Landscapes Unlimited: Magnificent Vistas in virtual 3D worlds

Over the last few months, several people have asked me if I had a version of the Yosemite skybox environment that would completely fit on a 64 x 64m parcel (4,096 m²). The smallest environments I had up to now were 100 x 100m, too big for people who could not get permission from their neighbors to go over their land with the mega prims. Last week I decided a 64 x 64m version would actually be a good addition to what I had to offer, and I started to create one. This was not just a matter of shrinking the existing environment, because the open area in the middle would become too small: I had to push the mountains, rivers and waterfalls to the sides. This resulted in a very nice, secluded sky environment of 43 prims. Rez a few trees, a cabin, some grass and you're done: a romantic getaway, high above your regular house or shop at ground level. This tiny environment is available in my store and on the marketplace , in Bronze (both Summer and Winter), Silver and Gold editions. As ...

I have decided to release the full sim surround version of the Tropics environment a few weeks earlier. As of today, it is available in my store . There are Silver (transferable with HUD) and Gold (copyable with HUD) editions available. Both have four completely different tropical environments inside, all with a couple of default texture options, making 15 default scenes. All can be selected and adjusted by HUD. I will not release any Bronze editions of this specific surround, because there are just too many scenes. Later this month, or early next year, I will release half sim surround, sim edge and sim corner environments based on these tropical scenes. As an introductory offer, Until December 6, both editions are discounted by 20%.

If you teleport from one Second Life island to the other, it's obvious that tropical settings are very, very popular.  And when you do so, it also becomes clear that, apart from smaller off-sim rock and wave structures,  realistic tropical off-sim environments are still scarce. For a few years now, I do offer a couple of environments with a tropical look, but I figured there would still be room for improvement. In November I have been working on this challenge. I have come up with four new island settings: They are inspired on various tropical archipelagos around the world. Some landscape elements are new, like  splashing waves on the the outer fringes, and slowly flowing lava on steep volcanoes. There is still a lot of work to be done. Right now, depending on RL projects, I think they will be available in the first week of January 2013. I will have full sim surround, half sim surround, sim edge and sim corner environments available then, probably all i...

The User Manuals for both the edition 4 and edition 5 environments and the catalog of alll landscape items have been updated. They are online available now as pdf files on Google Docs. Follow these links to read or download them: Manual edition 4 environments (collection 2011) Manual edition 5 environments (Yosemite and Swiss Alps, collection 2012) Catalog of all edition 4 and 5 landscape items, with clickable links to marketplace entries (when available )

The new store, situated in the brand new medium-sized skybox version of the Swiss Alps, is now open. You will find a lot of new items there: several land level and sky editions of the Swiss Alps, land level and sky editions of Yosemite and several fat packs that make purchasing complete sets of items up to 40% cheaper: ideal for estate owners who want to offer a wide variety of environments to their renters. As an introductory offer, today, tomorrow and on Sunday all new items (including the Yosemite and Swiss Alps fat packs) will be discounted by 20%. You will recognize them by the red star attached to the boards. I have also changed the pricing of all 2011 landscape items. Some almost stayed the same, but others came down quite a bit: especially the items that have copy permissions are more attractively priced now. Folow this link to go to the new store.

In June I transformed my island Landscapes Unlimited on land level to the Virtual Swiss Alps. I announced that the surrounding off-sim environment would be available for purchase in September. I'm glad to be able to announce that on Friday September 14 it will finally be in my shop! In fact, this will not be the only item to become available then. Here's a list of all new landscape items: The full sim surround Swiss Alps (with both a high and low on-sim ground level); By popular request: a half sim surround edition of the Yosemite environment; A sim edge environment edition of the Yosemite environment (see picture); Small, Medium and Large skybox environments of both the Yosemite and the Swiss Alps environment; the Medium and Large will  have trees, and all will have animated rivers and waterfalls. The items will be available in Bronze (Winter and Summer textures), Silver and Gold editions.There will also be a Winter edition of the Bronze Yosemite surr...

This morning I completely changed the environment of the sim. When you arrive there, you will be on top of a mountainous area, in between some of the highest peaks of the Swiss Alps and the lower areas to the North. The environment resembles the Jungfrau-Aletsch region, which is, like Yosemite, on the Unesco World Heritage list. The area is very impressive, for example because of the incredible height differences, the deadly, steep slopes of the Eiger, the waterfalls near Wengen, the Jungfrau with its extreme climate on the northern fringes of the Alps, and the long Aletsch glacier that flows southward, just on the other side of the highest peaks. Not everything that makes this area special can be modeled in a couple of mega prims, but the sim surround should give you a small impression. You can visit the Virtual Swiss Alps here This one came from the heart. What you see here is entirely off-sim The red square shows the sim border

On Friday June 15, I will exchange the Yosemite environment on my sim Landscapes Unlimited for another mountainous environment. This one is inspired on a part of Swiss Alps in Europe. Here's a first picture to give you an impression of what I have been working on the last few weeks. This environment has a couple of new features, this picture gives you a clue to some of them!

