"Prim" Islands?

Okay, so all the land I own is on private sims and I am not permitted to do teraforming, so my experience with that is very limited.

QUESTION:
I'm looking to buy on the mainland and can't keep from wondering why owners don't raise the land out of the water instead of making a prim island. Why?

RANT:
Why would you advertise land for sale and then put ban lines around said empty lot!? I would like to stand on the land before I bought it!

Mainland can only be teraformed +/- 4 m from its original start position. In some places the land is more than 4 m below the surface of the water.

Answer: because mainland terraforming is limited to +/- 4m. Unless you are right on the water's edge, you're not getting much out of raising the land.

Rant Answer: no clue, my dear. Probably clueless that the ban is on.

In many areas of the mainland, you can do way more than +/- 4M terraforming. Some areas are +/- 40, some are +/- 20, some are +/- 4, and some are even +/- 0 (not terraformable).

For the +/- 0 places, the reason for prim islands is obvious. For other areas, my guess would be that people find prims better suited to certain tasks than actual land. Unlike mainland terrain, prims can be custom textured for starters. So if you want any texture other than that of the surrounding area, you've got no choice but to use prims. Also prims are far easier to make precise shapes out of than land is. Many people find the terraforming tools to be difficult to use, and the wacky LOD behavior of the terrain mesh can be pretty annoying at times.

I can't speak for anyone else though. Just guessing.

Thank you to the both of you. Your answers make sense!

The knowledge base has a list of 54 regions where the limit is not +/- 4.

Good guessing Chosen.

Next question.
I'm looking at waterfront property. Is there any chance (or any history of) Linden Labs will add onto my edge of sim (continent) property blocking my sunset views?

And what about the "protected" inland waters?

Yes there is a chance that one day you will log in and find your ocean front view is now a budding subdivision.

LOL! So much for "protected" property!

Well think about it this way. If you're on an old, established continent, chances are pretty good nothing will ever change. If you're on the leading edge of a new continent, you might get built up to.

I've been wondering where I saw that listing....had a friend with land in one of those "regions with unusual terraform limits" but couldn't remember where that list was... thanks

The nicest property I found is on the old continent. Just a shame it costs so dang much.

I just bought some of those prim "islands", 4 lots, a fortune; $9590 for each 512 lot, but on an older continent. I'm pretty sure I won't have to worry about a fashion mall springing up on my ocean view. I hope *keeping fingers crossed* Was worth losing some prims over for the wonderful views (now if I could get that one neighbor to take his ban lines down, but that's a whole other kettle of fish...)

9590 sounds pretty good! The cheapest I saw was 11990.

I have 4 4096 lots on a private sim and the most expensive was 34,000.
The lot I had my eye on is about 2200 qnd they are asking 150,000!

Well these aren't ISLANDS. They are only sandbars

It's somewhere to sit and watch the sunset!

I was looking to do the same thing, meaning buy a couple of them. I found one group that had 3- 512's and a 1024. Decent size and facing the west.

I know what you mean. I originally bought 3, and then bought the last one, which was the far west one when I realized someone might grab it and screw up my view. Made my tier jump to $15, but was well worth it to make sure my sunset was safe

Many people buy mainland land on the ocean and then turn it into regular mainland land with the use of prims. I have no idea why. It doesn't seem to be worth the bother. I mean why buy land like that if you are just going to make it look like suburbia?

As far as erecting ban lines around land for sale I have seen it many times and have scratched my head raw. It is one of the deeper mysteries of SL I think.

Grrrr ! Prim islands. Build a bloody skybox ffs!!!! Bloody venetian wanabies.
/me goes looking for an realy big icebreaker.

It's pretty obvious when you look at the map if the land is going to continue, or if it's at the 'edge' where LL is planning to stop. If you see a perfectly straight line, with all land, then it's a pretty fair bet that they're going to add on more land. Whereas, when the edge of the sim facing the ocean is uneven, and there's a beach, then it's not likely going to be extended ever.

I've been wondering about this....... since new mainland continents are being built, would it be safe to assume that the monkeys won't be adding on to existing continents?
We've been looking at some land on the edge of an older continent, which seemed nice and reasonably priced, but if more regions were to be added, that could potentially ruin the view as it were.