what does sim mean in the context of second life?

hi everybody

recently i got the question: what for do the letters SIM stand for? like if it was an acronym...

i couldn't answer either question.

and i haven't found anything corresponding on the internet.

that's why i post it here... (not sure whether it's the right category but it seems pretty general. sorry if it's not )

is it an acronym?
and what does it mean?

thanks a lot for your answer

It is not an acronym. It's a shortened word for "simulator".

See this recent thread asking the same question for mucho useful detail:

/327/2b/208450/1.html

"Sim" is a short term for simulator or simulation.

The square imaginary geographic regions in SL are called regions or sims.

The word simulation can be traced back to the year 1340, where it was used to mean "a false show, false profession," from O.Fr. simulation, and comes from the Latin simulationem (nom. simulatio) , "an imitating, feigning," noun of action from simulare "imitate," from stem of similis "like" (see similar).

There used to be a connection between a sim or region and a server - in the early days of SL, each region ran on one server, which had one processor with one core - but that is not true any more.

I believe there is now a connecton between a normal sim and a core. Each normal sim runs on a core. Some low prim sims run multiple sims per core. I think 4 low prim sims per core

I'm sure someone will correct me instantly.

Common phrases you will hear in SL that refer to 'sim' would be...


"This sim sucks!"

"Ahhhhhh we're going underground! I hate sim crossing!"

"There's 40 people I can't tp you into the sim."

"Ohhh my minimap is red...the sim just crashed... hello?"

I read that thread Jillian mentioned just now and found the definition of lag was somehow dry and lacking in emotive power.

I guess to get a visceral sense of what lag in SL is I'll just have to wait until I experience some.

...


Boy, was that ever hard to type with a straight face.

Youll still find the occasional TSO refuge who calls her avatar a "sim"

How exactly do you hear this one?

I've actually typed this to one or two people before but I'm not sure they ever got the message.

Me too or "Wow... I'm being sucked backwards across the sim, what a trip!" I don't think they get those messages. LOL

folk, thanks a lot for the useful answers!

and i even got some extra information about how a sim is stored on a server. until now i still believed that there's one server for one sim...

to me it seemd the most obvious way of picturing it.

so that's really not like that anymore?

but let's say a sim (or several sims toghether) like mc kinsey for exemple, they use soooo many prims... do they use one server per sim?

thanks again

I think this is the current Class 5 set-up, but I may be wrong. Each server has 2 processing chips within it. Each chip has 2 cores. Each sim is one core. This means basically that there is a single CPU running the sim. Each core also has its own RAM, which AFAIK the entire sim sits. The only time it will write to the harddrive is when it needs to save a copy of itself or when it overflows the RAM, which is a really bad thing.

Normal sims run one sim per server CPU. That is 16 acres (256 meters by 256 meters) and 15,000 prims, for up to 40 avatars to use.

OpenSpaces sims, used mostly for all-water or mostly-water areas bordering next to private island sims, to provide more navigable water around the sim, are low-prim regins that are the same size as a normal sim, but allow only 10 avatars at a time and only 1875 prims. These sims run in blocks of four OpenSpaces sims per server CPU.