If I may mention a thought which occurred to some OpenSim developers, perhaps an asynchronous query to the physics engine could determine whether a prim overlaps a parcel, and by this means parcel owners may return prims which overlap their territory even though the prim center is on another parcel.

Megaprims, when used thoughtfully (not as floors where collisions are constant), can be an incredibly valuable tool both aesthetically and functionally. Taking it away would cripple essential builds that contribute to the community at large. This is a reasonable interim fix until a more permanent solution can be put in place.

However, two points must be made:

1) If a sim has megaprim scaling disabled, I would urge Linden Lab to NOT force existing or rezzed megaprims to scale down to the regular size, as this can literally destroy a lot of builds. If the build is no-modify then the damage would be permanent.
2) One point that I would OPPOSE free megaprim creation is this: megaprims are a line of defense against copybotting. When copybot replicates a build, it just rezzes prims, sets their position and properties, and links them. Except on opensimulator, copybot is limited to the 10m dimension size, just like everyone else is. So if a build using lots of megaprims gets copybotted and then replicated, then the attempt at replication fails to work properly, and the result is a bizzare piece of junk.

Why the divide?

The only reason (hinted at by my complex vector) that scaling (creating) megas would be useful is for building when creators encounter a "need" for a mega of a size they find is unavailable (Other uses for griefing and the like aside).

If such an ability were granted on private regions what would LL do to stop us from using those prims on the mainland.

I am all in favor of allowing the creation and manipulation of megas but if then we find LL makes any further ruling on their use we could end up worse off.

Why not instead of arbitrarily allowing mega creation and manipulation on only private regions simply get busy with the banning stick for trouble makers and once and for all make megas legal currency throughout SL?

This debate is years old. I would love to know why Qarl has at this time encouraged a re-examination of the topic with this very odd stipulation (only on private regions). Me thinks there may be more to this than meets the eye.

I offer a proposed compromise here: make a larger sizable prim possible such as mentioned in the post by Damian McLeod. 16, 32, or 64 would work. But I favor 20, 40, or 50 as a maximum size. The real issue for me is curved surfaces. I could live with 20x20 if I could curve it to a segment of a cylinder or sphere with a diameter of 100 meters Then I could assemble large radius rings or spherical parts. Perhaps not technically possible, this JIRA got us to dream big.... so that is my dream.

Can I vote twice? =)

this way estate owners who want to attract builders can offer a larger prim size limit then sims where they want to focus on other things.

1) Why can scaling not be allowed on the mainland too?

2) What will happen to objects that currently work with megas on regions that disallow them?

3) What if any maximum sizes should be allowed?

4) My own observation - How will the server and viewer be updated to understand them better (PRIM_POINT_LIGHT, Physics etc.) and how would these changes be applied to currently rezzed works in regions that disallow new megas (that is if the disallowing does not automatically break the existing ones)?

5) What will happen to a mega if rezzed on a region that disallows them (as opposed to the ones that are already there)?

6) Why on earth can the free creation and use of megas not be fully allowed across the entire grid?

Baring this in mind; How will Linden Labs go about implementing this feature without almost rewriting all the server and viewer code in such a way that present content is not broken and that future content is not by default banned from or killed by certain regions?

Will all creators who sell their items including megas need to state on which regions their items will work?

The reasons that people have for using megaprims aren't restricted estates. Those same reasons occur on the mainland as well. I want scalable megaprims as much as anyone, but implementing it for estates while leaving it unimplemented for mainland is NOT going to help. The proposal is nothing more than a marketing ploy for estate owners, and it should be rejected out-of-hand.

If the reason for not allowing prims bigger than 10m2 is really just down to policing object encroachment, there's a technical solution to the encroachment issue: change the rules for these things:

• Change the way returning objects works, so that a parcel owner (or group members with appropriate rights, for group land) can return any prim that encroaches on their land at all rather than just prims that are centered on their land, and
• Change the way "Allow Object Entry" works to prevent an object from entering a parcel when its bounding box intersects the parcel boundary, rather than when its center intersects.

1) Copybot defense? This only works if you're talking about someone who would be interested in copybotting your content for use within the Secondlife grid itself. I'm sorry to say, but you really should be concerned about the fact that copybots now go beyond simple content rips and can claim even asset content like scripts (Albeit they get them without variables, but they still get them!)

2) This is a valuable step towards estate emancipation. Linden Lab has treated estates essentially as a loosely controlled arm of their own grid; This is a value-added step for sim owners, adding reason and value to the choice to pay more for estate land than mainland.

3) One term. Megasculpties. This would allow me to create single-prim UV-mapped PHANTOM megaprim sculpts, then use ordinary invisible prims as a collision mesh. The visual possibilities are staggering.

4) Estates with any semblance of management police their own overlaps without G-team intervention. Sometime hopefully the mainland will too, either with a technological solution or otherwise. This is a good relaxation of attitudes to permit further use of megaprims on the mainland once a technological solution can be worked out to enable their easy use there.

Megaprims are a tool that Secondlife needs legitimized, pure and simple. They're ubiquitous, they're too deeply rooted to remove, we may as well embrace them. But don't use this as a step to revoke their use on the mainland; Use it as a step to examine how you can make their use on the mainland technologically policeable, and move towards the goal of making them universally useable in time, Linden. I support this as a great first step.

Another point - Will there be lsl constants for checking if megas are allowed and if so (if some suggestions are employed) up to what size etc in much the same way as we have now to check for object entry and creation etc?

I wonder what other issues may need to be born in mind? Surely with all these nagging complications we either shift the use of megas from "shh" to "yay" or not subject ourselves to a potential mine field of accidents and recriminations.

And since we have Qarl Linden to thank for this burst of mega enthusiasm; Perhaps he might like to comment?

Unfortunately, these are typically the sort of issues that bog down LL's efforts to solve an issue for users. In trying to make a solution that fits everyone, most everyone ends up getting less-to-none of what they originally desired.

It strikes me that the issue here is scaleable megaprims; perhaps a solution may be that only the existing, non-scaleable megaprims can continue to be rezzed on the Mainland, even if that's quite an unpleasant solution to the remaining inhabitants of the Mainland. Rezzing new megaprims and scaling them to size would therefore be limited to estates.

I can understand that the use of megaprims, stacking them all in the sky sandboxes, and making them physical dropping them all down on people is a problem because of griefers, but for people who can actually use these things responsibility, I dont think it is a problem at all.

btw, Lets assume that one is building on a region that allows mega stretching and one is using the in-world tools (limited to 3 decimal places)... As many creators I'm sure are all too aware, if building accurately prims can be stretched manually out of the 3 decimal accuracy in pos and scale without any obvious sign that this has happened. Only when examining with a simple llGetWhatever script does one discover the 4th, 5th and 6th decimal places are non-zero. So it would thus be possible for a creator to accidentally create a mega without any knowledge (thus destoying their chance of it being allowed on some regions (Which ones? Who knows?)).

Unless there was another distinct new type of prim (see previous comment about workability for different types of prim).

I am a fan of megas and I love building and scripting. But am not going to vote for this until I am CERTAIN that LL are not going to wreck what we have now to make a half cocked attempt to satisfy an ill conceived notion that makes no sense.

If any change is made to the scaling allowances it should simply be to allow scaling up to a given limit. I personally can't see why that shouldn't be at least 1024m cubed (consider the sculpted mountain ranges and sky-scapes). If over lapping a boundaries is all that is stopping us then courtesy is truly dead. I could easily encroach with a normal link_set of non-mega-prims by many meters now, but don't because it is rude.

Rather than coming up with ever more complex ways to make life difficult why not either leave things alone or allow FULL USE of megas?

