Category: World Map

Bellisseria Third Anniversary

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

It’s time to celebrate 3 years of the Bellisseria continent

Today on Friday 15th April 2022 marks Bellisseria third anniversary in Second Life since the second generation of Linden Homes were first launched on the grid. The Moles and many Lindens have worked really hard over the past three years to keep growing the Bellisseria continent so that more releases can happen regularly.

Join in with the celebrations here

Bellisseria Fairgrounds – April 2022
Chalet sub continent windmills

When the Bellisseria continent first opened to the public back on 15th April 2019 there was only like 384 regions. Today there are thousands of Linden Home regions spread over many themed sub continents connecting up to former continents. It’s been exciting to keep track of progress since then and even before that back in late August 2018 when the first 80 SSP regions arrived on the grid.

11th April 2019

A few days or so before the big opening the lab added the Linden Homes section on the Second Life Forums. The SSP? thread is still running today with 263 pages full of historical findings. It’s amazing it’s been active since 21st August 2008.

In early April 2019 Patch Linden went live on Relay Rap Radio Talk Show to talk about the new Linden Homes project that the lab have been working on since mid 2018.

Here are were the updates from the radio show….

  • The opening “will be announced when it happens”
  • Currently “one week past the original roll out date”
  • There will be four house styles to choose from. Eventually “there will be six to eight more styles” for Linden Homes – some 512sq and some 1024sq
  • The new SSP continent will “grow futher down South then East” where the new water regions are
  • It’s recommended to get a new Linden Home quickly as there may be a long wait
  • The old Linden homes will be going away and will be shut down. At least a year or two before this happens.

Back in late March 2019 the first part of the SSP continent showed up on the world map. Over the weeks that followed the continent became much bigger. See the comparison maps below 2020 vs 2021 vs 2022. Linden Lab back then said it was to do with a Super Secret Project they are working on.

Bellisseria SSP continent – Late March 2019
SSP Continent – 16th January 2019
The houseboats release opens – 15th May 2019
New area of land – 17th August 2019

The first preview of the new Linden Homes was at the 2019 Home and Garden Expo.

First preview of Linden Homes – Mid March 2019
Welcome to Linden Homes – Mid March 2019
Lighthouse near the ocean – April 2019

During the past year the Chalet, Fantasy and Newbrooke sub continents have arrived on the grid with new areas to explore, more Linden Homes and a bigger community overall. Work is not completely done yet and further expansion of Bellisseria during the next year or two is highly expected.

Newbrooke sub continent

The lab is due to announce details on Premium Plus by the end of May 2022 and maybe there will be more interest for Linden Homes after that. The next theme reveal may happen at SL19B which happens from mid June 2022. The release will most likely happen before the end of the year if there are no delays.

Campwich Forest
All Hours – April 2019
Fourze – April 2019

Bellisseria growth over the years – (August 2018 to April 2022)

First SSP Regions Arrived – 20th August 2018
Bellisseria Continent Opening Day – 15th April 2019

April 2020 vs April 2021 vs April 2022

Bellisseria Continent – 15th April 2020
Bellisseria Continent – 15th April 2021
Bellisseria Continent – 15th April 2022

I can’t wait to see what the Bellisseria continent will look like in a year from now and even two years from now. It’s going to be triple the size that’s for sure and I will continue to keep track of new developments on my blog. Stay tuned for that.

Feel free to share your best Bellisseria memories from the past three years in comments.

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New South Coast Added To Fantasy Sub Continent

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

This week the southern coastline has been added to the Fantasy sub continent in Second Life and now it’s showing up on the map for the first time. The newest regions are highlighted in red from SSPE2746 to SSPE2755 and the blue arrow on the right hand side is where more regions will be added to fill up the coasts around the sub continent.

Below is the Fantasy sub continent map as of Tuesday 9th November 2021 featuring a brand new west coast line that includes hundreds of new Fantasy Linden homes. The long blue line on the right hand side is what’s coming next with hundreds of more SSPE regions arriving very soon. I think the plan is for the east side coastline of the Fantasy sub continent and the west side of the Chalet coastline to be finished before 2022 starts.

Work will be starting very soon on SSPE2750 and in nearby regions.

I will post more updates on my blog when further big developments happen. Stay tuned for that.

InWorld Map Tiles Now Working In Second Life

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

The new Chalet regions now show up on the map

Breaking News

After months of waiting Linden Lab have now fixed the Inworld map tiles via the world map in Second Life which is fantastic news. Maestro Linden and Nat Linden worked directly on the re-coding of the Map Tile generation system for some time.

New Update posted on 19th April 2021 via Second Life Status page.

