The Big Prim Problem

The real problem with that is that if you "repair the system" to work with mega-prims, then they shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to improving it or adding new features. Your aforementioned "repairs" as a result could in fact prevent LL from doing so much more.
As I've already explained; if we are able to know that a prim will never exceed a 10m x 10m x 10m size (well, slightly more if you consider twists) then you can easily add optimisations to the system. For example, if you have a physical object with a velocity <1.0, 0.0, 0.0> then it is travelling North at 1m/sec, using that information, and the fact that a prim is no more than 10m x 10m x 10m, you can discard all prims more than 10m South of the object, as there is no way that the physical object will ever collide with a prim given those circumstances. You can also discard all objects 11m North of the physical object, since it is never going to get that far in a single tick.*
However, with mega-prims that's not the case. As a mega-prim whose centre is 100m to the South, could be hundreds or thousands of metres in length, meaning a collision can still occur.

This is not good as it means that in order to perform the same optimisation, you have to test every single object to the South for it's size as well, at which point the performance gain starts to become less and less noticeable.

That we can create situations in which normal prims cause more lag than mega-prims of the same volume is a by-product of the currently un-optimised state of the physics engine (possibly a Havok 1 limitation). This does not however mean that normal prims can't be much more efficient in future, but because of mega-prims this may now be impossible, unless we can get rid of them, or replace them with something better.

I know I've already posted it several times but please refer to the following JIRA issue for a solution that allows us the bigger shapes we want, while using ordinary sized prims. Be sure to read the sub-task as well on "Partial primitives":
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2859
This proposal would allow us to easily make big-shapes that could be very efficient on the physics engine given the above proposed optimisation.

*Note that my values for the example are a bit simplistic, as SL works out speeds more than once a second, and the full 10m doesn't need to be considered since we only care about distance from centre-points. It also doesn't consider the size of the physical object.

Hello all,

huge prims, the sim is smooth, we have no problems at all :

http://slurl.com/secondlife/hangars%20liquides/149/217/78/?title=Hangars%20Liquides

::::

indeed

I looked at the JIRA, its a nice idea, much like a construction kit, but you're suggesting that we simply emulate huge prims with regular sized prims... Which kind of demeans the fact of using huge prims in the first place. How would this idea create a 50x50x50 torus with several path cuts, twists, taper and revolutions? Because I'd rather use one huge prim than several hundred regular sized.

If I understand this right, its not a solution for the huge prim problem.

Primary use for people using huge prims, is to conserve. We want bigger shapes yes, but we don't want it at risk of 200, 400, 800+ prims in doing so. Like platforms, I'd rather not use up 400 10 x 10 x 1 prims to create a sectional floor in my sim, when I can do it in 4 prims, especially when theres more than one level.

If you're suggesting that the 'Flagging' some how nulls the containing prims in this emulation, then the server is still going to have to process all of the data, which in the long run is going to cause more problems, with overloading a sim.

I don't think you understood me quite well. I didn't say mega prims i said larger prims. meaning the second life server/grid/system should be re constructed to allow larger prims without all the problems it has handling them. This would eliminate the need for mega prims as the client would already be able to resize prims to that size without boundary issues. As you've seen in this forum topic there is a dire need for larger prims grid-wide.

IMO if the server cannot handle them, it should be upgraded so that it can. Why trash perfectly good resident content just because it causes a minority of people sim issues? It doesn't hurt my sim, or my neighbors sims. LL should focus on upgrading and repairing their system instead of removing what it cannot handle. Especially if "what it cannot handle" is something most of us clearly desire.

The sub-task (http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2859) addresses this. You'd still need to use a lot more smaller prims; but only the volume divided by 10 x 10 x 10. So in your case you'd need a maximum of 125 prims for that shape (less since with a torus there are a lot of gaps and empty areas you can omit). A lot less than if you attempted to build it from regular prims at the moment.


It's a lot more of your prim allowance but frankly that's tough. Anyone using mega-prims specifically to get around their prim-allowance is exploiting them.
I'm surprised that LL have let this continue for so long considering the whole idea is; you want prims, you pay for the percentage of the sim you need. Land in SL isn't strictly a measure of area, that's coincidental, what you're paying for is a share of the sim's resources (space and prims).
There are people who are using mega-prims for buildings that simply can't be done any other way, this is fine. But people using mega-prims purely because they want to be able to build a 500m tower for free are the ones who should have that taken from them. I agree that owning land is expensive, but using mega-prims to circumvent prim-allowance is like pirating a CD or downloading software from bittorrent without a license (for the software). If you do it, you should expect it to be taken away, not think it your god-given right to do as you please.


The cost of having large prims that don't cause issues with future features and performance enhancements, is that you have to use your prim-allowance to keep the over-sized shape on your land.
You're aware that plots of land have a limited prim allowance, you're aware that mega-prims are not legally-sized prims, you're aware that LL have closed the exploit that created them, and do not encourage their use. To think you can use them to forever get around the prim-allowance is wishful thinking.
LL want rid of mega-prims, because the prim size limits, as I've already described in my other posts, allow for some very powerful optimisations to be performed, but these can't be done with mega-prims to account for.


