Should we form a keep mega prim petition?

If linden Lab destroys the mega prims they will be destroying my sim. 60% of the sim consists of mega prims since linden lab formerly said it was OK to use them... It really does help out if used responsibly (just like scripting, gonna remove that too?). Take a look at what linden lab will be destroying if they do this. The result will be a lot of angry content creators and residents/visitors of this fine sim forming a mob in protest and hatred of linden lab. Should we form a petition against linden lab's actions?

Video of Serenity Woods and it's content: http://youtube.com/watch?v=kkfb2vxZPuU
Image of the mega prim sky islands revamped: http://images.wolfeedarkfang.com/sky%20islands.jpg

They should just disable physics on any object that is detected to have a prim larger then 10x10 as it seems the physics are where most of the issues are.

Sim sized mega prims are also great for breaking private sims into multiple levels so you can have a nice SkyTown

To play devil's advocate: LL have always maintained that they can not guarantee that megaprims will continue to be supported, and so any resident using them in their builds is taking a huge gamble. I do feel for you Yiffy, and for others that have put a lot of hard work into extensive builds using megaprims, but the above also has to be acknowledged.

I don't have a strong opinion on whether they should be wiped or not, as I don't have enough information to make an informed decision; I really don't know how much of an impact they really have. But I do applaud Michael putting it out there for residents to discuss, and if LL do decide to wipe megaprims, I hope they follow up that gesture with some notice so that residents can make the necessary adjustments to their builds.

my opinion:
with prim counts being so crucial, i think they should remain. however, as others have pointed out in the parellel thread, i think they should be limited to a reasonable size, and the basic prim be upped to 16 x 16.

as long as it's consistent across the grid, we'll just have to live with what is decided. with a company as small as LL, i imagine the politics associated with petitions might have some sort of weighty pull, but having said that, i've also never heard of a case where petitioning has done much more than unite like-minded people and caused the petitionee to think a little longer before making the decision they were ultimately going to make anyway.

The best course of action for linden lab to take is to re-engineer second life to allow us to use larger prims without the problems they say it causes. Not to destroy our content. I really do not want to rebuild my sim from the ground up because linden lab changes their rules. Many occasions I've had to revamp my products because linden lab changes scripting or how shiny works or something. LL stop messing up our content please... Mega prims being used irresponsibly? what else is new? Scripting gets used irresponsibly every friggin day. Is it next to go?

We've sort of thrashed it out on Walker's thread:
/327/52/216509/1.html
That said, if LL are going to remove megaprims, I would like them to give us a bit of advance notice so that changes to builds and products can be made before a cutoff date. If they pull the plug on megaprims 'Friday afternoon VAT-style' there's going to be an awful lot of broken builds right across the grid. No, it won't be the end of SL but it sure will be messy.

And if you're starting a petition, Yiffy, I'll sign it.

I use a few mega-prims to save on prim count, but if it takes removing them to get Havok4 and advance SL, then I'll bite the bullet.

While I wouldn't sign a petition to stop the removal, I do agree with Alazarin. A good warning would be nice. I won't hold my breath for it though.

One thing I'm hoping for is that if the physics advances with Havok4, that we ~may~ be on the verge of an increase in allowed prims per sim (which also would increase prims per sq m).

LL has not said anything along these lines, and even if they were working on it, it would be smart of them to NOT say anything until they were absolutely sure it was going to work first. But, eventually there will have to be some new tech that allows for a higher primcount. I'm just not sure what that will be.

And Yiffy, if they do pull mega-prims, and if my slight skills in building can help, all you need to do is ask and I'll be more than glad to help rebuild if you would like. I'm not the best (far from it), but I like to think I'm pretty good at building and prim-tricking for low prim counts.

~Jessy

I'm a great builder, it's just since we have to rent out most of the sim just to be able to afford it, our prim count is almost 2k left and i don't wish to push more into it. This is why we use mega prims.

I looked at the solicitation of player input on the mega-prim issue as being a good thing at first. Then after 300+ replies to the question, I noticed what the problem is. Michael Linden put three orthogonal issues into one question. They are:

1. Should we increase max prim size?
2. Is there an issue with prim encroachment across parcel lines?
3. Should we un-deprecate that which was deprecated since their introduction?

Three questions bundled into one makes for a very confusing answer and even difficulty answering it. I think the answers for 2 and 3 are self-evident:
2. Fix the encroachment problem by allowing return of overhanging prims of any size. This should have been done long ago and it isn't rocket science to compute.
3. Get rid of deprecated objects.

Which leaves only question one. Except Michael already answered that:It's kind of a shame that such a seemingly "community oriented" question should actually be so muddled. It's almost as bad as soliciting input on what color the Pie Menus should be.

My sim is built completely on big prims. Needless to say, I'm rebuilding right now...

I have heard reports that mega prims are actually functioning better with Havok 4. I think LL is just trying to gauge the amount of outrage that will occur the day they decide to delete them. I'm really confused why they are even asking us how we feel about them if they are claiming they will hinder planned upgrades to SL.

I'd sign.

Well of course Linden Labs wants the huge prims gone. The more prims you have to use the more money they make cause we all need more prims.

My pessimistic reasoning boils down to "Let 'em gripe now, so when it's done, they'll be whipped into submission already."