I suggest that work is done to be able to return any encroaching object and then large prims can be available to everyone. This would reduce load on governance also as it's not only mega prims that are used to grief/ encroach.

[edit]

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2859

Andrew linden - "I prefer another solution: implement object-parcel collision queries (so you can ask, "Is this object overlapping that parcel?") and then let people make prims as large as they like... as long as they fit on the parcels which allow them. Parcel owners would be able to move (or maybe just return) objects that extend into their parcels. In order to do this we'd have to have better collision approximations for sculpties, which is a big project, but that is something that needs to be done anyway." 20/Nov/07

Something that needs to be done and hasn't in two years? Seriously?

And I also have to wonder why such a useful tool is "banned" because a small minority abuse it. I have used this analogy in other situations, but it fits: if we use that reasoning, then let us call for a ban on kitchen utensils because they too can (and have been!) used to cause harm, great harm: death.

My approach here, as in ALL cases similar to this: do not ban or restrict things that are useful just because they may be used (or are used, to a small degree) for harm. Instead, punish those who misuse the tools. Not having enough people to cope is not a valid excuse to punish the entire community by removing/restricting a highly useful tool.

The benefits of mega prims by far outweigh the few instances of abuse, IMHO. I personally do not see the need to limit their use anywhere. But again, I don't go to mainland if I can avoid it, so my view is certainly "uninformed".

HOWEVER... I'll take this small step forward over none at all. So I voted for the proposal.

As a professional solution provider I could not do my job without these objects. But I am left to scrabble and search for these unsupported resources. The current situation is daft and needs a sensible and workable resolution. As an interim compromise I would be happy with an approved tool kit of fixed sizes that could only be used on private sims and not exist outside of the sim they were created on. But this is not an ultimate solution.

I would much prefer the ability to use a prim that scales to 256x256x256m rather than 10x10x10m. Bigger than that is unnecessary.

Rather than limit the prim size, limit where it can exist. I.e. It cannot exist outside the boundary of the owner's sim and will resize itself to accommodate (while building) or move or be returned to owner (if sold and placed causing a boundary violation). I know this idea has been mooted before This may sound a bit wacky but could be useable - once you got your mind around it. We already have these limits. You can only move a prim so far within a link set, it snaps back if a violation of the rules occurs. I assume this approach would obviate some cross boundary rezzing / detection issues?

Ian.

I use land on the mainland AND private sims. Why make it complicated with trying to set up estate management methods of controlling scalable megaprims? Just up the prim-size limits to 50m as maximum.

(I'm debating voting for this as it currently stands, though Miro Collas's rationale for voting for it makes sense. For now, I'll watch.)

"If the reason for not allowing prims bigger than 10m2 is really just down to policing object encroachment, there's a technical solution to the encroachment issue: change the rules for these things:

• Change the way returning objects works, so that a parcel owner (or group members with appropriate rights, for group land) can return any prim that encroaches on their land at all rather than just prims that are centered on their land, and
• Change the way "Allow Object Entry" works to prevent an object from entering a parcel when its bounding box intersects the parcel boundary, rather than when its center intersects."

I will gladly vote manually one thousand times if the solution for this issue includes the above.

and i have, in fact, written the code to do this encroachment test.

the problem is when a prim on one region overlaps into another region. currently regions are not aware of the prims in their neighboring regions. (you can see this with the physics engine, if a prim is centered in the neighboring region, you can't stand on it. your own region's physics engine doesn't know about it.) so we cannot currently do an encroachment test across region boundaries.

solving this problem is very difficult.

It simply adds two huge factors: ease and finesse.

Yesterday I created a new sim design. 14 huge prims. From thought to mock-up on my local sim, took me about 3 hours.

But that was the end of ease and finesse.

There was no way to simply bring the design over into SL ... because the prims would have become useless

So now ... my poor tiny ferret builder friend has to spend time locating just the right legacy huge prims, etc etc.

Oh yeah and there were no pieces measuring 20.235m ... nope precision aka finesse was truly out the window to begin with.

Yes, please, let's move away from denial and admit that huge prims are here to stay!

b) Qarl says: "the problem is when a prim on one region overlaps into another region. currently regions are not aware of the prims in their neighboring regions. (you can see this with the physics engine, if a prim is centered in the neighboring region, you can't stand on it. your own region's physics engine doesn't know about it.) so we cannot currently do an encroachment test across region boundaries."

Is this a reason to not allow anything over 10m? Currently, there are many problems with region boundaries, such as you can't reliably drive a vehicle across one. Does this mean that vehicles should be outlawed the same way large prims are outlawed?

Add the code to determine encroachment within the sim, and let us edit prims to our liking. If the cross-border problem gets solved later, then that'll be a happy-making thing, too. Currently, the g-team has to deal with megas rezzed anywhere, correct? When you've included the encroachment code, you'll have solved some substantial portion of their problem set. Then the only problem they'll face will be megas that overlap sim borders.

Please don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough.

I would vote for scaling if it were equally available to all residents who currently have the ability to rez a megaprim. (Everyone.)

my thoughts exactly.

Here are my thoughts:

1. Encroachment is an issue that concerns only the parcel owner being encroached upon. S/he can easily return the offending prims (usually).

2. Megaprims are only problematic when they are ridiculously too big (e.g. 1024x1204).

3. Megaprims should be scalable everywhere.

So ... from these thoughts come my suggestion: without destroying or changing anything that currently exists, allow the creation of new, fully scalable prims up to, say, 100x100x100 meters across the grid. This should solve the great majority of issues and shouldn't be very difficult to implement.

Example: As the Sole Estate Owner, I had the privilege of altering the TEXTURE of the ground, and had the privilege of granting and denying such formidable roles/responsibilities as raise/lower land, etc.

It seems only natural that as an estate owner, I would be of course privileged to create scaled megaprims of sizes up to 1024(3) and grant/revoke that same privilege to any other Estate member I feel handles that responsibility responsibly.

1024? Isn't that 4 sims by 4 sims by omg?

My point is this. If this Jira is approved, I'd find it perfectly understandable if while rezzing a mega, the calculation is made from the about-to-be-rezzed mega-prim center, out to it's extents, as to whether any point of those extents encroached a millimeter onto another sim (not parcel, I chose the word sim). If it did, I simply would recieve the "Nopes, uh-uh, nada, sorry no can do SL error." Same with moving. Same with scaling up or manually setting params in the Object tab. Move it to encroach and I risk my mega flying off-world and back into my lost & found folder.

As Estate Owner, my RL money is at stake if I abuse or let the privilege be abused by any of my delegates. I'd even support a 5 day waiting period after recieving Estate Owner privs on a new sim before being permitted to access scaleable megaprim responsibilities.

Remember, as owner, I may not know how to build with these, but may have a guest I hire that IS experienced. I grant them day-at-a-time privs to work with them and my sim gets built.

I voted yes for this of course. I'll watch the results of this vote and consider using SL again based on it's result, implementation and fallout.

PR Noyes

Since Qarl has bypassed all the niggling problems around the description of this request (like how will these new prims exist only on certain regions etc) and skipped forward to "How do we make megas fully workable?", I have to say I am impressed. Good on you Qarl.

So to business. Excuse my youth but ideas are not harmful, only actions without forethought (usually).

Since the viewer KNOWS where all the prims are, whether on the same region as the viewer or not, and as one can interact with objects across region boundaries the server must as some point become aware of the interaction via the action through the viewer. Take for example all the detected functions. They are capable of deducing and supplying all the details of any encroaching mega that a person could need.

Obviously this would require that the person checking the prim was able to script it BUT...

If one adds the viewer knowledge of what is where to a lil' bit of code jiggery pokery then surely we have a recipe for success?

