The Big Prim Problem

I would be too, if they were officially supported and released as part of the traditional SL client. I would not advise anyone purchase anything from a builder using megaprims until there is a guarantee that they aren't going to be removed.

Then that data isn't the one cube. That one cube looks like, maybe soemthing like this:

database:

...

object {
"cube" //shape
"object" //name
"" //description
0.500, 0.500, 0.500 //size, X, Y, Z
0.000, 0.000, 0.000 //rotation, X, Y, Z
0,0,0,0 //the other atributes, such as path cut, twist, and hollow
0000000 //various bits for things like physics, phantom, sculpie
[UUID] //textre key
}

...

A non-default cube looks like....

object {
"cube" //shape
"object" //name
"" //description
5.500, 1.500, 0.100 //size, X, Y, Z
90.000, 10.000, 0.000 //rotation, X, Y, Z
0,0,30,0 //the other atributes, such as path cut, twist, and hollow
0000000 //various bits for things like physics, phantom, sculpie
[UUID] //textre key
}


These clearly take up a different amount of space in the server. </sarcasm>

And here's how you can prove that two default cubes ARE NOT the same object, but with different references:

Create two cubes and put them in your inventory. R-click, copy UUID. Paste into notepad. Repeat for other cube. OMG! IT'S DIFFERENT!

Better yet, create an object sensing object that'll print UUIDs. Make two default cubes. Log UUIDs. Change one cube so it's no longer default. OMG! IT HAS THE SAME UUID AS WHEN IT WAS DEFAULT!


I'd also like to point out:



Only one cube in the database, but has a bajillion pointers to it, yet...



Wait, so...we store the cube-info in the database, in a DIFFERENT location, yet, there's only one cube?

A pointer holds no data except the location of the data. A "database reference" is nothing but a pointer. A UUID.

I have purchased over 1 sim's worth of land to have enough prims to make what I want.

I resent having others buy minamal lots, and put up tech. problem causing monster sized prims just so they can save cash. I personally experience having these caused many stability and lag problems, even when not on your land or sim!

Sure it would be nice if I could have efectivly 64 times (or more) the number of prims on my lots, but not at the cost of stability.

If they work reliably, then let every one have total access to them. If not, get rid of all of them. Lord knows we do not need another thing for LL to have to "fix" for the next few years...

I can see people leaving mega-prim trash all over the place. The trash issue is bad enough as it is.
I don't like the 50x50x50 earth and moon in Jinseok, an eye sore as bad as ad farms.

Building large structures in SL which need large regular geometries is really best handled by large primitives rather then piecing together smaller prims. It's much more efficient in every aspect. Currently, the 10m limit causes considerable headache with this especially when dealing with a cut section (a quarter cylinder curve then can only cover 5x5 units max). Architecture especially benefits from the use of larger primitives used sparingly. Allowing the use of "non-standard" primitives in the way megaprims are used is not a good solution. Instead the existing primitive system should allow for the scalability to create and manage these large objects.

First of all, powers of 2 make more sense as well for maximum sizes then powers of 10. With that in mind, the lowest the maximum primitive size should ever be is 16 units in any direction.

My suggestion would be to allow the maximum size of a primitive to be calculated depending on the area of the parcel it is rezed on. If the parcel has enough area to fully contain the primitive then additional powers of 2 may be allowed. In addition, estate owners should be able to override the default calculated settings for a parcel in the same way they override the primitive quota bonus. For sandboxes, estate owners may wish to restrict the primitive size below it's calculated max, or for private regions the estate owner may wish to allow a prim to enclose the entire region. An absolute maximum size of the length of one region (which I believe is 256 units) in any direction makes sense as any one primitive should generally never cover more then one region.

I like this idea, but i doubt LL would put that much time/work into a solution. The topic here is enough to prove that, since they would prefer to nix them rather then to fix them. :/

The foundation of Second Life is content creation, despite it being a commercial platform. The common user is no less entitled to their building rights than you just because you throw more money at LL for your land. You could just as easily use megaprims if you wanted and cause technical problems for the people with smaller parcels, and you'd better believe there are sim owners that do. Shame on you for trying to make this an issue about people getting their money's worth; it's about finding a stable way to satisfy the building needs of everyone.

On the topic of megaprims, I'll say what I've been telling all my friends: What does it say about LL's coders if they can't make Havok4 support something that Havok1 handles? You could argue that Havok1 doesn't really "handle" it, because it's just a hack, but in that same light, why not make Havok4 able to handle massive prims that aren't hacks?

