The Big Prim Problem

I use the smaller ones on my own land only. Useful for floors and skyplatforms.

Megaprims are hugely useful when building but I think there should be a size limit on them maybe 60x60x60 which is big enough for most builds but not so large they cannot be managed.
Using 10x10 for bases and backdrops would be impossible and SL would not be as beautiful as it is now without the use of megaprims so please think carefully about getting rid of all of them or if you do, firstly give us plenty of notice so we can adjust our builds, secondly increase the basic size limit from 10x10x10 to 20x20x20 so we have some chance of building on a larger scale without ending up running out of prims.

Megaprims have their uses. one of the uses is of course 'abuse' just like one of the uses for any prim is abuse.

here is what I'd suggest. a 3 month transition period where.
1. you distribute a non-copyable set of megaprims to sim owners that limits their use. i'd imagine around 200 prims as a base set, with the possibility of buying more packages for a percentage increase in tier or perhaps a flat charge
2. 3 months later remove all other megaprims other than the non-copyable ones.
3. include a sim setting to allow or disallow megaprims like you have for voice. it would just check a maxdimension variable or a size variable.

the big prime up to de 32x32 size are to use full to be deleted the others 50x50 up are not needed, but on when the prime limit is change to a volume size of 10.000 or zome thin like that and then set that a max size is not bigger than 64m ( that is de minium draw disten every body see, than a wall/ floor of up to 64 x 64 x 2.?? can be made
i think that this way wil sute all need for every body even is max is limit to 32x32m
then the use of huge primes is not needed any more so when it poseble
i like to see that the primes ma be reside up 32 or 64 meter in every side as long
the x * y * z is not bigger then 10.000 ( this way the 10x10x10 is still poseble and when 1 side is reduce then a other side gan be bigger.)

else keep the huge prime up to the 32x32x40

Someone here already mentioned building platforms in the sky for legitimate use of megaprims. That's one of my uses for them. I also wanted to have a moon above my cemetary, in a mainlandSim (Murinata) where i own most of the land. 50x50x50 sphere was ideal for that. Without megaprims, i can say goodbye to my moon-in-the-clouds, unless i want to get a pathetic low-altitude 10x10x10 sphere

Another 2c from a resident and paying customer:

Yes, the prim limit has been mentioned several times. 20x20 up to 50x50 are a great asset for builders (that counts me in, too). They also are a great help for texturing large walls or floors. Sim owners mentioned several times that 'mega megaprims' are great tools, too. I never used anything larger than 50, though.

Greenies, for example is an awesome place. But tons of large buildings in SL use them.

No, not at all.

Don't you dare!

Personally I don't need prims larger than 50x50. But sim owners may need the larger ones.

- Increase prim limit (and not only on private sims, of course!!)
- Implant a max prim size of at least 20 (50 would be better, though)


I don't see a "Big Prim Problem", I only see a problem if we can't use "Big Prims" anymore.

you want some reasons for mega prims to stay? Here are 8

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Langerck/LightRay_001.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Langerck/reason_001.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Langerck/reason_002.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Langerck/reason_003.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Langerck/reason_004.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Langerck/reason_005.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Langerck/reason_006.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/Langerck/reason_007.jpg

huge prims are a necessary thing for me, i build in huge scale and alot of the times i build organic type things. Without huge prims, my forests dissapear, and so do my castles, since the prim conservation on the castles makes them possible on smaller parcels. Without huge prims i can never turn second life into something more for people. I will never be able to push the boundaries of SL, i will be stuck trying to find some complex unneccessary pain in the neck way to emulate even a little, the same effect that i get with huge prims

my suggestion? Up the size of prims to 20, thats mostly what i use anyway....and i use ALOT of 20 20 60 cylinders...NO TOUCHY THOSE!!

i admit there are griefers who use megaprims to be jackasses, but think of it this way, the griefers use EVERYTHING to grief anyway, you wanna get rid of megaprims cause people use em to grief? OK lets play your game, get rid of prims alltogether, dont want them spamming physic balls all over the place or how about 10 10 10 boxes placed at the edge of the parcels to bleed into the next one without deletion, yes definitely get rid of prims. Definitely get rid of scripts, they cause a whole heap of trouble, screamers and particle throwers and prim generators and duplicators, the fun never stops, lets get rid of scripting too.