I realize my statement is full of gaping holes, but my intention is simply to point out that even if the server (physics or whatever) doesn't KNOW about an overlapping prim the viewer does. There must be a simple way to evaluate the viewer data to establish an encroachment.

Some of these comments here remind me of the kids who cry "Waaah, if I can't have ice cream, then no one can have ice cream."

I'd like to get my toe in the door. I'd like to see content created with scalable prims. If all goes well, perhaps Linden Lab will acquiesce and the struggle for megas, universally, will be over.

How is having something better than nothing? This isn't about eliminating megas on the mainland. It isn't about taking something away. No one and nothing gets hurt. How is that so bad?

Me - There are some issues that need addressing before any "new" allowance is introduced. Otherwise quite simply content and creators could "get hurt".

A nice idea is only nice if everyone it effects sees it as nice.

However Qarl has made it clear that the only issue standing in the way of FULL ALLOWANCE of megas is encroachment (as a side-dish prolly griefers too) so we are moving past the "where" to a more satisfactory and worth while "how" stage of discussion.

"A nice idea is only nice if everyone sees it as nice."

Do you share your dinner with the homeless? How come you can afford a computer when so many people are starving in the world? There shouldn't be a cure for cancer unless EVERYONE gets the vaccine?

Meh.

and that's a HUGE job.

Objects that already exist would run into problems if that was the only measure by which placement were governed (mega or not). If the object were moved and code as described was in place the server would be in a position to calculate the allowed placement. However one has to ask...What does the server do with an object that it discovers (on being moved) never should have been where it was in the first place, let alone where it was just moved to?

There then is the issue of what to do about all the violations in place that would never be discovered by this automated answer.

So I suggest that in stead of relying on the server to provide an automatic solution we drive for a system that would allow at any time and on any region the justified return to owner of encroaching objects.

So the problem is....How do we establish without asking a Linden to come and look whether an encroachment has taken place. There will be a way.

So when that system is proven to be feasible we need only ask that LL implement it and that they give us a new maximum limit. Many figures have been mentioned and IMO most are ridiculously small. Why if a system is in place to solve border disputes limit ourselves to a few hundred meters? I fully understand that way too big is (I suppose) possible but lets look ahead to a time when 256m is just too small. Then we are in the same position all over again. Why not make the limit really massive so that we don't need to go through all this again?

I personally look forward to a day when regions are larger and borders are less "Twilight Zone" for crossing so we can really explore our imaginations and build truly magical worlds. But that time is prolly a long way off. In the mean time (good enough) we can extend regions (obviously only those surrounded by water or by the same estates land) vistas in quite wonderful ways by using sculpted megas. Some of these need to be truly massive.

If we are talking here about releasing ourselves from restriction then surely the last thing we should be doing is suggesting the new restrictions.

All we need is a way to empower residents to not suffer "abuse" by thoughtless neighbors. So I ask that since we have an exited and responsive Linden willing to discuss this issue and a platform to do it, we all put forward our best thinking with regard to solving this last stumbling block.

Real usable mega scale prims may seriously at last be a near reality. No mainland or not nonsense. No estate tools nonsense. No 100x100x100 is big enough nonsense.

Oooh I had another crazy idea... The map!! It knows where everything is. if the height was extended to 4096 then on update all overlaps would be seen. Could the data from here be compared with the data from there to establish anything useful?

How about another "invisi-grid" that was offset to/from the standard so that all the borders were in the middle of this new reference grids "regions"? (you understand?) Like a single purpose reference grid.

I hope you realize that I am just trying to suggest an alternative to what perhaps may have previously been considered. Anything is better than another dead jira issue.

BTW Qarl - If you read all my earlier comments (yes I know there are lots) you will see that I am WELL AWARE that this is not easy to "fix". I simply believe in trying rather than sitting back and moaning about how hard it might be.

Erm...and...llDetected's do work across region borders. At least they do for me.

You must be new here.

The folks complaining about "discrimination" against mainland surely must have noticed that mainland estate management is sadly neglected.

The point of this proposal is that with active, conscientious estate management, allowing scalable megas may be doable. Since that isn't available on mainland, mainland has to wait until there's an automatable solution. This sort of thing is part of the value-add from having active management on private estates. This isn't "discrimination", it's simply a direct result of the already existing situation.

Of course, if your point is that what you are charged for mainland tier should include better estate management (from LL, since mainland is their estate), it would be difficult for me to disagree. But that's a different issue.

If ONLY private regions are given the right to choose to allow the creation of megas but the mainland is not we must establish what happens to any mega created on one of these regions that is then transported to the mainland.

If the restriction would in that case ONLY be where the mega is CREATED then the "discrimination" aspect is almost moot.

If however LL are seriously considering this private region only system for the USE (not just creation) of megas we must then ask "What about all the present content?" etc. etc. etc.

If there is any divide established between what is allowed to exist on one region as opposed to another ALL the ramifications of that divide must be established beforehand. Otherwise a lot of content and developers could find them selves broke.

almost, maye in the greater context ..
for me alas simply no.
because: i pay tier on mainland where i "live and work" and where i want to be able to create that item using a 10,01m prim. if i am not able to do that but someone on a private sim is, i will feel discriminated against.

and i have not heard a convincing reasion why this discrimination should be implemented to begin with.
(sorry bettina, i think ice cream should not be just for the kids on the right side of the fence )

Otherwise you end up like Stan (AKA "Loretta") in Monty Python's "Life of Brian":

Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?!?!
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But ... you can't HAVE babies!
Stan: Don't you oppress me!

Open up the megas, again, Linden Lab. We are considering re-doing the build in Open Sim for our university. It would be a lot easier. That's not an idle threat, because we are seriously looking at SL alternatives and the mega-prim restrictions are contributing to our "shopping around."

I have been waiting for this for a long time. This compromise is totally unacceptable. This is a discrimination to mainland owners, a slap in their face. There are several communities on mainland where members work hard to improve the quality and aesthetic of mainland against all odds. Mainland residents have to deal with a number of problems, a smaller prim allowance per region, no estate tools and several other factors. Scalable megaprims would be an important help to improve the quality of building and prim saving on mainland. This iniative would make many mainland residents feel angry and discriminated. Why do I have to pay hundreds of US$ in tier every month just to see myself being treated as a second class customer, receive such poor support and feel discriminated? What's the point of working hard on improving the quality of mainland when these efforts are deliberately ignored? This is totally outrageous!

Removing prims scalability on mainland to avoid griefing is a moot point. What stops a griefer to rezz huge megaprims on mainland today? What will stop them doing it after scalability is removed on mainland? Nothing. They can do it today and will still be able to do it after the enforcement, whether the rpim is scalable or not. Then, why bother?

Scalable megaprims are a must but please do not set any limit for mainland.

In order to deal with the issue of overlapping megaprims, I'm wondering...is it even necessary for a neighboring sim to know of the existence of an overlapping prim?

Given that the simulator where a prim is rezzed must surely know: a) where the prim is within the sim, and b) how big the prim is, could the simulator not simply use these values to calculate how far a prim extends out of its own region, and if extends too much (say, more than 10m), automatically return it?

If this is indeed possible, the only issues I see are 1. If there are legitimate reasons for extending a large prim into another region (more than 10m), and 2. More importantly, if there's legitimate existing content that already does this, and would be broken if the extending megaprims were returned.

However, if this is indeed a significant issue, perhaps another suggestion given to make sizable megaprims into new types of prims (which would eventually have LSL support as well, and may in fact be safer than simply extending LSL scale limits on existing prims) would solve the problem. Or alternatively (and perhaps ultimately simpler), adding a new checkbox flag to existing prim types called "Scaleable Megaprim".(or the equivalent) would do the trick. Existing fixed-sized megaprims would not have the flag enabled by default, and therefore would be allowed to remain extending unless the checkbox was ticked.

