inquiry about skybox/ urgent request

I would really appreciate if any of you check the answers and also provide reply for the black answers.

Q: what should be the maximum altitude of skybox?
A: = or >500m

Q: What does the term skybox refer to?
A: The term skybox refers to a parcel of horizontal platform suspended in a higher altitude usually right above a privately owned SL land. The area of skybox should not exceed the area of land.

Q: what could be the form of skybox? Can we have landscape (water fall, terrain) in skybox or only structure is possible?
A: ??

Q: Does skybox need to be enclosed?
A: ??

Q: Is there any Linden Lab owned skybox??
A: ??

Q: Do all Skybox are privately owned?
A: ??

Q: What are the limitations of Skybox (as detail as Detail)?
A:

Q: Is there any possibility that SL will expand vertically in future when the land will be scarce?
A:

Q: what should be the maximum altitude of skybox?
A: 4096 M maximum. Personally, I prefer no lower than 400M, so they are above the particle clouds and can't generally be seen from the ground.

Q: What does the term skybox refer to?
A: A skybox is not "a parcel". It is any structure suspended in the air, and is ALWAYS right above a privately owned SL parcel of land. The area of skybox should NEVER exceed the area of land that YOU own below it. Extending any build beyond the borders of land you own is called "Parcel encroachment", and is an abuse reportable offense, at any altitude.

Q: what could be the form of skybox? Can we have landscape (water fall, terrain) in skybox or only structure is possible?
A: Anything that can be built in SL can be a skybox. A fluffy cloud platform, a space station, a hollow moon, a floating fragment of land, an airplane in flight (that doesn't actually move), or a hollow plywood cube are just a few of infinite possibilities. Anything is possible.

Q: Does skybox need to be enclosed?
A: No, but if you don't enclose it, you have no semblance of privacy. And if you intend to use the skybox for adult-rated activity, it can't be over PG land, it needs to be enclosed if over Mature land, and it could only be an open platform if over Adult-rated sims.

Q: Is there any Linden Lab owned skybox??
A: No. At least not that anyone can use for personal purposes.

Q: Do all Skybox are privately owned?
A: Yes

Q: What are the limitations of Skybox (as detail as Detail)?
A: Same as any structure in SL. You need to own the land, or to be paying rent on the land, directly below the skybox. You need to have enough prims free on your land in that sim to build it. You can't build above 4096 Meters altitude (Building limit in current SL server and client.).

Q: Is there any possibility that SL will expand vertically in future when the land will be scarce?
A:None whatsoever. There is NO vertical partitioning of real estate in SL. All land purchases give the owner control of a vertical column of space from zero altitude to infinity, and the ability to build as high as 4096 Meters. They would have to completely rewrite the land permissions system to allow any sort of vertical partitioning.

And land can never, in SL, be "scarce". Linden Lab can create whole continents of land at will, and does so regularly. We are glutted with far too much land as it is. If they want more, they just put more servers on line.

"Skybox" as it applies to SL is the generic term for "A room built up in the sky, for privacy, so someone walking across my land or flying without a flight assist device won't encounter that room and what I do there." It is a simple privacy measure in a virtual world that does not allow for locked doors and opaque walls as real means of privacy. Anyone can penetrate any wall, if they choose. Anyone can send a camera through any barrier, even from a position well outside the land that you control. A skybox provides "security by obscurity". If the average person doesn't see the room, they won't peek inside.

Dear Ceera,

Thanks for your previous reply. I have few other inquiries. If you kindly have a look. Ciao
.......................................................

I read somewhere that the value of Z (0-768m). You mentioned that the value of Z is now 4096m maximum. I guess it is because the newer version of SL viewer. If my guess is right then

Which version of SL Viewer allowed Z (0-768m)? …….
Which version of SL Viewer allows Z (0- 4096m)?...........

It seems that the newer version of SL viewer allows access to higher elevation. Is there any possibility that premium user or VIP users would get the privilege to use a classified version of SL viewer which will be different than contemporary public SL Viewer and would get them extra privacy and client satisfaction? Whether is it possible to disseminate user access based on SL viewer?

I would also request you to check the following information:

1) Residents are not able to fly higher than 300m altitude. Is that correct?
2) Is there any range for clouds? Minimum…..and Maximum ……..?
3) Anything higher than 300 m is not displayed on the map? Is that correct?
4) Is there any example of skybox in Linden own land or it is a phenomenon in case of private owned land?
5) Can a private parcel owner built skybox anytime or it needs permission from the estate owner?

6) Like the height of skybox has increased over time, the range of terraformation has changed also or it is static?

