Landscapes Unlimited: Magnificent Vistas in virtual 3D worlds

Over the last year I released two new environments: the Grand Canyon and Tropics environment. Up to now I only had versions to use at ground level, making use of Linden water. Today I release sky versions of both, to be used to surround any sky build. The Topics sky landscape. The reflective waves are made of new animated materials. The beaches in front are made of the mesh beach system , ideal for use as a natural, solid & walkable surface on sky builds The Grand Canyon sky landscape The innovative part of these sky environments is the use of animated, reflective prim water. This water makes use of the new possibilities Materials have to offer. The water almost looks as good as Linden water, which is great news for people who want to have several natural environments stacked on top of each other above their land. In order to see the reflective water, you have to enable the Advanced Lighting Model in the Graphics section of the Preferences of your viewer. Today, onl

Straight beach. Looks familiar? Over the years I have seen many island-themed regions (often tropical) with beaches along the sim edges. Almost always, the beaches appear to be straight and unnatural, with deep cliffs at the sim border. This is especially apparent when you look down from high above. See the picture to the left as an illustration. A chart of 49 out of 158 segments It's obvious that it's not easy to create naturally sloping beaches with the regular terraforming tools. What I have for you now, is a system of mesh beach segments that fit together like domino blocks. I made 158 segments that fit together like domino blocks in uncountable ways, to allow people to compose their own unique beach. The segments are solid, so you can walk and build on them and solid 'invisiprims' are not necessary. A complete sim, layed out with mesh beaches. The 25 segments are textured like a chessboard. The red area is the sim itself: note that part of the outer

The tropical full sim surrounding environment that I released in December 2012 proves to be very popular. By now, there must be hundreds of them out there on the grid. To use this full sim surround, however, you need to own or rent a complete island. That makes it unusable for many residents. Today I release a version of the Tropics that you can use on a 1/4 region. It has eight different scenes inside (volcanoes, mangrove islands etc), all in three editions with dedicated textures making 24 setups to choose from. This item will only be available in the Gold edition, which means that it's copiable and that its appearence can be changed by means of a HUD. Moreover, you can remove unnecessary scripts and sitting on any object on the sim will not be blocked  in any way. The new Tropics environment is available here , and it's very attractively priced. You can get a demo to try it before you buy the real one.

Linden Lab is collaborating with others on a project to enable the use of richer looking materials in Second Life. Read more about the materials project in today's featured blog post . Be sure to watch this video where Torley Linden explains about using materials to enrich textures. At exactly 1:00 you will see a shot of the Grand Canyon surround! Flat surface textures can be improved significantly by adding normal maps and specular maps. I have improved the rock and sand textures on the mesh cliffs and caves environment at ground level on my island by using this new technology. And I must say: the results are very, very promising indeed. Here are two pictures: You can see what the richer textures look like by installing the latest second life viewer  and teleporting to landscapes Unlimited . In order to see the materials you have to enable the Advanced Lighting Model in the Advanced section of the Graphics settings (Preferences menu, CTRL+P). Some environment setting

The Grand Canyon off-sim environment and the on-sim Cliffs & Beaches mesh environment are now available on Landscapes Unlimited and on the Marketplace ( off-sim surround ( including a demo ) and on-sim mesh ). In my in-world store, there is also a pack of both environments available against a 40% discount.

I am proud to present to you the Grand Canyon sim surrounding environment. From today you can visit it on my sim Landscapes Unlimited . I don't think the real Grand Canyon region in the Western USA needs much introduction. We all know the breathtaking images from documentaries or study books. I have never been there myself, but I've been wanting to go there for a long time (and I probably will next year). This new surround is not an exact reproduction of a specfic part of the Grand Canyon, although Horseshoe Bend  has been a big inspiration for me. You will also notice the green pastures at the bottom of the Canyon and the pine trees on the lower slopes. You may say this is not very realistic, but I thought it was pretty anyway. And hey, don't you agree that lots of things in SL grow better than they do in real life? Within the boundaries of the sim itself, I set up a mesh environment. Both the rocks and the beaches are made of mesh. All other objects are regul