Mega Prim

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A mega prim (also referred to as megaprim, mega-prim or huge prim) is a primitive with one side beeing greater than 10m. Their creation is not possible due to limitations.

History

In 2006, Resident Gene Replacement managed to tweak the viewer in a way that allowed him to create these objects despite their limitations, until Linden Lab fixed the security whole some time later. The mega prims were distributed and spread quickly across the grid, since Residents found many ways to use them in their builds. While Linden Lab didn't ban the objects completly, their policy was to return them if they were a "nuisance". In a Town Hall discussion at December 20th 2006, Linden Lab announced that they were going to allow the use of mega prims on private estates^[1]. After open sourcing the viewer, another bug exploit allowed the creation of mega prims for a limited time. Residents took the chance to create a variety of these objects in many different sizes, even those which covered multiple regions completely. Linden Lab announced and discussed plans on using methods to prohibit the use of mega prims greater than 256m, but then decided to only limit it on 64.000 meter, since they found legitimate use for the 256m prims for example in horizons and skies.^[2] In order to support builder who'd like to use mega prims, Resident Zwagoth Klaar collected and sorted these prims in order to release his so called Salt HUD, which is a free tool and allows access to a huge database with mega prims in different dimensions.^[3]

Problems with Mega Prims

Problems with mega prims are obviously related to their huge size. They can reach far beyond parcel borders and therefor disturb neighbours with their presence. Residents might not even recognize that it is a mega prim which is hindering them, since they might be inside the mega prim and therefor won't be able to see it. Non-phantom mega prims might also cause a problem for the havok physics engine, since - again because of their size - they might detect - and need to handle - way more collisions per prim than with regular prims and therefor cause lag. There are also reports that the graphics engine wouldn't be able to work well with prims larger than 256 meter in any dimension.^[4]

Future of Mega Prims

While Linden Lab is still not supporting or endorsing the use of mega prims, developer Andrew Linden talked about^[5] future plans on what he called the "liberation" of mega prims. He is planning to

1. Allow parcel owners/managers to move (or maybe just return) objects that overlap their parcels.
2. Provide UI feedback to the Resident when moving their objects, indicating whether they overlap neighboring parcels.
3. Maybe provide real-time enforcement of parcel permissions. That is, allow parcel owners to set a paranoid bit “I don’t want anyone, or these specific people, from putting stuff on my parcel”

He noted that "once that is done then perhaps we will allow you to make prims/objects as large as you want as long as they fit on your parcel."

Footnotes

1. ^ Linden Lab allows use of mega prims on private estates (see at [14:55])
2. ^ Linden Lab allows doesn't ban 256m mega prims.
3. ^ You can purchase the Salt HUD here for free.
4. ^ The big prim problem - Bugs with mega prims
5. ^ Read the 2008-04-09 and 2007-12-21 transcripts of Andrew Lindens Q&A sessions about the havok4 engine