Loch Avie and the Terrain Disaster
Nicholas K, Bellambi E. Unexpected loss of terrain data in a Caledon duchy. Proc Royal Soc 2007;8.
ABSTRACT
Caledon Loch Avie suffered a data casualty on Friday, August 10, during a period of ongoing unusual server performance. One of the authors (EB) witnessed a whole-scale disruption in the Loch Avie terrain. Land elevations were affected across the sim, with some locations receeding over 1 metre. Three woman-hours of terraforming was required to return the Loch's landscaping to normal.
Imagine my surprise when I logged-in on Friday and found water in the Loch along the rail tracks. Yikes! What disaster caused this?
As I then rather frantically flew around the Loch, I found trees floating in mid-air, pieces of my land fallen into the Loch, and mountains which had made themselves smaller than they once were. WTF?
My heart sank. What had happened to my beautiful Loch Avie?? Rapidly I checked my Estate Tools. Everything was as I had left it. Had Phillip (the volcano - not Linden) done this??
Understanding that there was nothing to be done, but to attempt repairs, I set about raising, smoothing, reverting, flattening, etc., the land. Meanwhile the curses coursing through my mind - and sometimes coming out of my mouth would make a sailor blush. One could understand this I am sure.
After working for more than an hour at this and making slow progress, I telegraphed The Honourable Kate Nicholas. Her skills with terrain work are finely honed. She was not in world. But thankfully, sometime later that night she was able to assist me in the RE-terraforming process. Our abstract of the event is above and you may read the full article at Proceedings of the Royal Society.
It should be noted that when I logged into SL yesterday (Sunday), I was an island unto myself. By that I mean that despite seeing all sims active and open (save for Vic City which was listed as offline for the second time this weekend) on the map, I could see NONE of the other Caledon sims. Odd things appear to be afoot. I hope Loch Avie's server is not declining, but I am growing concerned. We will continue to monitor.
