What's the consensus on openspace over-subdividing?

The nice things about these openspace sims are:
-You (almost) always have a view
-You have more land
-Your closest neighbour will be further away

The drawbacks are:
-You won't have the prims to fill up your entire area. You have to be VERY cautious about prim usage for building, furnituring and landscaping.
-Your Openspace sim is run on one CPU, together with 3 other Openspace sims, while normal estates run at 1 sim/CPU. If all 4 Openspace sims on that CPU are "light use", then there's no problem. But, if one of those sims happens to be a busy club or heavily scripted and textured mall, then the other 3 sims will take a performance hit as if they were the same sim. We have yet to see what happens to a nice residential openspace sim if all 3 other openspace sims on that CPU turn out to be clubs/malls. Mainland would probably be a better place to live then.
-Land on Openspace Sims can be sold "as if it's" a normal sim. A 1024 sqm piece of land may show as having all 234 prims available with the bonus modifier, but this may well be a fake. The sim won't go over those 3750 prims, even if there were a hundred pieces of land on it with a prim limit of 200+ each. So yes, new residents ARE being frauded into buying land that's not as good as it looks. Especially newer SL residents may be conned into this, not knowing to check the estates tab to see what type of server it is, and maybe not understanding it fully when they do.

If anything, land owners SHOULD tell if a sim is an open space sim, and inform people wishing to buy/rent land of the consequences. Bonus prims should probably even be disabled entirely in Openspace sims, to prevent the kind of abuse OP is talking about, so for example, a 2048 sqm plot of land in an Openspace sim will always have only 137 prims available, no more, no less.

im not *assuming* anything...i know of many people with these void/openspace sims..which is why i started to look into it myself...ive listened quietly to the problems they tell me their residents have, and to some who have joined them to their exisitng estates and wish they hadnt/ are presently having them removed or moved away...ive been fortunate to know honest people who have invited me to witness the script errors that happen on very minimaly rented spaces...ive hung out on quite a few to see for myself how these huge split into 4 parcels react whehn you try to launch a modest boat...(that was fun, crashing & bouncing around a lagged up sim, uder the sea, over the sea, flying through the air-) and only me, 3 residents and some pretty average looking homes there) You share the resources with 3 other void sims...its pretty logical to know that your use WILL indeed impact on the other 3..and theirs will impact on you.

uhm as far as i know , one full sim runs on 1 server...you dont share resources between the sims you own.

Sorry I don't understand this mentally, 1. your assumptions are based on that everyone who buys a open sim doesn't know what they are doing, 2. that by not knowing how a open sim is different from a full sim that that would be a con, most know, can see, they are getting a lot of space with a few prims.

I was going to say this was rubbish and that if the land owner has genuinely made part of the land = water, very low or no prims at all, the residents can use those prims as a bonus. However, on a open sim, why do this at all, just give them the larger area of land equal to that bonus, so yes I would also question why a open sim would ever be set to show bonus prims.

One full sim per CPU, that means a quad core box has four full sims on it. It's fairly unlikely that the sims you own share a box but you're definitely sharing with someone.

im not an oldschool mega land baron lol. i own ONE full sim..and feel pretty torn from what i read in these forums- which granted isnt representative of the WHOLE of SL...!! I see and listen to what im told from those who have gone the void sim route already...i listen to those in here who say they are fine...its a difficult choice, im not here for the fast buck, and i dont want all the hassle of going this way and not heeding what ive seen for myself and told by associates, to regret it later. I think what i may do is buy one and "suck it and see", i cant see how it will react any differently from those that ive been on inworld...and that wasnt fabulous to be honest...and thats where i struggle..knowing already feels different to buying in and then finding out, and making the best of it.

Also this means that 16 open space sims share too. 4 x 4

And this is different than the experience on overloaded full sims how??

My point I was making earlier was that, I've been in full sims that were overloaded. The only difference was that I could SEE (or assume, based on where the AVs were) who was impacting the sim performance. (Well some of them... not counting the the other 3 sims per server, right? )

And just because I could see them didn't mean I could get the other owners to change anything anyway. I didn't own the estate, just the parcel.

You are saying that openspace sims are laggier. I say they aren't signficantly laggier than any other virtual land. It depends who else is sharing, yes. That's nothing new.

A normal sim runs on 1 CPU, but there can be multiple CPU's in a server (usually 2 in SL).
Usually, you'll hardly notice a thing of the other sim that's sharing your server, not even if it's an active sim. But there have been extreme cases where lag from one sim did bleed over onto the other. There was some thread about this about half a year back, about some sim being allocated to the same server where some extremely heavily visited newbie place with a big mall, casino and camping area was. Yes, a casino, so that has been a while ago

if youi rented land on a full private estate and had performance issues...why not contact the owner? I know many who would run a check for you and if they saw something that was scripthogging away the sim would sort it out- i know i have. I have banned the use of prim rezzers , and keep a close eye on what people use...no one person should wreck another users experience, education wins all the time i find, people just arent aware of their own impact and need to be made aware, its quite simple.

Sorry about any confusion, class 4 and 5 are dual proc, dual core as discussed here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/06/goodbye-to-class-3s/ and here http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/16/looking-forward-to-class-5/.

Specifically here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/16/looking-forward-to-class-5/#comment-9918 for number of sims per server.

I rent and lease out on both open space and regular sims, normaly on a regular sim I set land size to 1024 and 4096 and 512 on request.
Openspace sims I normaly only offer at complete size but I have devided one in 4 on request of all renters on it, I don't feel comfertable splitting one up beyond that.

The people I rent open space sims to especialy ask for one and I have a feeling most estate owners offering openspace sims do this too.

