Since my last update on Land Impact Costs changing there has been a decision on how the Lindens will handle sculpties. In the recent Pathfinding (PF) User Group (PFUG) meeting Falcon Linden reminded us of the new equation for figuring Land Impact Cost.
As Falcon put it, “…sculpts will be capped at 2.0 streaming cost, not 1.0. (Note, that’s a CAP, so if they were less than 2.0 in new accounting before, they’ll still be less than 2.0).”
Ardy Lay asked, “What was jacking up the streaming cost?”
Falcon’s response, “It wasn’t a bug, it was just a formula that, upon further consideration, we decided was not appropriate, i.e., when it was first implemented, it was actually calculating a triangle-based render weight, which for meshes is a good measure of streaming cost, but not for prims.”
Yuzuru Jewell asked, “Is the new cost applied to all the objects?”
Paraphrasing Falcon, no. The new sculpt cap only applies to objects using the new Land Impact (LI) accounting. Object will only use the new LI if the object is mesh, a linkset containing a mesh item, or if one sets an item or item in a link set to use a physics weighting other than PRIM.
In April I wrote: #SecondLife Land Impact Costs to Change. That article includes the equation for the change in costs.
We’re changing streaming cost for prims to be capped at 1.0 and we’re changing server weight to be:
0.5 * num_prims + (0.25 * num_scripts)
But capped at num_prims. So, instead of going from half prim count to prim count by adding one script, it will be a more gradual change to encourage fewer scripts.
This follow on change is about an exception for sculpties and their being capped at 2.
In most cases this change will reduce LI cost. At worst it will remain the same.
The previous and this change are about creating incentive to be smart with scripts.
Understanding the new LI can save you prims or Linden$ when building with prims, sculpties, or mesh objects. See: Reducing Prim Count.
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