Five years.<\/p>\n
Has it really been that long? True, SL hasn’t been seeing many major changes in that time, so discussions about where it could be headed next seem… Less than important. I also don’t keep my ear to the wall about upcoming plans as I used to.<\/p>\n
I’m still in there, by the way, even if you don’t see my ol’ white stripy avatar puttering about. We all have alts, and some of mine have been more relaxing than others. Tiger is still my go-to for doing WORK, but with SL’s current state of hugeness and massively-concurrent development, I often don’t feel I have much to contribute, or the time to do it in. I’m now more a consumer and modder than a creator.<\/p>\n
I just don’t feel like I’m part of creating a world anymore. The world is already THERE. And BIG. Seems exploring it and it’s people is challenge enough.<\/p>\n
If I were going to try to think up some new suggestion for the fine folks at Linden Lab, something that might revitalize the feel of SL, it would be… GROUND.<\/p>\n
Any of you ever play Minecraft? There’s a good likelihood you have. When you think about the ground in SL and the ground in Minecraft, what about them feels different? Ignore looks and how you can manipulate it… Just think about the feeling.<\/p>\n
Second Life has sham ground.\u00a0 A thin film of practically nothing that’s actually transparent from the underside. It feels about as solid has a kid’s fort made from two chairs and a bedsheet. The ground doesn’t seem IMPORTANT in SL. And it’s not. It’s just a place to put prims.<\/p>\n
In Minecraft the ground is a massive thing. It has presence and bulk and a life of its own. It has depths and heights that SL just can’t match (and if it tries, you get ugly, smeared textures).<\/p>\n
Can Second Life ever get better terrain? Well, there shouldn’t be any issue with backwards compatibility since we’re talking about what is below the current surface, and right now, there’s nothing there.<\/p>\n
What could it be like? A solid volume of some sort, deformable, paintable, and digable. How to dig? Well the most obvious and easiest interface I can think of is subtractive geometry. A new prim property that makes a prim shift into an alternate dimension if you will, completely undetectable unless you turn on your alternate dimensional view.<\/p>\n
In that view, you can move these transparent prims into the surface of the ground, and where they intersect, holes are formed. Not necessarily precise holes with sharp edges, though. Make a hill with the usual terrain tools, then place a room-sized cube inside it with a cylinder connecting it to the outside of the hill, and you’ve got a cave with an entrance. Leave it rough and natural and slap some texture paint on it, or put up walls inside for a nice, comfy hobbit hole.<\/p>\n
Drawbacks? It will take more vertices to make a more complex surface. Would it be possible to limit the vertex count bet parcel? Perhaps.<\/p>\n
It’s all pie-in-the-sky, but something to think about. It would add a LOT of solidity to the world…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five years. Has it really been that long? True, SL hasn’t been seeing many major changes in that time, so discussions about where it could be headed next seem… Less than important. I also don’t keep my ear to the wall about upcoming plans as I used to. I’m still in there, by the way, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigercrossing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}