Low Prim Sims

It would be nice if Linden Labs would offer subsidies or grants towards people wanting to do non-commercial, community building, social regions that will benefit everyone, because I remain quite convinced that by choosing to avoid a huge popular club/casino/mall/*ingo lagfest, I am unlikely to ever cover my costs, regardless of how many tip jars I put out to remind people that I am paying for this so that they may be entertained. Unfortunately I won't have residential/rental/commerical areas making profit on other sims that will be offsetting the cost of the 'sink' island.

I plan to move my existing operations (small club, laserquest arena and store, possibly also the campsite although being a 512sqm can stay as my premium tier land) and incorporate further buildings which are purely cosmetic, as part of my 'small town' vision with public transport possibilities.

Sure, the majority of what I have planned are purely dream builds that I have wanted to build ever since I first came to SL, and saw as sadly missing, but that doesn't mean they have any less value than a casino. In many ways, as far as creative potential go, they are worth more than just a box, full of everyone else's creations that all the competition have.

Lewis

Nexus, I'm wondering if your group has done any recent experiments with vehicle traffic in void sims. I originally floated the idea of using multiple sims on a server as a vehicle park about a year ago, but the initial results in the void sims were disappointing, with lag spikes and tricky border crossings.

Have things improved any? Do you think they would be at all suitable for races or air battles?

The Sailing Community routinely uses 4:1 servers for sailboat racing.

There can certainly be lag and TD spikes. In my experience we're able to get about 8 sailboats to sail relatively well in a 4:1 or void sim w/o encountering too many problems. We've also had regattas with 12 boats, and our HUDs start responding erratically (obj to obj chat seems to be the first thing to start flaking in the 4:1 servers.)

We also sail through 4:1 sims owned by other people, which can sometimes be problematic if they've loaded up their homes with 1001 badly written widgets and gadgets.

They got better when we were testing them, we were about 6 on jetskis screwing around in Rigel and Vega it was ok. Since it has been made public, the problem like I said is some of these sims share ressources with people who load their voids with 1001 badly written script \ widgets as Static mentioned. IF I would get my 16 voids on 1 server (which I might ask) I think our performance would be great.

BTW if anyone wants to test out voids, take a look down in AzureIslands, we have 16 they are all empty, you'll see some are worse then others. So if you want to try and fly, drive etc, give them a shot. Auto return is set @ 15 or 60 mins.

Lewis, if I would put up voids and sell them to people, which I don't want to because it would cause nothing but problems and people would just get frustrated with the lack of quality. However you're looking at like 46US per month (to cover tier) and 1250 initial fee to buy the thing. Also that's 1800 prims for 46 a month, not very good, plus covering the initial 1250 is a killer. With less then 25% of the processing power (don't forget the over head) it gets slow, REAL quick.

Hrm, I wish LL would make split sims a more viable option. I'd happily buy a lesser sim if it were half the cost, as I don't need a whole sim, but DO need the control a sim allows to do what I want to do. If you could buy shared sims or something then it'd be interesting.
I mean, I was all raring to go to get a sim, knowing it wouldn't be cheap, but then looked at the current pricing and really it's a joke what you have to pay for "maintenance"

Considering that you don't "own" a region, and that if you leave it will be sold on again for the same $1200 setup fee, quite frankly Linden Labs shouldn't even be charging a "setup fee".

Paying $195 up front a month to play a computer game is a serious commitment, regardless of whether you expect to ever recover that cost through sales/events/commercial activity - and it would be nice if they would recognise that commitment in return.

I am quite convinced that the initial setup cost is what puts most people off of getting a full island, and LL are shooting themsevles in the foot by having this ridiculous fee which actually gives you nothing except access to a 'concierge' service which I've heard can be less than useful at the best of times.

As I've said many times before, to ensure the future of Second Life, Linden Labs MUST broaden its scope to appeal to making itself accessible to things other than commercial activity and those with lots of money. This would be one small step towards that goal.

Lewis

Yeah I agree. I mean, my current dream idea isn't that prim-costly, but it really requires access to be able to change the daylight settings. It would probably have some commercial value, selling vendor space maybe, and probably apartments space since I seem to be doing quite well at that (I do try anyway and tenants seem to appreciate it). So in theory it would lessen the hurt of the running costs, but still, it'd be a lot to cope with and unlikely to be profitable by any stretch.

I wouldn't mind so much paying the set-up fee if I got to keep the computer when I was done, the current fees would repay set-up easily

IMO a set-up fee would still be acceptable if the monthly fee were better.

I just visited a couple of places to see how performance compared.

Firstly, my own property in Rosieri. Secondly, I visited Castor, a void sim in Azure Islands. Finally, I visited Icedragons Playpen, and Cliff View Mall, both high on the "popular places" list.



Just thought it interesting how it compared. I know Castor has no scripts and therefore the highest framerate.

Lewis