No disrespect, but there's not an iota of difference there. A mega-prim is a prim that is larger than a normal prim should be, hence "mega".
My point still stands; larger prims remove SL's ability to easily optimise the physics engine. Having a limit to prim size is an extremely good design decision on LL's part, and 10m x 10m x 10m is a perfectly realistic size to set it at as it represents a division over which collisions are likely to occur (avatars aren't likely to travel faster than 10m/frame, most objects shouldn't either), and which can be used to very neatly remove unseen geometry from rendering passes. Mega-prims, or any prim larger than the limit break this rule, rendering a large number of optimisations that rely on the 10m limit completely impossible, or forces them to use work-arounds which cripple their benefit to the point of uselessness.

People can argue all they want that mega-prims are more efficient, but the truth is that the are only that way now because LL are unable to improve performance for regular prims because of them. Mega-prims therefore might not make sims run much slower, but they also don't let them run any faster.

The difference between a larger prim and a mega prim is mega prims cannot resize and have a lot of boundary issues. a larger prim is the result of linden lab raising the prim size limit without having any issues...

Why is it you insist that all large prims are gonna cause this problem? this is why i am proposing that linden lab FIX their servers so that they can introduce larger prims without these problems... Why is it so hard for people to figure out what I'm trying to say?


Again. This is why i propose linden lab to upgrade their systems enough so they can introduce the ability to expand a normal prim to larger meters... The current setup totally blows and reading back on this topic you can clearly see the importances of using mega prims. There are definitely some things you cannot do with a 10 meter prim. Want proof of that? go to Serenity Woods and take a look at the Sky Islands i built at 500 meters Z vector. Their made out of 1 large 50m prim thats sculpted to appear as a floating island. It has perfect boundaries except it thinks its a cube. Repairing the grid physics would fix that issue if they actually knew what they were doing...

Linden lab hasn't made a lot of good decisions in the past couple years. These decisions cause people to distrust and even dislike them even more. If they remove our mega prims their just rubbing salt into the wound they made. And i for one am not the type to just sit back and let it happen. There is a time where we as the users have to force the development to understand what we truly want. Regardless to how much work it takes for them to make it so. It seams linden lab only likes to add more and more useless features into SL that make it even slower and laggier rather to repair things and improve upon what they already have.

My proposal is perfectly doable if they get off their duffs and do it. There is a special body part that was used to make second life. It's called a brain. LL has shown they have them so it's time they start thinking about new ways to fix this problem besides destroying things. Something that wont cause a huge outcry...

It isn't. However you seem to be ignoring the part where I gave all the reason why Linden Labs would be reluctant to actively support larger prims as you (and others) seem to want them. I've said several times now why a 10 x 10 x 10 limit is preferable to allowing prims of any size.
Please consider:
If you have no idea how big all the prims in your sim are (the case with "larger prims" then to work out if a moving object is going to hit one you have to check EVERY SINGLE prim in the simulator to find out if there is a collision or not. That's up to 15,000 bounds-check and/or physics calculations.
If however you know your prims are all a certain size, you can easily work out which ones a moving body is likely to hit. You can cut 15,000 calculations down to a handful for only the prims within 10m of you.

At it's absolute simplest:
Larger-prims = no future physics improvements.

It's not entirely true, but is the simplest possible way I can write it. The cost of bigger prims is huge in terms of the future performance we will never ever get as a result.

It's the same central problem; Second Life is DYNAMIC. Unlike high-end games that can take HUGE geometric shapes and compile them down into an optimised structure, SL has to assume that an object can and will move at any time. The only way it can win is if it can make definite assumptions about the environment, the only definite assumption really worth having in a physics related engine is that an object is:
- Never going to go above A speed
- Never going to go above B height
- Never going to move unless object C moves (i.e - a box landed on another box and stopped moving)
- Never going to be above D size

We already have the first three, and that's great. But the last one there is possibly one of the most powerful. There may be one or two others, but these are the major ones.


I'm aware of such builds, and it's great. But what we need is not larger-prims, but a way to build larger-shapes using prims of a fixed size. A mega-sized sculpted prim is unnecessary; using a 3d application you can cut it up into the smaller segments required to build the full-sized sky-island.
As for physics on sculpted prims; you do realise that currently a sculpted prim is simply a box or sphere with a pretty little texture that makes it look like something else? Sculpted prims are a client-side visual effect just like flexi-prims. To make a sculpt map physics enabled would require the simulator to download the sculpt-map, generate the same geometry as the client, and then save it as a physics capable mesh. Every single time that every single sculpty in the simulator has its texture changed by a user, or a script, or some animation, it would have to be recalculated by the simulator. Doing that for a single animating sculpty could quite happily kill a simulator.
Right now a sculpty is just a piece of data for the simulator to send to clients, that's how it should remain.


Your proposal as it stands would seem to encourage Linden Labs to make SL even laggier, while denying them the ability to make it LESS laggy.
I'm not proposing to remove mega-prims, there are too many people using them. But they need to provide an alternative that works with the system, and allows them to still do what they want to do.
Yes LL often ignores what residents want, but in this case what residents want runs counter to what SL needs, which is better and more robust physics performance, and less people using mega-prims to get more out of land than they should be.

In reply to Haravikk Mistral

Again, your solution isn't a solution to mega prims, I can easily build huge shapes from regular prims and/or use the already exsiting script for making huge shapes. The solution you came up with isn't the issue here.

The issue is using mega prims WHICH Linden Labs DID allow, dispite your claims of us using an exploit. Like I've said a few pages back and that others have said, there ARE other exploits in SL that have been used for years, inwhich LL has rectified when they were broke.