Do these solutions seem feasible?

You have my permission to implement this feature. Any time before lunch tomorrow would be acceptable.

I just wanted to comment here, so I could look back on it in 2011... while we still wait for it to be done.

Scalable megaprims coming soon! Like... "real soon now"!

Because otherwise, there'd simply be megaprim creation bots on islands, that will receive a desired prim size, rez it, and send it to the requester on the mainland. The problems of megaprims on the mainland do not lie in resizing them, it lies in parcel encroachment and prims too large to be returned by anyone but the Lindens.

Well, Bettina.... how is that any better than: I want my ice cream and the rest of you go to hell?

This sort of ugliness makes me want to just stop caring. It seemed like such a little thing, and it's all blown out of proportion. Heck, it is making me sympathetic for the Lindens.

@Qarl, why not do a temporary fix of preventing anything over 10x10x10 from being within 10m of sim borders, it's not an ideal fix but I don't see why it couldn't be done, the system already is in place I think to automatically move prims when they aren't allowed to be moved into a space or rezzed past a certain point.

Not sure if it would cause more load though, you'd have to do a check like (is primsize >= 10.0x10.0x10.0) and another one that checks the rez / move location.

Bettina, I don't belong to the usual angry mob ready to chase the Lindens with pitches and forks whenever something goes wrong. And as I said to you, I am fully supportive to your efforts on raising this issue, as well as I understand Qarl's good intentions. So, there is no intention on my side to insult anybody.

However, seeing the opinion of those who disagree with Qarl's suggestion being discounted as whining doesn't help a bit.

The opinions of many here is that Qarl's suggestion is not a solution and there are sound reasons for that:

It would not solve the issue with griefing. Griefers can rezz megas on mainland today, if they wish. This solution would not stop them doing it tomorrow.

It would likely create a megaprim black market, thus making the whole matter moot.

It would be an unacceptable discrimination for mainland residents and land owners. The debate this matter is stirring is proof that this is not an acceptable solution, unless you want to make a lot of people feel left out and angry. With all the major PR stumbles LL had this year, this is the last thing we need.

I don't agree with those who think Qarl's suggestion is a small step in the right direction. It would be a justification for LL not to deal with the issue for a long time because the matter is "already taken care of".

Also, I don't agree with those who think this is the only solution possible because a real solution will never happen. Or, those who think why bother, they won't do anything anyway. With more virtual worlds coming to market, offering better technology and graphics, LL must keep up with the what the competition has to offer. Does anyone wonder why they announced mesh import now that Blue Mars is coming?

Times are mature. I knew this matter had to come sooner or later. I have been waiting for it for a long time. Kudos to you to raise the matter but please don't settle for half-baked solutions.

Don't give up...

I love this idea, don't get the angst over it expressed here. Seems very reasonable to me.

On the question of different rules for estates, doesn't seem like a problem to me since there's already different abilities as estate owners and that seems an appropriate priviledge of payment.

I'm also assuming, but missed in looking this over, that this proposal would leave the current frozen-sized megaprims unchanged, which if true would also answer a lot of the concerns raised here.

1.- There is no reason to discriminate between estates and main land: if megaprims are allowed here, they should be allowed there as well.

2.- As someone pointed out already in this thread, if you can create megaprims in any estate/private region, then it's dead easy to transport your mega-builds over to the mainland: will this imply that the use of megaprims would become impossible on mainland as a "side effect" of this "new feature" ?... What about existing builds ?... This would be unacceptable.

3.- The true and definitive solution to abuse of mega-prims is to allow any parcel owner to return any prim that overlaps their parcel (and this would also be of benefit for non-megaprims !). This solution was already pointed out by LL themselves as a prerequisite to opening mega-prim creation on SL and would render any serious objection to their usage completely moot.

If you really want mega-prims, then please vote for MISC-3454 instead...

As Qarl Linden has pointed out, No region server is aware of the neighboring regions objects. So if an object overlaps a parcel boundary that is also a region boundary the system would fail. Incontinuity of service therefore results that until a solution is found (actually installed is a better word to use since it seems the coding required is already known but "a HUGE job" (to quote Qarl Linden)) to the problem of region overlaps there will probably not be a solution to parcel overlaps.

We can however rejoice in the fact that (so it seems) LL are finally giving both the question of allowing (or not) mega scaling of prims and if so also the problem of how to stop them and other builds from wrecking the neighbors life.

Still waiting for Qarl to answer my question about when the "tiny viewer" might be installed

EDITED - Still not voted and never going to for this issue to be made a reality without confirmation that a vote for this is not a vote for a technical catastrophe resulting in content being destroyed, returned or both across the grid if not only on the mainland.

However DON'T GO AWAY YET. Perhaps in this case I wonder if instead of "tiny viewers" and boundary encroachment return issues being a total block to this. Maybe we could be trusted a little more to behave ourselves and LL could allow scaling to mega sizes anyway?

Everywhere.

Implementing this means that most creators will avoid using megaprims... others will create versions with and without megaprims... most users will be mystified why they can't rezz their content on mainland... all in all, I think this would create more problems than it would solve.

I really don't think there's any intention to change the handling of the existing uneditable bandit megas, so the griefing potential of bandit megas would remain unchanged on mainland or estate.

A primitive (prim) that was by the use of a bug scaled to exceed the maximum 10 meter cubed allowance LL has imposed is what we NOW call a mega.

However...

If any person in SL were able to create a prim that was allowed to exceed 10 meters cubed it would not be strictly a mega. It would be (surely) just a new prim.

At present the unscaleable megas we have are all perversions. They only truly reveal themselves as such when we attempt to change their scale. This is because the server recognizes them as just another prim.

As far as I am aware (at this time) there is no way for the server to distinguish between one (mega or not) type of prim and another. So in order for this "Estate only" system to work a label of some kind would need to be embedded in the prim letting any other region to meet it know what type of prim it is.

This strikes me as being a lot of guff. How ridiculous to make all those changes to the server code just to allow a few extra mutant prims to be created that can then only exist in a few select places. Quite honestly with those restrictions people would be FAR better off going to opensim.

The only sensible option is to drop the terms mega, huge, giant etc and just think about what properties we would like ordinary prims to have. And with regard to scaleability, I would like to be able to scale prims to a far greater size than I presently can.

One type of prim for one grid. No fuss and everybody is happy. And I can clear my inventory of 10000 alternative mega prims.

#1 - Raise the size of prim creation EVERYWHERE to at least 64 x 64 x 64. This would solve a LOT of the building problems without having extremely large prims floating about.

#2 - the SIm Owner can opt to allow creation up to 256x256x256.

But once the prim is CREATED, it need to be rezzable ANYWHERE.

T'ain't so.

In other grids prims are not artificially limited to force more prims to be used to try to sell more land. If LL wants to compete then LL needs to get rid of the artificial limits.

In the meantime I say yes indeed make it so oversize prims are allowed on estates. By all means make private estates more valuable. We pay $100 more per month for them as it is. And we use oversize prims if we so please already so do make it "legal" and let us scale them to fit. In addition fabulous sold prefabs can simply have a message on them that says "For Use On Private Islands Only! ". Maybe even sell them at a discount over the zillion prim versions used on mainland.

Perhaps we need the option allowed on full prim regions only as well to make homesteads less attractive. Especially considering the large influx of these cheap islands recently.

As for griefers using oversize prims? Well all LL has to do is word the TOS in such a way that they can deal with it effectively. However that would fall into a policy discussion outside the context of a pjira technical discussion so I guess we cannot hold that relevant discussion here.

Yeah, i has vote for it, and the next step is also Clear. Made an compatible Viewer and Serverprogram who is compatible with the Prim Sizes of Open Sim Grid's. So whe builders can build in all Grid's and can export/import our buildings without any problems.

