Bubye Huge Prims

It's not at all good as a floor, unless you're using it just over very flat land.

If the problem is that it's borking up the physics engine, I would take "they can stay but go phantom" over "they've got to go."

Garbage - there are plenty of places using the reasonable megaprims that are just fine in sim performance. The size should be the only distinction. If the bounding box doesn't line up with the dimensions of the prim (and yes, I've seen this), then I could handle those being banned - but these are typically on the really large prims, like 50x50. That said, they need to put in support for at least 20x20x20 prims, but preferably 32x32x32 prims.

well i use megaprims on my island and it would be odd that i could not use them.
i mean it cost 300 dollars (ex VAT ) a month, so please let me use my mega's where its not a burden to someone else......
so maybe a function in the estate propertys where you can set if megaprims are allowed would be an idea.

but who am I, linden does what linden does best......

Linden Lab opens up for only a couple of hours to collect 'feedback' with a blog title declaring huge prims a 'problem' - so we know where they stand on the issue already. (I didn't find out in time to register my feedback.)

Much of the builds on my 2 private islands use mega-prims - most of my builds would disappear:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/HatHead/7/24/31

I also have several altitude levels on my sims, each floor made by a giant prim for example. Despite what people say about textures, the images rez great on them and it would be almost impossible to create the same image effect with hundreds of individual prims. (i.e. one level is a street map of Paris - creating that from 10X10 to cover an entire sim would be tricky and tons of work - no work and easy with mega prims).

Also, I have a sprawling 3-sim hanging garden made with huge prims spanning across different sims. It is built precisely because the giant prims can rez (at least in appearance) across sims.

Mega-prims reduce lag on my sims by having less objects to rez. They make it easier on the prim limits by doing with on prim what it would takes hundreds to do in many cases. Huge prims also rez well from a distance where a collection of smaller prims will not rez at all.

Mega-prims are useful for cross-sim builds as avatars do not fall through them at a sim crossing as they through regular prims

I rely on mega-prims for big build projects as they provide excellent objects for creating super structures - especially cross-simulator builds!!

So far, LL has not reported all the benefits properly; throwing up a "The War on Griefing" rationale holds no merit whatsoever. And to make matters worse, LL says it will punish the private islands owners for the sake of Linden mainland properties.

I would definitely be using LL's new arbitration system if they deleted all my work, or if half of it disappears. Of, if LL removes any new use of mega-prims, it will add hours and hours to my build projects and bulk up prim limits.

Leave it alone!

Honestly..Well crap. At the risk of once again alienating myself from the community at large I can only reply with my honest opinion. Delete em. There are 100 blog reps and 2 pages here of the why and why not. I'll not rehash. But really. Delete em. Every single one of them.

IBM might rethink their recent collaboration with LL when they suddenly find large holes in their in-world presence where their megaprims used to be .

Almost anything has the potential for abuse, be it intentional or not. I agree there are significant issues that can arise from the bad use of megaprims, but IMO we and LL should be working a way to overcome these rather than taking the blunderbuss approach.

Megaprims are very useful when properly used for the reasons many people have stated above. The 20x20x0.5 prim alone makes a significant saving on floorprim use without any discernable effect on performance. Where prims efficiency = money (because poor prim efficiency means more land is needed and more land is more initial capital and more tier), megaprims can be critical in enabling a good build.

Michael Linden stated on his blog that the big sim-sized prim will definitely be going, and that they will be removed from all of SL, not just the mainland. I think this is a mistake. In some very themed sims, some very clever use of this large flat simsized prim has been made - I've seen it used to make a base of lava with an animated texture (the former Byss sim for those who remember it), or several of them layered to replicate a misty foggy water (one of the Avilion sims, I forget which), or a weird alien sky. Also, many themed sims (and my own experience is the Star Wars sims) use them vertically on the edge of the sim to form walls which can be textured with giant images to give wonderful thematic flavour - for instance an entire cityscape (please visit Telos IV or The Outer Rim sims for examples of this) or brooding mountains (Vjun sim). There is *no other way* of doing this satisfactorily at present.