At the beginning of this post, Michael even says LL ALLOWED residents to use them and have been used on various projects for resident creations AND corporation, and this is simply because Huge Prims were allowed. Here:


--------------------------------------------


Who said anything about 'doing as you please'? Again, LL allowed huge prims to be used, the only reason why this has become a problem now, is because they want the grid to be optimized for Havok 4...

People that said, its your own fault for using them are just crazy, the real issue is WHY DID THEY ALLOW IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? But AGAIN, from what you're saying relates to my previous post about people complaining that this is an exploit and people that use an exploit should of known better... okay.... lets ban invisiprims, thats a hack, then you can be blaimed when thousands of angry women come complaining about their shoes that they've bought no longer work, you can then say to them the same thing.

But going back to your idea, its good dont get me wrong, but it has nothing to do with the whole argument at hand here, its about 'upping the prim size, even to 50x50x50 being max. This has been a long time issue and for a lot of residents would be a godsend. But we have no other means of creating these, so yes, we've used an exploit, so sue us... LL allowed it, they've allowed other exploits with no word on their deletion, so yes, we use them with the fact that we expected them to stay around, considering that LL are the ones that let them stay...

If I said to you that I'll give you 500,000 USD to do with what you want and nothing else was said apart from 'Go play with it, do as you want'... then you go and spend it all... and I come back to you a year later saying, 'I want it back', you'd be a little disgruntled.

Same applies here, the exploit was made, but LL said they'd allow them to be used with no other comments that they would be removed completely. Now they want to. So yes, theres alot of people that are annoyed that they've created so much with them.

We don't want a way of creating large prims using regular prims, I can easily build an optimized shape using the minimum amount of prims, to create a massive one. I can create the most complex shapes by eye and not care how long it takes or if a script can do it ten times faster... Thats not what everyone wants, they want to be able to make bigger prims passed the boundry of 10x10x10, because simply its too small of a shape to deal with on larger projects. Thus, leaving open more prims to build with, creating better, more lush worlds.

Thats what its all about, not abusing the system, not using an exploit to do as we please, just the chance to be able to create what our minds invisage, not an 'alright' looking build, that 'sorta' looks like what we imagined...

Like LL, we want to progress too.


*** IDEA TIME ***
If LL can find and zone in on all huge prims on the grid, which I know they can, as when I first started building my sim a year ago, a linden popped up a week into development.

If they can do this, why can't they implement some kind of SIM OPTION that allows the use of huge prims? We pay enough for islands and with all the residents that rent island space out, it still gives renters the opportunity to use them.

For those that don't like them, they have the option not to rent in that sim. This would then give us the best of both worlds. Its restricts their usage to private islands, which wont effect the main grid.

Even if its as simple as banning all prims by Gene Replacement and have an option on islands that you can untick... Considering hes the only creator and theres apparently no chance of ever making these prims again, I don't see a problem.

I couldn't have said it better, Detect.

I'm sure the argument will continue anyway. LL allowed the use of mega prims, and it wouldn't be feasible to take it away after it's been used globally for so many projects grid-wide. It's not just about having a prim look large, but the boundary has to be large too. Improvising by cutting shapes does not do the trick. We want to go beyond the 10 meter limit. Second Life will never really expand/evolve into that "new age internet metaverse" Philip invisioned, if they keep such silly limits. Oh it will continue to carry on, but someones gonna eventually do something better. Understand we know why this limit is here, but we also know that brainpower, time, and effort can expand that limit.

Yeah, I know Yiffy

I wish they would just let bygones be bygones, theres so much thats been created with huge prims... beautiful and wonderful. I know that they have physic problems, but I seriously don't think its that bad, not as bad as some that say: I've put one huge prim down and it lagged the the sim so much, my head exploded... or something to that effect lol.

If they just atleast come to a compromise like with selective huge prim private islands, it would solve this dispute in a split second. But, I suppose it means acknowledging and supporting an exploit, so, like you say... the arguing will continue. *Sigh*.

Can't we all just get a thong? amean... long?

Yes it is. Once applied to all existing mega-prims it means that none will exist, while builds which have not abused mega-prims to cheat prim-allowance will still look exactly the same. Implement the ability to produce big-prims as I've described and you can easily have a period in which both mega-prims and "big prims" are available, allowing builders time to remove mega-prims from their builds. Then we can say goodbye to mega-prims, without losing the building solutions that they provided (for large cylinders etcetera).


Linden Labs' official stance of mega-prims is very loose, and this covers the issue you mention with "hacks" (bugs or behaviours that are used to unintended or unexpected effect).
The issue with mega-prims is that SL was never meant to allow primitives larger than 10 x 10 x 10 to be created. And it would seem that though LL wanted this restriction, it was never actually enforced by the simulator, instead it is enforced by LSL (preventing you resizing objects to be larger through scripts) and the Second Life client. However, the people at LibSecondLife found the object creation messages used by SL, and presumably someone used this knowledge to send values that should have have been illegal, ie - anything larger than 10m in one of the three size fields.

What happened was that since the simulator just blindly accepted the client's values as correct, it created mega-prims. Now the problem here is that once this was discovered, it become over-used, people who had wanted it forever started using it to create all the shapes they wanted, others used it to test the limits (hence the weird-ass mega-prims that are 65,536m long).

