The Big Prim Problem

Alright, Guess it's time for me to state my opinion on this matter.

Have I ever experienced problems caused by them? No! ... I have personally never even seen an abusive use of one, but I'm not out looking for trouble makers either.

Truth be told, every griefer attack I've actually witnessed has used relatively small prims, and lots and lots of them!

Sure, there will be people that will abuse them. But this is true of anything in the game.... So if abusers end up being the main excuse to eliminate them, then throw out sound clips, particle engines, physics engines, non-physical movement, yada yada yada...

Do I use them? .. Yes indeed! .. I love them! .. sure, they have some odd issues, but even so, I use them whenever possible... Even my 'office space' on a 32x32 lot is comprised entirely of them ... a whole whopping 3 .. floor, ceiling, and walls! .. Do I need to conserve prims, No! But it's a darned good habbit to be in, even when you don't need to!

Should they be removed? Definately NOT!

What should be done?
.. Make them legitamate! ... allow us to create prims up to the previously mentioned 256M per side... Fix them so you don't have to make them phantom to use as walls (Hollowed cube), etc... Give us the flexability of any other prim! ...

If need be however, disable the use of physics, flexies, scripties, whatever breaks things, on prims over certain sizes... they should be used for buildings... not sim sized cars afterall

Given the power to effect changes to their size, I bet encrochment issues would even be reduced. People would actually be able to get them to fit propperly, as apposed to doing odd things with the secondary parameters....

If encroachment continues to be an issue, do something about -that-! .. with all the other 'improvements' as to prim control on land (not allowing onjects to enter land, etc), we should be able to return objects that encroach our land... After all, even with standard prims, linking, and the like, you can encroach FAR onto someone else's land with out them being able to return the objects... I see that as a much bigger issue!

In short, the reasons to get rid of them, far underweigh the exhaustive list of reason to keep (fix) them.

-- Tossi

You'll have to pry the big prims from my cold, dead hands.

Just sayin'.

I've posted a JIRA proposal for my preferred solution. What we need to do is take mega-prims and break them up into the same shape but built from ordinary sized primitives. Following from this we can provide an editor allowing users to produce 'mega-prims' that are then stored on the server-side as individual prims that are linked together.

My JIRA issue is here:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2859

This means that the same sized structures and shapes can be easily created, but without exploiting the prim-allowance. Only people who will be hurt by this are people who are abusing mega-prims to exceed their prim-allowance.

It should not matter who uses these huge prims the fact remains they are not I repeat NOT supported by Linden Labs or they would be accessible in the build mode, which makes them a violation of the TOS. Anything that can be built using a huge prim can be done with the same prims available in the build mode. So if IBM and other large companies is using them they should be made to remove them as well.

So yes I agree REMOVE THEM ALL... It should not matter who is using them and for what, they are making the whole enviroment unstabls just by using them, not to mention it is againt the TOS to use any item that is not supported by LL if it was supported you would be able to pull it from the build mode. Allowing these hacks to remain is opening a door for more hacks that cause just as much problem as these do.

After my last post I was approached in game in reference to my post from someone who builds everything out of huge prims. We had a lengthy discussion and still I stand firm that the huge prims need to go. Though he has his own Island and should be able to do what he wants on his own island I can not even after carefully thinking about it think of how LL would be able to allow an Island owner to use them and keep them from being used in Mainland at all. Even though he was on his own Island, the lag was so bad, it caused major chat lag and I could not even move. It is a shame because the items were very pretty, all I can say to him is think inside the box, make your items with the build mode objects provided by LL and build them better.

Lets compare your analogy to a real life situation. In your case your a doctor in charge of several peoples lives who have been exposed to a deadly contagion, and the only cure is a drug medical science prefers you not to use. The government has given you the right to use it anyway, but you would rather let them die then to use it. It's the same situation just a different environment.

