Openspace sims make some of us content creators look bad...very bad.

People will continue to overload an Openspace sim for the same reason they overload a normal sim. There are lots of folks who don't know what causes poor performance, or they just don't care. Either way they will continue to abuse hi-rez textures and load up on over scripted, primmy attachments - all the while complaining that "LL sux" and "The lag is horrible here!"

It would be a good idea to add some sort of visual clue when one entered an Openspace sim. Maybe one of the icons similar to NoPush or No Flight at the top of the window? Or maybe the word OpenSpace in front of the sim name? Any sort of indication might help to let people know that there are differences between the types of sims.

btw - I've had an Openspace for about a month now and I am very happy with the performance. I've had hundreds of scripts running with very decent performance, small gatherings of a dozen or so avatars, and no problems with slow loading textures. For example check out this short video I made on my Openspace featuring 101 physical, flapping butterflies:

http://www.shiny-life.com/2008/08/29/fluttersphere/

I think that the performance on an Openspace has a lot to do with who you are sharing your server with. Guess I have been lucky so far

Ok here comes the dummeh....

Zactly how do you check to find out what class sim you're on? I'm a renter and I'd actually like to know before the next tier is due.

Bring up the land window and check how many objects the sim can hold. 3750 = Openspace.

You can't really figure it out yourself if you're not on the mainland - all you can do is ask (and trust them to answer honestly) your estate manager.

edit: unless you mean openspace vs full sim, which is not the same as 'class'.

edit2: Great idea, Vlad! I'm gonna update one of the JIRA issues mentioned earlier and claim that as my own...

oh i guess i was not reading.

What?? Flog the sim renter???

Sorry. Any SL Realtor passing off Openspace sims like they are regular sims to anyone - new, old, ignorant, whatever - should be shamed, especially if they have an inkling that the person they and leasing it to is doing more than just a personal space. Why would any respectable, moral, ethical business person want to take money from somebody and give them something that cannot suit their needs? They would not - that is why we have words like moral, respectable, and ethical and people operating in that realm do the right thing.

There are plenty of SL Realtors or Residents in the Estate business that want their residents to be happy, and I know in my heart from what I have gleamed about them in their life in this and other forums, that someone like Wildefire Walcott would never take money from a person for an Openspace sim if they had an inkling that person who wanted it was going to be putting it to "heavy use" and did not know there was a performance difference in sim types.

So, yes. Shame on those people taking advantage of the ignorant. Being ignorant is not criminal. You should not have to read through 210 days worth of blog posts back to March to learn about Openspace sims. Heck they even took the blog links off the login page making access to information even more difficult.

Since it's not intuitively easy to know whether or not you're on an OpenSim, it is the responsibility of the island owner -- who ordered the OpenSim after all -- to make sure their residents are informed of its limitations. They should also have strict covenants in place concerning use and abuse of server resources, not just for their own tenants, but to protect the other sims sharing their server.

I don't get why anyone thinks it okay for residents to blame SL/LL for a sim owner's negligence or greed in overpacking a sim. Anything that reflects poorly on SL is ultimately bad for all residents.

Correctly, yes.

The problem is that in reality, it isn't turning out to be their responsibility; because, firstly the tenants often don't have the technical knowledge to know who's to blame; and secondly, even if they did, they have no recourse against the landlord.

There's an old saying which goes something like: "There are two ways to learn anything; the "easy" way, where you study, practice, and work your tail off before getting your feet; and the "hard" way, where you just jump right into the middle of the shark tank right from the start."

I don't coddle people who choose the "hard" way; they obviously are in it for the experience, both good and bad. The ones who chose the "easy" way don't need to be coddled.

In the military, we called that choice: Working harder, or working smarter.

The latter was always preferred.

Just had to mention these:
http://secondlife.com/land/#
Yes, go click the friggin big sign saying "openspaces"

Then, there's this one:
https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=4235

1) Provided the landlord of the sim makes clear that the sim is an "openspace" sim, those two things are pretty hard not to find. Both make very clear that they're "light use" and even give very clear examples of what can be regarded as "light use". So if they were warned, and just went on, then they do have themselves to blame, I really couldn't care less about it. This may sound cold, mean, whatever, but I'm sorry, there are limits to even my compassion. One could've even asked the landlord what this "openspace" means, and move responsibility to him/her for any bad decisions based on info he gives.

2) In case the landlord of the sim didn't make it very clear that it was an "openspace" sim, then yes, I could understand that people feel tricked into buying the place without knowing what they got into. It is simple to find out in advance, but for that you'd need prior knowledge about the estate window for example. So in this case, I do feel sorry for the people buying an openspace sim. They might not have had this problem if they had asked around for advice on purchasing land, but even then, good advice is sometimes hard to get. Anyway, the landlord is to blame in this case. The common word for this practice is scamming: selling people something, which may look like the thing they say it is, but actually isn't.

3) In case the landlord of the sim did say it was an "openspace" sim, but continued explaining that this only meant that it had less prims (or not even that) and nothing else, then again, I find the landlord to blame. As a landlord, one should be aware of the differences between sims. Lying or witholding information about this matter can be regarded as fraud, and I'm not sure how Lindenlabs would react if a complaint about such a scheme reached them, especially if it included chatlogs or the like, proving the behaviour of the landlord. I'm not a Linden, but I think I'd hit such a landlord pretty hard, possibly confiscating any assets the landlord might have.

