It's a problem that someone can use this to deny a neighbor in the sim the ability to access their prim allocation. It seems likely to me that if a sim has any kind of constant load of temp prims, it's because someone's using a "zero prim rezzer". This is against the ToS and you should abuse-report the person who's doing this, if this is on a mainland sim. Be sure to note that their use of a temp-rezzer is preventing you from using your actual prim allocation. If this is a private island that you're renting land on, talk to the staff for the island.

We obviously have a difference of opinion on this matter. I think the fact that temporary prims were made more permissive in the most recent change, and that this is a feature that will be used by residents for a number of different purposes means that there is an implicit conflict with temp prims counting against the total prim limit on the sim.

There are a number of reasons why people use temporary sims more regularly, granted that temp rezzers are one of those, but there are others too, and each of these has the potential to erode the prim count for other land owners on the sim.

As far as zero prim rezzers are concerned I don't see anything in the ToS that forbides their use either directly or indirectly, and I have spoken to a very well respected and well established content creator who said that they spoke personally to a Linden about this issue and were told that they were not breaking any rules, just using the features available to them in a creative way. (Note that this person is not involved in creation of temp rezzers per se - just one fascet of their business that uses some zero prim rezzing). Indeed, beyond that I have searched as thoroughly as I can and I have never seen a comment from a Linden that this use of temporary prims is illegal.

Given that people will and are using temp prims for a whole host of different reasons, the issue is that there is a problem! It looks to me like a bug, and the simplest answer and the one consistent with the use of temporary prims as described in the formula would be to allow them not to count against the normal prim limit. Many people have discussed the arbitrary nature of the prim limit per sim in many different places - so I am not going to re-hash that here - suffice to say that each sim has an allocation for attached prims on top of rezzed prims, and that the number of rezzed prims allowed is arbitrary - many people have pleaded for it to be increased outside of the scope of this discussion. The bottom line is that the 15000 prim limit is not quite as inflexible as you make out in my opinion, and there should be room to make the temporary prims formula per parcel consistent with the temporary prims available per sim.

"In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not:
...
(viii) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service;"

and the Community Standards:

"6. Disturbing the Peace
Every Resident has a right to live their Second Life. Disrupting scheduled events, repeated transmission of undesired advertising content, the use of repetitive sounds, following or self-spawning items, or other objects that intentionally slow server performance or inhibit another Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life are examples of Disturbing the Peace."

It's clear from your example here that overusing temp prims is against the ToS because it disrupts others' ability to use the Service. The same goes for the last part of the Disturbing the Peace section of the community standards, after the comma. I think both places make it clear that abusing temp-prims by having hundreds of them constantly out through the use of a temp-rezzer violates both the ToS and the community standards.

I see one problem with allowing temp prims not to take up the 15000 sim prim limit, and that's the use of temp-rezzers. There are tons of these products around, and it's trivial for the standard user who isn't aware of the impact they have on a sim to use them to put a several-hundred-prim house on a tiny plot of land. That's just not what temp prims were designed for. Temp prims, just like normal prims (and NOT like HUD or attached prims) require constant processing by the sim for physics, even for items that don't have their "physical" attribute set. The lindens have determined that 15000 prims is about as many as a sim can reasonably handle without being brought to its knees (and trust me, 15000 can bring it close), and when you buy land, you're buying a share of those 15000 prims. Temporary prims circumvent that "piece of the pie" system and allow you to put extra load on the sim without having it impact your prim count. It's allows you to put a disproportionate load on the sim, especially if you're using a temp-rezzer that repeatedly rerezzes structures (which also saps sim resources during rezzing).

It's bad enough that temp-rezzers allow people to unfairly use more sim resources than they've paid for, at the detriment of their neighbors. It'd be much worse if they allowed users to put more load on the sim than LL ever intended. We have lag and stability problems in heavily loaded sims now, and they'd only get worse.

Temp prims were originally designed for temporary items, such as bullets and other special effects that are short-lived. The intention was that yes, these effects would be allowed to consume more resources than your land-holdings originally allowed, but that would be okay since the prims would disappear within a minute (or less if the sim decided to nuke them to make room for new temp prims). If the temp prims caused the sim to hit its 15000 limit prematurely, that'd be okay because a land-owner could just wait a few minutes and then try again to rez the prims they're entitled to.

Unfortunately, temp-rezzers turn this whole system on its head, abuse it, and subject it to loads that were never intended. I support keeping the hard 15000 limit where it is in the name of stability, and I suggest that people AR anyone using a temp-rezzer in their sim, ESPECIALLY if it prevents you from rezzing prims you're entitled to.