My optimistic reasoning suggests that it isn't to gauge reaction so much as to show us that they will pretend to listen to us. Frankly, if they'd up either the prim limits OR the prim size to at least 20x20x20, I'd be far happier. I do use some of the 20x20x.5's for floors, and would have used bigger ones.. except that they have some wonky bounding boxes, unless set phantom. That, sadly, would defeat the point of me using them

And for the ability to return any prim that overhangs onto my land? Can we say, happier me? Sure we can! And if they could make it so that auto return also did it? Hung the moon, is what I'd be saying.

A possibly unpopular counterpoint to the second part of this...

I personally would prefer that overhanging prims only be returnable manually, on a case-by-case basis, and remain untouched by autoreturn. Why on earth, reasonable people may ask? Because that would allow parcel-crossing-builds-by-mutual-agreement to remain. I've seen a few instances where useful stuff is accomplished right on the border of parcels with different owners and set to different groups; if prims encroaching on the border end up affected by the autoreturns of *both* parcels, it would become very difficult to build across irregular parcel boundaries.

And the special case of this, that affects me personally and probably lots and lots of other people: what about useful builds that encroach a little bit on Linden roads and other protected land? Say bye-bye to bridges across roads or landings and steps that go right up to the edge of the road.

Yeah it's a small thing, and I strongly suspect that *if* LL implements an "overhang return" function it will be all-or-nothing, not so granular as to allow manual returns without autoreturns bundled in the same package; but if given a choice I would vote for manual returns and not autoreturns in these cases.

True.. very true. I did forget about that!

Only problem with the manual is that one can't select the farking encroaching bounding box, if that's all that is encroaching. Maybe what we need is a button that allows us to return encroaching prims, instead, right under the other returns that parcel owners have.

So we have all learned we have an object-encroachment problem that really is separate from the megaprim question.

Nice to clear up the confusion. Now let's see if LL can be induced to clear up the problem, which seems quite widespread.

hope they destroy them, it's full of retards that use them to grief mainland

Look at Shoki sim

nope, because I for one would like to see the discontinued use of mega prims, and if possible increase the prim max size to 16 x 16 or even 32 x 32

to keep them, especially if they are going to cause any problems with future upgrades to SL, is not quite the right thing to do

I know your not calling us content creators who use them responsibly, retards... As I've said already... This is second life. What hasn't been used to grief? If they do away with this they better do away with everything else thats been used to grief, including scritping. It's only fair if they want to remove the problem rather then to address it, their gonna have to do a whole lot more then this.

Mega prims were created because of a need to have larger prims. Linden Lab's crazy prim size restrictions aren't very popular. If LL wants to correctly address this issue, the right thing to do is rethink how the grid is designed and redesign it to allow larger prim sizes which doesn't cause disruptions. But even then some idiot is gonna make large billboards. However people grief the grid every single day using SCRIPTS and PARTICLES. I don't see anything being done about that...

Particles -- Ctrl+Alt+Shift+= to turn them off/on. (Not effective if continuous from a focal point off your land, but still near enough.)

Scripts -- Disable Scripts. (Not effective if continuous from a focal point off your land, but still near enough.)

Prims -- Return. (Not effective if encroching from a focal point off your land, but still overhanging yours.)

LL will state that any of the above, not on your land, but still effecting you, can be ARed, or summited to Support and be taken care of. Effectiveness of Support can be argued, but they have worked for me on certain instances.

This is delving into matters of griefing however, and not the focal point of the thread.

Mega-prims, as they stand, are a hinderence to the new system, and are a "hack" in any event. I'm all for LL redoing prim size (both the upper AND lower limits) to allow for more inclusive building, as well as possibly revamping the prim-count limits per sq m.

IF LL would redesign the mega-prims so that they do not cause instability (and none can argue that the "footprint" of the larger [60m+] prims can cause "issues", then those that fit the new system should be allowed.

As stated in the blog, LL is saying that prims at 256m+ are the ones causing issues with Havok4.

Do we really need prims 256m in size?

What I think LL needs to do is look at a comprimise. Remove the mega-prims that cause issues, but leave the rest. Also, they should re-evaluate prim sizes through the normal SL build function.

Now....will they do that? *snorts* If there was direction in the LL Managment, I'd give a good % that they would. Under the "Tao of Linden" it will only happen if someone at LL wants to. Given the workload involved in this, did I really need to ask if they will?

~Jessy

If the maximum prim size is increased to compensate for losing megaprims, it must be to 20 not 16. I think the 20 x 20 x 0.5 big prim is far and away the most used.

"It's not my card it's second life. mostly everyone complains about the lag in SL especially in serenity woods which is almost full on prim count. i have a geforce 7600 GS 256MB so it ain't that"

hmm think it has anything to do with all the mega prims there?

As I've stated i would like it raised to 50m because any less i would have to rebuild my sky islands which took me a month to build. I don't believe true content should get f*cked up by a linden decision. They should work around it and find a REAL solution that doesn't involve breaking things.


Very true in most cases. if the prim is annoying someone they can easily return it if they own the land. Still the fact remains that anything and everything in second life can be used to exploit or grief the grid in some way or other. Removing mega prims is not going to help. And to be honest the last time i ever saw a mega prim being used to grief was 3 months ago when some newb kept rezzing a 512m prim in my sim and i kept returning it. Once i banned him it was over.

"It's full of retards that use them to grief mainland"

Uh huh. What's full of retards, again?

And you'd not have a problem to allow them on islands?