For two weeks I have my newest sim surrounding environment, a virtual version of Yosemite National Park, USA, on display on my sim. More than 2,000 people came over to have a look! Since this morning, you can purchase your own copy of Yosemite on my sim . Go there and you will see the board where you can get one. You can purchase one of three versions: a Bronze (L$ 2,950), a Silver (L$ 5,950) and a Gold one (L$ 8,950), and of course there are free demos available too. You can also get it at the Marketplace . The environments have a few interesting new properties: The Silver and Gold edition can be changed by a HUD (a new version of the one you know from the previous skybox and sim surround environments). Not only can you change the textures of rocks and meadows etc., but the off-sim trees can also be changed, for example to palm trees, autumn trees, snowy pines etc, to suit any season you want The Gold edition has an Advanced menu, with which you remove the unnecessary ...

In the previous blog post, you read about the first example of a new generation of sim surround environments. I posted a few pictures, and yes, the envirnoment resembles Yosemite National Park in California USA. Here's a link to the UNESCO World Heritage List and to the website of the National Park itself . Now I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is, the environment is not ready for sale yet. It will probably take me another two weeks to clear some bugs in the scripts that control the surround. The good news, however, is that you can visit Virtual Yosemite on Landscapes Unlimited now. I hope you will enjoy the view, and I would love to hear your comments on this page, on my profile wall or on my facebook page !

On February 13 I wrote about a completely new technique that allows me to recreate the world's most impressive landscapes. I will release the first one on April 15 , and it should resemble... No, wait, YOU tell me what it looks like! Comment on this post to tell me what you think. I'll reveal two things: it's in North-America, and the valleys and mountains were sculpted by thick glaciers during an ice age. And, while you're at it, please tell me what other landscape, preferably listed on the World Heritage List of UNESCO, you would like me to recreate. A few new features make this surround different from all previous ones: It has five off-sim animated waterfalls It has about 600 off-sim trees, that can be textured for every season you want It is made up of morphological entities (valley floor, rocks, boulders, alpine meadows), that can all be textured separately The surround comes with a new version of the HUD. Both the surround and the HUD use web-b...

On ground level on my sim Landscapes Unlimited I created a brand new mesh environment. I wanted to figure out how to use mesh for my environments. Meshes make it easier to create solid caves, tunnels, steep slopes and overhanging rock masses. They also offer more options for texturing: enough reasons to give it a try. Complicating factors are, that mesh objects can only be 64x64x64m in size and that they take a lot of prims. In order to cover a complete region with one environment, I had to use 25 meshes that take about 900 prims. Optimization of the meshes could reduce the prim count, but I hardly think decreasing it to less than 450 is possible. You're invited to take a look. Please beware: you need a mesh viewer to be able to see the environment in it's full glory. You can use Linden Lab's Viewer 3, or the latest Firestorm viewer. Don't hesitate to comment on my work on this blog or on my profile wall ! Follow this link to visit the mesh environment. . ...

A few weeks ago I created my own message service for people who want to receive messages about new products, updates and discounts. Up to then, I both had a Subscribe-O-Matic group and a Second Life group. The Second Life group proved not to be very popular, because there's a limit to the number of groups to which you can subscribe (42 groups). The Subscribe-O-Matic group did not have this setback, but the only way people could subscribe was by touching one of the panels on my sim. I could not invite people by menu or by sending them a URL or an object, and most people didn't notice the panels. For those reasons I now have my own protected database. A couple of scripts allow me to invite all visitors to my sim to subscribe: clicking "Yes" (or "No") is all they need to do. I have also added a similar script to the boxed Marketplace items, so that people who get an item there also get the opportunity to subscribe. People who have already subscribed, don...

It's been a long time that I've written on this blog. I have been very active with various projects that I haven't shared with you yet. I will sum them up in this post, and I will give you more information in the weeks to come. I'm sure a lot of you will be excited to see what I will have to offer soon. I have created a solid mesh landscape on my full sim. Mesh offers great opportunities for solid caves, cliffs and overhanging land masses. I rezzed a forest and some beaches, and Margaret Heliosense rezzed lots of beautiful items to make your stay enjoyable. The island is surrounded by an especially designed sim surround, to complete the whole experience of the sim. I have developed a message service, and I have transferred all group members (both Subscribe-O-Matic and the SL group) to that service. It's much easier now for me to invite people to this service, and, since it's not a Second Life group anymore, it won't count against the maximum numer of SL g...