Megaprims in Second Life are prims (primitive geometric shapes that everything is made out of) that are larger than the standard size. These mightily oversized components were originally created through an exploit and are used in many places in Second Life, for construction, decoration and causing grief or inconvenience to others.
"Megaprims are a mis-feature... a bug that many people consider a feature." -- Andrew Linden.
During a talk at the Volunteer Island Meeting Area today, Andrew Linden mentioned megaprims during a discussion about the new Havok 4 implementation.
At various times there have been sweeps to remove megaprims from mainland simulators (but the Linden Lab staff now use them for building their own office areas there) and to punish people selling or trading them.
"I was motivated to remove them about a year ago, however they are now in such ubiquitous use, that they cannot be removed. They will stay in their current unsupported state until I can fix them right," said Andrew in response to a question about Megaprims.
Unsupported in this context, refers to Havok physics, "They aren't "supported", so I'm not actively doing any development to test or fix them, however they are also not under threat of removal."
"Perhaps we will allow you to make prims/objects as large as you want"
Andrew went on to outline what he calls the "Megaprim Liberation" plan:
- Allow parcel owners/managers to move (or maybe just return) objects that overlap their parcels
- Provide some UI feedback to the resident when moving their objects, indicating whether they overlap neighboring parcels
- 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"
- 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.
So, there you have it. Megaprims are a permanent feature of Second Life now, at least until someone pulls a 180 on policy.
