The Big Prim Problem

I use megaprims to achieve things that will NEVER be possible with normal sized prims due to prim limits...Private estate owners should not have to suffer because LL wont lock the doors to idiots and greifers. If my 256 x 256 m prim coloring my ocean disappears...I wont be happy. I understand havok 4 an yadda, but seriously, I'll leave SL in a pool of blood if they stop working.

One other thing from me. I came to SL to build and enjoy building, done the dancing, the relationships and all associated with it, tried to make $ (failed) lol

To me SL is an outlet for relaxing , and building relaxes me, give me a 20x20x20 please

Meeting new ppl is nice, but you will seldom find me doing anything but building

A 20x20x20 would be like giving me a pitcher of Margaritas lol Building would be so much more relaxing
thanks

To anyone who does large scale building in SL, Huge Prims are invaluable. Even to the noob with their first 512 sqm lot a few huge prims can save them dozens of prims when building with limited numbers available.

When I first started building in SL I would use almost all my prims building and have nothing left for furnishings. When someone gave me huge prims it changed my building because I could now use 1 - 40 x 40 for a floor instead of 16 - 10 x 10's. Suddenly I could build a nice house AND furnish it too.

Personally I've seen more destructive and annoying abuse from Griefers using particle swarms and self replicatiing cubes, than from anyone building with huge prims. IMHO.

So to the Lindens; either keep them or offer us a better alternative...like more prims.

I will readily admit, that I haven't read the forum posts yet, so I could well be duplicating other's sayings.
However, I myself use three megaprims in my store, which takes the form of a space station. The Megaprims are large cylinders making up the floors of my three level shop, and I've seriouslly considered using thicker, hollowed, phantom megaprims to make up the walls, which would reduce the prims I'm using (having created my walls using the ShapeGen tool, which aligns them all quite nicely).
As an example, my store (Trek Designs) can be found at:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Isle%20of%20DisQ/91/88/22

Another perfect example, is SL Starfleet, found at:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Starfleet%20Sector001/225/183/23

SL Starfleet makes abundant use of megaprims; for walkways, station floors, station walls, etc.

The long and short of it is, some builds cannot be created without megaprims... well, they could well be created, but the resulting prim count would cause more strain on the servers then the single megaprims would. I say your choices are these:
1) Keep the megaprims, destroying some of the extreamly large ones; maybe 150x150 and larger.
2) Keep some megaprims, and marginally increase the allowed prim size. Maybe to something like 20x20x20, which by itself would greatly increase building options.
3) Destroy all megaprims, and increase the allowed prim size to at least 40x40x40 (my station floors are 50x50).

These are just my thoughts on the issue, and you can take them to heart or disregard them as you wish. Thank you.
=/\=
Gawyn Philbin
Owner/CEO - Trek Designs

I must agree with so many already, get rid of the ones that exceed a sim size (yes, sometimes the only way for a sim owner to get privacy is set a sky limit, hence leave the 256x256) and leave the rest. Mega prims are essential for larger build and especially creative sim building depends heavily on the ability to save prims.

For an example check out the fantasy/RP sim of Aglarond (review available at http://www.slnn.com/index.php/article/about/aglarond/page/1.html). Without megaprims that work very well together with creative landscaping this sim would never have been as alluring as it is.

Keep the mega prims!

I do a lot of build projects on private sim's and have used prims that are 20x20 on up through 150x150 but not larger then that. Realistically I do not think there is any need for prims over 200m in size.

I am against removing mega prims completely as for one, I have many build projects that utilize them, like in wall sections that are repetitive and long (100m) like my hotel at Global Music Quest Sim, as well as floor sections that are 40x40x.8 sized. Two 40x40 sections replaces 32 regular prims that becomes a important factor when your dealing with homes or landscapes that are designed to maximize the guests experience there.

I believe the prim size limit should be 200m maximum and all sizes from 200 on down to anything over 10x10 be allowed for Premier Linden users who pay for land ownership.

Also you should be able to add a Allow command box in the land control panel just like rez objects and such that also says "User can rez or use mega prims". Then just disable the feature for all mainland and leave optional and perhaps defaulted to disabled for Sim's.

Again I do NOT want to see mega prims disabled or removed completely, just better controls on them. Also I would like to see that if allowed for Premier members, that they can also manipulate them like regular prims, that it is another create option on the menu for mega prim which can be reshaped once rezzed and but still manipulated size wise to what we need or can use.

All structures I build I tell the clients that they can not place them on mainland ever and expect that they would be deleted if done so, that they are built only for private Sim usage.

I hope someone at Linden reads this and seriously considers what I have said. Mega Prims have their place and to help maximize their use, put better controls on them. Even put a icon at the top showing Mega Prims are in use in this location when a person rezes there.

