Landscapes Unlimited: Magnificent Vistas in virtual 3D worlds

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...