Note: the Camper and Trailer Homes are still in development, as such details of the designs and the planned environments for them that will be developed in Bellisseria may differ with the designs and landscape seen in this article.
One of the things that may have caught some people by surprise at SL16B is the preview region featuring the upcoming Linden Camper (aka caravan) and Trailer Homes, planned as a future phase of the Linden Homes continent of Bellissera.
Deliberately unannounced, the inclusion of these homes at SL16B, sitting within a landscape park, was an idea put forward by Patch Linden, the Lab’s Director of Operations, and while we have been promised a near future release of homes that would be different to those that have thus far been made, the use of trailers / caravans as home is potentially novel enough to have caught many by surprise.
Given that Patch discussed the trailer style homes during his Meet the Lindens session on Monday 24th, I thought I’d take his comments concerning them from that event, and take a further look at this new type of Linden Home.
The first couple of points to note about these styles of Linden Home is that:
- In all, there are 8 styles of camper and trailer home, four of which were initially previewed at SL16B, with more added following Patch’s talk at SL16B.
- They have been designed to fit both 512 sq m and 1024 sq m parcels, but will be initially offered with 512 sq m land.
This may seem an odd fit, given the first phases of houses within Bellisseria are provided with 1024 sq m parcels; however there is some logic behind the move. Not only do these trailer-style homes present a contrast, their use of 512 sq m of land means that those premium members who already have some of their “free” tier used for land can potentially obtain a property on Bellisseria without necessarily having to pay additional tier.
There’s another aspect to this as well. While the Traditional houses and houseboats have proven popular, they are still nevertheless “enclosed” homes; they have walls, and even though the houses have yards / gardens and the houseboats can be moored in close proximity to one another, they still have a sense of “boundary” to them.
The new campers and trailers, however, are different. They are designed to be in open spaces and, given their smaller internal space, are liable to encourage people to spend time outside and to create outdoor spaces on their parcels in an environment that places neighbours relatively close to hand and without the same sense of intervening property boundaries.
So it might be that the Camper and Trailer type homes could encourage easier mixing and befriending and further develop a local community spirit among those occupying them. In keeping with this, Patch has indicated that when deployed, the Camper and Trailer regions will come with their own “large scale” community space intended to help encourage more community-developed events and activities.
In terms of the release of the camper and trailer homes, and how it might fit with the announced new Linden Home release process (see Special: Patch Linden on the new Linden Homes release process) Patch had this to say:
The Campers and Trailers are going to come in a large release initially. We kind-of feel like rolling out that entire area, because it is a bit of a scenery change, a theme change and stuff like that. Thematically it doesn’t quite line up [with the current home types and styles], but it is designed to all blend together so you’ll transition from one area of the continent to another.
But as we go through that process, you’ll see a who bunch of regions get spun up, for those of you who keep an eye on these things … You’ll probably see the building versions of those regions come soon, and we’ll start building those out and then at some point we’ll have a really large release for those as well; and then those will enter that same process of this more frequent release cadence. And then we’ll be off to our next theme after that which – I’ll not really going to talk that much about!
– Patch Linden, SL16B, Monday, June 24th, 2019
All of which should be enough to pique the curiosity – but there is more! While he didn’t go into things too deeply, and although they are a little off-topic for this blog post, Patch did indicate that:
- Small commercial opportunities may be coming to Bellisseria (although some had already guessed based on a development on the SSP prototype regions).
- Trains will be playing a role in Bellisseria, and will apparently be “linked” to the SLRR.
Both of these are clearly topics for the future, although I’ll have a little more on them in my upcoming summary of Patch’s SL16B Meet the Lindens session.
In the meantime, there is current no date for the release for the Camper and Trailer type homes, although there will obviously be an announcement about them once the initial deployment is ready. So, those who are curious about them and perhaps haven’t seen them – and the response so far has been positive – should perhaps drop into SL16B Spellbound before July 8th, 2019, and take a look.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 