Pro:
My 20x20x10m sky-box is build out of 6 over sized prims. It saves me 10 prims and makes texturing a lot easier.
My boat have a deck made of a 20x20x0.5m cylinder. That would not be easy to make from regular prims.

Come and have a look! I live in Satellite (166,212)

Contra:
Huge prims, say more than 100x100x100m tend to ruin the wonderful illusion of the SL world and should not be used by anyone in my humble opinion.

people have no idea how much mega prims are actually used in private sims. and how much this would cripple them.

At Inspire Space Park we have a couple big planets made from giant prim spheres. This add a LOT to our "space" theme and we even have a club venue area inside one (inspire dance planet) . They have become a very well liked addition to the space park and do not disturb our neighbors or extend beyond the region borders.

It would be a huge loss for Inspire Space Park if we were not allowed to continue using these giants on the mainland.

My clubs are made almost entirely of megaprims. Without them my glass floor would not be possible removing the water feature under the club. I have seen these prims abused but am sure this happens with everything. My 4096 parcels are perfect for the prims and save prims for other features.
If they are removed it would mean many people would be even more restricted on what was possible on their land and may force places to simply dissappear.

Come visit Pulse Industry and see what is possible with a sensible use of big prims.
Use search or http://www.pulseindustry.co.uk to find us

remove scripting since it can be abused.

I use Mega Prims when I build for things like floors, and the 20x10's are wonderful for long walls! I say, keep them, because without them, many of the wonderful builds you see on SL would vanish for lack of prims allotted to land space. Most of us are very careful and responsible with our Mega Prims - we don't use them to grief people or to create invisible barriers. Most of us don't use the super-ginormous ones. It would make more sense to get rid of the people doing the griefing, imho, because someone could use anything to grief someone else, not always just a Mega Prim.

Long story short - Keep Them. They are invaluable as a building tool. A lot of fantastic builds will go if they aren't around.

Where I go, we really need the huge prims; we're cutting it close on the prim count WITH the megaprims. These guys, however a nuisance in the wrong hands, are necessary for the Second Life atmosphere.

Since you say the engine and other aspects of the client have issues with mega prims I say remove them all.

Mega prims are used too often in attacks and abuse such as covering a whole sim and making it very difficult to get around them.

I do not feel mega prims are needed. If you keep mega prims in then increase the number of prims allowed for everyone else that follow the rules.

Thank you,
Davina Glitter

I understand that immensely large megaprims, such as ones over 256 m, which were mentioned in the original Linden post, can be and are a problem for many reasons. However, I'd like to voice strong support for not doing away with smaller, 'standard' megaprims sized at between 50m and 10m on their largest dimension. These objects are not all that large, and please understand that they are very helpful in building large architectural models without using an inordinate number of 10m prims. Using these keeps total prim counts lower, and allow one object to substitute for many... surely a good thing. Perhaps there are technical aspects to this that are beyond my knowledge, but from a practical perspective, all else being equal, these objects are highly useful and should be kept in world if at all reasonably feasible. Thank you.

Exactly.....after some thought and reading the replies to this thread since I posted, I can't help but push the need for LL to apply tools for people to thwart abuses and for LL to actually ENFORCE abuse rules INSTEAD of removing crap that has the 'potential' to be abused.

I can't even tell you how many times I have had major projects since SL became live that have been ruined because of the bandaid approaches to griefer attacks. All too often does a feature or tool get seriously hindered or removed due to some idiots and LL's inability to punish the one abusing it. Or could it be the lack of desire to work towards punishing the griefers....could it be harder to punish them than to piss off the general population? Either way, its been done before, lets NOT do it again.....

LEAVE the EXISTING tools alone, and actually DO SOMETHING to those who abuse them.

If not, (as the quote above so clearly states) You may as well shut off the servers, cuz SL can be abused.


EDIT:

Also, as far as the limited size of prims, if they weren't so grossly small in the first place for those who need larger prims....this probably wouldn't be an issue.

It's simple psychology, if you put limits on the general population, there are going to be many who will rebel. Of those that rebel, there are going to be a few that will abuse based off the limitations.

So prim size should be in relation to plot size....uncap the prim limitations entirely, and have something server side that only allows the creation/editing of prims within the size of the plot they are in or being created in.

This along with plot boundary checks for placement of objects will null and void most all prim related abuse problems....IT IS SIMPLE LL.....just think a little.

Michael you need to talk to Andrew, I have heard that he has prim vs property line ideas

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/10/04/second-life-havok4-beta-preview-temporarily-offline/

this could go a long ways with internal communication in LL.

Megaprims are tool like any other. They exist for one simple reason - they can be validly used in making a large build which saves prims on a parcel (or sim) which is intrinsically bound by prim limits. Any tool can be abused, whether it's a megaprim or voice or the ability to rez, or even simple movement. When abuse is discovered, it should be reported, and LL should deal with it as they deal with any abuse. This is common sense.