By the time LL fixed this (making the simulator check values it receives) it was too late, there were already mega-prims in circulation and being used. As a result they were in a difficult position, and while they wanted to get rid of them they didn't want to make the situation much worse. So the official stance became that if you have them, you can keep them (within reasonable limits, or on private islands). However they were clear that there is zero support for mega-prims and that they will be removed if they cause problems, iirc this was never specified as being on an individual, case-by-case basis. But obviously a grid-wide removal would be unpopular.
However, the very important point here is that LL have never guaranteed that mega-prims will not have their behaviour changed, and that's partly the physics related problem. LL could quite happily implement the optimisations, and leave mega-prims in, but you'd only be able to stand on the middle 10 x 10 x 10m of them. Wouldn't be very popular either.
This is why I proposed what I have, as it lets us replace mega-prims with normal prims that do the same job, but will work just fine. Please vote on it if you agree with it; as it is a viable way to replace mega-prims so both parties can get what they want.


The problem is that this exploit doesn't really follow the same rules as other "hacks". For example, the warp-pos hack in LSL; using llSetPrimitiveParams with multiple identical rules you can "warp" huge distances almost instantly. This is a hack, as it was never intended to be used in this way with multiple instances of the same parameter. This "hack" became widely used, so when an update at one point broke it, there was a lot of complaints and it had to be undone/changed so warp-pos continued to work.

The distinction here is that unlike prim size limits which were always clearly defined, and with reason, the "use the same rule more than once" issue was never explicitly described. It was just kind of assumed, why would anyone want to do the same thing twice?
Arguably this is a way of circumventing the traditional behaviour of llSetPos() and similar functions (which are limited to no more than a 10m move), however the limit for llSetPos() is technically that a prim may not move more than 10m in a single call to llSetPos(), well warp-pos is just like a bucket-load of llSetPos() calls.
Mega-prims however break more of a hard-and-fast restriction; no more than 10m in any of the size fields.


I'm talking here about responsible use; people who are using them to build something they otherwise couldn't are fine, that's understandable, I'm building a huge (100m+) tower which is a sort of concave cone if that makes sense (round base, tiny tip, but the sides sag inwards on a curve), it's a bitch, taking me ages to do using normal prims. Except that I'm still gonna do it with normal prims, until larger ones are officially supported.
However, big cylinders, big spheres, using normal prims (even generated by script) look really crap. I can get away with it because for my design, the sort of flat-sides don't matter.

Some people however are using them purely on the basis of; "Hey, I want to build a 100m x 100m cube, but that'll require 1000 prims! I'm not going to buy the land I'd need for that, instead I'll just use one mega-prim". These people are not using mega-prims to achieve shapes they can't otherwise easily achieve, they're using them to pack more stuff onto their land than they are paying for, these people should not expect any preferential treatment when it comes to taking away or replacing their precious mega-prims.


Invisi-prims don't break any limit imposed by Linden Labs, or even OpenGL, it's just a very interesting bug.



Wrong metaphor. It's more along the lines of:
- You find $500,000US that belongs to me that fell out through a hole in my pocket
- I patch up the hole in my pocket but say; "Fine, you just keep the money for now".

I have not given any explicit license for you to expect to be able to get more money from me (create mega-prims). Nor will I offer you any help if your investment of my money turns out to be wrong, or cause you problems down the line.


LL did the same with joints. We used to have a physical object called a joint, which let you have a physical object attached to another physical, or non-physical object. It would therefore be like it had a hinge where they joined. This was quite a nice feature since it meant you could make realistic wind-chimes and stuff.
However, it also was fraught with bugs. And yet; there were things made with it that worked just fine, and there was the possibility that more things may be produced that (working with the bugs in mind) could be made to work really well.
But they were removed. There is still no solution other than flexi-prims as an alternative to this, and flexi-prims aren't great for that.


What do you want more?
- Yiffy Yaffle's "fixed system" that allows bigger prims but has less performance in order to achieve those fixes.
- A system where you can produce large prims but also has much better performance and the prospect of new features that would otherwise be impossible.

People who just want to make prim boundaries bigger are people who don't understand why we have them, or why they are a good thing. The majority of these are the same people who expect to be able to build big things without paying for more land, the people who use mega-prims to leech.
These people are using mega-prims to solve a quantitative problem; they want more for nothing. Yes, prim-allowances suck, I'd love more, but using mega-prims to cheat your way around it is not the answer.

The people who want to be able to produce larger shapes should not be opposed to a system that allows them to do so with existing prims, in a more efficient, easier and better looking format than scripted solutions. As these are the people who just want to be able to make a cylinder bigger than 10m x 10m x 10m.
These are people who are using mega-prims to solve a creative problem; they want to produce a shape but can't realistically do that using ordinary primitives.

Has LL Said anything new concerning this issue ?

I do think that LL needs to revisit the size limits on prims even if it means just raising them to 20 x 20 x 20. that in itself would help alot.

Create a tool that allows you to build larger than 10 x 10 x 10 on a private sim but only to a certain point. And auto delete anything that doesnt stay within the confines of 10 x 10 x 10 on the mainland.

We pay enough for those private sims, we should beable to have more build options.


Darius Wilberg

No it isn't, its a way to replace and emulate huge prims with regular sized, again this is not the argument. You'll find that people that support mega prims, will agree with me on this one.



So loose that they plainly state 'we're letting huge prims be used on private islands' and 'live and let live'?

I know the history of mega prims, you don't have to explain in small details.

I agree that some are very large, which I never use and I think alot wouldnt.

Linden Labs could of deleted them at any time they saw fit, they state that they would only delete the ones that are abused/abusive/grief.





From your last post, apparently an exploit is an exploit, you can't pick and choose just because you don't support one of them. Its condescending. So basically, you don't support huge prims because they impose a limit breaker (That LL allowed), but you're all for people hacking the system, as long as it doesn't conflict in anything you feel strongly about? Hmmm, nice.



