The Big Prim Problem

Anything that has at least one valid use should be kept, I personaly use upto 256x256x1 on my own sim for instance as splash water.
using a 65Kx65K to block out the ocean around a desert sim is a valid reason too so even that should be kept.

I'm realy surpriced by the claim that mega's would give problems on HAVOC 4 because all indications show that the new physics engine is handling megas better then the curent one.

in the 6+ months that I have been in SL I have withnessed plenty of griefing, probably more then the average resident because I'm a child avie, and I have yet to see griefing with mega prims.

As far as lag goes, logic would say that mega prims reduce lag because there are less polygons to handle, I get more lag from particels and sculpties then megaprims.

agreed i think there should be a size limit. if you go to nanotechnology island you may see where i have made a sculpti mega prim land bridge this is used with a 20x20x60 prim. i think this is a great size to use for manipulating terrain and creating caves.

soon my company will be working with a record lable called "cave records" in their site proposal ...yes we have included a cave.

mega prims like crystal meth and man slaughter are good in moderation.

-shuk

hi, i cant see any problems with the big prims i used at my house and land. But i am only using prims not bigger than my land is. the actually maximum sice is 50m *25. That should not be a problem. anyway these have few stupid habbits. U cant get inside s empty prim. so u need various for all sides. But i still think its more sencefull to built a just cube house with few big prims than lot of small.
Prims with bigger than sim fitting sice should be banned.
there is no reason to use them and its very unfriendly to get the edges at neighboures land.

so my statement would be. allow all prims up to 256 m *256 m and even make them builtable. Bigger they shouldn t be. Bann all these and remove existing afetr a period of change, just to give time enough to modify existing ones.
bye, Tight

From what I have seen the mega prims are very useful for people who have low prim limit. The smaller mega prims are very useful.

I say get rid of the riduculously HUGE mega prims and keep the reasonable ones.

Alternatively, as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread. Keeps the prims and get rid of the abusers.

I probably don't need to chime in here. If the choice to keep them or not is going to be based on community feedback, it appears that the majority of people agree that they are useful in moderation.

I'm excited of the possibilities

Not only should mega-prims be kept, they should be improved upon to allow greater flexibility. The 10x10 prim size limitation is prim-cost-prohibitive in a number of scenarios, as others have mentioned - sky platforms, ocean builds, etc. This affects complex builds on whole islands as much as it does on small plots where extreme economy is necessary to accommodate the 117 prim limit per parcel.

Rather than remove them, I'd like to see greater flexibility with mega prims, including sets for shapes that do not currently exist on the grid and the ability to modify their size and shape. The bigger the prims, and the larger variety of starting prim choices, the better our builds can be, it is as simple as that.

Of course I've been affected by irresponsible mega-prim use, but only twice in a couple of years versus the hundreds if not thousands of times people have misused regular sized prims to be obnoxious. Even if you remove mega prims, people can still chain regular sized prims together and just place the root prim over their land to cross boundaries and etc.

The positives of mega prims far, far outweigh the negatives. Don't remove them, make them better.

Dump them! Please remove all big prims. However, I would suggest allowing prims to be up to 16x16x16 meters in size instead of just 10x10x10. Why? Because at 16x16, you can easily make a floor in a 512 sq.m. area just out of two prims. It allows a better fitting for averale-sized land pieces. Because right now, to add a floor for a house in such a small area, I need 8 prims! It would save a lot of people a lot of prims if the maximum size of prims becomes a bit bigger.

But in general, I hate to see big prims. I've seen some people just misuse them by adding a huge prim on their land, crossing land barriers of others and thus blocking access to those other lands. It's even worse when a huge prim is used to create a huge wall to block the view of any visitors. I know I have a huge wall on my own land, but mine is made out of several dozens of prims and thus they're limiting the things I can build on my land. (But I do this so my neighbours don't have to see the erotic images that are on my land. The wall blocks accidental viewing.)

People have been using big prims to overcome SL limitations. LL has been modulating the use of some features in order to cash in. It's pretty obvious that megaprims will be gone soon. Anyone that read the original blog post as a call for comments needs to sharpen up - that was an annoucement: bye bye megaprims.

As far as i see it, the real questions are:

why should LL allow us to make/use bigger prims (by raising the 10x10x10 limit) when they can force us to buy more land/prim use? (they shouldn't, and they wont)
will megaprims be gone overnight just like VAT was applied? (yes)
will LL adopt a double standard for islands and mainland? (of course: they did already in several instances)
will LL raise the 10x10x10 prim limit? (no, they will suggest you buy more land and pay more tier)

You think you look pretty in your 10000L$ photorealistic skin, but to LL you look like a big fat cow, always ready for more milking.