Megaprims are no longer an underground thing with abuse control through limited access; majority of builders have them (even if they don't use them), and anyone could get them if they wanted. Yes, they are abused, and they've been abused for quite some time, but notice how it's been off the radar until the Havok4 issue came along. Now that they're causing problems in Havok4, LL wants to remove them (yes, WANTS, there would have been no need for the blog post if they had any intention to attempt to fix them).

There's no need to weigh the usefulness of megaprims versus the abuse potential, because that's not how the problem surfaced. It happened because LL encouraged us to try out everything possible on the beta grid, to strain the systems and see what the new engine can and can't handle. It is simply a neutral item that has been around for a long time, despite being the focus of many a controversy, and would likely have continued to exist if the problem from Havok4 didn't happen. What if, hypothetically, the friends list broke down in Havok4? LL would have to fix it. Why? Because it's an integral feature of SL that people rely on. Note that I didn't say -everyone- relies on it, because not everyone does. Not everyone relies on megaprims either, but some people do. Are megaprims somehow less important than the friends list? Is it really fair for anyone to judge that, even LL? If they aren't compelled to fix it simply because it's a "hack" then they need to give us something stable to work with, because it's just not fair to isolate anyone who might rely on them as a feature simply due to LL's lack of interest in finding a better solution.

It isn't a feature unless it's officially supported. If megaprims go away... it's nobody's fault but the people using them, that their content gets borked.

I agree that there should be larger prims... but only when they have been added as a regular feature.

But if havoc4 is the real issue. Then the phantom mega prims should not be a problem. So only allowing the physical up to the size they new engine are sure to handle, and non physical ones up to a bit more. *shrugs*

I believe that the consensus seems to be that a 'oversize prim' limit should be established. I agree with this. I personally have access to those massive prims (1024 meters and larger). I don't use them, as they are generally only good for griefing. I DO, however, use the 32 meter prims for floors and walls in many of my sims. If they are done away with, it would increase the prim count on my main structure from 8 to at least 30 or more!

Well it's been a week and over 600 posts since this thread started. So where is the discourse between the Lindens and their customers? Having started this thread it would have been nice to actualy have a response from Michael somewhere on this. It is obvious that they are decided on removing them from the DB and this thread is a cynical ploy to say to potential investors that they do discuss things with their customers.

This is yet another kick in the teeth to all the people who pay the bills, you don't listen to us, so stop insulting us with this micky mouse publicity crap.

This is the first I've heard of megaprims...now I'm going to have to go and find one. I'd like to put up a "geodesic dome" one of these days, and who wants to use that many cylinders?

1. Megaprims do not inherently cause stability problems. SOME of them do, and they're also the ones that are abused.
2. There are certain things that simply can not be done without megaprims. The megaprim mars and earth dioramas you can find in Burning Life (one sim east of the main gathering area) can not be made using any number of individual prims, because you can't make a sphere larger than 10 meters with matching textures using individual prims.

Yes, let everyone have total access to them, with restrictions that prevent them from causing physics problems. These restrictions would be applied by the sim, on rezzing:

* Eliminate the ones that are bigger than a sim.
* Force any megaprim that does not have a simple cube shape to be phantom.
* Force any megaprim larger than minimum draw distance (64m) to be phantom, or
* Force any megaprim larger than the maximum link span (54m) to be phantom.
* And allow anyone to make megaprims of any size, subject to these limits.

Invisiprims weren't ever officially supported, but they were fixed when they were broken. The warp-move hack wasn't ever officially supported, but it was put back when it was broken. The Lindens do tend to bend over backwards to keep useful content working, and they *have* said that estate owners can allow megaprims on their estates.

Bernoulli discovered this really cool bug, but it took a couple bicycle manufacturers to turn it into a hack.

Einstein discovered this other neat bug, and Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley managed to make a hack out of it a few years later.

I have to agree with argent, it may not be LL supported but neither are those other 2.

I agree with Yiffy and Argent, theres a lot of hacks in SL that are unofficially supported, just because they're hacks doesn't mean people shouldn't use them. They make life a little easier for the content creators that use them correctly and in a none abusive way.

Like the Lindens said in a previous town hall meeting, when they first publically recognised Huge Prims, it went something to the effect of - "anything over 10 x 10 x 10 cause server problems and might effect surrounding sims". Which to me says that LL don't want to increase prim size limits or won't.

A fellow Surface posted the comments that, LL tried to get rid of them in the past, but its not feasible as BIG COMPANIES use them, such as IBM and so on.

So personally, I see this thread being posted for the Lindens to gain some ground to have evidence for these companies to remove them, kind of like a petition, to show that if this was so, the majority of SL was against huge prims. So then LL could go to these companies and have some ground on removing them, then effectively, removing them from SL all together.