As a side note, it may be the case that some Lindens have "okayed" this, but I've heard plenty that've said that temp-rezzers aren't okay. LL doesn't speak with one voice on all matters. Not all Lindens are well-versed in all matters.

I do have one potential solution. I think that temp prims should NEVER actually "edge out" someone's legitimate prim allocation in a sim. If there are 14500 prims in a sim and 500 temp-prims and I try to go rez a new prim on my land, you're saying that currently I'll get a message that the sim is full. I think that the system should look at those 500 prims, delete the oldest one, and allow my prim to take its place, up to and including completely disabling all temp-prims in a completely full sim (which is rare). If someone's using a temp-rezzer for their house, too bad; the house will disappear and won't get to rez again next cycle because the sim is full. This'd solve your problem and my objections. What do you think?

I have read the ToS and the community standards, and I strongly disagree with your interpretation of them. I don't believe that a court of law would agree with you either. Specifically, a resident using a documented feature of the software could not be construed as breaking clause (viii) that you quoted. Particularly when advice has been sought and reassurance offered that the activity was not illegal (that is not a side issue in my opinion). It would also be very hard to argue that residents using temp prims within the limits specified in the documentation was intentionally slowing server performance or intentionally inhibiting another residents ability to enjoy SL. That is not their intention at all. In fact, I think that a court of law would probably be more likely to support the argument that inciting Abuse Reports against residents when there was no clear breach of the ToS was a form of harassment.

I believe that the reason that LL changed the rules on temp prims in the first instance, from being unlimited to having a limit dependent on the size of the land owner's parcel, was to ensure that it was not possible to over use temp prims. I think that they set the current parcel limits because they determined that these were what could be supported without excessively degrading server performance. All scripts, and all objects put a load on a server, some more than others, but this is not about scapegoating any one script that impacts the servers - unless we are going to crusade against any script that we believe is too resource intensive - and believe me I have seen many that grind things to a halt a lot faster than a temp rezzer!

Your potential solution is interesting, although I fear that it isn't very pragmatic. Temp prims are either allowed or they're not, I can't see how people would be able to get their heads round sometimes being allowed and others not. You say yourself that there are very many people already using temp prims, and I would suggest that it would be much more pragmatic to accommodate the use of temp prims as was intended when the calculation was first rolled out, rather than backtracking and essentially making temp prims worthless because of their unpredictability!

Finally, there is an interesting addition to my initial observation, which is that if you have a sim that is full to the brim with 15000 normal prims, you can still rez up to 1000 temporary prims over and above that! I would say that this was strong evidence that it was never LL's intention that temporary prims should count against the sim prim limit - and that the initial observation is indeed a bug that needs fixing.

Your last paragraph is interesting, though. I wasn't aware that temp prims could continue to be rezzed in a sim that had 15000 prims. You're right, that does point toward this being a bug.

I'll start out by saying straight up that I'm not siding either way with the TOS issue you were discussing, but say that if an Estate Owner clearly spells it out in their Covenant that they are not permitted, then temp-rezzers are then prohibited in regions of which that Covenant governs.

The 15,000 prim limit is an "interesting" issue when you bring temporary objects into it though, and mostly for reasons already mentioned. Though, a region filled to capacity due to temporary objects will mostly not allow normal prims to be created, but also in some (albeit not as common) cases, the temporary object being re-rezzed by the script fails to rez due to the "Server Full" error too.

Also, the strain placed on the server every time an object is rezzed via a script is pretty painful, as shown by the short-yet-severe performance drop on rez.

Finally, I've created http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-884 which asks for a beacon to identify the location of temporary objects - similar to the ones we have now for scripted, touch, particle or sound emitting objects. This should make it a lot easier to find them in areas where the specific Covenant doesn't allow them.

(Probably should've specified the 'root prim' of the linked temp object as the beacon point.. or perhaps the location of the rezzing script too.. oops..)

When I first raised this bug, I hadn't meant for the discussion to be about temp-rezzers per se - there are quite a number of other applications for temporary prims many of which can and do cause problems with the current bug! I am keen for the underlying conflict to be resolved!

This behavior can be shown in a repro:

1. Open About Land to confirm the number of prims.
2. Create a box.
3. Check About Land. Observe that the number has raised by one.
4. Set box to "Temporary."
5. Check About Land. Observe that the number has lowered by one.
6. Take the box.
7. Rez the box from your inventory.
8. Check About Land immediately after.

