Can I cross SIM borders?

This may be a stupid question, but I can't find out anywhere..

Can I make a building that crosses SIM borders?

And also, can I join land parcels across SIM borders? I'm running low in prims, and in the next SIM, adjacent to my parcel, are free plots for sale. So can I join these in and get a totally higher prim allowance in the "original" parcel?

I wouldn't recommend building on SIM borders, they usually cause ppl to drop off the sim. A good example is Midian Apocalypse, joined to the older Midian SIM by 2 bridges. When I try to cross them I end up walking off the SIM. (note that it's a busy place, so the lag doesn't actually help)

Mandy C

Okay.. Thanks!
So, remains only my thoughts about joining parcels to get a higher prim usage....

You can't join parcels in different sims.

I have a building that crosses a border and there are two issues:

- flying in from the side without a wall to the side where there is a wall you'll go straight through it, there's a lag as you cross before your avatar realises it's in a new sim.

- walking across a sim you'll sink into the ground, or whatever you're walking in (same reason as above).. but this can be rectified by having two overlapping invisible prims at the same height as your floor. Make sure that the centre of one of them is in one sim, and the centre of the other in the other sim.

*EDIT* When I say invisible prim I mean a prim with 100% transparency not an invisiprim.

Okay.. That fact invalidates the building question then... If I can't join the parcels, I have no use for the parcels in the next SIM.. I'll have a chat with my neighbours to see if any of them are willing to move from "our" SIM to the next instead. Maybe we can just swap parcels.

Thank you both for your help!
Suz

yes you can build across borders with little problems. The only glitch I see in my art gallery that crosses Pinson and Rakhiot is sometimes your avi sinks into the ground at the border but you end up doing that at random points all over SL anyway.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rakhiot/240/240

and

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pinson/16/232

I built something on a sim edge last year, and the wall running parallel with the boundary didn't need doors because anybody entering the sim from that side just went straight through it, ending up inside the building.

Since nobody else mentioned it...

You cannot join parcels/share prims across sim boundries.

In a way, you can gain new prims by purchasing land in the new sim, but you have to use those prims in that sim, and the other prims in the other sim. No sharing of prims across sim lines.

When u get low on prims, one thing you can do to "create" more is to do a few things:

1. Check you land... if you have build and object entry on, people can rez on your land, and sometimes do, even inadvertently (i.e. someone on the other side of the sim chucks orbit cages really high up in the air.) so u wind up with prims being used that need not be there.

2. Examine you rezzed objects. Some objects are more prim hogs than u may think. U may have to look around, and see if you can remove overly prim objects and replace them with better, low prim verisions... or if it's your own creations, try to rethink a lower prim way to do what you're doing. Remember, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

In agreement with the other posts.. overall, I'd avoid building a single structure across sim boundries because of the lag issue. Last September, when I first joined SL, concurrency ran about 4-9k avatars logged on at any given moment, and back in, heh, "those days", there was just a slight "freeze up" that lasted less than a second. Since the population has exploded, one of the bottlenecks seems to have been crossing sims. Understandable, since quite a bit is going on near sim boundries. Neighboring sims communicate with each other to a degree, so if you're in one sim, you can "peer into" the next sim, and see avatars, their text because they're less than 20 meters away (even though they're in a different sim). So, there's alot going on there at sim boundries, and with today's population, there's a big lag crossing boundries which would be bothersome to anyone spending alot of time in that structure.

[double-post... forum server delay]

On the other hand, there are some advantages to owning parcels on both sides of a sim boundary.

Depending on the boundary, it may offer a handy place for you and customers to flee during rolling-restarts.

You have a handy standby location for servers, "Magic Boxes" and the like (although this can be obtained inexpensively these days by purchasing 16sq.m plots from gone-bust ad-farms).

You can shift the avatar-intensive parts of a business to the other sim when somebody opens an overnight-sensation camping-chair Club Notorious on one sim, until the club dies of "Nobody Goes There Anymore, It's Too Crowded"--then you can shift back.

Or, if *you* are Club Notorious, you can spread between the sims, delaying that NGTAITC effect.

I.E., when you walk from one sim to another, you are in fact teleporting. Whenever a prim extends into another sim, the extra portion becomes phantom, that's why the falling effect.

Yes, you CAN build things that cross sim borders. But you have to take the limitations of sim communications and architecture into account. (FYI, the same tricks regarding rooting half a build on each side can be used to build out over "protected" Linden waterways, to make a bridge joining two parcels across a waterway.)

1: You can't share prim count from one side to the other. What is in one sim remains in that sim's resources, and that includes prims rooted in one sim but sticking over the edge into another. Where the root prim or center of the single prim is determines where it is counted.

2: Any prims that stick over the line into the next sim are phantom as far as the other sim is concerned. BUT, when you are going from Sim A to sim B, for a short distance prims rooted in sim A can still support you. This is vital to cross-sim building, because when you step over the edge, the sim you are leaving doesn't think there is a prim there for you to step onto, unless there is a prim sticking over the border from its side. So you start to fall through as you step across. So you need to do a prim overlap on the border. One prim that is linked to the other side, sticking over the border from each side. I usually duplicate one full prim in both directions, linked to the far side and textured 100% alpha, while the prim it duplicates is one with a non-alpha texture.

3: You can't link a prim in sim A to a prim in sim B. So to have an overlapping prim that is entirely in sim A and linked to a linkset in sim B. you have to link it while it is in sim B, then edit linked parts to slide it over the edge into sim A.

Keep those facts in mind, and yes you can build over a sim border.

Case in point: Pooley auditorium. It's a Linden build that spans at least two sims (I can't recall if it is on a corner and exists in 4 sims, or just on an edge between two). They split it across a border to increase the number of people who could attend meetings there.