In some respects I agree, but the argument again is, if LL allowed it in the first place, people will take advantage of it. If the people that created the program give the 'all go' on something, which they DID, I can copy paste the quote again, its then in the residents best interest to conserve their prim count on, say a 1024sqm plot. But only if the resources are there, which they are, in the form of mega prims.

They've been in SL for way over a year now, you really, truely think that we're all leeches for using them, just because LL did not take them away within the first month? Is it really our fault for using mega prims to our advantage when they've been here for so long, putting the idea in the minds of residents that maybe mega prims will be here, hopefully for a lot longer?

No its not, people that blame residents for using an exploit, among other exploits that are commonly used in SL, are just fooling themselves into believing that its souly the residents fault. If LL never wanted this exploit to be used, it should of been deleted as soon as it hit the grid, not a year later when immense damage will be done. THEY CAN DO IT, they're doing it with the massive sim sized prims, so it could of been done with the smaller sized mega prims.



Meaning - LL allowed. Thus giving residents mega prims (Which to builders are a valued tool - explaining the 500,000 USD) and clearly state 'we're ALLOWING people to use Huge Prims on private islands'. The making Residents feel its okay to use mega prims.



Meaning - Residents use them to their own devices. And that RL companies use them in their own sims, inwhich RL companies have paid for this work to be done, on the fact that Huge Prims have been allowed for so long.



Meaning - Obviously, a year later, LL come back a year later wanting to delete them.

You need to read more into metaphors before you clearly dismiss them.



Yes, yes, I know about pivot/joints, you don't need to explain them, I used them as a reference in some of my early posts. I've been in SL for a long time.



What? You mean the system that people complain is only in place because restricting a certain amount of prims for small areas, COULD result to the fact that it encourages people to want to buy more land. The same land that LL increased because 'Companies are willing to pay more for virtual communities' which says to me that they're only interested in making money?

The Havok engine can deal with many more things that SL hasn't got yet. Games like Starcraft 2 uses it in their physics system. Also Half Life and Halo 3. Its all about the programming.

Again, branding people as a 'leech' simply because they want to build more, only suggests that:

* They don't have the spare money to buy more and sustain land
* That they want their place to create things without wasting the value of prims
* Creating sims by using huge prims is far easier

And so on. I'm not agreeing with people that try to live beyond their means, but if the means are there, I'm all for it.

I agree that people abuse huge prims, but I'm more talking about residents that are griefing with them.



You're right, because noone wants to waste 40+ prims to create the cylinder, or 200+ to make a torus. Thats why your suggestion wont work for builders. And why its not a solution for huge prims, the only way the problem would be fixed, is if LL expanded the current limitations of regualr sized prims. Its Easy enough to make a cylinder or sphere out of cube prims, but its not efficient.

If LL allowed huge prims to be here, then YES, its our god given right to use them. NO, LL wasn't sketchy on the whole matter, I remember and listened to the Town Hall meeting a year ago. I don't think it could of been clearer than 'Yes, we're allowing them to be used on private islands'. If thats been sketchy, then is Windlight NEVER going to be added? I mean... They did say it was... and it was even on First Look too... MY GOD! The bank said they have my money in their computers!!!!! I need to go down to the car dealership and make sure my car belongs to me too, they said it was, I even paid them and signed forms!!! GAH!! THE HOUSE!!!... I've just become a hobo in a matter of seconds, because we should of known better than to listen to officials that are part of the company or run it.

Apply real world to your second one, if someone from the company you are dealing with 'okays' something, people will use and expect it. If people come back and say 'its your own fault for doing it', then I'm no longer arguing with you, as you're not seeing logic. Do we all really need to get paperwork done for every little thing? Or, do we just take their word for it? If you come back and say it wasn't official, then I'm not repeating myself 100 times on every reply.

THEIR WORLD, THEIR IMAGINATION... We just live here. Apparently.

You know i do ;p

Woot! lol Score one for Detect lol. Hehe, cheers Yiffy.

/me does the Chandler Dance.

I'm joking Haravikk, we all have very strong opinions on this subject, but it really is going no where, fast.

And frankly, I'm getting bored of all the seriousness and pie slinging... unless its chocolate pie or banana cream... I wonder if theres been any decision or update on this yet. Otherwise, 1000 posts here we come!

I have built quite a few structures and have found that 20x20 and sizes up to maybe 60m are most useful. Obviously unskilled builders will have difficulties handling them but they also have issues using regular prims. Unless SL increases the prim limit on parcels to a lot more then it is now then I would say keep any prim below 60m or allow the creation of prims in size up to maybe 30m. That would effectively allow businesses and other residents to create buildings and objects that are unique and look great without using an exorbitant amount of prims.

One problem with going over 10m I see is noobs having access to and leaving 20m cubes lying around. Perhaps they should be limited to 2m or 5m for some period even. Where at least you need to know and look for Megaprims to get them. Linden making all sizes available, would that let any noob rez a 1024x1024?

So what *is* this argument you're referring to?
The situation I see is thus;
- LL want rid of mega-prims
- Builders want to build bigger shapes more easily
Logical conclusion? LL provides a way to build bigger shapes more easily, WITHOUT using mega-prims. Hence; solution.


