Two years ago today, the Not Possible IRL group read Michael Linden's post, The Big Prim Problem, in dismay. Be sure to read that post if you have no idea what I am talking about.
A great deal has happened in two years, including a tiny window during which a number of creators were able to take advantage of a wee exploit and make many huge prims in different sizes, but none of them scalable.
While we would still like to have scalable megas with which to create, our priorities have moved to other areas, with the top one being better IP protection of virtual creations.
In any event, since that fateful day, October 12, 2007, this blog has kept a vigil of sorts. We published many posts about great content that would not exist were it not for megas, and we still care. And we still want scalable megas. In fact, I cannot imagine most of my favorite content in Second Life without them. What creations never existed because we don't have scalable prims? I suppose we will never know.
In the meantime, scalable huge prims are not a problem on OpenSims, and hardly an issue on Blue Mars were prims don't even exist. Why hasn't Linden Lab allowed them? Why?
I thought you might enjoy reading an old post that Douglas Story prepared for you, many many moons ago, and below you'll find links to just some of our old posts. This blogpost was published long before we'd figured out how to resize pics on Blogger. Sadly, ignore the slurls for the Man Angel at Black Swan and DanCoyote Antonelli's Hyperformalism, as this content is no longer on the grid.
Also, Juria Yoshikawa's Liquid Light is currently located at the "new" Chakryn Forest, the old Chakryn Forest is still there, Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point was returned to her one day by mistake and she has since had to rebuild or recreate it, prim by prim, and the FlowerBall has been relocated to Cetus Island. I'll post slurls to these things shortly.
How time flies!
~*~
Without Megaprims...
Originally published October 20, 2007
this post by Douglas Story
Ah, the power of them three little dots! I refer to the ellipse... Useful in this case because we were all ready to write a scorching propaganda piece with the theme, "Without Megaprims... All This Great Shit Will Go Away!" But now with things looking up on that front (latest word is that the all-powerful Lindens are leaning toward keeping megaprims) I only have to change the part after the ellipse to "...All This Great Shit WOULD Have Gone Away! And What A Damned Shame That Would Have Been!!!" Hmmmm...the first title was snappier though, you have to admit.
Without megaprims...DanCoyote Antonelli's Hyperformalism would have disappeared.
slurl
Without megaprims...Rezzable's Greenies' Home would have disappeared.
slurl
Without megaprims...the irritatingly prolific Juria Yoshikawa's Liquid Light would have disappeared.
nor this,
nor this (spanning three effing sims!)
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nor this.
slurl
I'm sure we've missed many wonderful items (I'm sure you'll point them out, gentle readers) but I think we made our point here. The loss of megaprims would be a cheapening, deadening blow to the fields of imagination and creativity that Second Life opens up to people. We hope that this wonderful creative tool remains open to us, for both our creative impulses and for those who appreciate same.
Yoo hoo! Linden Labs? Paging Mr. Michael Linden... Please give the waiting (second) world a favorable answer, and soon!
See also:
In any event, since that fateful day, October 12, 2007, this blog has kept a vigil of sorts. We published many posts about great content that would not exist were it not for megas, and we still care. And we still want scalable megas. In fact, I cannot imagine most of my favorite content in Second Life without them. What creations never existed because we don't have scalable prims? I suppose we will never know.
In the meantime, scalable huge prims are not a problem on OpenSims, and hardly an issue on Blue Mars were prims don't even exist. Why hasn't Linden Lab allowed them? Why?
I thought you might enjoy reading an old post that Douglas Story prepared for you, many many moons ago, and below you'll find links to just some of our old posts. This blogpost was published long before we'd figured out how to resize pics on Blogger. Sadly, ignore the slurls for the Man Angel at Black Swan and DanCoyote Antonelli's Hyperformalism, as this content is no longer on the grid.