Hi
At the smaller end of the spectrum (20x20 and 20x60), the megaprims are invaluable and quite indispensible. For example, the 20X20x0.5 is essential to getting all kinds of work done, not only within the already modest prim limits, but also as a productivity tool to get things completed within reasonable time scales too. And as other posters have remarked, without which some projects, such as the fabulous Greenies sim, would not be possible at all. Going up a notch, the 60metre long cylinder makes (amongst other things) a perfect floodlighting beam that can be animated. Standard prims just can't create the same effect at all.

My experiences concur completely with that of other posters who rightly point out that these are wonderful tools. Misuse arises from certain people with any tool, and more often than not the 10X10 is sufficient in the hands of the petty, the spiteful and the plain inconsiderate. The consequences of the loss of large prims would impact creative people and those who appreciate their creativity, far more than it will impact the griefers. Mega prims are a great emergent tool and not a problem, and getting rid of them would bring far more pain than pleasure.

Frankie.

I have 2 sims with a number of builds using big prims. They not only save prim count, they make faster building because you can cover large areas with one prim.

If big prims are used for troublemaking, the solution is to remove the troublemakers. Removing big prims will only lead troublmakers to use a diffrent tool.
TM

I for one love the 20 X 20 X .5 mega prim. I have pulled out some of the over-sized prim out of inventory and thought wth?? Who would possible need a prim THAT huge? Some of them are ridiculous in size..and I would think useless in most cases. Personally I'd LOVE to see a prim size be increased to 20 X 20 X 20, it would save sooo many on prim. Personally I use them for bases/foundations for bigger builds or backgrounds around my lands. Used properly and with taste and respect to those that are also in game. Be considerate, if you use one for backgrounds around your land.. phantom them AND make the side you do not see invisible. It may be nice for you to block out ugly structures or to keep your area with a "theme" w/out seeing someone else's work of art, but keep in mind.. that same person may think the same about your build. I say set a size limit and set restrictions on how they are used in certain situations. So I would say, allow them... with restrictions and limits for use and those outrageous ones in size??? Really, how the heck can one use one THAT huge?

I'm personally for getting rid of them. But it would require a tool to convert them into an acceptable set of normal prims. Such a tool would be very useful in general.

However the cost of creating such a tool could be quite a lot of work.

On a harsher note; anyone that is using mega-prims is using an exploit which people have commonly mentioned may cease to work, or cause problems later on. Such an exploit isn't worth keeping if it does in fact have an adverse effect on simulator performance and presents issues with future physics development.

So long as plenty of warning, and as much support as possible is provided before the removal of these prims I'd say there shouldn't be a big issue with removing them other than residents throwing a tantrum over having to use prims within the limits set upon them! If you want a big build, you get a bigger parcel. That's how it's supposed to work.

Travel around the caverns under Avaria Kro (which is almost complete), and then say that no good can come of megaprims. The entire continent of Avaria relies on megaprims. Remove our megaprims, and Avaria will die.

You want to solve the megaprim problem?

- Let us make prims up to 256x256x256 in the editor.

They're common in large builds as walls and floors, and for large spheres the only other option available takes a lot of prims. Experiment with the physics to find out what sizes give the physics system trouble - I've seen no signs of sim problems with the common 20x20x0.5 prim.

- Allow island owners to "texture" the view off the side of their sims

This is the main use of megaprims over 256M^2. With WindLight in development, would this be a good time to consider adding this feature?

- Make prim parcel encroachment impossible.

I've had MANY more cases of this from the standard Linden trees than from megaprims or anything else. It is a common user complaint, and I suspect the Lindens who do inworld support would love for parcel encroachment to be impossible.

I think Mega prims should be official, up to a point. As has been pointed out in numerous responses, they are a great prim saving tool when used properly. So long as there aren't any technical reasons for restricting to 10m (and I thought there were at one point), I don't see why we can't have some sort of reasonable limit... up to 256m/side. I do think something a bit more sane like 64 or 128m would be better -- you reach a point where it becomes unwieldy to work with prims that large.

I'm relatively new to SL and I've only recently started building. However, as I've gradually learned more about building, I've come to realize the functional applications of MegaPrims. For instance, when working in a public sandbox - proverbial lawless wastelands overrun by griefers - the best way to get away from griefers for some peace and quiet is to rez a skybox often made of MegaPrims. But I think the popular argument here is that MegaPrims help to conserve prims, a particular issue for land owners that are severely limited in this regard. Many others have already mentioned how valuable MegaPrims can be better than I can say. If MegaPrims were to be removed, I think LL should make some compensation to the more responsible builders that have relied on MegaPrims by increasing the prim limit on sims. And as already mentioned, giving some prior notice would also be greatly appreciated.

But personally, I'd hate to see MegaPrims go. How they are used really falls to user responsibility. Griefers will be griefers no matter what. Whether they have access to MegaPrims or not is not going to make a drastic difference in if they grief, only alter how they grief. Personally, I've been caged and hit with scripted objects more often than I have seen MegaPrim abuse. So an argument can be made to remove or in the least limit combat weapons and other griefer scripts. But the idea here is that although many use weapons to grief, there are also a great amount of people who use weapons in the appropriate settings to get greater enjoyment out of SL. Virtually anything can be abused in the hands of the wrong people. Particle scripts, for example, are regularly used to spam and crash sims, but many people have been able to use them in responsible creative ways to add a refreshing new aspect to SL. MegaPrims can be an incredibly useful component in SL if not for the handful that abuse them. Should those few bad seeds necessarily ruin it for everyone?