See my point? Noted that prims spanning over 10 sims are pretty serious, and i think those should be removed, i do not think the actions of a few retards should make the world of SL art crumble.

You want the problem to go away? Then make huge prims legal, and increase the size from 10...10 is nothing, NOTHING. Especially considering the prim counts most people get.


*sigh* i have said my peace, I hope huge prims arent taken out, i would have to leave =/

Difficult issue. I have used them and like them.

Now they are being used against my by Christians who don't like the fact that their neighbor is gay.

Enforcing TOS is the obvious solution but so far it has been 5 days since my report and nothing from LL.

Meanwhile our sim is crashing all over the place.

A lot of peole are going to be very angry if they are deleted.

oy

It appears there are may good uses of mega prims. To limit abuse I believe some rules on returning or moving prims you don't own should be made.

1: A property owner should be able to move, delete or return ANY prim that encroaches on their property by ANY amount.

2: When a prim occupies space on 3 or more land parcels and those 3 parcels are owned by different avatars that are not part of a group that owns the 2 parcels, ANY avatar may delete that prim.

These rules would apply to any prim not just the mega prims.

Giant Prims can have very positive uses. The photographs I have posted here illustrate several positive uses at the NASA and NOAA sims and a few other locations in SL. Aside from reducing prim count, they have enourmous advantages where large smooth curves and seamless textures are desired.



I own most of the land in Shona, a mainland sim, and have 32 of the giant prims in use there, and have not noticed any problems related to using them.

The most useful prims are the spheres and cylinders, as they allow one to create objects with smooth curves that cannot easily be replicated using smaller prims.

All of the giant prims 50m and below in size are quite useful. 100m and above have uses but are more limited and can be replicated with smaller prims. I could easily support removing them.

I love the idea of big prim as a builder, I would actually love to see a better variety of buildings oriented big prim with full editability (i.e. a LL sanctioned 20 X, or 30 X or 40 X)to help with prim count, especially on small property but the super bigs . . those seem most suited for full or half sim estate owners and island builds

Perhaps the prim size could be restricted by in part by size of property . . I mean there is no need for someone with 1024 sm to rez the 65,000 plus prim just for grins.. The system already as the capability to know you can build where, between what the labs already tracks for tier and the ability of residents to give permissions for building on their property thereby limiting random big prim building

Lately there has been a lot of discussion on big prim and sim performance . . if the lab had suitable designed (optimized) large prim I suspect this would also be helpful overall

Pluses: total prim in a build, ability to truely be creative in structure building
Bads: the few people who use them to harass, the lack of spatial understanding of those that rez them just to see what it means

Just IMAO

The mega prims that are roaming the grid currently, are often way too big to be usefull. However, a lot of them (like 20x20xsomething or 40x40xsomething) are very usefull indeed. I think a maximum size can be set (like the suggested 256m).

Also, if you remove the 10x10x10 limit we could e.g. use a 30x30x0.5 box, instead of a 40x40x40 hollow & cut box that we currently use for a platform simply because the set of available huge prims is too limited.

Tho large cubes can be recreated using multiple smaller prims - circular shapes larger than 10m cannot be recreated while maintaining nice curves.

I vote for a maximum prim size of 256x256x256 - and while you're at it a minimum primsize of 0.001x0.001x0.001

Lyn

I've never heard of mega prims until now, but I think it seems like a great way to save on prim usage. I'm a builder myself and have spent countless hours creating floors, walls and roofs, then not having enough prims left to furnish the buildings afterwards. I can see how mega prims would be useful in this situation.

I can also see how it can be abused, but there are all sorts of ways to abuse second life, including other ways to encroach other ppl's parcels. I don't think that something so useful should be outlawed when there are so many other things that are not useful at all that are abused every day. A good example: Alternate Accounts. There is no reason for someone to have an alternate account except to abuse some kind of rule, such as entering a parcel that you have been banned from. This is still allowed, yet there is no good use for it.

I'm going to log in right now and go find me some mega prims and use them to replace all of the walls and floors on my parcel with them. That should save me about 100 prims.

