Megaprim resource usage ?

When using Megaprims for large lakes or rivers I can’t always find the exact size needed. Since they are used solely for the surface appearance I’ve been using lager than needed megaprims and burying them in the ground with only the exposed top textured.

This has wondering if I am causing a resource drain by using the larger than needed and if so by how much.

If they're phantom and not crossing region boundaries, I don't think it's much of a problem.

No need to worry. It's the same amount of polygons whether the prim is 20 meters wide or 200 meters wide.

If you really want to nitpick, then the technical answer is arguably yes, you could be wasting some resources by using larger-than-necessary prims. First, from what I understand, there is a small amount of CPU overhead added when you repeat a texture more than once, and with part of the prim covered, you're probably using more repeats than you otherwise would. Second, it could be argued that you're wasting some polygons by covering them up. Third, the bigger the object, the further away you have to get before LOD is culled, so larger objects will take more rendering power at any given distance than smaller ones will.

But unless you're talking about a few thousand objects, all those factors are quite negligible. Here's how I'd bottom-line it. Technically, on paper, you're being slightly less efficient than you otherwise could, but the effects will be far too minor for anyone ever to detect. From a practical standpoint, there's really no difference.

And of course, just make sure not to overlap anyone else's property.

Thanks for the quick resposes. It's just a lot faster to use a "lager than needed" megaprim for a river surface then to sort through the 1,000's of megaprims to find the best fit. Since I have almost a whole sim to work with boundries are seldom an issue.