If extremely large megaprims are a problem, then ban the extremely large megaprims. There is no real prim savings or validity for anything over 256x256 because such prims cross the prim count boundary between regions, so if there's a need to get rid of megaprims, start there and see what impact it makes before going further.

Personally, I think the best solution would be lift the prim size limit on normally rezzed prim, making whatever adjustments are necessary to the graphics and physics engines, so that we can create prims up to 50x50x50 using any type of prim. Then, if you want to outlaw the megaprims, you can do so by giving people a certain amount of time, say, 3 months, to get rid of their old 'megaprims' and replace them with the new, valid, prims that can be sized up to 50x50x50.

As an aside... many of those who think that the megaprims should be summarily banned and removed from SL are unaware of how many builds they visit regularly are filled with these megaprims, and could not exist without them. Many fail to understand how many builds are on parcels that don't have the prim-allowance to permit those builds unless megaprims are used.

I've heard it suggested that the removal of megaprims may be another way for LL to surrepetitiously increase land prices by requiring people to buy more land to have the same number of prims. Since there are 4 sims out there which have double-prim limits, the prim limit is obviously something LL could flex for us if they wish. My suggestion to answer this charge would be to double the available prims on the new Class V servers, which still wouldn't make up the loss of 20x20 megaprims, but it would be a good step in the right direction.

Private islands are just that; people bought them to be able to do things they couldn't do on the mainland, the mainland has a different set of rules and circumstances. I think LL should be very careful about setting policies that impact private islands.

- Aurelius Draken

I haven't used megaprims so far due to the grey area on 'legality'. However I would like to be able to use larger prims than are currently available for building.

I have spent ages creating larger builds that could have been done faster and more efficiently using bigger prims. It would be easier to get textures right too. I use a texture align script but even so...

Is there a way of preventing you creating a prim larger than the area that you own/have building rights on? That should stop 250x250 prims on small plot of land. Other people have mentioned returning prims that encroach on to your property - that would be useful at current prim sizes never mind larger prims.

A first step might be to increase the size of prims that can be created say up to a max of 50x50x50 and then see how that goes. I would certainly welcome larger prims - sooner the better!

Hi .. I own 3 open space sims that have a lower prim limit for the sim .. I get only 1875 prims for a whole sim rather than the 15000, I have found this to be rather limiting and the mega prims have allowed me to do much more especially in making roads, ice ,buildings. I do not use the really huge ones and if i do use one for backgrounds i make it transparent on the back side so it does not disturb my neighbors.

Not all of us abuse these priviliges and I feel there could be a compromise on this issue expecially using the ones under 100 M. I have enjoyed being able to do more things because of the mega prims and not havaing to use hundreds of them to make a road or a large building.

Not all of us should be punsihed for the sins of a few and especially on private estates which we own.

Thanks for letting me have my say

Lacy217 McLuhan

I have to chime in on this one. I haven't used huge prims in my prefabs yet, but this would kill that usage, so you've just told prefab makers they can't compete and anyone doing custom where the end user wants to own and modify their build is out too. Then there's the trees that use huge prims. I use those extensively on my estates. Sorry, if they stay, they have to be transfer. If they don't stay, then everyone shares the pain equally.

Of all the huge prims, the one I use routinely is the 20x20x.5 prim. Its proven stable and reliable and *most* of the time I can rez successfully on it, something I can't say for most of the others.

The two frustrations I have with them are a) not being able to resize them to fit the build parameters I need. I really do not want to have to size my vision to fit a huge prim, I need my prims to fit my vision; and b) that they show someone else as the creator (yes I know you can link them to a prim of your own creation to 'hide' that, but then you're adding prims and that defeats one of the purposes of using them, right?).

The ideal solution is as Havoc 4 is brought in, that we be given tools to create larger prims, but within limits. What those limits are, by necessity, have to be set by those whose responsibility it is to make certain we have a stable platform. Giving us the ability to make larger prims will *not* be a boon if it also destabilizes SL further.

I have seen some truly wonderful builds using the huge prims. I've seen weather mocked with them and hated it because it was low enough to routinely be in the way of my cam'ing around while placing buildings in the same sim, with the additional complaint from those who use the mini-map of 'it ruins the use of the mini-map'. I've also seen situations where they were abused in legit use to the point where it did effect sim stability, not only within its own sim, but from neighboring sims where it was the 'child sim' and effected draw/rendering on one's client from a sim over (ok, so I'm used to 256 draw distance and not everyone has that luxury, but even at 128m, getting near the border was killer).

The facts are that the prims are here by the grace of someone taking advantage of a hack. Had we never known them, we could have continued right along getting along with them. Conversely, its very hard to shove the genie back in the bottle once let loose.