• Observe: number of prims raises by one, before lowering.
  = Expected: number of prims should not change.

I see this as a bug that LL needs to address without placing further restrictions on the SL enviorment. If today we go on a witch hunt looking for rez box users because we believe they are unfairly using up sim resources, will we tomorrow go on another one looking for complex scripted item users?

I hope you see my point. Perhaps it is the very nature of any completive enviorment that there will inherently be a fight for whatever is scarce. However, I believe our fight should be for creating more recourses rather than campaigning for greater restrictions. Hell, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm in SL because it doesn't place the restrictions on me that RL does. For gods sake, lets not make SL into a duplicate RL.

rayj

In answer to your question, if the bug is corrected and the temp prims become available over and above the normal prim limit as specified in the equation, then yes everyone will have their fair allocation - so even if one person is using a temp rezzer in their parcel it won't preclude the use of temp prims for some other use by you.

I reiterate that there is more to this bug than simply temp rezzers - this is really about how temporary prims are accounted with across the board in all circumstances.

That'd still violate the "if everyone does it, will it work?" rule. Imagine a sim with 30 land-owners in it. That means there could be 30,000 temp prims above and beyond the 15,000 prims. LL chose 15,000 prims per simulator for a reason... a sim just can't support 45,000 prims! The prim limit system is there in order to fairly allocate scarce resources.

You are also assuming that everyone is using their full temporary prim limit all the time, while I am considering the outcome of any number of temp prims in the sim and its impact on the allocation of normal prims. There is a bug here that needs to be fixed, because if both the equation for temporary prims allowance are true and temporary prims count towards the normal sim prim limit then there is an inconsistency with the allocation of normal prims in the sim.

I know that we're talking about two issues here. I definitely agree that anything that prevents a land owner from using their actual land-based prim alotment is a bug, and that's what this issue addresses.

I think, though, that it might also be a good idea to fork off another issue on the subject of temp-rezzers, because it seems to me like they still result in a situation where some users are in a "competition for scarce resources", using temp-rezzers to unfairly use more prims than their land allows or than the sim supports. If we do add that issue, these two issue would be closely tied because they both related to the fact that the 15000-prim sim-wide limit is there for a reason, because the sim can only handle so many prims.

My understanding from reading Andrew Linden's posts on the user forums was that the equation above was already introduced precisely to address the issue of over use of temporary prims... prior to that time there was an unlimited allocation of temporary prims and, as I've said in previous comments, the allocation on a parcel size basis was addressed specifically to stop temp prims from being over used - ie this was deemed to be a workable limit. It is also instructive that the equation was changed several times, from being unlimited to:

temp_prim_limit = 0.5 * regular_prim_limit + 20 or 500 whichver is smaller (sic)

through various other iterations to the current equation (which is actually more permissive). The same debates over temp rezzers were also hashed out at that time. If we are going to start targetting on the basis of use of resources within the boundaries set, then I think there will be a strong case for a witch hunt against any script that is too resource intensive - also against individuals who attract more than their fair share of visitors to their land etc.. I don't see that it has ever been LLs policy to police the use of resources that are used within the limits determined by the code - unless there has been a clear intention to disrupt other resident's activities or to bring down the servers.

And from my understanding and experience, a region will only allow 15,000 prims on average, regardless of them being temporary or otherwise. So, because we sell land in our estate and work out the parcel size to co-incide with the number of prims allocated (normally for regions with a region multiplier of greater than 1.0x), if everyone had a Rez-box house, and logged in at the same time, it would be a race to see who could rez thiers first. Add to that, we would probably get support emails from the unlucky users telling us they're getting "Server Full" messages, and that thier Rez box was only rezzing every third or fifth minute for one minute at a time.

I'll probably split up one of our empty regions into parcels, and test the 15,000 theory though, to be completely sure about the limit. I'll post the results up at a later time though.

With temp-rezzers it is (theoretically?) possible for a landowner to still have 50 free prims allocated but not be able to rez a single prim because a temp rezzer owned by someone else in that sim is using his prim allocation. That is stealing in my book. That person could theoretically be paying the next tier level because of those 50 prims extra while NOT being able to use them (ie, because the sim is full).

Then there's the issue of lag. I've seen more then 1 adfarmer using temp prim rezzers to place 3 times as many prims (every 45-55 seconds) on a small piece of land. Imagine all adfarmers start doing that (adding a prim rezzer script in their already heavily scripted ads), the lag on the sim in general, and thus on ALL users, would increase dramatically.

