Confused as to difference between objects and prims?

In a number of situations objects and prims are used in conversation, documentation and the SL interface as if they are the same thing or and on other occaisions, not.

Can someone reply who knows all there is to know about this subject and list when they are and when they are not the same thing?

Please do not reply if you don't know I am looking for facts not conjecture and fun time yada yada.

Much appreciatted, future murk cleanser.

A prim is always one of the basic geometric shapes that you get when you go into the "create" tab and click on the ground - a box, cylinder, prism etc.

An object is one or more prims linked together. A single unlinked prim can be an object; an entire set of linked prims can be an object. I think it's safe to say that that's the generally accepted definition of an object. If you want to be absolutely precise you could call this a "linkset" or "set of linked prims".

It is confusing though that land parcels limits are described as object limits. I spent a while linking prims together into single objects of 10 prims or more only to find that my lands object count hadnt decreased at all. Should be called prim limit really.

Thanks Ordinal that sorted my brain.

Yossarian, I am still new and feel your pain but let me give you 2 tips:

1. Sometime the About Land is not quick to update the object status, I am guessing that closing and reopening it might help. (No gaurantee)

2. A better idea is to move your work to a Sandbox and bring it back linked, see if that helps.

It's more loose Linden talk. Rez a linked house onto your land and you will find that the objects available count has decreased by the house's prim count even though the house consists of one single linked object.

Part of the reason is because not all objects are prims. The linden procedural trees or bunches of grass are considered as one object each, even though they look more complex than regular prims. So instead of listing them as 'prims', they use 'objects'.

This is changed in Second Life 1.10. Play with the Preview. Thanx for your attention to this matter.

I need 2 clarifications:

!. "It's more loose Linden talk", ed44 Gupte to what are you referring?

2. Torley Linden, We are about to see 1.9.1 how far away is the version you are talking about, version 1.10.0.26 ? I saw your quote but what has it changed to as opposed to the quote?

It's a name change because too much goodness got packed into 1.9.1 and it busted up a version number. See

/3/b8/106873/1.html

and yeah, play with the Preview if you haven't yet!

Have a lush day...

Loydin said:


Hi Loydin (and Torley),

On re-reading I see what I said being a bit emotional and unwarranted and I apologize for that, particularly to the Lindens who are doing a great job under tremendous pressure.

When you look at the land tabs you definitely see mention of objects, not prims. But the reality is that it is the prims that are counted. So objects are both prims and linked groups of prims. Maybe groups of liked sets of prims should be called "link sets" so as not to be confused with the objects mentioned in the land/object tab.

Maybe I am being a bit pedantic, but it might seem confusing to some.

Ed

Torley//

Sorry to slightly change the subject, Loydin, but I was jazzed to read that there is a new preview release, but disappointed to find out that I still cannot access the preview grid due to being born after a certain cut-off date. This was already the case with the 1.9.1 preview, and I was hoping that the grid's db would have been put up2date. When is this going to change?

//Kliger

Kliger, that is too bad, because my little juant out there was impressive. The first thing that caught my eye was the wind physics. Not just flags and the trees that we all see in previous versions but what I think is a wind powered wind mill of Dutch fame, wow.

Are sailboats possible, one would think so.

Sorry for the wasted energy, but in fact, the new preview does work for me
I forgot that I had changed my password... And yes, Loydin, I am liking very much what I see in the preview grid.

//Kliger

What you're talking about is nothing new, actually. Wind was around well before I joined (it may have been there in alpha, I'm not sure), and it's relatively simple to script physical and non-physical objects to respond to it. The only new thing is the flexiprims, which are really just visual effects that don't have any bearing on physical interactions.

So Beatbox are you saying that you can build a wind driven windmill in the current version of Second Life?

Indeed! Just make it spin using llTargetOmega, periodically changing the speed based on wind speed and direction.

You could also make a physical linkset of blades that spins on a pin and has rotation impulses applied to it based on the wind. This would be less stable and more sim-resource-intensive than the first way, but it wouldn't suffer from the "jump to default rotation" issue that occurs when making repeated calls to llTargetOmega (and it would be possible for avs & object to interact with it). Actually, you could probably omit the pin and simplify things by holding it in place in the air with llMoveToTarget... and I think there's a way to restrain its rotation to one axis, but I don't recall what it is off the top of my head... Or! Better yet, ask around and see if anyone has a full-perms hinge joint they'd let you have a copy of (since we can't create joints from scratch anymore)...

Er, and I have a feeling you didn't follow any of that. Eep! To summarize, the things you describe have always (or almost always) been possible in SL. You just need some scripting knowledge in order to figure it out.

EDIT: "Beatbox", I like that, Loydin! *BOOM BOOM DISSH, KABOOM, BADOOM DISSH, KRAKABOOM!*
Quite frankly, I haven't done enough beatboxing lately...

The Flying Tako sailboat, by Kanker Greenacre, uses the SL wind to sail.

I'm a little confused. Will the text in the "About land" box be changed from object to prim? Or will each group of prims be only counted as 1 against the objects used? Playing with the preview won't help me in finding this out because I don't currently own land. It is something that I'm heavily considering though.

ive only been griping about the x amount of object on x amount of land since 1.5.8, and ive been telling ppl to file with the BBB since then about deceptive statements (since you dont really find out that they meant prims not objects untill after the BS claims are gone and your standing on your dinky plot)

all i can say is thank you Torley, if all the lindens did as much poking, proding, pestering, and most importanly following up SL would be more of the "platform" that phil wants, rather than the disposible toy that it is now

(i mean really now, over a year and a half to get one word changed?sigh)