First Cut of the New Sim Landscape

[Jon Seattle]

[b:1g2nu2s7]First Cut of the New Sim Landscape[/b:1g2nu2s7]

[img:1g2nu2s7]http://jonathan-smith.info/snapshots/half-height.jpg[/img:1g2nu2s7]

While I did the RAW terrain file at full height (I spent some time measuring NFS and CN today) this picture was shortened so I could display the entire landscape. The flat areas are still flat, but the cliffs will be higher than shown here. The north and south edges are more or less consistent with the NFS and CN terrain. Actually it looks quite dramatic at full height.

- You should imagine the NFS city walls over this picture in the top left.

- A pond in NFS (on the prim land) would feed the waterfall and river, connecting to the river mouth in Colonia Nova. There would be a picturesque foot bridge to connect Plateau 2 and 3.

- This includes Arria's suggestion of a monastery on the high ledge to the left. Imagine rocky cliffs from the monastery down to the river.

- Backhoe (the program I used to do this) is rather rough, so the switchback road does not look quite the way it would. The idea is that as you leave NFS it branches left and down, and then right and down to meet the plateau.

I will do a top-down map of this to see what the available land area looks like. Note that inevitably more area is devoted to cliffs because of the severe slope.

Any comments and / or thoughts?

[Sudane Erato]

Jon, it looks great!

I understand what you say about the real sim being even higher. This image does not even look so bad. It really should be much steeper.

I get the sense that your approach is to put most of the elevation in the south third of the sim. With the center and the north being plateaus of different levels. Is that a fair analysis of that pix?

That makes a lot of sense for building houses, which we'll surely need. because houses seem to want to be built on flat surfaces. But an alternative might be developing builds that will look right and work right on steep slopes. With those, the elevation might be spread more across the extent of the sim.

Just a thought. It's wonderful to begin to see it take shape .

Sudane...........

[Beathan]

Jon --

Gorgeous -- great work!

Beathan

[Arria Perreault]

Jon,

great work! It looks wonderful. I guess it will be a romantic sim.
Thank for taking in account my proposition of a monastery. I will try to find a model. I have already an idea of a place where I can get easely textures.

[Diderot Mirabeau]

[quote="Jon Seattle":313634r6]Any comments and / or thoughts?[/quote:313634r6]

I have been largely silent lately yet lurking in the corners. Excuse me if this lengthy post is too contrasting of that silence. I seek merely to contribute constructively in the below.

The rendering looks great. I can't wait to see it implemented! I have a few remarks and questions:

- I assume that the monastery will be a publicly owned building? Given this its location makes sense as it will enable everyone to enjoy the view from one of the most spectacular locations in the sim. However, if the ambition was to place it in an inaccessible and desolate place I cannot help but wonder if a location relatively close to the city of Neufreistadt will take a bit away from this experience. Of course if the area between the monastery and the city is in an inaccessible valley covered with trees then the monastery will be able to maintain its desolate location. If it's going to be situated directly up against the city walls the location will be considered as less remote and perhaps thoughts should be devoted to creating an entrance to the place through the city walls?

- I applause the intention of establishing a body of water in NFS to feed the waterfall. It is my impression that waterfalls with feeding waterways look a whole lot better and more realistic than those where the source of water "springs up from underground" right at the point where the water goes over the edge.

- Further regarding the waterfall: I take it that Linden water can still only be present at one level in one sim? If so this means that most of the water flowing through the waterfall will have to be made of (possibly swimmable) prim water. The last time I checked, swimmable prim water does not support boats, inner tubes, water skis or indeed any kind of physically enabled waterborne vehicles. It seems to me that the waterfall is presently designed to have one big drop followed by several smaller ones interrupted by longer stretches of "level" streams of water. Since these streams will inevitably have to be made with prim water they will most likely look good but they won't be able to support any kind of recreational activities save for (maybe?) fishing and swimming. We should be aware of this and choose either to design the level intervals of the waterfall in a way so it discourages any attempts at using boats, inner tubes or similar equipment to enjoy the waterfall. Alternatively, we should make it "steeper" so as to let the physical expression of the waterfall better support the plausibility of the fact that you cannot use it for boats and similar.