If you get rid of megaprims, you need to somehow increase the prim limits on all property to compensate. Depending on the region and the server it's hosted on, the allowed limit on any particular parcel is often so ridiculously low that it makes no sense to even try to build anything beautiful or complex (or both), which is what makes SL a special place, with its diversity. What, we should all put up ugly low-prim buildings just so we can have furniture? SL would become a real urban blight area if so.

Megaprims help get around the limits, but yes, they can be abused just as anything can be abused. My main point is, why punish everyone for the sins of a few?

Up front, I'm a relatively novice builder and have never used megaprims. But my pocketful of cents is this: If these prims are negatively impacting the physics engine, they should be banned. End of story, IMHO.

I've encountered many instances of inexplicable lag, and I've heard these megas are the reason for it. If that is true, then I can't believe their downside - LAG - is counterbalanced by their upside - EASIER builds, more SPECTACULAR builds.

Building in the real world is constrained by the laws of physics, so I don't see it as a major limitation for this virtual world to be constrained by the removal and banning of megaprims. Especially if doing so improves the smoothness of moving about and interacting in world. BAN EM!

Did no one read my post about how useful 65,000 prims are on OUR sim?

Please visit Avatrian Central and tell me if they are NOT useful and if they do cause any major lag on our sim and your SL experience.

-RODION

I spend a lot of time in a busy RP sim (CoLA). Until recently it was a stable RP sim but neighbors have added some out sized prims to the area. They have caused added rezzing lag along with added sim crashes. These prims should be gotten rid of. Frankly i say to builders if you need something huge, make it with several prims and line up the textures.

(however it should be noted i also think parcel/sim prim limits are far to low, add the hardware to cope with more prims then people wouldn't want to make megaprims)

I would suggest that if you must limit megaprims, limit the multiple-sim spanning ones. Ban the larger prims' use on the mainland (20x20x.05), but allow private sim owners to shoulder the risk of the larger ones.

I would agree with allowing sufficient notice for people to fix their builds. I cannot imagine the amount of content that will be destroyed otherwise. :/

Any tool can be abused. Scripts are abused to grief and even crash the grid, we've all seen it done dozens of times. LibSL can be abused for things like copybot. Anonymous accounts are abused all the time by both griefers intent on harassing, attacking residents, and crashing the grid, as well as by financial criminals intent on defrauding honest people.

LL is not getting rid of LSL, LibSL, or Anonymous accounts any time soon that we can tell, constant pleas for restraints and restrictions on all of these have fallen on deaf ears.

As an architect in SL, I can attest that Megaprims are necessary tools of my trade. You can see them in my majestic skyscrapers in Friedman, Von Mises, Lorrey and Magritte.

Architecture is not about blowing tons of prims on creating something simply of beauty. Such un-utilitarian a goal is called art. Architecture is about taking utilitarian needs (i.e. allowing for the maximum use of prims BY THE OCCUPANT for themselves and their furnishings) and creating a structure for them to accomplish that goal that is as aesthetic as technologically possible without sacrificing that functional need. For this reason, megaprims are absolutely necessary to deliver upon the mission of the architect. It allows for the architect to design a structure that minimizes the number of prims needed for basic structural needs (large walls, windows, columns) while offering generous usable floor space and headspace.

Particularly given the 20 meter range of chats, multifloored structures should have 20 meter ceilings for each floor to provide a modicum of chat privacy between tenants. Trying to design for such privacy requires twice as many prims for walls as a 10 meter ceiling. 20 meter ceilings also allow for sufficient wall space for vendors in stores, all of the best stores in SL have such high ceilings.

By minimizing prims wasted on basic structure, we can actually make our buildings more beautiful, because we can use saved prims on the details which turn a box into a building. Thus, megaprims serve a very useful function in two ways: they allow for more prims for architectural details, and allow for the building owner to maximize the number of prims they can use for themselves, or rent out to their tenants.

Without megaprims, building owners are forced to choose between beauty and utility. With megaprims, they can have both.

That said, there really is no architectural need for a prim larger than 256 meters in size. If LL were to eliminate prims larger than 256 meters, that would be fine, but don't do anything to the ones under 256 meters.

I imagine they interfere with your ad plots quite a bit.