This is just speculation, but if this is the case, then LL are just using Residents to get what they want... They didn't seem too concerned about peoples opinions when they raised Sim prices, simply because "BIG COMPANIES are willing to pay more for Land in SL". Which has kind of nipped you in the butt though now, as the biggest company in SL uses Huge Prims.

I just find the reasoning behind this thread a little dubious, if they've already tried once before to remove them, why are they bringing it up again?

Detect, you're reasoning from 2 lines said in office hours by Andrew Linden. This isn't about big companies vs residents, that was a quick remark by one Linden.

There is an extremely common misconception among residents that Linden Lab is a single monolithic entity, imbuing every word it utters with hidden meanings, and (another of my pet peeves) turning all of its attention away from everything other than the thing it last made a blog post on.

None of these are true. There are many different Lindens with different opinions. Mistakes are made, remarks are just remarks, and many people are working on many different things.

Andrew tried to remove megaprims at some point in the past, but was dissuaded by other people in LL. Michael brought up the issues again to get opinions on the matter from the residents, and in my opinion the vagueness needed from a post that is asking for unbiased opinions did more harm than good. If people read the office hours transcript I posted the link to, you'll see the further story behind that blog post.

No mystery, no conspiracy. Just different people, not acting as a monolith.

You're right, Seifert, I don't mean to judge or sound paranoid, but it was just an legitimate observation I made as to the big fuss this has caused.

I do achknowledge that, 1) Linden Labs is full of people of different beliefs in various areas of the construct, and 2) That my judgement was based on a few lines from a post of yours. Basically, my last post is a judgement based on no credible value at all, just an observation on peoples views.

But...

My relevance to stating the fact that there are companies in SL that use huge prims is that - Do you think if none of these entities in SL used the exploit, that huge prims would be still in-world?

But anyways, thats a different topic really... I just really don't want to see a useful creators tool go down the drain, as used creatively and responsibly, like the adults we are, is an asset more than an exploit.

I'm sorry that I touched on one of your personal peeves though, but still its a valid judgement as misconstrued as it might be.

Are you serious, or is this joking? "Shame on you for trying to make this an issue about people getting their money's worth; it's about finding a stable way to satisfy the building needs of everyone."

!) Yes, I have given money to LL till I bleed.
2) I try very hard to follow even LL's most stupid and unenlightened regulations.
3) This is not a theory. The problems I have experienced are real, reported and recent.
4) If you think I should make others miserable, so I can save on prims you are just wrong, IMHO.
5) I would love to death, to have huge prims, if; A) they were sanctioned by LL, B) they did not crash and need fixing all the time, C) They did not infringe on the equality of the base of players. and D) you buy from me all my empty "Prim Farms" I have to fulfill my need for prims in my projects on other lots. (I AM Kidding on "D".
6) I have been buying and selling land, building and donating tier for many worthwhile causes, over the last 3 years,I don't own any of this total for myself.
7) It is exactly because of not having a "level playing field" I am upset with people who do use these "NOT SUPPORTED problematical, hardly likely to ever work totally right, mega-prims on any lot size, while others are prevented, or have the moral courage to bite the bullet, and buy what they need or chose to build to fit an exisiting budget.
I have yet to see much in the way of LL really fixing anything of this nature in my 3 years online, as they are far to busy adding more questionable features, and unregistered griefers to bulk up their appearance. I honestly think as much as they would be nice for huge projects, that they will not be reliable now or ever. (IMHO)
9) Yes I do get tired of people trying to work around LL's TOS by experimenting or cheating - to the detriment of others. If I see a blatant problem or abuse, I do file, (and I never get responses from LL about them, other than to confirm they received it). This doesn’t bolster my confidence they have the ability to deal with problems we have now, say nothing of somthing as problematical a thing as huge prims. (IMHO)
10) There will always be something that just will not work reliably or at all in SL, and if you think that LL will always pull a rabbit out of it's hat, to do so it is deluded.

“Real SL” should not be a beta test-bed for every possible contrivance and experiment. LL needs to confine its experimentation and multiple attempts to fix (kludge) its code on the Beta grid ONLY. Give it to us when it is polished and proven, not have the end users be the test-bed. You want BIG prims? Get it to work reliably and safely on Beta FIRST.

I love to build creatively and get what I pay for, I also like a stable platform to actually use what I build, and to have the time to chat with other players too. Call me crazy, but I prefer a working SL over one that is unstable but being made "better" buy unsupported additions.

Sorry, that is my take.