7) I knew that it is +/- 4m in most LL owned regions, +/- 40m in some older sims but the limit is +/- 100m for private islands. Please correct me if I am wrong?

Is there any possibility that in future Linden Lab will sell extra prim with extra fees in addition to the usual fees? Can this strategy be lucrative enough for LL to generate extra revenue?
9) Pros and Cons of vertical expansion of SL land?
10) Pros and Cons of horizontal expansion of SL land?
11) Currently land is provided by Linden Lab alone. In future is there any possibility that private servers can also host SL lands? Does Linden Lab have any long term view in this regard? If you mention it clearly.

Many of the questions you are asking have exhaustive, detailed answers at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Landowners. It might be a good idea to look there. You will also find a nice collection of videos, some of which address your questions, at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:FAQs_and_Videos.

In answer to a few of your specific questions...

(1) Residents cannot fly over 150m unaided, but it is very easy to exceed that limit either with a Flight Feather or by simply changing the setting in your Advanced menu. I suspect that most residents have figured this out.

(3) Everything shows on a sim map, regardless of how high it is, skyboxes included. [ETA: Hmmm... This may not be correct, although I can think of at least one very high skybox that I'm pretty sure shows up on a sim map.]

(4) There are skyboxes everywhere. It doesn't matter whether the sims are Linden-owned or private.

(5) If you own land or have building rights by virtue of a rental agreement, you can build on it, at any altitude up to infinity.

( Unlikely. The limit of 15,000 prims is not economic. It's a practical limit imposed by the memory constraints of the servers that hold and control all sim data.

(9) Ceera already answered this one. If you have rights to build on a parcel, you can put as many prims as you like on it, up to the parcel's prim limit, subject to any covenant restrictions the estate owner may have placed on the parcel. That includes building at any altitude. If you want to expand upwards, do it. There are some practical limits that make building at high altitudes problematic. There are greater uncertainties in prim dimensions and placement, for example, and some scripted behavior is irregular. If those don't bother you, though, go right ahead.

(10) Ceera also answered this one. LL can add as much land as they like. "Land" is simply memory space on servers. To increase land, buy another server. The size of an individual sim, like the 15,000 prim limit, is a function of server size. Also, because you need to be able to use scripted articles on any sim, it is not possible for some sims to be larger than others. If you did that, all sorts of things that depend on a constant grid size would fail.

(11) Private servers already control SL land on separate grids. That's what Open Sim is all about. You cannot walk or fly or TP from one grid to another, but you can certainly build and do anything you like on an Open Sim on your own private server.

BTW, the most recent upgrade to the standard viewer was mandatory, meaning that previous versions do not function. However, there are several alternative viewers like Emerald, for example, each of which is compatible with the latest standard viewer. These generally offer additional features or expand on options in the standard viewer. You'll have to look at each of them individually to see wht they offer.

ETA: Ceera's note, below, does a much better job of elaborating on some of these points.

Any SL client from client 1.20.15 to present is able to build up to 4096 meters height. Which means every version currently allowed to run on the grid. Prior to 1.20.15, the limit was 768 Meters. The change came in when the Havok 4 Physics engine was added.

Not likely at all. The client is now open-source, which means that even if LL limited the normal client to 2048 Meters, and offered a special version to Premium members to access between 2048 and 4096, all the third-party clients would ignore it. And there are WAY too many current land owners who have land on Private sims, are NOT Premium, and have builds all the way to the max 4096 M height.

The limit is based on the physics engine's capabilities. It is not an arbitrary limit that LL can rearrange to suit preferential policies.

No. Without a flight assist, the stable hover height limit is almost 150m above the ground (terrain mesh). With a free flight feather, or any other scripted flight assist attachment or vehicle, you can go to thousands of kilometers altitude. Though anything above 4096 Meters is rather pointless, since nothing exists up there.

Roughly between 150 M and 250 M altitude.

I think ot is 400 M up that things don't get mapped on the in-world map. Not certain.

There are no "Public skyboxes" on Linden-owned land, that I am aware of.

On Mainland, yes, whenever and wherever the land owner wants, as long as it is over their parcel and does not overlap someone else's airspace.

On Private Island sims, it depends on the sim owner's covenant. Some don't care, some say it can't be visible from the ground, some says if it is visible from the ground, it needs to look like it belongs in the sky (Like making it look like e blimp, or a hot air balloon.) This is largely because Private sim owners often have zoning in place to improve the look of things, so the sky isn't full of random trash.

The range of terraforming actually decreased, for Mainland. On some of the older sims on the original Mainland, you had very wide terraform limits. As much as +/- 100 Meters. In the newest sims LL has put out as Mainland, they are typically limited to +/- 4 Meters.