Anyway, Lindens might have to assign someone some time to look into this, and weed out the bad guys. A few weeks fulltime, to clean things up, and a few hours a week after to keep things tidy. It shouldn't be that hard, to get some alt to investigate the various places. Linden Labs knows who is paying the bills. Linden Labs knows exactly what avatars own the various places, and can easily figure out who's Openspaces are heavy usage. With that information, Linden Labs can easily sort out which landlords need investigation and which don't.

Thanks for the links Meade! Voted on both.

dAlliez Estates when renting an open space sim to an avi always explains to the renter how the sims work, I personally do that with each renter. I will not allow Clubs or Malls in an os sim because 4 sims share the same core.

I make each renter Estate Manager teaching them all about estate tools, allowing them to keep track of scripts through estate tools. Just for the record you never know which other estates you are sharing the core with.

No matter how many times all of the above are explained there are a few renters who insist on using resource hogging scripts and will blame it on SL and the sim. The few we had in dAlliez have since moved on of their own accord.

I think most estate owners try their best to inform all renters of just what an open space is and what it is cabable of handling.

Alliez Mysterio

Nice advert there Alliez.

Laval's Estates and land rentals put in their adverts and parcel description that openspaces are to be used for light use only, they're not suitable for clubs or heavy script use!

Briana, I just had my first experience with a club on an Openspace sim...just horrible.

The lag made it impossible to stay...like glue.

I'm really surprised someone would go to all the effort to set up a club for live music and make it impossible for anyone to attend because of it being on an Openspace sim.

It boggles the mind that people could be so foolish but since it is the case, some education is definitely needed.

Just for the record it was not an advert I was stating for you to know how many landlords like me handle it. And as I said, I will not allow clubs or malls. I do spend a lot of time with renters trying to be sure they know all they should, cause and effect!

The many problems the op experienced is nothing new, it's just another day in sl.

Instead of things getting better with time, in sl it's the exact opposite. Things get worse and those in charge instead of fixing the many problems, instead concentrate their time on an alphabet long-list of viewers which none work correctly either.

Gotta' love those Lindens!!

That's something completely different.. From what you said, I was under the impression the renter who overbuilt that sim KNEW it was an openspace, and just wasn't telling anyone. In that case then yeah, shame on the realtor for trying to rake some noobs. IMO they should also make people take a basic sim knowledge test or something before being able to rent whole regions like that, so stoopid stuff like this doesn't happen.

I've seen heavily primmed out avatars cause the same affect on my full sim. I've never seen you in-world and can't know the details of your avatar or your friends' avatars, but the jewelry on your forum pic looks similar to the kind of things that have made my sim cry for it's momma. You might try an experiment with the same chaise in the same sim but with one stripped down avatar and see if the results are the same. I've also seen a group of 10 people show up at my sim wearing more scripts than most sims have on their own. Based on what Desmond has said in the past, the right group of 100 avatars can have a party on an openspace. Based on what I've seen in my full sim, the wrong group of 10 avatars can crash a sim without even meaning to.

Thank you for this post, I've had some friends get Openspace sims, and a few others who I know would like to get one in the near future. Hell, I've even thought about trying it myself in a few months. The prim limit will be fine for me as I have been a Landscaper in SL for close to 4 yrs now and I am used to doing wonders with restrictive prim limits. Even on my bit of land I have now, I have a nice lower prim house that looks like more than it is, a few pieces of furniture I made and some decorations. My main focus on my land is the outside, with the flowers and trees. I have a pretty nice set-up and try to keep 150-200 prims free. I've never lagged there except when there is some sort of SL issue.

I don't know all the specifics about the sims just yet and this has helped me learn way more, but I figure someone like me is going to be fine and have a nice place that won't lag the hell outta everything and everyone. I'm sure there will be many people who will buy these sims up like hotcakes and put laggy clubs and other things that they shouldn't be used for, but they will learn the hard way if they don't know what they are getting into when they buy an Openspace sim.

as a scripter, I wish we had a way to detect if the current sim is an openspace or not. Then it would allow content creators to disable deluxe features, switch to "less pretty but more efficient" processes, etc.

But, we don't. I think most people (as stated previously) will figure out that "it's just a laggy sim" and blame LL.. "cause (whatever it is) works fine in other sims".

So far, my experience has shown this to be true. Have been running a small club (yes, *club*, OMGZ!!! ) on an Openspace for about a month now. Maximum number of avatars usually doesn't exceed 20, frequently less than that.

I have not found the lag to be any different on the openspace sim than other full sims overall. Some days are better than others. One day I noticed that time dilation had dropped way down, so I restarted the sim, and everything was back to normal. That day it had seemed laggy with only 1-2 AVs on the sim and nothing going on, so I could only assume it was something else happening on one of the other parts of the server. But a restart took care of it.

I keep my eye on time dilation, FPS, and script usage... overall script usage on my OS sim is quite low.

For what it's worth, I typically find many areas of mainland to be MUCH laggier than my OS sim, or other OS sims I've been on.

how to know if it`s a void sim:

1. ask owner (should be obvious befor buying/renting)
2. tier (if it`s cheaper then most other places, 1+1=void)
3. PRIM LIMIT

if people are desperate to part with their money, they could do a simple search for "openspace sim"/"void" and see it`s for light use if they have no idea what the term means

you can`t blame all the creators for the ignorance of a few, blame the estate owners for not informing their clients propperly or shuvving multiple residents on a void

being able to detect it trough LSL would be like asking LL to add a transaction failure check in the money() function

Winter, all you have to do it look in about land at objects. If you have a land mass of 65536m2 with 3750 prims you have an os sim. Hope this helps~