PSA: Where can I get Mega Prims?

Most of you know about the SALT HUD where you can wear a hud and request the size of mega prim you want if it's available: https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=712605

But now there is http://megaprim.sl/ where you can request a megaprim from a website. It will send you an IM and link to authenticate yourself before it will send it to you but it seems to work quite well and seamlessly. It's run by Katharine Berry of web based AjaxLife fame and she coded the thing in a day and a half! http://kathar.in/2010/01/megaprim-sl/ Pretty cool huh? This would be a great service for all the other community tools that may end up getting delisted due to the Xstreet pricing changes.

Have the Lindens ever explained why the creation of new megaprims is not allowed? Why the editor is limited to 10x10x10?

I understand the notion that megas could be used for griefing, and have even successfully AR'd that a few times in my home sim... but 99% of them are not used that way - and normal prims can be linked to grief a region as well...

What I've head from Andrew, who may not have the only opinion at LL, is that it's largely a governance issue. If they allowed megaprims, they'd (rightfully) expect a huge increase in encroachment ARs.

IIRC, he thought that them allowing megaprim creation would probably be precluded by them letting land owners return objects that were at all over their land instead of just objects that were centered on their land.

FWIW, just to make sure we're all speaking the same language here, LL did at one time allow megaprims to be created. That's why they exist now. After LL changed things so that no prim could be created with a dimension of more than 10m, all the folks that had megaprims from before, made copies of them and distributed them.

Yep. The first time, 2006 or so, one of the libsl people figured out that the 10m enforcement was client-side and made a whole bunch of megaprims via some bot-like probram. Then LL made the 10m enforcement server-side. All these 'old' megaprims have the same creator, which I can't remember at the moment.

Then, 2008 or so, LL opened it up again for a few days and tons of new sizes & shapes were created by a whole bunch of different people. Whether LL did this on purpose or not, I have no idea.

Gene Replacement.


Additional factor in the "why not megaprims?": question: it is strongly in LL's financial best interests if builds require *more* prims, rather than fewer. The parcel encroachment argument holds little water IMO. It might have been credible if the maximum allowable size were 16M.

As for a megaprim search engine, this item has been available for along time:

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=768468

and is my personal favorite to date, although I will try the site introduced by the OP.

With no stinking HUD to wear and costing nothing, this is a simple 2-prim item. When you rez it inworld and click it you automatically log into the search engine, verify your avatar, and open the web page in your browser. Then simply type in your size criteria, browse a list of available prims at or near those parameters, and click to choose an item from the list for instant delivery.

Oh I had never heard of xstreet device you had listed. Katharine Berry's website does seem easier though. There's nothing to rez and I was able to order up everything offline. The first time you request one, it sends an IM with a link to verify (I get offline IMs) and once verified it delivers your mega prim and you only need to go through the verification process once.

Right! Just had to read the G and remembered it. I've certainly seen enough things with his name on 'em...


/me isn't convinced. I think LL introducing sculpties disproved this one.


I own about a 1/2 mainland region and still have neighbors creeping over the line.

Point taken.

The fact that prims are limited to 0.01 to 10.0 is stupid to start with. It just makes building houses and jewelry/accessories much harder than it needs to be.

Thanks, Josh!

more correctly, someone figure out how to create them despite LL's limiting code in the viewer. they have allowed them to remain though (it wouldn't be hard to add code to the sim to auto delete or refuse them on rez)

the two LL governance camps boil down "can reduce bandwidth" and "can be used for griefing"... both agree that megas + physics = bad things, even with H4. (adrew's comments to that effect can be seen in an old building forum post)

back on topic, between salt (which I grabbed all conglomerate boxes for) and the few TRULY megas I've picked up, I haven't found any new ones in katherine's site (there's a 256x1024x1024 though)

Sculpties do not address the same issue megaprims do. Sculpties may have the use of being able to save prims, but primarily they let you build objects you can't (at least not in a practical matter) with standard prims.

I think the griefing issue is bogus, as megaprims are readily available to griefers without needing to be made through the viewer. The inconvenience is to builders who can't make precisely the size prim they want, not to griefers.

I don't think I mentioned griefers.

the logic is that anyone focused on griefing will find a way, but not making them readily available reduces the casual griefing that might crop up otherwise. OTOH at least then the object would be identified to it's creator (although again, a smart griefer would just use someone else's)

Other people did.

Oh. You quoting me made me think you were responding to me. Never mind.

AKA "notorious griefer Plastic Duck".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNSDbkA_l5E

Gene Replacement made the first megaprims, by using some sort of software hack that bypassed the limits LL had set. He didn't actually make very many of them. Most of the "different sizes" of megaprims with his name as creator are actually much larger megaprim sizes that have been cut down with path cuts, profile cuts, dimples and other prim torture techniques. As a result, most of the Gene Replacement created Megaprims floating around today have bounding boxes that bear no visible relation to their apparent size. You might, for example, think you were placing a 25M x 25M x 1 megaprim exactly over your parcel, but in fact it might be a 50 M x 50 M x 50 M cube, whose bounding box extends well past your parcel edges into other people's parcels, causing problems for them. Linden Lab swiftly clamped down on the loophole that Gene Replacement used to make them, before he was able (or willing) to tell anyone else how to do it.

Over a year ago, a set of client and server updates inadvertently opened another loophole for creating new Megaprims. Some Open Source coders found the loophole, and published the client hacks that you could to do, to modify your SL Client to be able to make megaprims. For about a day and a half, several content creators worked furiously to create a range of megaprims that actually WERE usable sizes, without prim torture to alter them. Thousands of new sizes were made. I made 329 of them myself, before LL once again slammed the loophole shut.

Megaprims are a two-edged sword. Especially with the prim-tortured Gene Replacement megaprims, it is VERY easy to use them in ways that infringe on the rights of others, even if you are trying to use them responsibly. Griefers love to use them to do things like placing a 100+ Meter invisible cube over an area, making it inaccessible. And if the center of that cube isn't over the property owner's parcel, they can't return it!. The tortured ones also cause odd effects if you're in the bounding box volume, but don't realize it. Like failures to be able to rez anything, or what you try to rez on the ground appears on the top surface of the megaprim's bounding box, so far away from the prim maker that they think it failed...

At the same time, a properly-sized megaprim, used responsibly, can be the only rational way to make some things in SL. Try making a true Gothic Arch that is 50 M wide and tall in SL. It's far easier if you have prims larger than 10 M to make it with.

Some of the originally valid arguments against megaprims went away when Havok 4 physics was finally rolled out. Even Gene's tortured megaprims were less harmful with a better physics engine running SL.

As for the service mentioned by the original poster, it won't have ALL the megaprims in it, I don't think. Neither does the SALT HUD. I know my 329 are not in the SALT HUD, and I rather doubt they are in that web-based service either. And with the rush to remove freebies from XStreet-SL before the merchants get charged weekly fees for providing a free service, megaprims will be harder to obtain.

I just did a test using both SALT and Megaprim.SL, and there are still sizes that neither of them can find but which I have in the mega collections in my inventory. Thank goodness I kept those things, even though they are a pain go go though.