Similarly, I've seen the 250m diameter sphere used with a wonderful cloudy sky texture inside and made phantom, surrounding a large skybuild (Nautilus sim - also defunct now) which was a fantastic effect. Maybe Windlight will achieve this also but you can't suddenly change your mind and replace it with a starfield texture to simulate space....or whatever you want.

I fully understand the problems with bad usage of megaprims, but then even normal prims and other things like scripts can be abused - are we to ban those also?

Megaprims as floors above a certain size (20x20x0.5m as I said appear to be fine) are a bad idea due to the different collision properties, and physics enabled megaprims are also a bad idea. But these surely are issues the Lindens can sort out with some controls...

- no megaprim can be physical? - would solve people playing with this function or trying to make megaprim vehicles (ACK)

- megaprims over a certain size must be phantom? - so no more huge megaprim floors to lag people out

Parcel encroachment issues are a problem, but there can also be abuse without using megaprims and there is no programming solution for those - an abuse report or somesuch is needed. Why is this different?

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

People like Hathead Rickenbacker and Genereplacement make a lot of sense. LL PLEASE listen to them.

The larger the size, the less practical use though, and the fewer people who are using it responsibly.

If 10 people use a 256x256 responsibly and a 1000 others use it to grief, it's less clear whether the small benefit outweighs the negative impact.

Quite true but if the measures above are carried out, a significant proportion of the issues would seem to me to be resolved. I wonder if the Lindens have a way of preventing megaprim rezzing in the mainland? If the only alternative is banning all megaprims, even this would be better perhaps. I don't have a private island but I do visit several and they would be decimated by a removal of large megaprims.

Well thats not a nice attitude, I mean why in the %$%^* should i get punnisht for what other people do with megaprims. like allot of builders they use it on estate/island so why remove them??? it easy to say if you dont use them.

and its true, when you have a big building, and you use a vew megaprims its less rezzing.

so c'mon gambling.. ok but plzz let me keep my megaprims on my own island.

As he mentioned on the blog post, Michael Linden has created a thread here in the forums to discuss the megaprim issue with residents.

/13/b7/216541/1.html

I have no objections to large prims if they are used properly - e.g. to save prims on a structure or to make building easier. When they get used for semi-griefing purposes like covering a whole sim or as huge parcel-encroaching, lag-inducing rotating ads, then they should be AR able.


What is more important is that prims or trees should not be allowed to permanently overlap other people's land if it's set to no-build. OK, a struture of of mine currently overlaps an unused 16m plot between 2 pieces of my land, but I accept that if its owner wants my stuff moved, I must remove it.

But very short term object entry (1 min) is important as a right, so that buildings can be rezzed and positioned on one's own piece of land.

Thankyou Hathead @29 for pointing out the useful and constructive uses for megaprims. As you mentioned, in your situation and the ones Leo Mission mentioned (Byss, Telos IV, The Outer Rim, Vjun, Nautilus), there is no real practical alternative. Megaprims are just another tool in the builder's box. The problem isn't the megaprim, the problem is with the person rezzing them. It's a quck, cheap, easy and cynical 'fix' for LL to make an issue out of megaprims before moving on them. What they're really (plastic) ducking here is the problem of dealing with people who use tools and features in SL to harrass, grief and in any other way diminish the experience of residents in SL.

I love the 20x20m ones and use them for the ground and roof on my sim- it saves A TON of prims.

Big prims (except for the more-than-sim-sized) are convenient, useful, and for some purposes, necessary. Keep 'em, up to the 256's. Maybe even add to them.

If we're going to ban things that are convenient, useful and necessary because griefers also use them, we are going to have to ban everything in SL. That line of reasoning would make us the ultimate griefers of SL.

