Properly prim(med)

Tateru Nino speculates on the future of the megaprim on her blog, in an entry that is ironically amusing in its timing.

The megaprim has been around in various forms for years. Early megas (prims bigger than the 10x10x10 SL limit) were highly questionable, having come about through an exploit that meant their dimensions were so tortured as to be highly suspect and / or that actually played games with the physics engine. A 50×50 (x,y) mega, for example, may have looked like it was 50×50 in size, but it actually registered with the sim as either a 50x50x? or 100x100x? mega, depending on how the original had been tortured and where the “centre point” lay (either along one edge of the prim or in one corner). Push such a prim up against a sim boundary, and you risked destabilising the sim as you had a physical object effectively crossing the sim boundary. Such megas also massively increased the number of collisions on a sim as avatars walked on them (or more usually – again due to the nature of the beasts – through them as far as the physics engine was concerned.

LL, as Tateru reports, itself was split into two groups: those that wanted to ban megas period, and those that wanted to let them in to a greater or lesser degree. With the coming of Bay City and Nautilus, the latter group partially got their way: a “legal” exploit was used to create megas that could be tortured without the issues surrounding earlier attempts. Thus was born the plethora of “legal” megas we all know and use today. They are not perfect: you cannot resize them without them “snapping back” to 10×10(x10); but they can be cut, sliced, tapered, etc., like any other prim.

Now, Tateru speculates, the era of these megas might even be coming to an end. AS I’ve noted myself, the “legal” prim size is due to be increased to 64x64x64 with the introduction of Mesh (although I thought it was 60x60x60 when I blogged on the matter). Further, LL are implementing a new toolset that will enable people to return prims that encroach upon their land.

Had I read Tateru’s blog in isolation, I’d have dismissed it; it is hard to image LL wiping all mega prims from the grid, given the chaos it would cause. And yet…

Last night (my time), mega prims – and anything they were linked to – started vanishing from the grid (I was actually one of those affected when the main section of my house vanished out from under myself and a friend). While the situation was apparently stopped by Maggie Linden, it was nevertheless perplexing, and afterwards, theories started appearing on various blogs as to what happened. These seem to have comprised the following:

• It was because LL had banned the prims belonging to one “Crowley Avro” (or “Auro”), and that these were being systematically wiped from the grid, OR
• That “Crowley Avro/Auro” had been banned with the result that all megas made by them were being blacklisted, OR
• That LL were wiping out all 50x50x?? prims our larger, OR
• That is was restricted to a specific size of prims around the 50x??x?? size.

LL are, unsurprisingly, remaining quiet on the subject. Personally, I have issues with these theories, because:

1. All of the megas I used in the section of my house that poofed (which I later recovered via a re-rez from my backup rezzer) were created by Research Project not Crowley Whoever
2. The section of the house that vanished didn’t contain any 50xanything megaprims in it: indeed, the single 50x50x1 prim I’ve used in the build was untouched

Thus, it would seem all these theories floating around as little more than guesswork; as are these two alternatives:

• Someone at LL simply boobed (although why they should be focusing on megaprims is itself an interesting question) OR
• Someone boobed inasmuch as they pushed the button to early – that is, there are plans to remove megas at some point down the road – someone at LL just accidentally jumped the gun – and as such, Tateru is correct.

On the one hand, it is hard to conceive of LL “banning” all current megas. Not only would it piss off a lot of people, it would create a heck of a lot of work for them – or rather their moles – given both Bay City and Nautilus use rather a lot of megas. But this doesn’t necessarily rule out such a move – there might even be valid performance reasons for doing so; and even if not, LL seem to have a habit of upsetting users, even when they don’t intend to.

Addendum 3rd Feb

While the exact cause of the issue remain unclear, LL posted the following on the Grid status page, which actually hadn’t shown up on my Dashboard when I posted the above:

We are aware that some megaprims were removed from the grid which have affected builds that contained the megaprims. While mega prims are not supported, we understand their value in builds.  The issue has been resolved and the object can be re-rezzed from your inventories at this time.

It’s interesting to note LL understand their value in builds but also reinforce the fact that mega prims are not supported. So I’d say the jury is out on the subject of eventual removal, but possibly swaying towards not banning them. Even so, I’ll still be reworking my builds when the time comes…