How are mega-prim vehicles done?

I keep hearing there's a thirty-something prim limit on vehicles, and I know that if objects are too far apart you can't link them. So I'm curious -- how is it that there exist vehicles of hundreds of prims or more, and mega-prim starships that are so big you can't rez them in most sims? How are the limits circumvented? I don't need to try to build one myself, I'm just really curious.

There are a few ways to achieve this.

First, you can make a vehicle base which is within the 31-prim limit, then have a 256-prim attachment that is the vehicle's detail and outward appearance. As an attachment it is phantom and non physical, so you (and passengers) just sit on basicaly a flat board with some seats on it, and you wear the attachment which makes it all look good.

Second, you can use non-physical movement. You can make something with up to 256prims I think and then script it to move non-physically, using llSetPos and llSetRot calls. It can be a bit jerky and non-realistic, but it does work.

Finally, you can use non-physical movement, with more than one object. Make 4 or 5 separate objects, each with a 256-prim limit, each up to 30m in size, and script these separate pieces to all move at the same time, with non-physical movement. There is a script called MultiMove (I think) which does this. It is a bit jerky and the pieces can sometimes move out of sync but this does work and will allow a thousand-prim 100-meter long vehicle to move.

-Atashi