And yet they removed the ability to create them, and officially do not support them. So they said you can keep them for now, but they sure as heck didn't want to, and if they can get rid of them with a sane solution, they will. They want one thing, but they're forced to say another.
Their stance as a result currently covers both sides of the fence, seems pretty loose footing to me.


Of course an exploit is an exploit, but you are the one who seems to want to call things exploits that aren't. Mega-prims are an exploit; a way of breaking a limitation that was explicitly imposed (but poorly enforced due to a simulator bug). Things like warp-pos, sit teleporting and so-on are badly named as "hacks"; more accurately they are unexpected behaviour. Someone used an option creatively, and found they could use it for other things. Unlike prim-creation which pretty clearly tries to say, "no more than 10 x 10 x 10", sit-targets never specified, "oh by the way you can't use this as a clever way to 'teleport' short distances".
Now I'm not saying people using mega-prims are necessarily exploiting the system, that depends on how they're using the limited number of mega-prim types in circulation. However the creation of the mega-prims in the first place is a software exploit; someone found a bug and exploited it to create the prims they wanted, knowing that they're not supposed to be able to. Therefore, mega-prims are an exploit, their usage can be as well.


That depends who you mean by 'we'. If you're using mega-prims to build good looking giant cylinder or sphere sections that would otherwise require a very poor approximation in normal prims, then no, that's not leeching. If you're using them because you don't want to buy the land to support your build, then yes.


Unfortunately LL aren't always the quickest to react to these kinds of situations, and people who were happily creating mega-prims aren't the most likely to report the issue either. By the time LL fixed the exploit that created mega-prims, there were already too many people happily firing them into builds for them to get away with just removing them again. LL bit the bullet on their mistake, and their slow reaction, and allowed them the ones in existence to continue existing.


LL gave us nothing of the sort. They haven't yet taken mega-prims away, there is a BIG difference there.

I understood the metaphor fine, but for that one point alone it fails to be a metaphor of the situation.


You want bigger builds? You get more prims. You want more prims? You buy more land.
It's how selling a product works.

Mega-prims are the pirated DVDs of the virtual land market; giving you a whole movie for a fraction of the cost.


All of those games know before they load what they're going to be loading and as a result are able to pre-compile BSP trees and similar physics structures that can be used to rapidly detect pending collisions.
SL can't do that, because when you enter an average sim, a good 25% of the prims in that sim are likely to be scripted, or part of a script controlled object. Meaning hundreds or thousands of prims can change at any time. Even the static ones at any point could be moved or resized by their owner. The cost of pre-compiling would tear a simulator to shreds because it would have to re-compile elements so frequently it would have no time left to do anything else.


No, people who want to build more aren't leechers, they're builders. People who try to get around clearly imposed limits so that they get something for free, are leechers.


If you can't afford the cake, you don't get to eat it. It's called a business model, SL is a product, managed by a business. It isn't something for you to consume freely.
Abusing mega-prims to achieve these two points makes someone a leecher.


This a failing of the editor and laziness on the part of a builder.

I've built a good half a sim using a 4096 square metre plot of land, I've been developing it in sections using normal primitives. I hope to be able to get myself a nice private island to put it on at some point. I'm not a leecher, because I'm working within the clearly defined limits.


Abuse does not equal griefing. The mere fact that people are using mega-prims is preventing other people from getting better performance, and new features. I've proposed a way to have bigger shapes AND get all the future upgrades; people who don't want that (either with my idea or anything else viable) are just being selfish, and hurting development for the people who use regular prims as they're meant to.
Yes griefing with them is wrong, but you can grief with normal prims too, mega-prims aren't a special case to griefing.


Please read the JIRA issue properly, including the sub-task attached to it. Assuming the cylinder and torus are the same volume, then with my idea they will use the SAME number of prims, and look as good (or better) than a mega-prim. Sure, it'll be more than one prim, but it will never be more than the volume sub-divided by 10:
- A 20 x 20 x 20 cylinder would need 2 x 2 x 2 prims = 8 prims.
- A 20 x 20 x 20 torus would need 2 x 2 x 2 prims = 8 prims.
For bigger volumes you may also be able to remove chunks that are empty, or which can't be seen (ie are inside the object), thus saving some more prims, and possibly done automatically by the editor since there's no point having a prim which has doesn't actually represent anything.


So don't make them out of cube prims, use partial primitives as I proposed:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2860
Please do not be so sweeping to say the "only" solution is to get what you want. Mine is the only one that I see to be a viable way to get what both sides want; as in, it's my opinion.
I have said now, a large number of times, exactly why increasing the prim limit is not desirable, and LL seems to agree with me. It therefore is NOT the "only solution" to anything.


They never "okayed" it! They said you can keep them, but they never said you may do so indefinitely, or without them being replaced at some point in the future. If they'd okayed it, we'd all be able to create them from the comfort of our own editor window, in any shape we wanted. And they'd be actively fixing issues with them to try and make them work better.
But they've done neither of those things, and with good reason.

Also, neither of your "real world" examples fit:

Because if this were the same as mega-prims then the bank would have stopped allowing you to put more money in, and would have nothing to do with any problems you have involving your funds within their system. Not to mention that you would have to have forced the money into your account by finding a hole in the bank-vault or something.


The car that you managed to gain possession of by stealing the keys when the owner presumably didn't want you to? That you're no longer allowed to put more petrol into, and if it breaks down you have to fix it yourself or just put up with it? If we're talking about mega-prims then that's the situation here.


The house you've been living in hoping you'd get to keep squatters rights, which you're not allowed to do any improvements to, and which you'll have no help with it falls over? If we're talking about mega-prims then that's the situation here.