You may not know this at first but theres things you see every day in SL and possibly use that aren't official by linden lab standards. Such as sit teleporters and invisible prims. Both created using some sort of exploit or a hack. And those aren't the only ones either. Has linden lab done anything about those? No. Because they don't care. Sit teleporters and invisible prims have both been used to grief the grid, but widely used all over SL for many legitimate reasons.

That is not even close to the same situation.

There is a difference between a legitimate workaround, and a hack. Megaprims have been shown to negatively impact sim performance and physics (over a certain size), and there really hasn't been a whole hell of a lot of research done on the impact of using large numbers of the smaller megaprims in a sim.

Hacking together something intended to work beyond a limitation intentionally set specifically for performance and stability is NOT a legitimate method of development. That's an exploit... a hole in the code that needs to be plugged.

I am all for larger prims... but only once the issues which have been presented are resolved, and they are approved officially by LL in the form of adding them to the feature set of Second Life.

Actually yes it is. I planned this one out.
Linden Lab plays as the government and medical science becuase it tells us we are allowed to use them but they prefer we didn't.
The mega Prims play the part of the Drug.
You play the part of the doctor who is the person in charge of what to do with the drug.
The patients play the part of the concept of creation.
If none of that still makes sense to you then i guess talking to you is pointless since your gonna continue on ridiculing something that most of us find important.

Sit Teleporters have been known to impact sim performance as well. If you have a estate i suggest you check the script time when you sit down on one. You'll notice it grows drastically as opposed to being unused. Invisible prims have been known to cheat people out of money by placing them secretly over someones vendor. I see mega prims as a workaround. And i do not see sit teleporters and invisible prims to be legit because linden lab has clearly made their points about them in the past. I say if they remove mega prims then they better remove those too...

I can see where you are going with the analogy... but I think it is way over the top, and the comparison takes away from your point some. I don't mean to offend you, but I have found that through the use of my own metaphors, I often tend to make the same mistake. People then focus on my metaphor and not my point... which I am ironically doing now. Sorry bout that... lol

Sit Teleporters have been known to impact sim performance as well. If you have a estate i suggest you check the script time when you sit down on one. You'll notice it grows drastically as opposed to being unused. Invisible prims have been known to cheat people out of money by placing them secretly over someones vendor. I see mega prims as a workaround. And i do not see sit teleporters and invisible prims to be legit because linden lab has clearly made their points about them in the past. I say if they remove mega prims then they better remove those too...[/QUOTE]Anything in Second Life can be used to grief people, that is not the basis of my opposition to "bad magaprims". And please understand... I do not oppose larger prims... I oppose them being developed without regard to the physics engine and sim performance. I want larger prims... I want them very much. But I do not want them if they were developed by some 3rd party hack who couldn't care less about anyone else's SL experience.

People who use megaprims that effect physics or sim performance are selfish, and deserve to lose their content. And from what I have been reading... that would be any prim over 32x32x32. Besides... if LL would work on a larger prim size as part of the feature set, we may get resizability as an option for them... which would certainly make using them a lot easier.

As far as griefing is concerned... I assume that with larger prim size, will come larger prim griefing. That doesn't mean the legitimate uses should be shelved, just like chat shouldn't be eliminated because people can script a chat spammer. The difference is... LL developed chat. Some hack developed megaprims.

Legitimize them, and I am all for them. That's all I am asking for... remove the performance/physics issues, and include them in the feature set... and I am on your side.

Calling people like the creators of Greenies or other fantastic places that are enjoyed FOR FREE by hundreds and thousands of residents selfish is just a *tiny* bit off...

Not if their creations are effecting other people's SL experience in negative ways. Again... I am not against larger prims, so long as they are stable and do not interfere with physics/sim performance. People should be hounding the Lindens about adding them to Second Life safely, rather than arguing with me about it.

I am all for them once they are stable and officially part of SL.

*peeks in, see the thread has devolved into a flame war, and leaves.*

And what about those like myself that have four sims full of megaprims with no adverse effect in physics or sim performance whatsoever?