- Smooth slopes or little outcroppings everywhere? I realise that the model is conceptual in nature and that intended details do not show. However, I think it's still relevant at this point to consider if we want the slopes to be smooth or if it is possible to allow for some kind of outcroppings and minor plateaus along the ridges that could be put to decorative or recreative use such as hosting eagles' nests, mountain goats, supporting vegetation like moss, trees and the like. We may even want to vary the expression of the slopes so that one becomes more smooth/straight/steep and another becomes more irregular with outcroppings so as to enrich the overall expression of the layout.

- Terrain texture. Excuse my ignorance on this subject but I'm under the impression that it is possible to make a custom texture for the terrain of a privately owned sim. Do we have the resources to make such a custom texture in a way so that the slopes and ridges will be rocks of varying composition, the plateaus meadows and the waterways and roads some combination of rubble and bedrock? If so I guess a discussion of where to place the different textures/zones would be relevant?

- Proportion of public vs private land. This sim will be rather more expensive than our previous two ones since Linden Lab increased the fees. Naturally, the larger the area of publicly owned land the more expensive will be the individually owned parcels. Are we aiming for a specific proportion of public / private land with this in mind? How much space will the slopes take up alone as public land - or will they be prim banks? How much space will the waterfall, road and lake area take up as public land? Will this total amount result in a fraction of public land that makes the individual parcels prohibitively expensive bearing in mind the increase of LL fees?

[Sudane Erato]

[quote="Diderot Mirabeau":bmzlbnvw] - Terrain texture. Excuse my ignorance on this subject but I'm under the impression that it is possible to make a custom texture for the terrain of a privately owned sim. Do we have the resources to make such a custom texture in a way so that the slopes and ridges will be rocks of varying composition, the plateaus meadows and the waterways and roads some combination of rubble and bedrock? If so I guess a discussion of where to place the different textures/zones would be relevant? [/quote:bmzlbnvw]
Terrain texture is a bit complex, and very frustrating.

As many as 4 terrain textures can be assigned to a prim. They are assigned to areas by elevation... for example, if you used two textures, everything above a certain elevation could be one texture and everything below that elevation the other texture.

Those elevation settings are set for each corner of the sim. So, in our "two texture" example, we could set the elevation at 100m in the SE corner of the sim, and 20 m in the NW corner. So the dividing line between the two textures would vary depending on how close you were to either of those locations.

This is further complicated by several factors. It is possible to have up to 4 textures, so, there are 2 elevation settings for each corner. The "Low" setting is the maximum height of the lowest texture, and the "High" setting is the mimimum height of the highest texture.

Also, none of the divisions are sharp demarcations. It appears that some sort of fractal algorithem is used to determine where any given texture appears, with a dependency on the elevation settings. But this means that a given texture *can* appear way outside its intended location, although only in small patches.

Finally, note that the textures are 256x256 bitmap files, and they are tiled in a fixed setting across the sim. You cannot create a single, detailed map, and apply it overall to the sim.

Bottom line. Texturing the terrain of the sim is an extremely "trial and error" process. Indeed, I have noticed that even the texture assignments are not completely fixed... a given square meter may appear with one texture one day and another one the next day, probably on account of that fractal algorithem.

Sudane..............

[Sudane Erato]

[quote="Diderot Mirabeau":1sc0et4g] - Proportion of public vs private land. This sim will be rather more expensive than our previous two ones since Linden Lab increased the fees. Naturally, the larger the area of publicly owned land the more expensive will be the individually owned parcels. Are we aiming for a specific proportion of public / private land with this in mind? How much space will the slopes take up alone as public land - or will they be prim banks? How much space will the waterfall, road and lake area take up as public land? Will this total amount result in a fraction of public land that makes the individual parcels prohibitively expensive bearing in mind the increase of LL fees?[/quote:1sc0et4g]
My I take this opportunity to suggest that we consider unifying all the fees in our various sims?

