Precious Prims ...

One of the earliest revelations and joys for both Babette and I was discovering building in Second Life; I am completely convinced that being able to realise ideas; fantastic, outrageous, practical, beautiful or even just fun will always be one of the abiding delights and challenges of Second Life.

In addition to being one of our earliest high spots it also became the driver for everything that followed; from the earliest plot of land we paid tier on to the OneFinalDarkness Estate as it stands today. The reason for this drive is that virtually everything you would like to see/create/build in Second Life is dependent on Prims; these are literally the fundamental building blocks which when manipulated create the Second Life world we experience and enjoy.

If you are relatively new to Second Life you may be thinking to yourself 'The Ditzy Blonde Brit is delirious!!' ... and I wouldn't blame you. I clearly remember when Babs and I filled our first parcel of land ... literally used all of the Prims it supported ... it was one of those 'OooHhh!!!' *wide eyed shock* moments. We sat and thought about deleting some things, which we did, then we added the things we wanted which was great ... then of course all the prims were used up AGAIN!!!

I am sure you can all see the bigger picture here; we needed more Prims, so we needed more land ... and not surprisingly that process simply continued till we arrived at the OneFinalDarkness Estate as it is today. To be fair at each escalation in our land ownership there were difficult financial decisions which provided plenty of 'Lively' debates. The biggest of the debates we had came when we realised we were paying tier on more than half of the island on which we had started (ikyoto) and we wanted more land. It was still a big jump to move to our own island not least because of the set up fee's but Linden Labs had just announced their new lower set up fees and ultimately we shut our eyes, crossed our fingers and made the final leap to becoming Sim Co-Owners.

At this point we both felt very 'Prim Rich' ... a brand new SIM has 15000 Prims available ... how would we ever use all of those!!! The real answer here is ... we haven't but we have had to stop adding features to the Sim to allow for unforeseen needs such as decorations for seasonal events and themed parties so you could be excused for being somewhat aghast that we have effectively eaten through 15000 Prims ... and that is just on the main Sim. Oceans End is the Homestead Sim we have adjoining and that had 3750 Prims ... all but a working buffer are also used up!!

If you are reading this as a seasoned Second Life resident you may well not be that surprised ... as someone completely new to Second Life the numbers may appear stunning. The main purpose I had in talking about this was to provide a framework for people to fit their expectations into and maybe to raise the awareness of just how Precious Prims really are!!

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device