Methinks we're only getting half the story on this (surprised?).
It looks to me like the Havok4 testing is revealing problems with megaprims. Am guessing it's caused by having them detect so many other objects / av's as within range and bumping the sims processor time up.
So it looks like it's more a question of what will Havok4 be able to cope with rather than how big do we want them to be.
That being said though, I can see a case for having them up to 128m long. That being the default draw distance, you're unlikely to bump into prims you can't see because they are too massive. However, 64m would be a nice compromise.
If I were LL though, I'd start by deleting the super massive sizes (256m+) and see how well the physics engine copes on the beta grid before deciding if we need to knock any of the larger remaining prims out.

LL could almost completely eliminate the griefing use of giant prims by allowing property owners to delete any prim that encrouches on thier land. They should do this anyway even for standard sized prims.

256x256x256 should be the largest prim out there.

Is there any way for an individual sim or sim classification to have assets not generally assigned? I'm asking as I would think ideally there would be limits on the mainland use of mega prims, with useable, scaleable prims up to 20 or 40m being added, and PIs to have megaprim usage determined in an estate setting. Michael says PIs can't have greater limits as then people will just take those prims to the mainland, but is there no way for those prims' usage to be enabled/disabled in the sim settings? Just wondering.

I've changed my position slightly as regards megaprims...... I'm now in favour of keeping all of them. Just been over to the Dune sim and seen how they've used one of the 65536 X 65536 megaprims to create the illusion of an endless desert world and I have to say that it works perfectly. Obviously such huge prims have very limited application but where they have valid uses, such as in Dune, the results are amazing.

Save t3h m3g4pr1mz!

I started this topic /327/97/216730/1.html#post1717816 to discuss how it would hurt the content of my favorite sim. Serenity Woods.

I must say, both you and Alazarin have shifted my take on this somewhat. There is plenty of huge prim content around with merit, and I would hate for it to all get broken.

The sim sized stuff can be a nuisance on the mainland, particularly if you can't get a Linden to resolve the situation, so maybe the solution is to allow them as an option on privately owned sims.

Here is a idea i know linden lab has never thought of. Instead of deleting the parts of second life that don't work, how about REPAIRING THEM. I noticed in the last year a lot of our valued features have been removed to make the database load faster... This should not be the solution. The solution should involve repairing the grid to house the features and content. The real problem here is linden lab are too lazy to address things correctly, and they expect us to keep paying them for their lousy services.

... I had the same problem until someone explain to me the reason. A prim need a collision box in order to be solid otherwise it would be phantom all the time, the collision box tell the game where the prim is exactly in space so you can interact physically with it. Collision box in SL are only supported up to 10m as are normal prims. So the huge prim you are using is not actually the size you describe it, it has been path cut to be of a smaller size but it still use the full size collision box. Try to make it hollow you wont be able to go thru. I have come up with a solution to make fake hollow prim.

Take a 50x50x50m huge prim and hollow it to 90%.
Cut path until you only have a flat wall, any L shape and you will bounce into the collision box. Collision box on huge prim are fine as long as the are completly square shape, nothing round, angle or corner. Using four pieces like this you can make a huge closed room for only 6 prim using a 50x50x1m floor and ceilling.

Hope this can give ideas as how to use the huge prims.

That's interesting; I thought hollow was just ignored, but apparently not.

Since the result is a flat box, I'll just mention that the standard trick is to dimple the megaprim instead of cutting it. To get the Dimple settings, switch the object type to Sphere, then switch back when done. Dimpling only affects the Z dimension, so the total range of possible shapes is constrained, but path-cut of the dimpled shape still works to carve up X and Y a bit, and the collision envelope seems to pretty accurately reflect the dimple and path-cut settings.

I've recently installed an oblate, 32x40m phantom dome, cel-shaded by the inside-out twist trick. That's one structure that would be hard to replicate with 10m prims.