Sayonara the Shamara.

There are rumours about lag caused by megaprims - i've tested this with a big building, made of more than a hundred megaprims. I was not able to see any lag caused by this prim crowd, nor was the estate owner.

The only problem i've ever seen are some griefers rezzing giant megaprims covering several SIMs. This giant prims are out in the wild. A "no" to this pjira won't take them out of SL.

As Shamara said.. HALLELUJA! Waited for so long...

1) Megaprims do not cause "lag" on their own specifically.

It takes a combination of factors (Just like any other prim) to make a megaprim "lag". What you'll be seeing in that instance is not specifically lag, it's usually physics overload, such as having an entire area's floor with 40 visitors trundling over it as a single prim. This is not half the issue in Havok 4 that it was in Havok 1, however. Also keep in mind that the difference between 40 of those visitors on a megaprim floor and 40 of them on a separate primfloor is pretty negligible.

2) Megaprims can be used as an encroachment griefing tool.

This is true even now. This is true even with ordinary prims, so it changes very little; Link a 30 meter wide mass of cubes, shunt the root to one corner of the linkset, stuff the bulk of it onto someone else's parcel while retaining the root on your own.. There are technical reasons as Qarl has explained, why this is still possible: SL has no way of telling where the borders of a linkset are, as this would require intersection tests across the entire bounding box of a linkset; This represents a potentially enormous amount of sim overhead compared to the current methods, as at bare minimum it will require serverside "rendering" of all content at a detailed level to determine surface intersection. Worse, it will require networking these solutions across sims to settle issues like linkset A on sim B protruding into parcel C on sim D. The overhead to do something like this is quite staggering, and a viewerside solution (Allowing parcel owners to return content not theirs if it intersects their parcel at all) is practically begging an exploit which will allow the return of any content or similar malicious actions.

3) Megaprims look awful in the existing vertex lighting solution.

This is one of the reasons why megaprims were actively politicked against internally at the Lab for a while. Megaprims do not jive with vertex lighting, because their vertex count does not scale with their size. Try it; Rez a 50m megaprim, put a light over it, and you'll see nasty jaggies in the lighting. It's been pretty clearly proven that most SL residents quite frankly don't give a damn about this, and more importantly, future versions of the SL client (And test and independant versions of it now) abandon vertex lights in favor of shaders.

4) Permitting megaprims on estates instead of mainland is discrimination.

Absolutely. And for technical reasons. Can you return an offender's objects across an entire sim when you're being griefed on mainland? No, you can't. Can you count on any of your ten estate managers to handle an issue when one arises on a sim you wholly own on mainland? Nope. So you count on Lindens, paid staff, on a product you're paying $195 a month for, to handle your issues. Estates are charged $295 a month despite the fact that we essentially manage ourselves; We already have priviledges you don't, because we pay for them, and we have obligations you don't, because we similarly pay for them. This is both an obligation and a responsibility for estate owners in a product environment which frankly, is already fraught with disparity. Welcome to capitalism, it sucks, but that's honestly how it is; Features are usually a paid priviledge.

So why should you as a mainland owner vote for this issue at all? It's really quite simple. At the moment we have no legitimate use of megaprims whatsoever. This one is quite simply a compromise gateway issue to permit a limited use, then as Qarl has hinted, possible exploration of technological solutions. This is one particular door that needs leverage, and gently applied, it'll open it wide for future use. We've already demonstrated to them we can handle using 'illegitimate' hacked-up megaprims, and with a few more buffers in place, we may very well see a global prim limit of 50m^3 someday. But one thing at a time, really. People have been asking for unrestricted megaprims for two years now. We likely won't ever actually get them unrestricted in one shot; It's a miracle that a Linden's actually looking at this issue at all, given how vehement some of the reactions to open megaprims have been in past.

I'd like to see a separate JIRA for Scalable Megaprims for ALL land. I'd vote for that in a heartbeat. I won't vote to support megaprims for some and not other landowners.

Chilbo Community in the Mainland of Second Life
Web: http://chilbo.org
SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Chilbo/112/222/121

I can live with the fact that estate landowners have more control over their properties because they pay more (though there is something to be said about a couple of things there too) but I can't accept a discrimination that affects such a fundamental feature as building in SL. That is simply unacceptable and something that in no reasonable way should be measured by money. People here also need to understand that increasing the size limit of prims is twice as important for Mainland residents because of the lower prim allowance. Every prim saved is precious for us as it is more difficult to build detailed quality content with the lower allowance we have.

Frankly, I am appaled by the disregard some seem to have about Mainland. Yes, Mainland is chaotic, even ugly in many places. But it is not only that. There are communities and residents working hard to improve the quality of Mainland. Residents should be supported and put in the condition of improving the quality of content on Mainland, not the contrary.

By reading the comments here I believe there is some confusion on this issue: I don't think anyone here is against scalable megaprims or increasing the size limit of prims. We all agree this is a much needed and long overdue improvement. No improvements have been made to the building system in Second Life for a long time. The technology is stagnant and the competition is offering more. I second Fleep Turque's comment on this matter, I would like to vote for this issue because I want prim size limits increased just as any other here but I won't do it at the expense and the discrimination of Mainland residents. So, folks, before voting on this issue think twice: you are not only voting to increase the size of prims, you do at the expense of Mainland residents.

Literally, discrimination – the act of recognizing a difference-- isn't the same thing as prejudice.

Mainland is different from estate land; estates have actual management, mainland in general has only absentee landlords. Recognizing that difference isn't some evil thing; it's simply accepting reality.

Maggie, this is the part of the proposition some people here oppose:

>> With this in mind, it is understandable that Megaprims in mainland areas of Second Life (while acceptable in many of their current fixed sizes) should remain unscalable.

In my posts here I say that this part of the proposition negatively affects Mainland residents. I mention communities because these provide effective management and quality control of large Mainland areas, something that is finally recognized even by Linden Lab with the launch of their Community Partnership Program. You dismiss this by the simplistic way of thinking that since most of Mainland is made of absentee landlors this is a reality to accept. Thus, according to this simplistic thinking, all community residents who provide management and quality content should be thrown out in the same bin.

If you don't mind, community representatives have equal right to voice their opinion here as anybody else, with the equal respect due to them as anybody else. Nobody here talked about prejudice, that's your characterization. Just as nobody here talked about discrimination politics. As far as I am concerned, I recognize and appreciate Qarl's effort on suggesting a solution. What some people here point out is that by restricting scalable megaprims we would have a "de facto" discrimination for Mainland residents. Quite a different thing.

I invite you "to get a clue" by visiting some of the communities on Mainland. Maybe you'll be able to offer a more valid contribute after that. The value of your contribution here is only good to inflame the discussion.

The premise of qarl's idea on the blog (full text of which you can read at https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5136096097852432485&postID=230606010505497345 is: megaprims are a problem because they can be used for griefing. Therefore, we can make megaprims an estate-region only option, and turn them off on mainland, because that way there can be no mainland megaprim griefing, and estate leasers can deal with megaprim griefing at their own whim should it happen on the regions they lease.

To me, this makes absolute sense - it's LLwho has to respond to mainland griefing issues. More work for them. I work in IT too. I understand exactly what that is all about. "Efficiency is intelligent laziness," and just not making megas an option on mainland is indeed the fastest way to remove all the additional work involved in dealing with mainland megaprim griefing.

Because, obviously, griefers use megaprims every single day, hundreds and thousands of times a day, to grief their neighbors.

Right?