Also, Juria Yoshikawa's Liquid Light is currently located at the "new" Chakryn Forest, the old Chakryn Forest is still there, Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point was returned to her one day by mistake and she has since had to rebuild or recreate it, prim by prim, and the FlowerBall has been relocated to Cetus Island. I'll post slurls to these things shortly.
How time flies!
~*~
Without Megaprims...
Originally published October 20, 2007
this post by Douglas Story
Ah, the power of them three little dots! I refer to the ellipse... Useful in this case because we were all ready to write a scorching propaganda piece with the theme, "Without Megaprims... All This Great Shit Will Go Away!" But now with things looking up on that front (latest word is that the all-powerful Lindens are leaning toward keeping megaprims) I only have to change the part after the ellipse to "...All This Great Shit WOULD Have Gone Away! And What A Damned Shame That Would Have Been!!!" Hmmmm...the first title was snappier though, you have to admit.
Without megaprims...DanCoyote Antonelli's Hyperformalism would have disappeared.slurl
Without megaprims...Rezzable's Greenies' Home would have disappeared.slurl
Without megaprims...the irritatingly prolific Juria Yoshikawa's Liquid Light would have disappeared. I make something new about every seven months. With Juria, it's about every two minutes. I find this annoying. slurl
Without megaprims... Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point would have disappeared. slurl
You'll find a lot of shots here that include Bettina's booty in them. The author wishes to point out that most of the pictures here were taken by Bettina herself. Any booty issues should be taken up with the management.
Without megaprims... The International Spaceflight Museum would have disappeared.
slurl
Without megaprims... Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point would have disappeared. slurlYou'll find a lot of shots here that include Bettina's booty in them. The author wishes to point out that most of the pictures here were taken by Bettina herself. Any booty issues should be taken up with the management.
Without megaprims... The International Spaceflight Museum would have disappeared.slurl
The thing is...the artists and builders who use megaprims tend to be the most creative, charming, and well-dressed avatars who bring us joy in SL. How lucky we are to have them!
Without megaprims... Douglas Story, Aldomanutio Abruzzo & Desdemona Enfield's FlowerBall would have disappeared.
slurl
Without megaprims... Douglas Story, Aldomanutio Abruzzo & Desdemona Enfield's FlowerBall would have disappeared.slurl
Without megaprims...Artoo Magneto's anyMOTION would have disappeared.
slurl
Without megaprims...Gazira Babeli's 'Gaz of the Desert' would not have been possible.
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Without megaprims...Gazira Babeli's 'Gaz of the Desert' would not have been possible. I don't like most of the machinima I've seen. This is 23 minutes of spell-binding, slow-cut magic. See it. slurl
Without megaprims...Earth Primbee's Inspire Space Park would have disappeared.
slurl
Without megaprims...Earth Primbee's Inspire Space Park would have disappeared.slurl
Yes, it's true that I took this shot myself. But you'll notice - there's no booty. My pictures are entirely booty-free.
(photo by Wellington Bahram) slurl
Without megaprims we would not have Bettina's forest home - Chakryn - by Andrek Lowell,
(photo by Wellington Bahram) slurlWithout megaprims we would not have Bettina's forest home - Chakryn - by Andrek Lowell,
nor this,
nor this (spanning three effing sims!)
slurl
nor this.
slurl
I'm sure we've missed many wonderful items (I'm sure you'll point them out, gentle readers) but I think we made our point here. The loss of megaprims would be a cheapening, deadening blow to the fields of imagination and creativity that Second Life opens up to people. We hope that this wonderful creative tool remains open to us, for both our creative impulses and for those who appreciate same.
Yoo hoo! Linden Labs? Paging Mr. Michael Linden... Please give the waiting (second) world a favorable answer, and soon!
See also:
- The Big Prim that wouldn't leave
- This just in! The future of huge prims is looking good
- Megaprims for science
- Not Possible in Second Life? Without huge prims...
