Landscapes Unlimited: Magnificent Vistas in virtual 3D worlds

One week after releasing the sky environment version of the Rolling Hills I'm now releasing tthe last two versions: a 250 m wide sim edge environment and a 1,000 m wide half sim surround environment. Both can be used on island regions, on connected regions and on bigger continents with an open side to the ocean. Default textures on Rolling Hills sim edge environment They are copyable and can be changed by using the HUD (8 themes and a few hundred textures to choose from). Like the previous versions, these landscape items also make use of the new materials: higher morphological detail on the hills (yes, I am a geographer), and cut-off alpha textures to make sure the trees do not interfere with alpha textures on your land (to prevent "texture bleeding"). Make sure to use one of the latest Second Life viewers and enable the Advanced Ligtling Model. Surfacing bedrock on this Half Sim Surround edition. The red rectangle depicts the border of the region The half...

The sky version of the Rolling Hills landscape is ready. It includes 16 setups (with or without reflective prim water in the middle, several texture combinations ranging from winter to desert scenes), all selectable by HUD. The medium sized Rolling Hills sky environment The Rolling Hills sky environment is available in three sizes: large (1,000x1,000m), medium (250x250m) and small (125x125m). The small one doesn't have any trees. They would look silly on such a small landscape, and it saves on your land impact. Up to now, the small sky environments were 100x100 meters. The small version of this one though is 125x125 meters, which makes better use of the available space of square 1/4 sim parcels that measure 128x128 meters. Because of this, the flat, open area in the middle is more than 50% larger. The small version is bigger than before: more space in the middle for your builds For prim water and hills I've used the new Materials. The hills are more attractive...

One type of landscape was still missing from my version 5 set: a peaceful, undulating landscape with gentle slopes and green pastures. This new release should fill that gap: the Rolling Hills sim surround. Default configuration of the Rolling Hills sim-surround landscape In its default configuration, you will see green pastures and pine trees. The HUD allows you to switch to other configurations, trees and textures, including winter scenes, flowery meadows and even some desert-like scenes. With exposed, weathered rock faces Desert with or without water in the middle Winter scene Rugged, coastal landscape with an extra-terrestrial feel I've used materials on this surround to add the suggestion of valleys on te hillsides and to prevent conflicts of the tree textures with on-sim transparent textures. With the Advanced Lighting Model switched on you will see the undulations, especially when the sun is at a low angle above the horizon. This makes the l...

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...