The new sim will be very costly compared to the other two, and it will have far fewer income generating square meters. This means that, standing on its own, private land here will be *extremely* expensive compared to our other two sims. In all liklihood, this sim will consistently lose money.

If, on the other hand, we unify our land fees across all 3 sims, setting up consistent zoning and associated fees, we have the means to, in a fair manner, spread the cost of our land among all the citizens. The only issue, then, becomes the *overall* allocation of public and private space. the more public space we allocate, the higher our fees must be... and, of course, the reverse.

Sudane..............

[Diderot Mirabeau]

Thanks to Sudane for the enlightening post about terrain texturing. I understand there are some issues involved in applying this usefully. I remain of the conviction however that a careful and considered approach to applying different texture mixes to select zones of the sim can vastly improve the look of it. With its sloped topology it seems to me that a varied terrain texture is of far more importance in this sim than in our previous two.

However, as it occurs to me that Jon probably intended this thread to be mostly about the topological layout I will not endeavour to discuss the matter in further detail here.

The same goes for fee harmonization. I can definitely see the benefits of Sudane's proposal. However, as Claude has previously pointed out doing so will mean that every new sim added will increase the monthy land fees for all of our exisisting residents (as the discount for the two old sims will be progressively 'watered out') and I guess decisions on how to distribute the shouldering of our economical burdens remains a political issue.

[Jon Seattle]

[quote="Sudane Erato":u5jo5nki]Jon, it looks great!
I get the sense that your approach is to put most of the elevation in the south third of the sim. With the center and the north being plateaus of different levels. Is that a fair analysis of that pix?

That makes a lot of sense for building houses, which we'll surely need. because houses seem to want to be built on flat surfaces. But an alternative might be developing builds that will look right and work right on steep slopes. With those, the elevation might be spread more across the extent of the sim.[/quote:u5jo5nki]
Thanks Sudane! Yes, I put a good part of the drop at the higher elevation, partly for dramatic effect (also land tends to erode and flow downhill) but I think you are right, an option is to spread the slope a bit more evenly. I will try this and see how it looks.

In any case I think we will need houses that work on steep slopes. I have just started thinking about this. One of my solutions in Cedar Island was to have one model of house made of four platforms on posts forming a kind of spiral up around an central empty space (pictures below). To my surprise, these were among the houses that new residents chose first, even though the land they sit on is very steep. Something along these lines, but made to fit the theme might work very well.

I am also including a couple of snapshots of very old houses on very steep slopes in Sinrta Portugal. The first one is known to some people as Gwynith's house (no, it it isn't actually her house).

[quote="Sudane Erato":u5jo5nki]
Just a thought. It's wonderful to begin to see it take shape .[/quote:u5jo5nki]
It is! and to see people getting involved with ideas.

[img:u5jo5nki]http://jonathan-smith.info/tree-house/t ... se_002.jpg[/img:u5jo5nki]

[img:u5jo5nki]http://jonathan-smith.info/tree-house/t ... se_004.jpg[/img:u5jo5nki]

[img:u5jo5nki]http://jonathan-smith.info/tree-house/sintra_001.jpg[/img:u5jo5nki]

[img:u5jo5nki]http://jonathan-smith.info/tree-house/sintra_002.jpg[/img:u5jo5nki]

[Rose Springvale]

This looks very nice, though it doesn't follow the original plan much. Three issues particularly:

1) Is it not possible to have the river for recreation purposes? That was a major part of my design. The only public buiding i had proposed was a lodge at the river source to support a recreational use.

2) A monastery is a great idea, but again, the plan did not call for publicly owned buildings such as this. I had anticipated that such structures would be privately owned and would be able to conduct commercial or recreational activity... selling wine or such as many of the monasteries in Europe do. Is the proposal now that such buildings will be public? That takes away fee producing land. In other sims, such buildings are built and maintained by interested citizens privately. I'd rather see us pursue this route before raising fees to support more public buildings in CDS.