Wait... maybe we should actually have some hard statistics on that. I'm sure that LL uses customer incident tracking software. Customer support departments are all, all over the idea of performance metrics - what sorts of incidents are reported, how they are resolved, the method used to resolve them. Et cetera. So, logically, someone at LL is tracking every single griefing incident reported and the method and location. Therefore, logically, the statistic of 'reported and confirmed griefing incidents on the mainland regions involving specifically megaprims within x timeframe' must exist either as a statistic in itself, or as a derivable value.

So, how much griefing is actually megaprim abuse on mainland? Is this actually a problem?

In absolute full disclosure, I am a comanager in the same mainland community that Indigo is. I would stand just as much to lose if we could no longer use megaprims. I don't think I'm the only one, though.

The USS-SL is connected to mainland Nautilus and Corsica by a spine of LL-owned public water, the Blake Sea. In fact, these sims bisect he USS-SL exactly in two east to west. You have to cross over them to get to the other half.

The USS-SL is, obviously, an odd case, but is still essentially resident-leased private estates that only happen to be connected to the mainland. WIth qarl's idea, I could rez a megaprim-using sailboat (of which many exist) in Foliage sim, where it would be legal to do so, but would not be able to sail to Honah Lee Lagoon (where it would also be legal to exist) because I'd have to transite several LL mainland regions (where it would not be legal to exist) to do so.

Ok, so I said it's an odd case - the Blake Sea regions have a so-far unique sort of comanagement case with the USS-SL leaseholders. So maybe we can consider that 'well, it's ok there, because of the circumstances.' Problem solved. But the Blake Sea exists where it is also as an extension, more or less, of the Nautilus City build and Bingo Strait. I'd only be able to sail as far west as Marmadunc if that were the case, as beyond would lie 'the Mainland.' Would the Bingo Strait have to be a special exception too? It's just archetypical mainland water regions. What would be the difference there?

What if I crashed out of SL while sailing west and my beautiful reproduction 18th century yacht with a set of very specific megaprim sails ran aground in someone's home on the mainland? Did I grief?

I vote no on this, because if scalable megaprims can be enabled codewise on the estate region servers, there is no reason that it can't exist on mainland as well. Unless estate sims use some sort of fascinating estate-only codebase that I'm not aware of that can't take the same diff patch before compiling. Therefore, the distinction cannot be one of technical issues - only support ones.

Of course, I am completely wrong if mainland megaprim abuse happens as often as I hyperbolically postulated earlier - but I somehow don't think I am.

That said... I reiterate once more. It IS discrimination to not permit their creation on mainland, for one simple reason:

Specific policing of megas (Griefing is NOT the only problem; What if your neighbour puts up a perfectly fitted megaprim screen and forgets to alpha your side?) is next to impossible on the mainland, and if the Adult Content debacle taught us anything, it's that G-team is already overtaxed well beyond their reach. Trying to get a G-teamer for anything nowadays is difficult unless it's an incredibly quiet day. For those of you complaining that a disparity exists between mainland and estates, you're absolutely right.

We pay a hundred bucks more than you. You want estate priviledge, pay estate price.

Pay more, get more. I reiterate once more that we are also paying for the "priviledge" of policing our own estates (Believe you me, I'd rather just have improved access control to SL as a whole, and a G-team that isn't afraid to implement a hardliner stance with hardware bans for clear and present repeat offenses. This is one of those areas where the SL client opensource movement is a pain in the ass). We police our own estates. It costs Linden less to run a single estate sim than a single mainland sim; They don't have to pay G-team members to police the estate, the estate polices itself, sets its own covenant, its own rules, and own management.

You want megaprims, you need to lever small steps in first. Estates have their own safety net; It's called the estate staff who are unpaid and volunteering by virtue of paying a premium, to police their own sim. Let it work out fine there for a while in a self-regulating environment, then wait until Qarl (Or probably Andrew, given the nature of the detection) can figure out how to do bounding-box checks on parcel borders, even across sims. Politicking that you don't want this just because you can't have it now, is roughly stating "I can't have my icecream because there's no cone for me yet, so why can the dude buying the deluxe have some when the cone's already there".

Something that mainland sailors in SL are very aware of is parcel lines that extend significantly into waterways (more common on older continents than new). The waterways may still technically be navigable, as often there is still a Linden-owned channel down the center, but often times builds can extend over water up to the very edge of the resident's leased parcel. This generally leads to tortuous, twisty paths that need to be sailed.

Of course, it would be better for the sailors at least if people didn't build that far over water.

But, the resident that leases the parcel from LL is perfectly entitled to build right up to their parcel lines. And that's entirely their right to do so.

If a neighbor put up a perfectly fit megaprim screen and forgot to alpha my side - I don't have a right to complain, unless it extends onto my land. That's their parcel, their prim, and the sad truth is I would have to just deal with it. Of course, I could just ask the resident to fix it (and that's something we have done, often, in our community to generally good results) but if they don't, that's their choice.

>> We pay a hundred bucks more than you. You want estate priviledge, pay estate price.

And maybe some don't necessarily want estate privilege. By the same ice cream cone argument - it doesn't even exist yet, so why must it automatically be an estate privilege? I don't want to lease a sim. I don't necessarily even want the mainland to be better or on par with private estates. You're absolutely right, you're paying more. You're entitled to do what you want with what you have been provided.

I just think LL would be doing an absolute disservice to say 'oh, you don't have to lease a private estate sim from us, you can just stay on the mainland but you won't get all the avenues of creative expression that the bourgeoisie have.' It devalues the existence of mainland at all. Why not just get rid of it entirely? I'm sure LL would love having everybody have to own a private estate just to own land...

Many mainland communities are great communities. But they face the extra burden of being on land they do not fully control...and recognizing that difference may meet the meaning of discrimination that is "the quality or power of finely distinguishing" but not "prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment ", which is the bloody shirt folks are waving hoping to influence this discussion.

My views won't become "more valid" by agreeing with you.

(By the way, in this context I would define "mainland" as "regions having non-Linden estate managers" rather than "regions contiguous to a mainland continent"...so Blake Sea regions for example are mainland but Hollywood, Honna Lee and Artificial Isle are not.)

>> We police our own estates. It costs Linden less to run a single estate sim than a single mainland sim; They don't have to pay G-team members to police the estate, the estate polices itself, sets its own covenant, its own rules, and own management. <<

Guess what, we do the same on Mainland.

Excuse me, do you have any idea of what you are talking about? You seem to have a confused idea of communities on Mainland.

Chilbo is 6 regions wide and they are an organized group of people who manage, take care and police their own community. The East River Community has an extension that is equivalent to 5 regions and we do exactly the same things. The same goes for Caledon, Luskwood, the CDS, etc. Each community has community standards which always include the respect of TOS guidelines. We provide free management of large Mainland areas (thus, saving money for LL because they don't have to use resources for that), improve the quality of the areas where we operate, clean up junk from the land we acquire because we have easthetic standards, fight land speculation and parcelization by joining micro-parcels. We fought ad farms in the past, when this was still an issue. Incidentally, we worked to clean up and rejoin parcels in 10 regions and some of that land is now owned by people who proved to make good use of it. The fact that it is more expensive to run Mainland regions is debatable considering that more Mainland regions run on the same server.

You know what? People don't choose to live on Mialnland because they are cheap, as you seem to think. Some do so because they are attached to the place they chose to set as home. The ERC is located in a historical part of Second Life and that is where we want to live.

In the 3 years that I have been part of our community I remember only one case when we asked the Lindens to clean up for a griefing attack, and it wasn't even on our land because we have autoreturn enabled. Besides, they were already aware of it and cleaning up.

Shall we use only money as a measure for judgement? Ok, then some of the communities on Mainland pay more in tier than some estates. According to your line of thinking one could be entitled to say: I want scalable megas because I pay more than you.

I don't think this is the right approach.

