what are regions and how do you know which one you are in?

[Theresa Tennyson]

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GabrielleVanDerMalle wrote:

Just curious, how do you know what region you are in and why do they differ?  

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A "region" is a 256 x 256 meter area that runs as a single simulation on the Linden Lab servers. Many private islands are made up of a single region; larger developments and the Mainland are set up as several connected regions (making up the "grid.") The region name is shown on the world map in the lower-left corner of each region, and right after the parcel name in the top address bar of the viewer.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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GabrielleVanDerMalle wrote:

Just curious, how do you know what region you are in and why do they differ?  

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A "region" is a 256 x 256 meter area that runs as a single simulation on the Linden Lab servers. Many private islands are made up of a single region; larger developments and the Mainland are set up as several connected regions (making up the "grid.") The region name is shown on the world map in the lower-left corner of each region, and right after the parcel name in the top address bar of the viewer.

[Klytyna]

SL is a grid made up of what are officially refered to as "Regions", a square piece of digital real estate 256m  wide, 256 m long, and about 4 km high.

 

Regions are commonly refered to as "sims" in SL by non LL employees. a Region/sim contains 1 or more "parcels" which are seperate areras on the region, for example a parcel called "Dave's New Clothes Shop" on a region called "Assorted New Shops".

 

You can see at the top of the viewer, an address bar, this will tell you the parcel name, the region, and the co-ordinates within that region of your current locastion. This region/co-ord info is sometimes refered to as an SLURL. If you cut and paste the info from the adress bar into an IM for example, the person you are talking to can click the link to teleport to your location.

 

As to why there are different regions, that's simple, SL's hardware can only cope with a certain number of people/objects on a certain amount of space, a Region. So the digital world is divided up into chunks the servers can cope with, and which are also convienient for selling/renting to different people for different purposes, a private home here, a club there, a shapping mall, whatever.