There have been no written or signed agreements beyond the ToS which (correct me if I'm wrong) does not state you can have mega-prims, and that LL are required to let you have them forever without trying to force an alternative on you or just plain remove them. What they "said" means very little, you should know that by now.


I am too, and would love for a nice jovial thread, but unless someone can show me that keeping mega-prims on the grid is going to be good for me, when I would much rather have the improvements that they prevent, then I will continue to argue it. I've offered an alternative, it may not have all the advantages of mega-prims, but as a builder I would use it quite happily to create big-prims. And would be happier still if we got better performance in the bargain.

As for official input, I'm trying to get a hold of Michael Linden for comment, but the @lindenlab.com e-mail addresses no longer appear to be in use (presumably due to spam or support requests) so it's not looking like it will be easy. Might try Torley instead and see if I can get a message through that way, since Torley has a much higher response rate =)

Just posting to go on-record here that I'd much rather abandon any of the stated improvements from Havoc 4 than to give up megaprims of dimension 256m and below. The physics improvements mean much, much less to me than the megaprims... there's not even any comparison.

I don't think this is necessarily the opinion of the majority, and I won't try to advocate for it, but at least some of us *really* don't care about physics features or performance. At all.

And for the record, I would much rather see the improvements from Havoc 4 and see megaprims removed from Second Life if that is what it takes to get the upgrade.

And some of us truly do care about physics and performance. It's silly to expect LL to toss out a long awaited (by many) upgrade to keep something which is an intentional circumvention of a limitation set by LL in the first place.

I will take legitimate features over 3rd party hacks any day of the week.

[ edit ] ---->

I do not oppose larger prims... but I want them to be stable. I do not want them if it will impact sim performance, physics performance, or any of the other unwanted side effects many people have reported.

The situation you see is a way of publicizing your feature, inwhich you've mentioned in every post. The *ARGUMENT* is:

- Residents want to have the prim limit increased, passed the 10x10x10.
I would of thought the last 64 pages would of given that away.
- People who use mega prims usually do it because the want to preserve their count.
- People want mega prims removed because people have griefed and abused them.
- Some people think that mega prims cause a lot of server problems.
- LL wants to get rid, because of Havok 4

Not to be able to emulate huge prims with smaller ones, you even said in one of your posts that to create a torus would be around 125 prims with alterations, now its magically 8? You had no idea how much manipulating I had in mind when I suggested how you can create a torus with path cuts, twists, taper and revolutions, no specifics on size or diameter and you can safely say it'll take 125 prims max to create it.... even so builders would never use.



The *Ability* to create them was through 3rd party in which Gene Replacement was banned because of it. No, LL doesn't support it. No they did NOT say 'you can keep them for now' MY GOD MAN, do I have to keep going over the same constant jibber jabber?!?!



Yes, I can see how held back Cory was in replying "We're going to allow them on private islands". I'm sure shes still shouting "Nooooooooooo!!!" a year later.

They knew about it a few months after they appeared and at the time, they were more concerned about the effects on surrounding sim, THUS why they allowed them on private islands.



Exploiting the system is a hack. In programmers terms yes, hack and exploit are different, but only by the genres terminology and by area. Everything that is NOT part of the system is literally an exploit, eg. people took advantage of a bug they found, to further advance through exploitation. Eg. People used the temp on rez bug in 2006 to exploit their prim count. Eg. You are exploiting this page to advertise your feature lol joking.


I'm sorry, but a year later? That statement is amazingly laughable.



No. One person created mega prims and then distrubuted it. If by freely making it available or via passing to a friend, that then passed it on. LL knew about huge prims a few months after, because someone DID bring it to the Lindens attention at a townhall meeting. That was a year ago. They had the chance to stop it then, but did nothing but say 'we're allowing them to be used'. Its against TOS to create things via 3rd party, thats why Gene Replacement was banned. But LL saw no threat of using them at that time.

The ONLY reason why now its a problem, is because they want Havok 4 running smoothly. Like a virus, if they didn't delete huge prims on private islands, but did on the main grid, they would just be passed back over and spread around again.

You say that 'there were already too many people happily firing them into builds for them to get away with just removing them again'. What? a month after they were released? ................................. errrr....... Yes, I can see the logic there - "Lets just wait a year and really screw them over" lol. I think you're just assuming/opinion to argue the point, because thats not the truth at all.



By 'gave us'... *sigh*.... I mean ALLOWED US (When you give something to someone, you're allowing them to have it, use it, do whatever), Thus giving us the ability to USE THEM. Why would they say, you can use them on private islands and ACTUALLY mean - you can't do anything with it? If they wouldn't of said what they did, I would of never used them in the first place. I said that phrase, 'allowed us', far too much in the last post for your benifit, so I used a variant. Look, I'll re-quote it again....


You obviously didn't understand the metaphor at all, as you came up with a completely different one, if one sentance out of the entire paragraph was wrong, you'd restate the correct phrasing. But the phrasing wasn't wrong, so that to me says you just 'didn't get it'.



My point was, as I stated, some believe that the encouragement is just a way to make money, considering how addictive Second Life is. Thats why some people are for upping the prim limit on land.

And, thats only because LL upped the prices for the only reason of 'corporate businesses are willing to pay more' which I find a little disgusting because its putting people in the position of, or should I say putting us in the bracket of grossing the same amount of money as real life businesses make, which there was a massive dispute about.