- Not Possible in Second Life? Without huge prims... (yes, another post by the same name)
- Not Possible in Second Life? Without huge prims... And another!
29 comments:
Without the megaprim, I wouldn't have been able to build my sim-sized build "It Came from the 8th Dimension." That was at Rezzable Visions in October 2008. Rezzable's Rightasrain Rimbaud had no problem with me using megas for that. Thanks RAR!
Tuna Oddfellow, who was awarded "Most Talented Avatar" by NBC two years ago, has done his psychedelic graphic arts show, The Odd Ball, for years with megaprims.
It's clear that they are more a tool of the arts and crafts of Second Life than a tool for griefers, and my understanding is that the recent physics engine upgrade removed most of LL's objections to them.
LL should embrace use of the megaprim, and condemn what needs condemning -- which is griefing behavior, done with a megaprim, particles, replicating prim scripts, or whatever legitimate tool is put to bad use.
Shava puts the argument succinctly: it's not the 'tool' it's the users behaviour that needs addressing.
Great set of pictures to remind us all of what has been possible with megaprims!
Our current build would have been a disaster w/o megas. I had to go back and de-prim about 75% of it, after students worked hard with 10x10s. It was my stupid fault for not checking the loophole--we are on a private island where megas can still be used.
Linden Lab dropped the ball (a huge prim sphere, in fact) on this issue.
As Shava notes, they punished creative content b/c a few asshats invaded others' land with megas or used them for griefing.
There is currently NO excuse for stopping us using scalable megas that I would accept as valid. It is TOTALLY unacceptable that LL drags it's heals on this point when the outcome is inevitable.
Shame on you Boys!
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.)
make it so number 1! er...qarl...that would be perfect, optional is always better than nothing at all. Megaprims are no longer a nice tool, they are an essential one.
Qarl: Of course, we'd love what we can get. I wonder...
beyond a technical solution, is it not possible to just say that megas are not allowed for use in advertising? on the mainland? Or is that getting too fiddly?
Megaprims are absolutely essential for a top notch Second Life experience.
As you have all seen with Inspire Space Park it is 100 times bigger and more accurate vs your avatar than anything that can be done with regular prims.
As with any technology there are benefits and dangers if used in evil ways. I am always sad to see an advancement in creativity held back due to the ill desires of others.
What we need here is perhaps a better mega prim? one that uses less resources and can only be rez'd on a space big enough to hold its size.
I doubt that's an easy development but it is much easier than living in a grid without the current ones :)
I am going to pipe up and be very selfish here and say that Qarl's solution is music to my ears: It will not solve everyone's problems for sure. But when I think of all the stuff I can do at Syncretia if I suddenly have scalable megaprims? I am drooling even as we speak...
That partial solution is better then NO solution! Megaprims are every where and I don't see the world falling apart. Its time to make them legitimate and stop letting the people that abuse dictate policy.
Qarl - wonderful idea ! Can we count on you to champion this ? *grin*
Seriously - YES of course the megaprims option should be a private estate owner entitlement. They would not affect the 'truly owned' parcels or regions that others have - and isn't that the issue at hand ?
Agree with 'partial solution is better then NO solution' :)
Mega's are critical for the growth of SL, especially "showcase" sims. My studio which is being designed for experimental opera requires mega prims in many areas. Also, the effects I could gain with normal scallable mega prims would allow even more compelling sets for venues. Another problem I have with the current mega prim problem is that I cannot be the creator(it's not obvious to me how I create mega prims), thus there is no way for me to maintain my IP with mega prim art.
I think Qarl's idea about making mega prims an estate option is an incredibly clever workaround to this problem.
What's the best way for us to help this get some traction beyond commenting here? JIRA?
Qarl's idea is brilliant! One thought: I can imagine there may be estates with mixed usage. So in addition to a simple on/off option, it might be helpful to have the option of giving megaprim permissions to invidivual avis. That provides a defense against the "potential griefer" problem.
