Limits
This page is an easy reference to common queries about Second Life limits. Some of these will almost definitely change over time, so if you spot something incorrect/outdated, please take a moment to update it.
Building
- Max. prim dimensions (non-megaprim) - 10x10x10 m
- Min. prim dimensions - 0.01x0.01x0.01 m
- Max. # of prims in a linkset - 255
- Max. link distance - See Linkability Rules.
- Max. # of prims in a physical object - 32
- If you try to link more, it'll either say "Can't enable physics for objects with more than 32 primitives" or "Object has too many primitives -- its dynamics have been disabled.".
- Note that this limit includes the driver and passengers of physics-enabled vehicles, e.g. if you are making a car to sit 4 people, 28 prims are available for the car itself.
- Max. build height - 4,096 m (SL 1.20.x or later required)
- This is 768 m for viewers prior to SL 1.20.x
Avatar
- Max. # of attachment points - 30 for avatar, 8 for HUD.
- They can be viewed in Edit menu > Detach Object.
- Max. unassisted fly height - Stable hover almost 150 m above the ground (terrain mesh).
- While an improvement over the previous limit of 50 m, Torley thinks this limit is ridiculous because Second Life is 3D. You can easily acquire a flight attachment to fly up to seemingly infinite heights.
- Common shoe sizes - Most women's shoes are designed for a size 0 (zero) foot. Men's generally scale up to 14. You can check this by going to Edit menu > Appearance and clicking on the Shape > Legs tab.
Chat (text)
- Whisper distance (done via scripting objects) - 10 m
- Chat distance - 20 m
- Shout distance - 100 m
- Rule of thumb: when you're at default zoom (View menu > Reset View), if you can see another other person's nametag, they can see your chat. If they're far enough away that you don't see a nametag, they won't "hear" you unless you shout.
- Max. length of a chat message - 1023 bytes/single-byte characters
- The same holds true for an IM<->email replies.
Groups
- Max. # of groups you can belong to - 25
- Roles within groups are sort of like sub-groups. In many cases, you can use them instead of creating new groups.
- Min. # of members in a group - 2
- A group with only 1 person for 48 hours will be disbanded (cancelled).
- Max. # of roles allowed in a group - 10 (including "Owners" and "Everyone", which can't be deleted)
Inventory
- Max. # of inventory items that can be sent in a folder - 42
- Folders count as items too. This has more to do with packet size limits than cheeky Douglas Adams references. ;)
Land
- Max. parcel size - 65,536 m2
- Covering a whole region, or square on the World Map.
- Min. parcel size - 16 m2
- Max. "NO ENTRY" ban line height - 768 m above the terrain mesh.
- This is if you're explicitly banned from a parcel. If the parcel is simply not public access or restricted to certain Residents/a group, then the access lines go up to 50 m above the terrain mesh.
- Max. prims in a region - 15,000 (3,750 prims for an Openspace region) <== (July 6, 2008) This limit for openspace sims is an intended limit, however due to a bug in the object bonus option the limit is currently unlimited. Using more than 3750prim on an openspace is still unadvisable because the sim performance decreases rapidly with the extra prims. Some openspace sims have been reported to hold 18000+ prims momentarily before crashing.
- Terraforming limits - Almost all mainland can be raised/lowered by +/-4 m. Estate (private island) terraformability is settable to a max of +/-100 m by the estate owner or managers.
- A few, very old regions like Da Boom have a terraform range of +/-40 m.
- Max. water height - 100 m
- Region water height is usually 20 m, and adjacent regions should have the same water height, or else they'll look discontinuous.
- Misc. estate limits - You can have a max. of 10 estate managers, 500 allowed Residents, 63 allowed groups, and 500 banned Residents.
- See World menu > Region/Estate > Estate tab.
- Mainland max. # of agents - 40 avatars/region
Performance
- Healthy Viewer FPS - Generally, FPS above 15 is good. The higher it gets, the smoother. You can check via Help menu > Lag Meter, or for more advanced usage, see View menu > Statistics Bar.
- Avatar Rendering Cost scores - Learn all about it!
Scripting
For specific scripting limits, lookup calls in the LSL Portal.
Textures
- Aspect ratios of profile, place, etc. pictures — all of these were measured at UI size = 1.000:
- Search > All for "Classifieds", "People", and "Places" - 4:3 (256x192 pixels)
- Search > Places and Classified tabs - ~7:5 (398x282 pixels)
- Search > Land tab - ~7:5 (358x252 pixels)
- Profile > 2nd Life tab - ~4:3 (178x133 pixels)
- Profile > Picks tab - ~16:9 (288x162 pixels)
- Profile > 1st Life tab - 1:1 (133x133 pixels)
- Profile > Classifieds tab - ~3:2 (206x137 pixels)
- About Land > Options tab - ~3:2 (178x117 pixels)
- Group Information > General tab's "Group Insignia" - 1:1 (126x126 pixels)
- Maximum texture size - 1024x1024 pixels
- We strongly recommend you use as small textures as possible because larger ones consume more memory and take substantially longer to load.