New Second Life Traditional Houses and Houseboats on Bellisseria

Earlier this year Linden Lab released the first batches of the long awaited replacement premium member homes in Second Life, which will eventually replace the existing premium membership homes.


As part of premium membership, users are given land tier which they can use to purchase land anywhere, or to use for a Linden home, which is a great perk of paying for membership.

The first new themes to become available are the Traditional homes and Houseboats. What is a really great new feature is that rather than picking one style of home from the theme and having to go with that, or abandon it to pick another, you get the option of choosing from a number of styles in that theme right on your plot. For the traditional homes the house is rezzed via the mail box, and the  houseboats via the life preserver ring:

House and Houseboat Rezzers

A dialogue box will come up from which you can choose the styles:

Traditional Home: Wincheseter, Continental, Adams, Alderley

Continental and Winchester homes

Alderley and Adams Homes

Houseboats: Windlass, Barnacle, Wallower, Evening Star:

Wallower and Barnacle houseboats

Evening Star and Windlass houseboats

(Note, the houseboats were photographed in the regions under development so the blue boarder you see around the houseboats are temporary and do not show in the final released homes).

As mentioned the size of the plots given with the homes has increased. The first gen houses were  512 square meters with land impact allowance of 176. The new themes are on 1024 square meters with 351land impact. This is a great improvement!. More space and more prim allowance to play with!

The house plots are square, but the houseboat plots come in two configurations: 16 x64  or 32 x 32. I find the houseboats more roomy than the traditional homes which have much smaller room sizes compared to the first gen homes.

Inside the Alderley House

But I guess you have more room outside to play with, so that works for those who want to add on a patio or other small outdoor building as extra room.

Nevertheless I think the designs are overall a great improvement, and especially so the landscaping in the new regions. They have deliberately tried to create more variety compared to the first gen areas which were more cut and paste. In exploring the new continent I have found so many beautiful places to hang out, and even just strolling down the avenues you can really see the effort the development team has gone into in order to create beautiful environments:

It's well worth taking your time to travel around the continent and explore between the houses and around the houseboat areas to find the cute little places you might not otherwise notice. They've also paid more attention to community areas, creating places such as community pools and larger hangout areas compared to the first gen home regions:

All in all I think Linden Lab are doing a great job with the new themes and the environments of the regions they are in. The next theme will be available today at the Second Life 16th birthday celebration event, so stay tuned to my forthcoming review of those too!