3. The waterfalls in the plan i proposed were intended to be on the lower portion of the sim, adjacent to CN. While putting the source in NFS is another option, and a good idea, it doesn't follow the plan as submitted. I'm not suggesting that the plan doesnt' need tweaking, but the waterfalls were important to me, and i'd really rather see the river build momentum from the mountains and drop off along the existing property in CN. Maintaining views along the north edge of CN was a primary objective in development of the plan.

Thank you for your work on this. I will try to monitor this thread, as i understand that to be my responsibility in this regard. If i am mistaken, i'm sure someone will let me know.

[Diderot Mirabeau]

[quote="Jon Seattle":178m0r2c]Any comments and / or thoughts?[/quote:178m0r2c]

Another thing that occurs to me is that it would be a pity to have such a huge slope of land without enabling its use for skiing in the winter. Just as Neufreistadt currently changes from green to white in winter time I imagine that the mountains - of all places - will be donning a white coat of snow in the winter season. Given that I imagine that some people would be wishing to try out the suitability of the slopes for skiing, snowboarding or similar. Would it be possible to have the current road design double as a piste for skiing in the wintertime, would it be necessary to reserve seperate land for this purpose, is there some other possibility or is skiing something we don't want to support? I admit that it is quite a landintensive way of recreation but just like parachuting, ballooning, swimming, sailing and jumping it is one of the ways in which a topologocially interesting sim can be enjoyed. So I just thought I would at least raise the idea with you.

And on a sidenote - I don't suppose there is room in the plan for a snowcovered, cloud-encircled mountain peak anywhere where people may plant their flag at an altitude of 500 metres or more?

[Arria Perreault]

I agree with fee harmonization of all sims. In the contrary, what would be the advantage of being a communaunity. The sims contest shows clearly that CDS citizen want to link the two sims and I am sure that they want to assume that. The problem of the slope was known: this sim could not a high density of habitation.
In that case, the monastery could be a public place. I can also imagine that we foundate a "confrery" with a chart. The members of the confrery can share the price and the fee. Would it be possible to estimate the surface and the price (questions to Jon and Sudane).
I like the solution of Jon for the houses. It is very smart and orginal. I don't any problem with the fact that it is not the traditionnal cottage of the Alps.
About snow and skiing: can people keep in their mind that the new sim is connected to the north with a roman city!
Another recreational idea would be to give people to make a "automated" visit of the sim. I have seen many kind of "vehicules" like balloon. Fout that sim, i think that donkeys (or horse) would be nice and fun. It would be attractive.

[Jon Seattle]

[quote="Rose Springvale":16879zii]This looks very nice, though it doesn't follow the original plan much.[/quote:16879zii]It has some differences in detail, mainly ones that flow out of the way natural landscapes work. The basic mechanism is that water flows downhill cutting "escape routes" in the soil, and in the process pushes the soil down with it. Generally this produces concave surfaces more than convex. I've tried to stay a close as I can to the spirit of the proposal, that is an alpine rocky landscape with terracing.

In nature a more gently sloped landscape would occur in one of two ways: A landscape with a gentle rise to start with (not an option here), or more often in a mountain region, the valley between two sharper slopes. The problem I am trying to solve with this is how to deal with the 150 m drop from south to north. That is quite a drop! If we want more gentle terraced areas at all we have to get rid of some of that elevation along the way.

The other option, that Sudane brings up, is to give the entire sim a sharp, more evenly distributed slope. This means that all the land is going to feel like the side of a very tall mountain, and little of it like a meadow. I took your plan to be slightly more meadowy, thus this arrangement. But I have no objection to trying it both ways.

One problem that comes up with sharply sloped land is that it is very hard to build on. To an extent this can be countered by architecture that provides its own ways of creating level areas: putting houses on piers or tall stone platforms. Generally, also, sharply sloped land is harder to sell. Small terraces help, but just a little.

[quote="Rose Springvale":16879zii]
1) Is it not possible to have the river for recreation purposes? That was a major part of my design. The only public buiding i had proposed was a lodge at the river source to support a recreational use. [/quote:16879zii]Part of my reason for this shape is to allow a deep valley in the lower areas. This will allow us to use Lindon water for a extent of it (perhaps 1 / 3 to 1/2 of the sim) to allow recreation. Lindon water, in this case, is always flat and must be at 20 M elevation (to match CN).