The whole 'your world, your imagination... a world created by its residents' used to mean for regular Joe, but now it seems to of shifted to using the residents to attract businesses, and if buisnesses are coming, why not up the prices. Even though the majority of people in Second Life and are the people who made it what it is, the Regular Joe.

I agree that every company has to make money, but I'm not agreeing to the fact of forgetting your roots.

Anyways, that was completely off subject.



Then that makes EVERYONE that uses mega prims a leecher. People that use mega prims is mainly to conserve their prim count, there is no other reason. People who want to create bigger shapes, could do it by constructing, but don't want to waste the prims, as it would leave hardly any to do anything else with. Like Yiffy's floating island, you could make them out of regular prims, but my GOD, you're talking hundreds, if not thousands of prims and countless hours to make what she did, what sculpties did with one or a few prims. I wouldn't of been able to create what I did in my sim if it wasn't for huge prims. I won't be able to create my next sim project without them.

Consume freely is a matter of opinion, in which again, if someone says you can use something, that is an employee for the company, you expect to be able to use it, if it was unclear to you, then its your own fault, but it seemed clear to thousands of others, including IBM.



I'm sorry, but, they're the same thing, builders use mega prims to get around prim limits. Theres no other reason. So yes, you're branding everyone as a leecher that uses them. Again, if LL never wanted us to use them in the first place, they should of deleted them. Branding us as leechers, simply because we used something that LL 'Allowed' is inverted... Do I really need to re-quote????



No, its about wanting to do what you invisage, its one thing to create a long prim for no reason, its another thing to create a long prim with a reason. I could create a half sim sized prim out of normal prims, but when I have several of these long prims that construct something else theres reason to do it and when its just for show, I wouldn't want to waste the prims for something thats just visual in nature, when the accumulative regular sized prims could go somewhere else. It has nothing to do with laziness at all.



I'm not re-quoting lol

But I will say, whats the point of 'letting us keep them' when we cannot use them? Why let us use them for a year and then get rid of them? Thats rubbish about LL being slow, they let us use them because its only now that they want to put in a new physics engine, and because Huge Prims have physic problems, they are letting us debat the subject.

Micheal even asks for us to give good examples of sims that use them, which in my opinion says they are atleast debating themselves over if they should be deleted. They probably know that allowing us to use them for so long is going to be a big problem. But with the future deployment of Havok 4, they want the grid to run smoothly. Keeping them on islands would not effect the matter, but they are worried that they will just return to the main grid.

Invisiprims are still here, they never okayed that 'hack', but allowed it and then fixed it when it broke. Meaning, thats not a supported feature, but they atleast give some support on it.

You say that LL would only okay something if it was a feature and if it does become a feature, then you can expect it to be around indefinitely? lol What about Joints? lol

Your logic is flawed in the fact of, LL seem to unofficially support things that are progressive to Second Life, as long as it doesn't cause major problems. If huge prims were a major problem, they would of gone the way of the dodo a long time ago.



But, Linden Labs hasn't stopped us from using mega prims.



No, no... that was sarcasm.



Yeah, that was sarcasm too... but I like how I've been upgraded from a leecher to a squatter lol... Same thing isn't it?



Doesn't state we cannot have huge prims either, its not that specific.... but then again, it doesnt state we can build using regular sized prims, its all refered to as content, which huge prims are because it on their servers. What it does state is that all content every user creates in SL is owned by LL as long as it stays on their servers, regardless of any copyrights you owned and used previous to upload/create. So either way, its Linden Labs that own these Huge Prims now, even if they did not create them, they still decide if they stay or go. But, they 'Allowed' them to stay and be used as content. And as far as the TOS goes, huge prims are governed by LL, so yes, when they say they 'allow' them to be used, then I have every right to use them, regardless of people that don't support them. If you've read the TOS, you should know that by now.

Nothing in Second Life is set in stone, be it hack, exploit or feature. But atleast LL is giving us the chance to debate if they should stay or go.



... Nice.

Actually, Gene Replacement was not banned because of mega-prims. That's about as far from the truth as you can get!

He was banned during the mass-banning of the group inhabiting the sim Satyr.

If anyone thinks giving up mega prims for any reason is a good idea... just teleport over to the sim Rezzable Hallucinogen:

secondlife://Rezzable_Hallucinogen/128/128

Absolutely stunning. There are other solutions - allow bigger prims, maybe up to 40 meters a side. I refuse to believe that Havok 4 can not handle something that Havok 1 is handling just fine.

Regards,

-Flip

Well, based on a lot of the concerns that have been presented by numerous residents... megaprims aren't being handled well by Havok 1, and if the Lindens are having issues with megaprims and Havok 4, I say wipe them all.

I don't care how wonderful any build is... nobody should have planned on megaprims being around forever, unless they were added to the list of supported features. When I ran low on prims for my store... I got more land.

Wasnt that incident to do with mega prims too, about blocking out surrounding sims with huge prims? So it can't be that far from the truth.

Actually, this was around September 2006 and the town hall meeting Michael mentioned at the beginning of this thread was December 2006. So, practically thinking, this might of been the first time the Lindens found out about Mega Prims, because of the events at Satyr with the blocking out 8 surrounding sims with mega prims and skywriting. Leading onto being banned for it. So, he was more than likely banned for the abuse and also the creation of.

Picture of the blocked out sims around Satyr -
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/images/satyr.jpg

Some info about mega prims and Gene -
http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/01/02/megaprim-crackdown/
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/12/ibm_shocker_lls.html