Shashe Neva (who tries to play by the rules, and have fun in SL, both of which get harder with time)

Yes.

Perhaps if they were used for nothing but griefing purposes (no art projects, legitimate use by residents etc.) then they would have been removed around the time when Andrew wanted to get rid of them, but no earlier. Things tend to happen if they need to happen right now (exploits etc.), or when some Linden gets around to looking at that bit of code. I don't mean "getting around" to imply that it's arbitrary and capricious, but there are priorities, and the griefing potential of megaprims isn't that big of a problem in comparison with many other urgent issues.

And we are working to prevent the radical muslims from griefing us with the Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley hack recently.

In light of Seifert's post, I'd like to replace all instances of "LL" in my previous post with "one or more Lindens."


What's your point? Lots of other people do too.

Again, what's your point? This is just a blatant attack on LL.

I don't recall saying your problems were imaginary.

No, what I said was you -could- and brought up the point that many other landowners do. This is supposed to bring a different light to your argument, because you make it seem like only the small landowners or renters who don't "bleed" as much money as you are the ones causing stability problems with megaprims.

Please refer to Graiser's post about features being sanctioned by LL. They just plain don't crash and need fixing all the time (I've seen them in heavy use for years, and NEVER watched a sim suffer for it). How do they infringe on the base equality of players? Everyone has access to them. That's like saying advanced scripts infringe on the equality of people who don't know how to code.

Again with the so what, followed by who cares?

As stated in other posts, there are a handful of SL features that "aren't supported," but you don't seem to care because they aren't known to cause stability issues. Furthermore, megaprims are used for things that can't otherwise be done, not just to get around prim counts (see previous point about how you could use megaprims if you wanted, and that other big land owners do). And now you have the audacity to say people who use megaprims are morally wrong? Get real.

Yet another blatant swing at LL. Your last sentence saves this from becoming a "if you don't like it why don't you leave" discussion. Sadly your opinion is not worth contesting, since I'm fairly sure nothing is going to change your stance that LL is out to get you and never does anything right (IMHO).

Okay? Megaprims aren't a TOS violation, and they're hardly a problem; there are far more severe issues for the Lindens to worry about. Just because LL doesn't take the time to respond to you specifically out of their hundreds of thousands of customers doesn't mean they aren't dealing with problems.

Getting you to make sense would be a more impressive magic trick. LL fixes things and there is reliability in SL (though it's far from enough, to be sure). What do you think this thread is about? The Lindens need pushing to get things we want done, such as making huge prims stable, and you're not helping the matter by insisting they're some apocalyptic problem. You say you'd "love" stable megaprims, yet you can't let go of this idea that the Lindens will never be able to do that, so it would be easier to just get rid of them. Well gee, I'd love everything in SL to work, but since I think LL can't do it, we'll just discourage them.

Megaprims are not a Linden experiment, they were a user-made hack, and this was long before there was ever a beta grid. In case you haven't noticed, the current issue is on the beta grid, and we're all trying to come up with a solution FOR the beta grid.

Other people like to build creatively, and paying is not a requirement to do so. You aren't paying for the right to make other people stop using megaprims. As for unsupported additions, once again, please refer to other unsupported features which you've neglected because they don't cause problems for you. Getting rid of megaprims won't make SL any more stable, but fixing them will (getting rid of a broken feature just leaves the other same broken features, mathematically increasing SL's instability; making a broken feature stable actually increases SL's stability).

Thank you Fox Absolute, but...that wasn't me.

Argent Stonecutter said something like that, though.

Any prim of any size can be used irresponsibly to cause trespassing issues, unsightly creations, hazards when flying, etc. Many prims linked together to make a large object exacerbate these issues.
Users create such problems, not the prims themselves.

The megaprims are a valuable asset to many of my projects. Sometimes the multi-faceted spheres generated by SHAPEMAKER are just not accurate enough, or smooth enough.
I promote science, technology and education through my constructions.
I have built a Bussard Ramjet, an Asteroid Habitat, RINGWORLD (Larry Niven has seen it and approved it!), ocean-current power generators, windmills, solar power satellites, the Space Shuttle Orbiter Processing Faciility (OPF), and NASA's "Terrestrial Planet Finder" satellite using megaprims. My N1 Russian Moon Rocket uses normal prims only, and totals 500 prims but with judicious use of two or three megaprims, that total would be only 300! This is a huge savings.

These items are on display at:
International Spaceflight Museum, Spaceport Alpha
International Spaceflight Museum, Spaceport Bravo
Space Frontier
Space Studies Institute
NASA JPL Explorer Island
Spindrift

Contact me if you need/want more information.


Jimbo Perhaps