I personally am going to report to Linden (via an AR) all temp rezzers I encounter (primarilly the ones used by adfarmers) as avatars 'stealing' somebody else's prims. That is, in my opinion, what it really all boils down to.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards,

Ini Catteneo

Regarding the bug and the ARs, you may find it instructive to read some of the previous comments - I think that would be a mis-interpretation of the intentions of the people you are threatening and in inciting such actions I think you are essentially guilty of harrassment which is itself an abuse of the ToS.

As far as lag is concerned, I understand why people want to eliminate lag - but I would repeat that there are very many other sources of lag - many scripts which cause more lag, clubs and stores which atrract large numbers of visitors, complex textures etc etc... I think this is a whole big issue on its own - and if we want to start a witchunt against high lagging scripts, then we will be going down a slippery slope - are we going to ban any script that uses too much resource on a sim? Should people be allowed to attract more than their fair share of visitors to their parcels (at other peoples expense)? The list is endless...

SVC-1477 this was closed as a duplicate.

I am stuck on both sides of the fence on the "rerezz box" issue. I have a mainland neighbor rerezzing a 350 prim house. :C ...yet i use temp objects in a few of my products(in very small quantity).

At some point people abusing temp on rez with "re-rezzers" led Linden Labs to make a number of changes to the way temp-on-rez prims were accounted for. These changes caused nightmares for vehicles, because suddenly vehicles were being counted against parcel allocations and your vehicle could be deleted from underneath you if you crossed into a full parcel. They seem to have fixed a lot of the vehicle problems (though we still get erroneous messages about full parcels) but I suspect that there's a deeper problem here.

Perhaps a better way to solve the problem would be to throttle temp-on-rez prim creation somehow, and revert the accounting rule changes that caused the problems.

Some people tend to miss the point on the difference between temporary prims and temp rezzers (or zero prim rezzers). Temp prims are not inherently evil. As a matter of fact, in most cases, they are less evil than regular prims are. The evil part about temp rezzers is the actual act of rezzing (constantly). If you do a fair amount of scripting w/ sim info up all the time, you'll quickly notice that one of the biggest eaters of simulator resources (from a scripters perspective) is rezzing objects. Temp rezzers exacerbate this issue by repeatedly rezzing the content in question. In sims with lots of parcels and lots of residents using temp rezzers the effects can be crippling to the sim.

As far as products using temp prims? In general, if the object you are rezzing is indeed temporary, using temporary prims is generally better on the sim. They don't create assets when deleted, they clean themselves up, they aren't returned when hitting sim boundaries, etc.

IMHO, temp prims get a bad name from temp rezzers (which are, again IMHO, totally and without question, evil).

1) Not scripted phantom temp prims (decoration for buildings) consume very little resources once they are rezzed and the viewers have received the information (these prims do not make the physical world more 'dense'). These prims should have a longer lifetime, say, 10 minutes, and they should count against an extra prim pool per parcel. The size of this prim pool should scale with the parcel size.

2) scripted or physical temp prims (intelligent bullets) might cause additional server or bandwidth stress and should be more restriced: they should have a shorter lifetime, say 20 seconds,and rezzing them should affect a different, much smaller prim pool per parcel than under 1).

In both cases i would like to see the following scheme of a resource pool:

A per parcel resource pool should be dimensioned in a way that the sum of these pools over all sim parcels do not harm the sim. Furthermore, a parcel P1 should be able to use the resources of the pool of another parcel P2, if that parcel P2 does not completely uses its resources. Once parcel P2 needs its resources, it will get them back, and the 'borrowed prims' on parcel P1 will vanish.

Further, this issue is one of both sim accounting, and SL policy.
While it does not produce rarer crashes, there is major impairment of function.

Major
Major loss or impairment of function, including rarer crashes.

As the behaviour of temp prims is documented in the LSL Portal and in release versions, as well as explanations by Andrew Linden in the forums, the observed behaviour is unambiguously and un-arguably a bug as the feature is not behaving as was intended or has been documented!

As discussed at length earlier in this thread - this is not about temp rezzers per se - however, if we are going to scapegoat any feature or behaviour in world that affects performance then i can think of a long list of other contenders that should be added to the list. Starting with high prim clothing, physical objects and physics calculations, "excessive" use of large textures, non-re-use of textures, baking excessive nunmbers of textures, large audio files, mega prims, scripts with listening devices, badly written scripts, large gatherings of avatars, particle generators, bling jewellery (hell, jwellery generally) - just to name a few! This issue was set up to report a bug - and as it happens it appears to be one that adversely affects large landowners as well as others!