Is it dramatically more complicated to also allow only land owners to create (and rez?) megaprims?
Eg in About Land > Options, have a new option:
"Allow Megaprims: [] All residents [] Group"
This would be the best of both worlds. Flexible for content creators and owners, and helps avoid griefers. This could be in addition to the estate option mentioned - if it's disabled for the estate then the parcel options are disabled.
Hi All! Dirk Talamasca, a JIRA pro, is helping me to draft a JIRA that you can vote on re: scalable prims on estates. I will keep you updated.
How is it possible for a cool, connected, nimble, wired and in touch company like this to take 2 years to resolve this problem? The company depends on the creative community for its revenues. People do not come here to admire yet another cookie-cutter exercise in urban grunge. The creative community needs scalable megaprims to do its stuff. The logic is inescapable, yet somehow the company chooses to escape that logic by sitting on its hands for 2 years.
In reality this is an example of the code versus rule thing that cripples LL decision-making. The griefing potential of megaprims is not the result of any code. It is the result of the rule that enables griefers access to as many alts as they wish and the consequence of that rule which is that any sanction imposed for griefing is utterly ineffectual.
I can't believe griefing is the real issue behind The Big Prim Problem. If it was, then why don't we also have The Pushing/Caging Physical Prim Problem or The Repeating Chat Spam Problem?
There are a lot of great builds using megaprims on the mainland too.
Hell, no! Why do mainland owners have to be discriminated? This would be even worse if we lost the use of magaprims. Places like the East River Community use hundreds of megas. It would be a major disaster for us.
I am in favor of any initiative to have megaprims but please think of something that makes them available to everyone for legit use and do not discriminate mainland owners.
There are people who work hard to make mainland a better place, it would be unfair to deprive them of something as important as megaprims. Mostly on mainland, where prims are a scarce resource.
Please refer to this new blogpost for instructions on how to vote for this feature on a brand new JIRA prepared for us by Dirk Talamasca!
I would definitely love this. It would feel like an overdue privilege that private sim owners should have considering what we pay every month. I also liked the suggestion of allowing estate owners to toggle on/off megaprim-rezzing to group/all/owner options.
>> It would feel like an overdue privilege that private sim owners should have considering what we pay every month. <<
Lashy, there are a number of mainland owners with a considerable land investment. We pay tier just as estate owners do. Estate owners already have a privilege that compensate what they pay, and that is access to estate tools and a larger number of prims.
I happened to meet Indigo Mertel yesterday at the Chilbo Community's Town Hall, she was asking for support from self organized mainland communities regarding this issue.
After reading qarl's comment, I can sympathize with both sides.
#1 Megarims are already used on mainland. Responsible residents use them responsibly. We try to be good neighbors. So, what's the problem?
qarl points to the irresponsible use as a continuing concern for the Lab, the mainland Estate Owner. With the example of abuse given, what seems to be left unsaid is that enforcement of land policies on the mainland is a huge PITA for the Lab, our Estate Owner. In fact, it may be among the lowest priorities for AR responses. I'm guessing at that, since Chilbo residents have done multiple ARs on a neighbor with what I believe to be three clear land policy violations (unrelated to use of megas) with no response for weeks.
So, I can sympathise with both Indigo and qarl on this. Yes, most mainlanders are responsible and yes, the minority that aren't can make a difficult administrative problem even more difficult.
#2 Something is better than nothing. As one little mainlander, I have to agree with that. If that is what is currently possible for the grid-wide community, I hope that it happens quickly. If any Estate Owner says up front, "Sorry, we can't handle that." then that's the way it is. The Lab is the mainland Estate Owner and that is their present policy. Perhaps some day it will be possible.
(qarl) >>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.
I am curious - of all the reported and confirmed incidents of "griefing" in a general timeframe, say, the last year, what percentage of them specifically involve the use of megaprims?
Oh, and I'm referring specifically to mainland griefing.
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