and just want to help out my fellow sailors!

Of course you can! The home you have on Wailele Isle will do just that, as long as the sailboat isn't a monster prim hog. I've rezzed at least three different boats from my collection on Wailele Isle and Nohona Isle, and sailed around the full shoreline of both islands. I think you can continue on into the Nohea Isle sim as well.

Lotka? If you look in your inventory, I just gave you two nice boats that are reasonable in prim count, and which work fairly well.

I still need to do some more work on the runabout, so it will seat 5 passengers. But for now it works great as a single user speedboat.

Hi Lotka!

Look under the clubs page http://slsailing.org/clubs and events http://slsailing.org/events pages for where and when to connect with other members of the sailing community.

If you need a non man-o-war type vessel, the Flying Tako (available for purchase in most of the clubs listed) is the defacto one design sailing dinghy used in SL racing events.

Or alternately, for cruising, I might <ahem> suggest that you take a look at my offerings at my marina in Eggar, the link is on my signature.

And when it comes time to build your seaside vacation home I can also highly recommend the East End (www.slnewengland.com) sims for *very* picturesque properties (and *very* reasonably priced as well).

Welcome to SL!