I've been to hundreds of sims, many full of megaprims, and never had trouble with the prims themselves. It's always

- scripts
- crowds of people
- particles
- torii

....that cause sim drag. Flexis? Never. They appeat to scale nicely. I rezzed a 10x10x1 cube and covered it in over 600 flexible 0.1x0.1x2 "grass" prims, all flexi and scripted to wiggle back and forth. Though the client updates on the flexis dropped until the flexis were drawn only every 30-40 frames, the sim performance itself was unharmed. It was obvious that 600+ flexiprims would cause an impact, but it was clientside only, which is logical, since there's graphics being rendered, which is a given. And megaprims? Unscripted and nonphysical, they've always been harmless to me. Setting megaprims physical? I don't support that, but that's no less than I support things like screaming, selfrezzing grief blocks playing the 'Fresh Prince' theme, Paper Mario particle spammers, etc, that, *surprise*, don't use megaprims for nothing.

It's how people use a megaprim that causes troubles, don't blame the prims themselves. A megaprim is a tool, like a wrench. Just because someone can hit someone on the head and kill them with a wrench, is hardly an excuse to recall and destroy all wrenches. Though considering this is a building standpoint, this is more like trying to ban chairs in your office because they are used by a few wrestlers to hit other wrestlers in the WWF!


I still have yet to find a place with them that is *not* stable and that they *do* interfere with physics/sim performance......

If they were, then people wouldn't go to visit the Greenies sim. But people do, and I haven't heard any complaints of poor performance at the Greenies sim. And *even if there were*, it's their sim, they can do what they want with it, if you don't want to go there you don't have to. I fail to see how this can possibly negatively affect someone else's experience. Somehow this seems reminiscent of people claiming that somehow two men getting married can have an adverse effect on one's own marriage.

Reference please. I have only heard of theoretical arguments why they might cause trouble, but no actual data. Certainly not any data about what really matters: whether the equivalent number of normal sized prims needed to produce the same effect is better or worse for the sim.

There have been multiple references throughout a few different threads on these forums where people are reporting issues with megaprims... specifically the larger ones. Use the search feature and look for them.

From what I have read... and mind you, I haven't used them due to what I have read... the issues come into play with larger megaprims effecting collission, thus lagging the sim or effecting avatar/vehicle physics.

But I stick with my personal belief that if they were developed by a 3rd party, and have not been officially included in the SL feature set, and there has been no data supporting their stability... they have no place on the grid.

Others dissagree, but they appear to really be more concerned with what they can have... rather than whether or not the issues which have been suggested are as bad as some are saying... or even exist at all.

I am not against larger prims, so long as they are proven to be stable, and officially supported by LL.

Ok; I have been keeping track of this forum post and we have had rather a large number of responses, both for, and some against the megaprims. Are we to see some sort of comment from Michael, as I seem to recall he said he would be watching this forum intently; or has this particular thread done it's PR job by diverting attention away from the blog of something else even more contentious.

I seem to remember a blog a little while ago about how open about issues LL was, yet we appear to have had no response as usual to this particularly lengthy item. I wonder why ?? Have they already decided to delete them and this is just a forewarning, or are they actually prepared, this time, to do something to solve the situation; especially since I believe they themselves have used them in builds, and as many have already mentioned several of the larger company sites have too. If it is, as you all seem to believe, they are after commercial development then they will find a way of making them acceptable.

And is someone trying to tell me that Havok4 is having more difficulty coping with them, than the old Havok1 (seems unlikely).

As to those that are blaming, poor sim performance on these megaprims. Is that the only thing possible; or could it be more the number of scripts being used, or the client count that is having more effect. I am regularly on 2 sims, both containing the smaller megaprims, both class 5, but performance on one is well below the other, and for the life of me I can still not uncover what is causing that difference, and apparently neither can LL (they have checked, and can't see anything wrong !!).