On Private sims, the limit is +/- 100 Meters, unless the sim owner sets it to less.

A private sim owner can use a .raw file to get a range as wide as zero to 510 Meters for terrain height, but in practice almost nothing exists with terrain higher than 256 Meters, because it horribly smears the appearance of the terrain surface textures. Remember also, a sim is only 256 Meters on a side, so a 510 Meter peak on a 256 x 256 base looks pretty extreme.

You are correct, for Mainland. Though in some recent themed areas, terraforming is limited to zero. Nautilus City and Bay City, for example, allow no terraforming at all. Same goes for the City area of Zindra.

On private sims, it's +/- 100, unless changed by the sim owner.

Nope. The prim limits are not a capricious whim. They are based on limits of what the simulators and asset servers can rationally and safely handle.

Not going to happen, short of creating a whole new grid. Too much of the nuts and bolts of how SL works are hard-coded for no vertical partitioning, and for the height limits we have today. The expansion to Havok 4, allowing building to 4096 Meters, required rewriting over half of the LSL Programming language, to revise hard-coded 768 M limits. And they STILL haven't caught up with all the glitches in that regard!

Happening every week. LL regularly adds more sims of Mainland, weather we need the extra land or not, and new Private Island sims are purchased and put on-line every week.

Not likely in any way connected to the existing SL grid. Too many issues with licensing of content rights form one grid to another. The new SL Enterprise "Behind The Firewall" product will provide Corporations with their own, isolated 8-sim mini-grids. But no contact to the main grid. Various attempts to reverse-engineer the Server software and produce competing grids are still in the "stone knives and bearskins" era, with limited functionality, and very limited trust for security.

Many thanks to Ceera and Rolig for your valuable contribution........

Q: what should be the maximum altitude of skybox?
A: The minimum height should be 1000m nobody wants to be looking at malls and castles floating above the treeline or crashing into thewm while flying low level above the landscape.

Q: What does the term skybox refer to?
A: I find best to make a ground megaprim the shape and size of the parcel at ground level using the "Show Property Lines " option the just change it's "Z" co ordinate to the height you want it then go up to it and place your skybox within it's boundries, I always leave it there, making it phantom & transparent if it's in the way, I also colour the underside with a cloudy sky texture so they aren't as easily visible from below.

Q: what could be the form of skybox? Can we have landscape (water fall, terrain) in skybox or only structure is possible?
A: Whatever people like.

Q: Does skybox need to be enclosed?
A: I've also used mega prims as box walls too so tennat could have different horizon effects and also control visibilty from outside and restrict access.


Q: Is there any Linden Lab owned skybox??
A: Yes a few Lindens have their offices in skyboxes.

Q: Do all Skybox are privately owned?
A: ??

Q: What are the limitations of Skybox (as detail as Detail)?
A: None really more than a groundbox, unless you mean road and water access.

Q: Is there any possibility that SL will expand vertically in future when the land will be scarce?
A: I would love to see land sold in 3D and stackable sims

Posting Rules

Nope, I rule!

Gora? How many threads asking about SL are you going to be spamming us with? Are you doing a school project but avoiding the usual response to surveys or are you a chat-bot?
If neither of the above, I suggest you go in-world and explore a bit. Chatting there is a lot more dynamic than here too.

As Ceera and Rolig have said, the sim prim limit is hard and fast.

Some private estate owners will sell smaller parcels with 'bonus' prims, which means you have more prims than a parcel of that size will support - but they MUST make that up by using fewer prims elsewhere on their sim. (So they might offer a 1024 lot with double prims (46, and set aside 1024 square meters of space on which they use no prims - perhaps walkways or dividing areas between lots.)

I understand there is some double-prim mainland as well, in Bay City and Zindra, but I do not know specifics of how that is done. It may be by shuffling prims as in the private estate example above.

That is exactly how it is done. Gov. Linden owns over half of those double-primmed Mainland sims, with almost zero prims used on the LL land.

Rolig: 3) Everything shows on a sim map, regardless of how high it is, skyboxes included.

This is NOT true, FYI, look at the sim map for Virgin Isle Marina, and the 3 sims around it. Our store is at 500 meters and does NOT show on the map. Also, at some height, (3000 meters?) I dont remember, items moved will go wacky and I think move back to a certain height. Sorry my memory is a little fuzzy on that height issue. I think the maximum height the map sees is around 400 meters high, something like that.

Right you are. I could think of a couple of high altitude skyboxes that I was pretty sure showed up on sim maps, but I hedged on this back in post #4. I finally went to check them out just now. It turns out that what shows up on the sim map in each case is another skybox several hundred meters below it. Thanks for prodding me into going back to look. I learn something new every day.