Tying in to this issue (http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-13544) I make the following (long term?) suggestion. Bear with me, this is a rather big idea. LL implements hardware/server/coding changes and implements a new and possibly additional server structure. In this new structure all the old sims are retained, as is. But additionally, Linden Labs hires a cartographer, creates a landmass that is about five times as big, in virtual measurements (or bigger), as existing continents. LL then partitions this landmass in one-sim squares, as usual. By default this map is not actually divided in real sims, but it is possible for anyone to pick a place in the map, anywhere and hire a sim there, as usual. Might look something like this: So resuming - nothing would change when this is implemented. On the map a big blob of new real estate would appear, sectioned into squares. People who teleport there see the landscape rendered very quickly because its one giant bump height map from horizon to horizon. The sight would be amazing and it would be far more appealing to many people to buy land or relocate a sim here. http://www.blazelabs.com/pics/landscape.jpg What would change? Surprisingly little. Its just a huge fractal map, with elevation elements where roads run, a way to paint this land in specific textures, depending on the type of land, a procedural tool to render trees if a character walks by. And yes, characters would be able to traverese all of this new continental area. Most of it would be deserted. and LL miight add more contental landmass to keep about onetetnth or less populated with simspace - the rest would just be vacant real estate, "renderspace" linking to some in-between SIM, and space to walk, make random encounters or locate generic landscape features such as planflife, road markers, small ruins (can be used again and again), a bridge, animated-water rivers here and there, and whatnot. Plants rendered in this non-sim Limbo regions couild easily be preocedurally generated and temporary - if a character walks around, he sees plants rez into being - this gets recorded for what, 3 hours? Then it resets. The plants next time the character walks through would be slightly different, but few people would notice. This would mean very little stress on the servers. - almost no data would be streamed back and forth, other than character location. So why the hell should Linden Labs do a thing like this? 1 - It would end the discussion about mature sims. Of such a continent, the "northern shore" would be, say, for PG users. It would be abundantly clear - no immoral content here, anywhere. Thje southern part of the land would be consistently X-rated. There would literally miles and miles of empty wilderness inbetween. Space is the ideal isolator between moral issues, as many libertarians would vouch. This would be experiences as a fair deal by current land owners - they vacate their old sims to a new sim area, but in return they get a wide and stunning vista in return. 2 - Currently a huge reason for people not to play SL is the rampant mall fungus, the general chaos build, the endless "more of the same", the unimaginative building. But even though, SL is mostly empty buildings. This can be depressing to new gamers and it doesn't always compute. But imagine the screenrenders of these mountains, these canyons, rivers, trees trees as far as the eye can tee, and then suddenly, in the middle of nowhere (with abundant ambient sound effects of birds chirping, wind blowing, 3- Sim owners could set weather effects in the area surrounding their sim. Sim owners could discretely tweak the nature of the landscape in their favor. Some would favor it to be always night in the mile surrounding their sim. 4- It would signify the end of annoying and contrived feeling sim crossings. A character would walk around somewhere in a wide landscape on some huge fractally generated map, and if a sim were there it would be incidental. serverwise. 5 - imagine revenues and land speculation on key places on a continent like this. It would heat up trade and ownership and entitlement in SL again. Where now people leave, people would be eager to return and own a piece of amazing virtual real estate. 6 - imagine synergy. A rich RW client could decide to buy a landmass, define characteristics and surface area and start renting that out. Or a RW city or corporation might decide to replicate real world land, for tourist reasons, or for scientific research, or to host a totally unique type of game. 7 - it wiould be a stunning vessel to mythologize SL. "the shore of vice" .... "the highlands of violencee". Imagine the YouTube vids and viral quality of this model. The biggest risk to Linden Labs are

• lack of longterm thinking
• lack of vision
• a defensive attitude
• fear
• fatigue

This idea would open up a completely new course for Linden Labs that would instantly ease the annoyance of many clients over the ghetto-plans, would increase value of SL, would be charismatic and adventurous and exciting. I know chances are small LL would go on such a wild adventure - its hard for an expanding IT corporation to resists the temptation of calcification and inertia... but if LL ever decides to implement this... name a major landmark after me OK?