I believe LL would be well within their rights to remove the hacked prims from the grid. Do I believe they 'should'? Depends on the *realities* of their effect on grid stability-- if they aren't a real problem from that perspective, leave them alone (except anything larger than a single sim. If you need weather over four sims, figure out how to do it with four prims instead of one, sorry, the potential for other misuse is too high and having a sandbox central to my estate sims, I'd like the ability to block the ability to rez the really big ones there, we already return them on sight).

Do I think they should be exploring every option to give us self-creatable larger prim sizes as they move forward with the updated physics engine, but ones that are stable and don't cause issues? Absolutely. (for example, I, personally, dislike .5 thick walls. They feel huge and clunky to me, so while I've used the 20x20x.5 for floors, I've never considered them for walls).

Char

It is not the megaprims causing lag - at least not in my experience. Scripts and scupties cause far more lag than anything but no one would think of Banning them for this reason. more than 30 avatars on a sim causes lag but no one would think of cutting down this either. come on.
Ive had no problems with lag or with physics on them, at least not the 20, 40 50 sized ones, even a 100 m sphere ( which fits easily inside our property)

If I had to pay extra each month to use them I would - its not a simple " oh it saves prim use" issue - it has more to do with texture seams and large curved shapes that would not be possible with 10 meter limits.

If physics cant cope - force them to be phantom? Not everyone will like that, but just a thought ( easy for me to say since mine are all phantom anyway :/

Very much so.

I use 40 meter spheres for skyboxes, and hollow phantom spheres are pretty much the only practical way to get a decent skybox effect that works for more than a tiny viewing angle.

I would say restrict them...

* Certainly a 256 meter maximum size.
* Force them to phantom? There's a number of shapes where they can easily cause inadvertent problems when "non-phantom", so forcing them to phantom if they're bigger than a certain size, or if they're convex or otherwise likely to cause problems (hollow, cut, torus, ring, sculpted). Path-cut cubes (produced by prim torture) should probably be allowed, because that's the only way to create certain useful structural pieces given the current limits, and they don't cause problems.

Yes...

I've come up with other suggestions for this in the past... like an option to precisely bend the path so you could build larger than 10 meter cylinders, at least, out of 10 meter sections. Perhaps allowing new "macro" prims that are forced phantom and non-physical so they can't cause problems for the physics engine, up to (say) 100 meters?

Since the sim was still up yesterday...

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life%20(Krigo)/200/36/24

Click on the planet mars (mine) to enter it.

Entering the Earth (not mine) is through a teleporter on the ground net to it.

to throw in my 0.02$:

I agree with so many on this board. megaprims are extremely useful when it comes to saving primitives, and should not be outlawed, rather introduced in a controlled fashion, like most people here write.

to give an example of just HOW useful megaprims are in terms of prim savings - and since I believe numbers can make quite an impact in the SL world - here is one from my very own house:
we have a large dungeon beneath the house, which is essentially a large room, all walls except the floor are megaprims. meaning the megaprim construction on its own are 5 40x40xsomething prims.
now if I were to build this dungeon whitout those, I would have to use:
4 x 4 = 16
16 x 5 = 80!

thats right, a whopping EIGHTY prims instead of 5 - megaprims save me 75 prims for one single room, and if I could build megaprims normally, I could save a great deal more on the rest of the house, since many walls are 15 meters long instead of 10. we do have a rather nicely dimensioned prim limit, but we still want to make the most out of it.

so my suggestion is like that of many here, but Ill try and keep it as short and informative as possible:
- maximum size for any prim: 50x50x50 (possibly 64x64x64)
- prims which are over 20 meters in any axis can not be turned physical anymore. aka they dont have to be phantom, they just wont be able to bounce around anymore
- prims over 50 meters on any axis are outlawed and will be removed after a grace period of a few months, which gives builders the possibility to adjust their builds
- megaprims will be buildable in the normal editor
- llRezObject() can NOT rez any objects which contain megaprims. this is to prevent 20x20x20 megaprim guns
- OPTIONAL: megaprim objects can only be created / used by residents which at least have "payment info on file". not sure how useful it will be, but it sounds like possibly a good idea to me to restrict griefers from rezzing a 50 meter penis somewhere

"The Big Prim Problem"?... What problem? The only problem I see is that LL does not support them. They are necessary to achieve certain builds and landscaping, especially when applied with sculpted textures. You guys (LL) are so excited about Windlight making the world prettier yet don't seem to realize that terraforming is extremely limited especially on the mainland and megaprims fill that gap allowing for some really nice landscaping effects to be built.

I agree that above a certain size should be forced to phantom to avoid physics abnormalities, but as far as griefing is concerned, people get griefed with particles all the time but those aren't banned. Trees and regular prims encroach on other people's parcels all the time too.

I really am not seeing the issue other than maybe LL's lost revenue because people on mainland can now buy less land because they can save prim usage by using a few mega prims.