If we do go with a more evenly sloped terrain, we will have to do without Lindon water. Prim water is what is used when Lindon water is not available, but is is a poor substitute for recreational purposes.

[quote="Rose Springvale":16879zii]2) A monastery is a great idea, but again, the plan did not call for publicly owned buildings such as this. [/quote:16879zii]This was Arria's suggestion, but it seems to be very popular. Its not clear if the structure will be public or managed by a NGO. I suspect the latter, which means tier will be payed.

[quote="Rose Springvale":16879zii]3. The waterfalls in the plan i proposed were intended to be on the lower portion of the sim, adjacent to CN. While putting the source in NFS is another option, and a good idea, it doesn't follow the plan as submitted. [/quote:16879zii]This is just a first draft and I do think it will evolve as people provide input. Once again, this is my attempt to make the landscape more natural. The source area on NFS is the meadow that provides a prim bank for the city. A pond would be very nice there. In my experience the more you make a landscape work like a natural landscape better it will be to the eye. Rivers almost never just spring up, they have sources fed by higher elevation streams. If we do go with a more evenly sloped terrain, this can become multiple small streams.

[quote="Rose Springvale":16879zii]I'm not suggesting that the plan doesnt' need tweaking, but the waterfalls were important to me, and i'd really rather see the river build momentum from the mountains and drop off along the existing property in CN. Maintaining views along the north edge of CN was a primary objective in development of the plan.[/quote:16879zii]I assume south? In any case this would mean giving up all the Lindon water, so its a trade-off.

[quote="Rose Springvale":16879zii]Thank you for your work on this. I will try to monitor this thread, as i understand that to be my responsibility in this regard. If i am mistaken, i'm sure someone will let me know.[/quote:16879zii]I do hope you will!

PS. If you want to get a feel for the slope, take a look at Sea Turtle Island. Sea Turtle has a 70 m tall mountain that takes up half the sim. It should be similar to a 150 m drop that takes up the whole sim.

[Jon Seattle]

[quote="Diderot Mirabeau":3sasnnh9]
Another thing that occurs to me is that it would be a pity to have such a huge slope of land without enabling its use for skiing in the winter. Just as Neufreistadt currently changes from green to white in winter time I imagine that the mountains - of all places - will be donning a white coat of snow in the winter season. Given that I imagine that some people would be wishing to try out the suitability of the slopes for skiing, snowboarding or similar.
Would it be possible to have the current road design double as a piste for skiing in the wintertime...[/quote:3sasnnh9]I like this idea. I will try to take this into consideration when I design the roads.

[quote="Diderot Mirabeau":3sasnnh9]And on a sidenote - I don't suppose there is room in the plan for a snowcovered, cloud-encircled mountain peak anywhere where people may plant their flag at an altitude of 500 metres or more? [/quote:3sasnnh9]LOL, Sure, as long as you don't mind it being about 3 meters across the base .

[Jon Seattle]

[quote="Arria Perreault":1hbgkmz1]I like the solution of Jon for the houses. It is very smart and orginal. I don't any problem with the fact that it is not the traditionnal cottage of the Alps.[/quote:1hbgkmz1]Actually I am working on a design that will mix the idea of using piers (stone in this case), with a more vertical version of the cottage, but with a touch of a more medieval flavor (window detail mainly).

[quote="Arria Perreault":1hbgkmz1]About snow and skiing: can people keep in their mind that the new sim is connected to the north with a roman city! [/quote:1hbgkmz1] actually people forget that Colonia Nova is meant to be a Roman colony in a German city in 100 AD.

[quote="Arria Perreault":1hbgkmz1]Another recreational idea would be to give people to make a "automated" visit of the sim. I have seen many kind of "vehicules" like balloon. Fout that sim, i think that donkeys (or horse) would be nice and fun. It would be attractive.[/quote:1hbgkmz1]I like this idea.. I wonder if we could have a tour through all three sims.