How Many Avatars to a Sim 40 or 100?

Yesterday I was at a gathering and the Sim reached the full 40 avatars or so, was extremely laggy and wouldn't allow anyone else on the Sim. Someone then telephoned LL and fixed it so that Sim could handle 100 avatars. With 55 avatars on the Island, it wasn't even very laggy. This is a private island for a University.

I wonder how this is possible, many times I've seen full sims at 40 avatars, they were laggy and often crashed. Are LL able to raise their avatar limits on Sims, is this something for educational Sims only, or available to all?

I have tried to search this, apologies if I've posted something already talked about.

Thanks

owners of full sims can raise avatar limits. homesteads are maxed at 20

Just to expand on what Tarina said:

For mainland, the max is 40, give or take a few; there is an exception for people whose home is in the sim so it can sometimes get a little higher than 40.

For Estate full sims, the max is whatever the estate owner sets it to, up to 100.

For Estate homestead sims, the max is whatever the estate owner sets it to, up to 20.

I've been at an event where there were over 70 people in one sim and that was some time ago. It was the last night of the Three Lions pub at Bourton sim.

Thank you very much for you help!

If they phoned LL, and it was a University, and you actually saw lag decrease, I expect that they moved the sim to an otherwise-unoccupied server.

They'll do just about anything for educational or corporate clients. Not the rest of us hoi polloi.

Agreed. In general, simply increasing the allowed avatar count from 40 to 100 on a private sim would NOT improve sim performance. It would allow more people to enter the sim, but lag would continue to get worse for every additional avatar present. If all they needed to do was increase the avatar limit, then every private island sim would boost their limit to 100. In actuality, most leave it at 40.

The ONLY way that "a phone call to Linden Lab" could have resulted in a faster frame rate (less lag) as well as higher avatar limit would have been if they either moved that sim to a less busy physical server, OR if they restarted the other three sims on that server. eliminating some problem on one of those three unseen sims that was lagging the whole server.

About a year ago, I remember seeing a mainland sim, I think it was Warmouth, that had well over a hundred people in it. Not sure how that happened, and I've never seen it since, so I suspect it was something wrong on LL's end.