Prim limits on land?

Hi everyone,

I just recently bought land and i'm building on it.
Now, if you want to make complex and interesting things, pretty soon you will reach the prim limit.

Now my question, how is such an immense place like Nexus City (Nexus Prime - Cyberpunk City of , Gibson (189, 254, 23) ) possible ?
Layers upon layers, buildings upon buildings!

Is it just very very smart building, inside the prim limit, or can the limit somehow be raised ?

- stukas

Different sims have different prim limits, with some sims going up to about 15k if I'm not mistaken. I haven't been to Nexus so I can't comment on the complexity of the buildings there, but it's quite possibly that it's built on a sim with one of the higher end prim counts.

A sim can have 15,000 prims. Period.

Sims like the one you are looking at are largely not divided into small parcels, so the owner can draw from most of the sim to build something huge in one small area. Note however how much empty, open space they have elsewhere. I believe you'll also find they are doing some superb work with textures to make very complex-looking stuff with far fewer prims than you might think, and that much of that 'city' may be empty shells. I haven't been to that particular city, but I know the Amsterdam sim looks like it has a lot of city buildings, but only a few shops on the ground floor level are actually usable space.

The owner of a sim can increase the max prims allowed per parcel, but not the cap on the whole sim. The default is 117 prims per 512 M2, which is what you get if every square meter of land in the sim gets an even share of the 15,000 allowed for the whole sim. If the sim owner increases that to a factor of 1.5, each parcel would be allowed to theoretically have 175 prims, but when the total in the sim hits 15,000, no one can build more. Even if your 1024 M2 parcel only has three prims on it so far.

Needless to say, very few sim owners change that setting.

The "sepcial" sims are not high-prim sims, but low-prim sims. In effect the owner gets 4 sims (at a reduced price) but still only has the 15,000 prim cap (the cap is slightly over 15k btw. I can't remember teh exact number).

This gives a person much more land, but as it is still on only one server, the prim-count remains the same. I believe it was implented as an enticement for vendor rentals or somesuch, where prims were less needed than space (for people to walk around and view products/advertising).

I've not heard much on them since thier inceptions, so I would hazard a guess that it was largely a flop-idea. *shrugs*

The best builds do use more textures and particles to give the "illusion" of more prims being used. Also, some persons are very very good at using less prims to get the same look but cutting, stacking and interpolating prims in various ways. Nexus Prime is a very well-built city, imo, and uses all of the above.

~Jessy

Also, it is because of smart building.... lots of smart builders use textures to replace the use of multiple prims... example, a startcase... or the outside of a building with windows.

And, of course the hollowing out of a prim, and prim cut can maximize what you can do with a prim. why have a 10x10 wall when you can have a 10x10 wall and ceiling with one prim.

I am an Estate Manager for 4 sims. I get to see and work with the same controls a private sim owner has available, and I have access to all the concierge documentation that private sim owners get to see. I've read every word of it, too.

Yes, a sim owner can set his sim to allow 100 avatars, if they are willing to severely sacrifice performance and usability. For unless they are all Ruth avatars with no scripts and no prim attachments or scripts, if 100 avatars are in a sim at once, the lag is so bad that no one can move. I suppose in a sim that is completely empty of content one might be able to form a rough "ampitheatre" out of the terrain, and allow as many as 100 avatrs to enter the sim at once to talk and socialize. But I assure you, they won't do much.

There are 'openspaces' servers that have 4x as much land area as a normal sim. You get 4 sims worth of 'space' on a single server. You also get 1/4 as many prims in each of those sims. They were designed to provide navigable water around island sims, or large expanses of open terrain around land-bound estates.

There are NO "superservers" that give you 2x or 4x as many prims or avatars in a single sim. If any ever did exist, they must have been experimental. They certainly don't offer then for sale now. My guess is that any such attempts failed so badly in the lag department that they were scrapped.

Hmmm... That may be true, though when I was in Nexus today I specifically remember seeing text on the top of the "About Land" dialog that said that Nexus Prime had a Prim Bonus of 2.0, which I took to mean that it had twice the primit (prim limit, haha) of a comparably sized normal sim without such a bonus.

[EDIT] Okay, I am in Nexus Prime now, but apparently what I mentioned only holds true for the part that is in Bonifacio, and the exact text on the top of the Objects tab of the About Land dialog says "Region Object Bonus Factor: 2.00". I don't pretend to understand what it means, I am only reporting what it says and what I thought it meant at the time I first found it.

There are also some double-prim sims sold by private estate developers; I know that Azure Islands has some. Like the four Linden urban sims, half of the land is empty, so that they can set the prim factor bonus to 2.0 on the rest of the land and not run out.

Thanks for the extensive answers and discussion!

- stukas

The "Region Object Bonus Factor" is a value that an island owner can set which causes SL to overestimate the number of prims allowed for each divided parcel on the island.

However, it doesn't mean that the sim actually has more prims! Instead it allows prims to be moved between parcel.

For example, if you divide an island in half, but only want to build on half of it, SL will by default allow only 7500 prims on each half (half of 15000). If you set the region object bonus to 2.0 it will multiply that by 2 on both parcels, so the half parcel you wanted to build on will get 15000 prims and you can use all of the island's potential. The other half of the island will report 15000 prims - but you can't actually use them without risking breaking the other side of the island.

If you look at the sim I organised, Bethselamin, it has a 1.1 Bonus Factor. However, it can have this because it has a big river dividing it into blocks, and there are no prims at all in the river. So the Bonus Factor lets those prims be divided evenly into the other parcels.

Agreed!!!
Skillful Construction, Learning the Most versatile ways to use a single prim, and Couple this with Equally skillful use of textures, and Now, Lighting Effects. These can make a Very simple, Low Prim build look like a Million Prim Project.

I was Fortunate enough to have a Great Teacher, and in my Latter days, I was able to show HER a few tricks. Look around, See how things are Built, sometimes there are some Very economical solutions out there that produce wonderful results.

Study, Study, Study!

Angel.

Actually yes, there was (at least one) such a superserver. Telador isle had around 19k prims, and according to this post, it was indeed done on experimental basis.

There are double prim sims, the old city sims like Miramare and Grignano.

Yes, but as noted in the reply to Llauren's Linden Answers query, the four "City Sims" do have doubled prim counts on half the land area, while the othe rhalf is unusable for building. The total prim count remains 15,000 prims per sim.

I never got to see Telador. I rather like Myst, and would have enjoyed visiting it. I dare say that with rising prices, we will never see the like of it again in SL, unless some huge corporation starts donating free sims to Public Works projects - the SL equivalent of a corporation sponsoring the land for a public park and playground.

Yes, Telador is gone and I miss it. SL needs more themed sims, whether Myst-influenced or otherwise, for people to explore and enjoy as well as giving them ideas and inspiration for their own builds.

No SIM can handle more than 15,000 prims, by design of LL for performance reasons.

The city sims allowed 2x prim bonus per plot, but, as Kelly mentioned, they only sold 1/2 the land..Why? Because a sim cannot handle more than 15,000 prims, even if each resident owned plot has a 2x prim bonus.

See the difference....The SIM has a prim limit of 15,000
A plot of land can hav a prim bonus (like the city sims) but that doesntmean the SIM can handle more than 15,000

SIM limits vs PLOT limits, don't confuse the two.