Anyone else? Prim drift and seams issues.

Ok someone please help me. I am working on a build and using cut, hollowed prims to make a skybox. I line them up exactly (aka oprim X = 60 next prim x=70) and I get seams. When I link them the numbers are slightly off (x =60.001) but when I unlink to fix the prims return to normal.

Any advice and/or help would be great.

Ahhh.. prim drift.. something that's been affecting SL for gawd knows how long.

To give you an idea of how bad the problem is, some people have writen scripts to return prims to their proper location everytime they drift. I swear there is some slow continental drift that affects all prims. How a prim can drift is beyond me.. isn't it's position stored somewhere?

well I understand the prim drift has been around...but I mean take this one prim

Unlink X = 60.000
Linked X = 60.000
Linked (second check) X = 60.001 (!)
Unlinked X = 60.000
I understand them floating when moved...but these prims are only linked to change difference. Oh and linking seems to cause no tonly drift..but indidual prim rotation! Out of 9 prims I used for a floor 3 were rotated slightly.

Are you building at high altitude, like close to 768 M, or are you building within 10 to 20 M of the edge of a sim? Both factors can indudce some prim drift.

However, the glitch you're seeing, with a prim shifting ever so slightly just because you link it, and then shifting back when unlinked, is a new one on me. You may want to clear cache, and to a re-install (manually) of your SL Client software. See if that helps.

Some other things to test:

Is the position of the initial prim on an exact value to start with? For example, X=120, Y=40, then the next prim at X=120, Y=50... and both at the zame Z height value?

Does it do it of you make new prims? Set those earlier prims aside a moment, and make some fresh ones. Does it still do that?

Does it do it if you build somewhere else? Try going to a big sandbox like Cordova, and see if it happens there too.

I am probably wrong but what you are describing sounds like what I have experienced recently. My advice is to check the angle and rotation. When something doesn't line up no matter how accurate my xyz numbers are I look down the page and walla.. it shows a teeny tiny shift in the angle or rotation. I adjust that back to either 0 or the closest number 90 degrees, etc.. and everything fits perfectly.

Rekeying in all the values in the rotation boxes is the best bet, as Martin suggested. The figures may look rounded off but internally, they are not. Its just a rounded figure displayed to you.

The errors normally occur when the prims are being rotated. You can test this by placing two 10x10 cubes next to each other. Then rotate both of them separately in all axes. Eventually, you will find a mismatch at the corners.

The prim drift happens regardless of whether its close to sim borders or at high altitudes. This was an old factoid that no longer holds true.

Since the update, has anyone else noticed that SL has moved eleven inches to the North. To fix this, Linden Labs appear to have moved (0,0,0) by the same amount in the hope that noone would notice. I did.

If you haven't noticed, it is probably because they moved you too, while everything was off-line on Wednesday. This must be true. Nothing else appears to have changed...

Join the 11"2^N SL group now if you feel like demonstrating your concern, and to campaign for LL to move everything back again: guaranteed to fix prim drift. A million polygons can't be wrong.

I noticed that if i used llSetPrimitiveParams to hollow out one prim in a linked group and to unhollow it again, toggling back and forth that every few clicks it would move nw or se on the diagonal, like there was a rounding error. The motion was always by a set amount and in a random choice of nw or se and fairly random chance of occurance...

It's probably old news by now, but the first time I experienced prim drift, I reported it on the forums and recieved a series of lengthy and erudite replies explaining how it was due, basically, to math errors and rounding up or down. It's an inescapable part of the fabric of SL and all you can hope for is to minimise the effect. Make your prims either in whole-number sizes or else simple fractions: 0.5, 0.25, 3.125, 5.875 ( 1/2, 1/4, 3 1/8, 5 7/ as well as straight decimal values. Similarly with positions, snap to the grid and use simple rotations (for example: 45 degrees, 22.5 degrees, 15 degrees) wherever possible. Sometimes you can't because of the nature of the build, but it's a good guideline to keep in the back of your mind while building.

I build large hosues, and prim drift is always an issue for a myriad resons, but always with pretty much the same result. Build the house on one sim (yes, I do see that rotation hit on multiple repeats of the same prim), then rez it onto another and you will invariably get prim dirft to some small extent. Result, dotty lines between supposedly accurately placed and perfectly aligned prims. We just do what we can to 'hide' the fact this happens with prim side texturing. The bottom line, I've found with houses anyway, is that every customer is so used to seeing it as a normal part of life, they almost accept it blindly. I'm sure that, like me, the only person who REALLY cares about those lines in their builds is the builder themself. Yep, it annoys me to death too!