And, please, can we bring this discussion on a more serious level? Accusing people who express legitimate concerns as "politics" is a lame argument, Selkit. Show facts and spare the crap, please. If you want to talk about politics, then look straight into the facts: this matter becomes politics the exact moment someone decides to provide scalable megas to some at the expense of others. That is what you are arguing for with a shrug.

By the way, the last I looked Caledon wasn't mainland.

I'd have to check with our security team, but in four years, I'm pretty sure griefing incidents in the Chilbo Community have been with regular old prims, not mega prims. I see the griefing potential as the least of our worries regarding mega prims, and whatever the potential, a small price to pay for the benefits of having them.

Please don't forget that the mainland is something akin to the "public" areas of the grid, in terms of contiguous space that newbies and residents can wander and explore. Scaleable megaprims allow for enhanced creativity (I'm sure Bettina would agree, and this is likely one of the reasons she's been such a tireless champion of them) in addition to prim efficiency, something every resident and builder of Second Life would benefit from if implemented. Residents on the mainland deserve that "upgrade" as much as those on private estates.

Private estates do indeed pay for greater control over their environment and an enhanced sim management toolset, but building and creativity is at the very heart of what makes Second Life a magical place of our world, our imagination.

Extending the palette of what's possible for some and not others with the very lego pieces we use to make that world is something I cannot support, and I'm surprised anyone would, to tell the truth.

As much as we try to manage and spread our resources we are often in a situation where we struggle for free prims. I reckon that with scalable megas I could probably save 300 prims or less in a single region. Not even that much, but they are worth gold for us.

I want scalable megas like anybody else. It's not me who wants to restrict scalable megas usage. It's not me who is driven by a "I pay more I get more" logic or by selfish interests. My views on this have nothing to do with "if I can't have it you can't have it either" stance, like some here say. If there was a clear roadmap that laid out a plan to have scalable megas first to estates and then mainland in, say, 3 or 6 months, I would not object to it. But I don't see any and the real concern here is that after providing a half baked solution the matter is put aside because a solution is already provided and the resources are scarce. I work in software development and I know how these things work.

As for Caledon, I stand corrected. It's so big there that it feels like being on a continent.

This proposal is doable with a relatively small effort and will pay off on over 26,000 estate regions. I don't see how you can justify holding them hostage in hopes of creating pressure to implement a much more complex solution for the mainland (which is what, perhaps 7-8,000 regions?) while claiming you're not saying "if I can't have it you can't have it either".

Your position is a strawman; if you've seen "a clear roadmap" that promises any new SL feature in 90-180 days, I'd love to see it. If only so I can point and laugh. Even Viewer 2009 isn't happening in 2009.

Exactly! Thank you for making my point.

>> I don't see how you can justify holding them hostage in hopes of creating pressure to implement a much more complex solution

Hee... holding hostages??? The poor lil' old me? You overestimate my influence, Maggie.

I am expressing my point of view, like anyone else who has an interest on this matter here. Please, let's not blow this out of proportion.

And I am not suggesting a more complex solution. Scalable megas (or increasing prim size limits) can be implemented everywhere with the time needed to flip the switch. Why? Because griefing with megas is a false problem. This proposal will not stop griefers from using megas inappropriately, unless all megas will be blocked on Mainland, which would be a major disaster. This proposal IS the more complex solution.

I see nothing in this proposal that affects the bandit megas at all.

Maggie, a number of suggestions have been made here. There are options. One is what Qarl suggests. Another is offering a full solution grid-wide. One more solution would be to entirely ignore the false problem of griefing with megas. And I have seen more. I am debating options here, I am not declaring a final sentence carved in stone for the sake of arguing.

>> The claim that "prims are more precious to us on mainland" rings hollow to me; there's 15K prims per region grid-wide, AFAIK. <<

Yes, nominally. The actual number is reduced by Linden land and land owned by absentee landlords. And we don't have a multiplier factor as estate land does. Even when one owns 100% of a region (and it never happens) it is unusual to have more than 12K prims.

>> which blocks scalable megas for 26K regions for the benefit of 8K. <<

Maybe we should look at this in terms of usage rather than in terms of number of regions. I suspect that in terms of traffic those 8K regions weight a lot more than the whole 26K estate regions. As Fleep rightly pointed out "mainland is something akin to the "public" areas of the grid, in terms of contiguous space that newbies and residents can wander and explore". Mainland is the mess it is today because it has been neglected for too long. LL has recognized the problem and has taken steps to change the situation. Banning ad farms, removing land parcelization, separating adult content, introducing the Community Partnership Program are all steps in that direction. We have seen big improvements this year since the introduction of these measures. But it is not enough, we need support to improve quality. This proposal, as it is, is a step backward.

>> I see nothing in this proposal that affects the bandit megas at all.

Ok, let's pretend BillyBoy Griefer decides to take a griefing action on mainland and that legal scalable megas are already implemented. Like most of us, BillyBoy has a vast collection of megas in his inventory. If not, all he has to do is to go to XStreet and get one of the several free packages available there. Or, he could ask friends. Or, he could go to one of the several sandboxes on estate land that have been created since the implementation of legal megas. So, how you can block BillyBoy to place a nice 50x50x50 mega on every abandoned parcel bordering another region? Or use an auto-rezzer and spam several regions? Even if legal megas were flagged as not to be rezzed on mainland, how do you stop BillyBoy to use legacy ones?

The only solution to solve this problem is to ban megas from mainland entirely. Which means that a lot of what has been built on mainland would be zapped, that 20-30% of what we have built would be zapped.

In the 3 years I have been involved with my community I don't remember a single incident involving megas. Mega griefing is a false problem.

This proposal doesn't affect the handling of existing bandit legacy megas, so any argument involving them is a straw man.

This proposal isn't "a step backwards for mainland" because it doesn't apply to mainland. It's a step forward for estates, to which you are attempting to hitch your personal wagon.

If there's no griefing potential for full megaprim liberation on mainland, you need to argue that proposition with Andrew; clearly he and the other Lindens believe there is. In fact, rolling this feature out in the estates might help you prove that point.

Unless the mainlanders torpedo it by crying about how discriminatory it is.

As people above have pointed out, the proposal is either not very limiting (because you could build on land with scaling permitted then move the build) or destructive (scaled megaprims not allowed / deleted on land which does not permit scaling).

"qarl said...

if ya'll want to make another push to get LL to address megaprims, i think i have a solution.

LL's concern is about griefing on the mainland. with the current code, a resident with a 1x1 parcel could erect a sim-wide banner.

we've tried to mitigate this with software... but those plans have been complicated, and so fell by the way-side.

a VERY easy way to solve this problem is to make mega-prims an estate option. estate managers can chose whether to turn them on/off - and then can personally deal with any issues that may arise. (and of course, we'd leave them turned off on the mainland.)
October 13, 2009 9:37 AM"
(From http://npirl.blogspot.com/2009/10/giant-prims-2nd-anniversary-of-big-prim.html?showComment=1255451837824#c5237814648895793139)

Taylor, did you know if you follow every link you see, you'll eventually end up at the end of the Internet? I'm trying to forestall that possibility. But if you want to skip to the end, here's a shortcut: http://www.endoftheinternet.com/

Just because somebody in a comment posted a link to an outside blog doesn't incorporate it into a JIRA feature request by reference. The requested feature is stated in the description. Alternate and related proposals are in the related links. Votes on a FR refer to the FR in the JIRA itself, no other approach makes sense.

And the Linden devs will go ahead and do whatever they want to anyway.

I do also believe that current existing megaprims should not be destroyed as it would ruin thousands, maybe millions of builds on secondlife already that look astonishing.

You could also argue that scalable megaprims make it easier to prevent encroachment.

