Land Search

All right, so I decided to look into the land options that Linden Lab provides for educational purposes. Unfortunately they only offer specials for institutions and organizations that purchase private island, which is not what we need.

Let's deal with real estate in world. We can either buy or rent without owning a Premium Account. Based on previously established criteria, our best bet is to rent a plot of land in private new regions (not mainland) running on Class 5 servers. Class 5 sims have better LSL (Linden Scripting Language) performance. In addition to the new Simulator Havok 4, it should be an exciting news.

2048 m2 (468 prims) - 4096 m2 (937 prims)

Options:

Campus Land "Scholarship" gives 1 acre of land (4096 sqm, 937 prims) free for the duration of the class

Kahakai 4096 sqm for rent L$7500 ($28)/mo (all occupied now)

GavenRezDistrict medium parcel 2048 sqm (702 prims) for rent 5000L/mo (no edit terrain)

Lukanida Alt-Zoom Theater and Sandbox dedicated for machinima purposes (BuhBuhCuh Fairchild a.k.a. Ben Linden & Alt-Zoom Studios) (no terraform, trees & grass)

Land Purchase Criteria

Criteria for evaluating land purchase for Machinima Project:

1. What kind of Sim is it? Is the sim lag free?
2. What is the parcel size that we will need for a small build and 10 users? (512 m2 is the smallest plot.)
3. How many Prims are allowed on the parcel? (This is a separate land use fee also known as Tier Fee.)
4. Does the sim have a dedicated server? Who are our neighbors in the same grid because we'll be sharing server resources? Or does the sim specify the amount of script lag/m2?
5. Who's the sim owner? Only sim owner has the access to Region tools to trouble shoot lag. How they are charging for the sale fee and maintenance fee?

The complete ownership of a grid space (a region also know as island) costs $1675. The average price per square meters for an island is about 40/m2 at auction. But there's only large parcel on sale. Linden has banned First Land program that allows Premium account holder to purchase a 512 m2 plot at L$1/m2. We either have to purchase from Land Auction or other Residents. This is very much a bad news because we will have to spend more energy and time to figure what and where to buy. When I saw that ebay icon, I went a-ha. It totally signals that Linden wants to promote the bidding culture and reinforce the current "free market".

See pricing list.