Off-sim prims and off-sim builds

Hi !

I wonder a bit about off-sim prims, and have my head full of questions about them. The land in which I'm building has no neighbour sims.
Can off-sim prims be used ?
What makes them work? Are they running on the same cpu as your sim is?
Can single prims be fully outside, or must they stay partially inside sim?
If they can stay outside, does they count against the sim prim limit ?

Tried to google this, but found very little clear info on it.

best regards
Zap

I never heard of "off Sim prims". That sounds pretty weird to me. Where or to whom or to which parcel/sim should an Off sim prim be assigned ? If that where possible, you could create prims which reside "in eternity" in "the virtual virtual prim space..." hmm, if that ever is possible, i doubt that it will last for long as it sounds like a severe bug to me. But i have learned here to "Never say 'impossible'". So i am eager to see if there is something behind it

The only thing i can imagine what is meant: You can push Prims "half over the sim boundary" As long as the Prim center stays on the SIM, that will work. You can make nice effects with Megaprims here, like visually enlarging your terrain... But you will never be able to walk along such a megaprim and get Off Sim, except there IS a nearby SIM... And the Prim will certainly be allocated to the SIM in which the prim-center is located...

It's easy to make. Build what you want, Link it all together and then place an invisible prim as far as you can from it. Link that to the rest as the root prim.

So long as that one stays inside the sim the rest can be outside the sim.

You can even put poses etc out there to sit on, you just can't walk around.

I've never heard of an "off-sim prim" either, Gaia, but I think you've interpreted the OP correctly. This technique is commonly used for creating a false bridge between sims, to keep you from sinking into the ground as you walk across a sim boundary. Link two large, flat prims and shove the linked object across the sim boundary. You can walk across the boundary without sinking because (anthropomorphising here) the server for the sim you just left thinks that you are standing on a prim that belongs on its side of the boundary. By the time it realizes its mistake, the server on the other side has welcomed you. I haven't tried it, but if there's no server on the other side, though, I doubt that the trick will work.

If you're on a private island, and there are no neighboring sims, then yes, you can extend your builds past the edges of the sim.

For example, on the North Pole sim, I used a 1024M mega cylinder, flattened, and with a square hollow the size of the sim, to make it appear as if there's land (ice and snow) surrounding the sim, which extends as far as the eye can see. For those with long draw distance settings, I also added a second, taller, and fully hollowed cyilnder, textured on the inside to look like an encompassing distant glacial mountain range, so that nobody on the sim can see where the ice stops and the ocean starts, at least not from ground level.

The effect works quite well. It makes the sim appear to be roughly nine times the size it actually is.




As long as the prim's center is in the sim, or it is linked to another prim whose center is in the sim, it can appear to be pretty far away. The only limitations are link distance, and what you can get away with via hollows and cuts.

The above example worked because the two cylinders are centered on the sim, even though they happen both to be much larger than the sim itself. The mountain range appears to be several hundred meters away, but that's only because the cylinder it's painted onto is hollow. The edge of the cylinder is indeed hundreds of meters away, but the center is right there in the middle of the sim.

If I were to cut that hollow cylinder, it could end up looking like just a regular size prim, inexplicably parked way out in the distance. But in actuality, it would still just be a the same cylinder, still located in the middle of the sim.




Yes. They're not actually OFF the sim. If they were, they'd be instantly returned to your inventory, for having "fallen off the world".



A single unlinked prim must have its center located inside the sim. A prim linked to another object can be fully outside the sim, as long as the center of the root prim in the link set is inside the sim.

Try it yourself. Rez two 10x10x10 cubes. Move them some distance apart from each other -- say, 20 meters or so -- and link them together. Now move the linkset to the edge of the sim. You'll see that the parent prim (the one with the yellow highlight around it) won't be able to move over the edge. It will stop when its center hits the border. But the child prim (the one with the blue highlight around it) can end up parked 20 meters over the border, since it's linked 20 meters away from the parent.



Yes. Remember, they're not really "outside". They're still centered on the sim, despite whatever trickery was used to make them appear otherwise.

Great Thanks Chosen Few !!!!

Great answer! You've really put all the pieces of this puzzle neatly in place for me!

Thanks to you others too - for piecing together this.

I've noticed the behaviour working with megaprims (that I could push them outside), also guessed that some part had to stay in-sim. Then I heard bits and pieces, some of which was wrong, but what you write makes a lot of sense.
Lately I first saw some Islands advertising as Off-sim capability, then I saw some wave products which also said they could be used off-sim, and my head started to spin.

The way you mention it could be used for making the sim appear larger is what I was looking for and the technique you mention with the hollow sylinder sounds very interesting. I'll make some tries with that. I'll check out your Indigo land, I assume thats where you did this ?

best regards and many thanks
Zap

Then i can create a link set, place the root prim on the sim boundary (center in sim) and let the whole rest float outside ? I never thought about that. I only used single megaprims so far thinking that this is the only way to do it. But the linkset/root trick is hyper cool

... As i said, never say "impossible" ...

oh.. then i have some nice ideas about how to create far away objects using sculpted prims on Megaprims.

Nope, Indigo is on the mainland, so it would be bad to do something like that there. The example I mentioned is on the North Pole sim, which is why when I first mentioned it I said, "For example, on the North Pole sim..."

Just FYI - Megaprims are not necessary for this trick. A normal linkset of normal prims can also be extended past the sim edge, as long as the root prim remains in the sim.

Anything extending past the sim edge is "inaccessable" if it is a void sim beyond the sim edge. Meaning that although you can build a bridge out into the void, you can't walk past the sim edge onto it.

You CAN, however, sit on a prim in a similarly extended linkset while it is within the real sim, and move the linkset, with your avatar seated on it, "Past the edge". Standing up while in the void is not recommended... *wink*

I've seen off-sim prims used a lot lately for offshore rocks and waves. My sim neighbor has a sea serpent in the water beyond the sim edge.

Kasteel Verloren (and several other private islands) use the exact same technique, with sculpted megas... looks bril when done properly.

I coined the term 'Voidscapes' to describe these megasculpted landscapes in the voids.

During the second megaprim exploit incidence I took the chance to rez up a large unique variety of megaprims especially for voidscapes. It is amazing the kind of surreal landscapes you can achieve with by carefully sculpting precisely.

The collection hadn't been available anywhere, not even on Salt HUD, but they were recently added to the megaprim.sl website search engine (totally recommended if you need a megaprim at specific sizes), they are in the ranges of 512m and above in each axis.


Green line on right side is the length of one sim.
Sorry about the big pic but was the best thing I had to show what these "off-sim prims" are.