My sim of Friedman contains thousands of megaprims, yet it is one of the smoothest running sims in SL. I can frequently move around there with my draw distance at 512 meters, whereas other sims without any megaprims immobilize or even crash me at such a draw distance. As an estate owner, I have extensively tested megaprims and my analysis shows that there is really zero impact on sim performance, and in many ways helps improve it, because the main determinant of rez lag for an avatar is the number of polygons they download, and textures they need to load. Megaprims minimize both of these. Claims that they are laggy are IMHO false.

Additionally, posts about collision lag on megaprims fail to account for the area vs collision ratio, take the collisions of avs on a megaprim, divide by the number of prims needed to replace that megaprim, then compare with the number of collisions produced by avs on one regular prim. You'll find the numbers are equal, ergo there is no net greater collision lag from using megaprims on surfaces that get collided with.

couldn't they outlaw just the one's over 100 meter's....letting residents save prims (which are god on secondlife), on the building of sky area's, or grass area's, or floor's for building's? For example, the 20X20 one's.

That's my opinion!
DaBull Hanup

I have experienced nothing but problems with the mega prims. Every since owning land and a business in Mainland, there has been numerous times I have seen the bad things the mega prims cause. We have had to move our Mall to the sky because of other people who use them, due to lag, crashing, teleport issues, as well as scripting issues arising from them being used. Yes I am aware that sometims Secondlife itsefl has these issues, but these issues have been observed on our land when there was no other problems around anywhere else in Secondlife. For the most of us we have regular computers not super pc's and anyone with a regular uptodate system will experience problem with these huge prims. And I also agree they are a form of terrorism, people without any morals will use them to get with they want, we have seen them use them to build eyesores on a piece of land and then lag it out with every script possible, then mark the land for sale at an outrageous price knowing the neighbors will eventually pay for it just to get rid of the lag they are experiencing. Others build them then never stay on the land there because they know it is nothing but lag and crashes and issues. A prime example of this can be found at a sim bordering our region, I live in Cheosan, and the problem sim is Mugunghwa, they have used mega prims fro the ground up to 750m high, try walking across it, try to fly near it, try to live a daiy life near this, or run a successful buisiness here. this area used to be well populated and now no one can stay around it much due to these selfish people who to them all they want to do is save prims, no matter the cost to anyone else or themsleves, get a clue NO ONE can shop there all they do is crash.

It is my understanding that they are not to be used at all in mainland but as long as one person is allowed to use them, everyone else will, I say they should be removed and all structures built with them should be removed, they are unstable and unsupported by LL and cause a lot of damage in many ways. It is sad when you can pay 120.00 a month in tier and can not walk across your land, have to crash daily, and have to file nuerous abuse reports, and still have no resolution to the matter.

If someone wants to build with these prims they should be made to stay there, live there, and be a part of the problem they are causing, if they can not be on that property then they should not build it and leave it for others to deal with.

Ban all mega prims and huge prims, remove them all and offer serious punishments to anyone who violates it for any reason, it will make Secondlife a far better place to come and live, do buisness, and enjoy the time we have to spend here. Remove all structures in place or have the owners do it. Make it clear in the terms of service that using them will result in termination of agreement and people will stop using them just to save prims. Return second life to some form of stability with this one action.

My personal vote would be for LL to remove the larger megaprims that really have very little purpose. A 1024 x 1024 x n prim won't even remain contained within a single sim, so by definition it's usage on the mainland can only be abusive and detrimental to the user experience in the main.

I would much prefer to see LL extend support within the current building tools to allow us to create prims up to 256x256x256. If this means that the option to make them physical is capped below this size then so be it.

Megaprims already exist and are widely distributed across SL, so I don't think that the argument that doing this would encourage parcel encroachment is a valid one. Most enroachment is accidental, and easily rectified by speaking to the owner. If someone is encroaching on another parcel intentionally, there's nothing to stop them using megaprims as things stand.

The benefits of prims of larger sizes to the asset server through reduced prim counts and build times, and the reduced rez times for residents would far outweigh the costs to the community with encroachment issues. Equally it would encourage more creative use of the tools available: A build like Greenies simply wouldn't be possible without prims of these sizes!

Personnaly I'd rather see them banned and replaced by an increase in the "standard prim" size to say 50m ! this way the prims are not constrained to the created size (I have not seen these prim being fully resizable).