(And I know there's a whole other issue here besides abuse - physics/graphics engine enhancement or whatever, but I won't touch that technical stuff. ^_^)

I agree with a lot of people here that we should be able to make reasonably large prims from the editor (50X50X50 would be good enough for me)

If you wanted to make restrictions I would say tie max size to the size of the parcel it is placed on. area <=512m 10m linear max. 513<area<=1024 15m linear max. etc

We need greater than 10x10x10 .. that is obvious.

I have never used anything over the supported size for a commissioned build ( without a disclaimer ( I will not be responsible for builds/re-builds,if/when megaprims become unusable )).

As for keeping the current "hacked" megas .. then that is for LL to decide.

I think megaprims are useful for disguising the vandalism of the mainland roads. Is the mainland road building program abandoned? Is it ok to cover up these non-roads with megaprims?

i also am a mega prime user. i have rezzed a few larger ones by accident and removed them as fast as i could. i must agree with others though in there value to building.
i feel if you wish to remove them from existence you should up the amount of primes allowed on a parcel of land. Maybe you could allow linked objects to count as one prime. that seems like a very fair exchange to builders of any type.
Another thing would be to go to 20 or 30 meter limit instead of the 10. i know that there was a problem long before i joined about having these large primes and sim generation, but a 30m max would solve a lot of building problems and many would be happy to discard there old primes.
Just my humble opinion.

The smaller ones are extremely useful for building and can be used to do things that are not achievable standard prims. SL would be much the poorer if these were removed (not to mention full of holes).

In particular the 20x20x60 cylinder is absolutly irreplacable for doing vaulted ceilings with (hollow to 90% and cut in half), the 20x20x0.5 saves a lot of work and primage on big builds, and there's a 1.75x25x40 that I find very handy too. The 40x40x40 sphere also has a lot of legitimate uses and cannot be replaced.

A reasonably compromise that would have minimal impact on building and would remove the worst excesses would be

1. All prims above 10m cannot be physical
2. All prims above 50m must be phantom
3. Ban all prims above 256 metres

The precise cuttoffs for 2 and 3 could be different, these just seem reasonable to me.

My understanding is that if they are kept 10m from a sim border they cause no problems (and that seems to be true from my experience). The 10m size for the standard prim is just too small and limits those of us who need to create the larger builds while conserving our prim allowances for decorative effects or game elements.

We need to give the new physics engine a thorough testing to see if the megaprims will impact sl negatively. THEN we can decide if they need to go for that reason. If they do, then time can be allowed for people to adjust builds.

The clear problem is the abuse of megaprims. Properly deal with people who repeatedly rez them in abusive manners and they should be no problem. Of course, there is NO reason to keep a multiple sim cube or the "big pink dot" that i have seen, those are of no use other than to grief.

I think that a reasonable limit on the size of prim to be kept is in order. perhaps somewhere between 60m to 100m per side. That would allow a builder to rez 4 mega's on a sim while still allowing some room near sim borders for a hand off without the prims being a factor. Of course we will still have irresponsible users, but they can be dealt with through the abuse reporting tool. If they have to go, we need a larger standard prim size limit of at least 20m as a compromise.

We used them to build our 25 skyhomes...so i REALLY hope they arent going to banned! They saved prims..and I dont see that up in the sky they can be a problem?
not only are huge prims are useful but i feel that the lindens should also OFFICIALLY
support the creation of prims up to a 50x50x50 dimension because
10x10x10 ones are really too small!

The Mega Prims are too useful to get rid of them &, be honest Lindens, if the standard prim wasn't so ridiculously small then they never would have been invented.

I personally would welcome the retention of up to 100m "low volume" mega prims. What I mean by this is the ones that are long and thin and the ones that are square and thin
so 100x0.5x0.5 and 30x30x0.5 for example. They save 9 and 8 prims respectively.

I (like most people I expect) use these for building to reduce the prim count

I can't see any need for the massive cubes/spheres nor the stupidly big ones...

A suggestion if encroachment / griefing is an issue! Hack your database and make all megaprims over 100x100 into phantoms.... who has land big enough to make a 101m or larger floor?

I can see limiting the size on the mainland. What would be easiest would be limiting the size on your "build" tool slider based on how large your land was.

On estates and regions, there is absolutely no reason to limit the size of the prim. If an estate owner wants to have a huge prim on their island at any size, it wont draw all over second life, it stays limited to their region, so this shouldnt even be a discussion.

Of course, people will abuse anything, but just because a few jerks are out there doesnt mean you have to limit everyone else. What you need to do is get rid of the jerks!

-my two cents