My prices also reflect the fact that it costs me 1/4 of the price so they pay 1/4 of the price, people charging more then that and not telling it is an openspace sim are in my opinion indeed frauds.

things like script errors and untracable lag that does not go away after a restart appear a thing of the past but offcourse with every roling restart things can change for better or for worse but currently threre is no problem using a openspace sim for a 1/4 of the load you normaly use a regular sim for.

Does anyone know the mechanism used to share resources for the four openspaces on one cpu? (Naively - if it were time slicing, it could guarantee constant resource availability but at the cost of reducing performance when the other three are empty. Probabaly such things as sending data to clients would have shared bottlenecks anyway?)

If you're expanding then yes, but plenty of people still like having neighbours or the feeling that someone else is around. Some people also want more prims than an openspace delivers.

Desmond, Sarah and yourself are the big players I see in this thread and you're all happy with them

The only way I'd get involved with openspaces right now is if I wanted to use one myself or someone asked me to buy them one and gave me the upfront fees. They're a hefty weight to carry around if people start not re-renting, I'm a negative Nancy on things like this.

Just for you Faithless, if you like, I've got an openspace region I'm using for development - you can play with it for a week and see for yourself, I'm too busy with other stuff to be using it much at the moment.

Drop me a notecard inworld if interested, I'll give you estate rights so you can see full script stats, physics, do restarts, load it up with prims and scripts, everything. All I ask is don't return the prims already there, and if you want to load it down with friends use group access rather than switching it to public access.

No baloney, no strings attached.

* * * * *

Regarding a fast buck - I wonder if people have *any idea* what would happen if I did a one line classified forum post saying "Des Shang backed openspace, 250 USD and then 110 a month" - but I haven't, and am not planning to.

I literally turn away one or two people *per night* who want an openspace region from me. Why do I turn them down? Because I want to make a compelling little country, carefully laid out instead of just another waffle-grid of tropical islands.

Yeah, crazy, I know. But it's the one thing that has made me different from just about everybody else. I think most people, if they found themselves in my shoes would simply laugh and scream "show me the Money baybay!!!!" and then wear out the region purchase button in the land store.

I had land store beta access from the very beginning of the rollout, when very very few people could even offer an openspace. Regions delivered near-instantly when almost nobody else could get them. I could have charged practically anything back then and gotten away with it, by virtue of being known and established - and god knows, many people did exactly that.

How many others in my situation would have been as conservative? Instead, I'm offering someone a free openspace to play with in forums.

If I'm playing for money, then I'm blowing it big time.

I haven't looked into the Open Sim thing enough really. If I wanted one, just for me, happy with 3750 prims as that is what I have right now - would that be more or less expensive than owning 1/4 of mainland?

A link would be great if anyone has one, for the thread itself?

Openspace sims currently seem to represent about 45% of all private sims which means they account for about 15-20% of all private sim tier and that percentage is only going to go up.

The time for LL to "police" the use of openspace sims has long come and gone, the only road open for them is to make openspace sims perform as well as they can get them to.

You can only get one if you already own a private sim so the only option is to rent one, or ask someone you know to get one on your behalf and pay them (which would be a rental situation as well).

The cost of them for a sim owner is $250 to buy (includes first month of tier) and $75/month in tier (same as 1/4 sim mainland tier). The one I rent is nothing upfront and $90/month which is about the same as I'd pay for mainland since I have 21% VAT so renting is as cheap/expensive as if I'd be paying LL for it (and I didn't have to "buy" it).

You can either get one detached (no other sims around you), or attached to other sims (most seem to require that you need to keep it open for people to sail through in that case) and it can be its own estate so you can get estate manager privileges.

Give me a poke in-world next time you see me on if you want to see how it behaves for residential use .

I agree with the overal sentiment regarding disclosure. However, on its surface, what you touch upon here I can actually see as a *good* thing, all else being equal and on the level. I would love to consider subletting an openspace sim from an estate owner, not being ready to take the plunge into island ownership yet myself.

Same price if you go via Linden Lab, of course you have your premium membership fees on top for mainland and only estate owners can get an openspace via Linden Lab.

In your case if you pay LL directly you pay VAT which bumps an extra $13 onto your payment so if you could get an openspace for $88 a month or less then you'd probably make a slight saving.

Id be a very foolish person to turn down such a great offer, so as soon as Im inworld I will write you that notecard as fast as my little fingers will go-thank you for the offer Desmond !!

As for the "fast buck" comment, no not directed at you but the new breed of agents I saw had popped up seemingly over night specialising in voids and not mentioning or giving any indication of what people were getting, or how it MIGHT be affected..some even casting a negative light to win business on private estates...that just left abad bad taste in my mouth.

I must be mad then, cos much as I love having a nice hill and river etc on my land I am surrounded by crap in all directions, sufficient for me to box myself in with 100x50 walls!

Hmmm ...

HMMM ...

@Kittywaffle ... sheesh, poke you in world? That's asking for fifty varieties of trouble!

This is the thing Faithless. I'm starting to be interested now tbh ... but knowing who to go to is the problem.

I think a nice little watery world near but not too near a 65k space, open access, would suit us just fine. Hmmmmm.

In terms of marketing though I find it worse to see people saying land is available for L$1 and then you read the advert and find that's not the case at all. That's very misleading.

I'm not talking about land that is set for sale for a L$1 reserve and then makes it abundantly clear that the land costs more, I'm talking about headlines of land available for L$1. Why do people do that? Makes me suspicious from the start.

As an aside, there was talk a while ago of openspaces having a potential issue with mono, has that been resolved?

Not sure about MONO but there was a memory problem with HAVOC4 in relation to open space sims but that has been fixed a few updates ago.