This is a discussion of landlord appeal.

If all landlords would deal will griefers in a way that responds favorably to the tier paying or rent paying residents, then the griefers would slowly disappear from all lands.

If, on the other hand, one particular large land management company cannot or will not manage griefers and chooses instead to outlaw scalable megaprims, then the users and builders of truly interesting large-scale builds will, over time, migrate to estate regions rather than choose contiguous land that is managed by a central department of public works.

There is already a de facto building limitation inherent to owning land on the mainland. The fact that mainland property cannot be terraformed to the same limits that estate owners can alter their terrain on their land is very limiting. Estate terrain is far more visually interesting than anything that can be achieved on regions managed by Linden Lab after they set the terrain the first time around. Contiguous regions creates the need for terraforming limits just as it creates the need for prim size limits. Antisocial behavior can manifest itself in poor terraforming just as it can with the placement of script generated and annoying prims, particle spam, and chat spam. There is no technical issue with the terraforming limits. It is a management issue.

Enjoy your virtual Life,
Ethos Erlanger

I feel that whatever size it comes in is unrelated to the grief.

Enjoy your virtual Life,
Ethos Erlanger

I understand Qarl said that megaprim griefing is concern for support team. If allowing megaprims on estates proves that megaprim griefing is not such an issue after all, and that leads to implementation of megaprims on mainland as well, I'm all for it.

However, if Lindens won't even consider allowing megaprims on mainland, than all this serves is only dividing content market in two, not to mention that premium membership gets another disadvantage.

So, Qarl and Lindens, what exactly are your concerns with allowing megaprims in SL?

1) If this jira is implemented, being that it specifically refers to scalable megaprims on estate parcels, what will it cause the status of
a) existing non-scalable megaprims on mainland
b) existing non-scalable megaprims on estate
c) non-scalable megaprim rezzing status on mainland
d) non-scalable megaprim rezzing status on estate
to become?

2) If this jira is implemented, would there ACTUALLY BE a plan to extend scalable megaprim rezzing to mainland assuming it can be conclusively proven that it would not increase the rate of griefing? (note that this concept, of scalable megas trickling back to mainland, is not something that was THIS PARTICULAR JIRA under the assumption this would happen is a mistake, as it wasn't part of the proposal.)

(side note: I could, if I were so inclined, be able to grief or parcel intrude without a megaprim. I could do it with a vehicle, or a sound, or particles, or a texture, or a standard prim. Maybe, for the safety of all concerned, vehicles, sounds, scripting, uploading, and rezzing should be prohibited on mainland and only allowed on estate regions where the estate leasees are paying for the privilege of it...)

to answer a couple questions i've seen:

1) the main issue (as far as i understand it) with scalable megaprims on the mainland is that it will increase support-load for prim encroachment.

2) this proposal would not disallow megaprims from working on the mainland - it is only in regards to their scalability.

And just to make it clear - I fully understand that we're not voting on the words specifically mentioned in the NPIRL blog. I know that just linking to it isn't a magical #include. But that doesn't mean it's not useful to have contextual background on why the jira exists in the first place.

Since the question of whether present content will be safe has been answered I personally consider this to be an excellent idea. I can see a couple of little points for discussion that could do with a clean-up though Qarl....

1) - The NEWLY created "megas" can ALSO exist on the mainland?

2) - What (if any) maximum size will be applied (if this were to be "fixed")?

Like I say...With this clarification from Qarl about the safety of old content and the allowed continued use of megas on the mainland I vote in favour. But consider that certain issues must be more fully considered before jumping in the deep end as it were.

Please respond Qarl.

P.S. Kudos for the creation of the anti-issue (MISC-3470 ).

EDITED to fix grammar.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/09/crime-scene.html

If my experience as a long time resident of mainland is anything to go by, my guess is 98% of those reports are regarding regular prim encroachment and NOT mega prim. This is obviously just a guess on my part, and no doubt if megaprims became built into the viewer, then those percentages would change as newbie builders often don't even know megaprims exist and so don't/can't abuse them.

Still, if the only reason megaprims for all residents isn't being considered is due to encroachment, I would argue that 21 incidents a month of ANYTHING on a service the size of Second Life is a pretty darn small number of incidents, and shouldn't be used as an excuse to deny some creators full access to the range of prim options provided to residents.

Way to go Bettina and Qarl

I'm totally sympathetic to the mainland peeps. I really am. But I am still lusting after scalable megas and don't believe for a moment that this wouldn't be a good next step.

THANK YOU to all those who have voted for this JIRA and thank you to those who haven't and yet have the passion for megas to argue on their behalf.

Qarl, any chance we can reach a decision on this one? Would you be willing to adopt it or help us find someone in the Lab who would? Looks like we have a hot one here! 425 votes in favor is nothing to sneeze at!

This issue is of major importance to SL, because it will add value to the user experience. Why the mainland problem is considered more of an issue than for estates is dubious in my opinion, unless we are talking banning all Mega Prims for mainland sims, which would be a complete disaster.

Currently on any sim, one could shoot a gun that fires 200 meter large, physical prim grenades, which in turn explode with chunks of 200 meter prim shrapnel, all of it physical, all of it colliding on the sim and surrounding sims and dragging sim processor resources down into the mud. That can be done now, from a 2x2 meter parcel, so let's get real. What kind of trouble are we avoiding by banning adjustable mega prims ONLY on mainland?

To date Lindens still tell my clients, upon arriving to help with sim problems, that they must get rid of all mega prims, because those are the problem causing their estate sims to run poorly. Then find out after all the elaborate mega prim builds are removed, that the issues are due to scripting or something more complex. And I have customers that are more reluctant to buy awesome mega prim builds. Then I go to linden run sims, and find mega prims in full use there. Let's drop the whole mega prims "are a problem" attitude.

I voted for this issue, because we need to start accepting mega prims as a necessary tool for creation. I urge the mainland element to be dropped, since it's a complete fallacy to say it would be harder to manage mega prims there vs. estates

If, as a builder, there is ONE THING I could change about Second Life, it would be the ability to scale prims to 256m. Having the scaling ability limited to estates would be fine by me. Preferably, even if they couldn't be sized on the mainland, they could be rezzed there.

I do a lot of full-sim builds. I have to use giant prims to get the first-rate look and completeness that my clients expect. Using giant prims also vastly reduces the number of flush prim joints that, even in the cleanest build, mean crawling white lines and mis-alignments that have to be dealt with.

However, there are two very big problems with the available giant prims that cause me endless irritation and frustration on a daily basis:

#1: the limited sizes available. I find that I am constantly wanting sizes that don't exist; the lack of finer gradation of size means continual, often serious compromises in the final result. I am continually fighting against this inflexiblity to get the look, the forms that I want; the process ends up involving regular, disappointing compromise.

#2: efficiency, in time and effort. I was thinking about the last three full sim builds I did, and my best estimate is that, having to use unscaleable giant prims increases the time it took me to do these builds by, conservatively, 400%. Between having to use huds and inventory searches to find the size I want and rez it, and then discovering that size is not going work for what I need, a build I could otherwise do in 1 week or so currently takes 4 weeks instead.

I would point out that many of the most celebrated, beautiful and seductive builds of Second Life - builds like INSILICO - would have been not been possible without the use of giant prims.

Oh, and BTW: Above, Ian Pahute above said that prims larger than 256m are unnecessary. Again, celebrated builds like INSILICO and Abyss could not have been built without them; they allow a builder to create atmospheric, lighting, oceanic and "context" effects that would not be possible otherwise - effects that often are part of the "wow" factor of those sims. I use them myself. I would not want to see the currently available prims larger than 256 disappear; I would hope they could be continued ( there are a couple of additional sizes that would be extremely useful).