Monitoring – Hooray! We have a working system for generating map tiles again, along with a few other fixes to maps (zoom). We’re still monitoring the results. Thank you for your patience during this long wait, and happy navigating.
Apr 19, 09:10 PDT

The Devs and QA teams at the lab have been working hard to bring the maps back and fix the zoom levels. If you visit SLURL (Second Life Maps) it now shows updated region tiles. Yay.

Alexa Linden shared the good news via Twitter on Saturday 17th April 2021.

Thanks so much Linden Lab for fixing this issue.

Map Tiles still being worked on

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

The latest news from this week’s Simulator User Group held on Tuesday 30th March 2021 on Map Tiles which relates to the World Map is that Linden Lab are working on it and its not fully fixed yet. There have been many asking about the World Map in recent weeks and months on the Second Life forums etc. Linden Lab have still not given any ETA on it.

The World Map Alternatives – (user-developed)

Progress is being made from the lab and from the user developed versions of the Second Life Map. It’s going to take a little longer for the World Map to be working like it did before in previous years.

Hopefully the wait will be over soon.

New Chalet Regions Released!

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

View from Lost Creek

On Tuesday 30th March Patch Linden announced the chalet regions release via the Second Life Forums under the Linden Homes section. This release is ahead of when the lab initially anticipated it would take place. This is good timing just before the Easter holidays start. The chalet homes come in four basic models named Matterhorn, Alpenrose, Edelweiss and Reizend.

The Chalet theme homes are modeled after stylized European alpine wood-timbered houses (fachwerhaus). The chalet homes are set on 1024 sq m parcels featuring hills, mountain streams, windmills and more.

The Chalet Linden homes new community center “Die Betrunkene Maus is located in Muehlenbach. This is a great place to hang out with friends and see the seasonal changes. Roughly there is 100 Chalet regions between the Bellisseria continent and the Satori continent. 

View from the edge of Muesli region

Here are the continents below in Second Life as of 31st March 2021. The chalet home regions are not showing on the map however I have highlighted in red where they are located.

OpenLayers Second Life Map

Once the World Map is fixed it will be great to see the visuals of all of the chalet regions and latest SSP regions when zooming in/out. I really hope the lab gets this sorted during April/May 2021 as its been broken since late October 2020.

The next Linden Home theme will be announced after SL18B so most likely in July 2021.

Eddy Ofarrel World Map

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

Eddy Ofarrel World Map

As many know already the World Map in Second Life has not been fully fixed and hopefully the lab will fix this sooner than later. It’s not been working since late 2020 (October/November time) and the last update from the lab was 21st January 2021 on the Second Life Status page saying that there is not an ETA.

Update – Now that Uplift has finished we are working to restore the map tile functionality. We still do not have an ETA, but please follow this blog for updates and thank you for your patience!
Jan 21, 11:23 PST

The World Map

Eddy Ofarrel has had a go at creating the World Map based on the standard Second Life web-based map API with a few tweaks. Region names show up in the bottom left corner of each region and Eddy has made it so it’s only limited to only the first two zoom levels. It’s worth pointing out here at the moment new region map tiles don’t show up yet. It’s possible to click on any region and teleport straight into Second Life.

The Zoom Part

Eddy mentioned that “the zooming part was just a very simple tweak to the existing script and doesn’t fix the underlying issue on the server side. I have got a bunch of ideas for ways I could improve it further though, so I’ll start working on those tomorrow“. It will be great to see what new ideas Eddy can come up with starting this week.

There is no Search for particular regions or area of the map. Eddy will be adding more functionality in the next few weeks. Eddy says this below on the world map via the Second Life Forums.

I’ve just had a go at doing exactly that… well, kind of. It’s based on the standard Second Life web-based map API, but with a few tweaks (everything beyond the fully-zoomed-in level seems to be non-existent there now). It doesn’t actually do any gluing together of images, but it does allow you to zoom further out using the fully-zoomed-in images rather than trying to load the others that don’t exist. The disadvantage of that (compared to using specific images for each zoom level as it’s meant to) is that it will put a lot more load on your browser (and the server serving the map tiles) the more you zoom out, so I’ve limited it to only zooming out by two levels, at least for now (i.e. 3 zoom levels total)

I’ve also added names to the bottom left corner of each region to try to match the in-world map, but that also requires a separate request for each region to a Second Life server, so I’ve limited it to only the first two zoom levels and then the names will disappear after that (which is sort of like the in-world map does anyway)

I realise it’s probably not that much use right now, particularly as there isn’t (yet) any way to search for/load any particular region or area of the map, but I will add more functionality in the next few days if anyone thinks they would actually find it useful (bearing in mind that the one thing I’m not in a position to do anything about is getting the map tiles to actually update, as much as I would love to help with that)

Eddy has showed interest in willing to help fix this World Map particular issue. Hopefully the lab will offer Eddy a job to get the map to work again.