I've read the same threads you have. "have been shown to negatively impact sim performance and physics (over a certain size)" implies data, not anecdotes. I don't recall any data. If you actually meant "people have said that megaprims negatively impact sim performance and physics (over a certain size)", then I retract my objection. If you did mean data, let's see it.

Yes Seifert... that is exactly what I meant and what I said a lot earlier in this forum. I have yet to see any data, that shows that megaprims adversly affect performance etc, as opposed to the corresponding number of standard prims that would have to be used for the same prim-area size.

If it's true, then who ever is coding havok4 into SL is doing it wrong.

well i will provide an example of where mega prims are used well and are absolutely nessecary. i think they are a great tool to save prims and shoudl be used in any large building.

they already have problems rezzing on large megaprims and that's somethign you have to deal with while using them but i hav found them a saviour to my building.

here is a prime example...this is on a private sim but you can see hwo this can be done well.

as a side note...on mainland i have used soem 20x20 prims on my house but due to the land configuration opn mainland, the larger builds tent not to happen as much. anyhoo this is the place...http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hutter/213/147/25

lets keep mega prims up to about 100m but no bigger...i see no point for any prims bigger than that.

Except that rather than the drug being developed, by any recognised medical body, it was created by hacking past clearly defined limits and restrictions put in place for a reason.

There are reasons that LL don't want mega-prims to be used; they are much heavier on the physics engine (far more potential collisions to calculate) and cannot be optimised. Features such as occlusion culling (which removes content from a scene if it is not visible) cannot be applied to mega-prims as it relies on the assumption that a primitive will be no more than a maximum size (10m x 10m x 10m).
Additionally (as Michael Linden hinted) there are future features that Havok 4 opens up that may not work correctly, or may be outright impossible to implement due to having to take mega-prims into account.

I've updated my JIRA issue for a "Big-prim editor" which provides a more flexible solution to this, allowing mega-prims to be replaced with smaller primitives that look just as good (or better in fact, since they can individually have more detail):
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2859

I still see it like this. If the system is having trouble handling mega prims then they need to rework the system so it doesn't. Either fix the problem and raise the prim size limits to at least 50 (I have a important part of my sim thats this size) or do nothing.

And those who think anything done by a mega prim can be done by a normal prim, your wrong. Just go to serenity woods and go to 500m up and look at my sky islands. you cannot do that with normal prims because it's also sculpted to look like a floating island instead of a bunch of rocks.

As a builder, the mega prims are NOT worth the hassle they bring. For some reason, they seem to create extra lag. I know of 2 popular RP sims that have removed them for this reason.

Then there's the fact often not even the owner can remove them. If someone puts one on your land, they don't even show up in objects AND you can't return them to owner. I've even experienced a situation that the creator/owner couldn't remove it.

Seriously people... quit being lazy and prim hordes and just stick within the linden's 10x10 prims. Mega prims are nothing but a pain in the butt.

Until LL finds a way to overcome the lag and object issues, not to mention the fact living next to someone with an eyesore 40x40m and no way to cover it, I say get rid of them.

Why don't you try to build a set of sky islands without using them. You'll find using a ton of 10m prims is worse off to your sim then 1 mega prim. I have proven this because i done it before in serenity woods. It's not a point of being lazy, it's a point we need larger prims to do better things. And i'm not one to "go with the flow and do as i'm told". When i see something wrong i make my point. We need larger prims.

Simply put, even those that say that megaprims are the problem cannot truly prove that they are or are not responsible, there isn't really anywhere in the stats we can bring up that definatively say that "this here megaprim is responsible for my lag". Without concrete data we're all just speculating.

If someone has a totally blank empty sim, give it a shot perhaps.

1. Rez a cube.
2. Make it 10x10x10
3. Make it a torus, torture the heck out of it.
4. Make 14999 copies. Fill the entire sim with a cluster of those torii in a corner of the sim.
5. Check sim stats.
6. Rez a 20x20x20 Megacube.
7. Repeat Steps 3-5.
8. Post results.