Prim confusion!

[LunaThyme]

Hi everyone,

I recently rented a property in SL for the first time, and I was told I could have 100 prims to decorate with.  I know a lot of people use the word 'prims' when what they actually mean is 'land impact', so I presumed she meant I could have a land impact allowance of 100 - as surely, it's the land impact of objects that counts, not the number of prims, right?  So I decorated the house, carefully counting up the land impact of my objects as I went along, and linking items together to save on land impact, to make sure I didn't go over my limit. I was quite pleased with the result, and also pretty chuffed that I'd managed to decorate the place so nicely for only 95 land impact. So imagine my consternation when I received several messages from the owner's prim counter telling me I was way over my prim allowance, and I must remove several items immediately - or else!!  It turns out that when the owner said 'prims', she actually meant prims, and not land impact!  So my lovely bath which is only 2 land impact, but has 10 prims, and my nice cupboard which is 4 land impact but actually has 8 prims, and several other items besides - all had to be hit with the delete button.  Now the place looks very bare! I've looked through loads of ads for rental properties here on the forums and on Marketplace, and they all mention a prim allowance, and not a land impact allowance.  So I was wondering if all you experienced SL renters out there could tell me - do rental property owners usually mean 'prims' when they say prims, or do they actually mean 'land impact'?  😕

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by LunaThyme
Spelling mistake.

[Phil Deakins]

I haven't been a landlord since around 2008 - before land impact was a twinkle in LL's eye - but I don't think it's possible to write a script that adds up the total land impact of objects owned by a particular person. A script can do it for a parcel though. So I think you can take as read that, when a landlord says prims, s/he means prims and not LI.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Phil Deakins

[AnnabelleApocalypse]

I have always rented from letting agencies/ land barons, and every place I have ever rented has a little stand where it shows you a few stats about the land, including how many "prims" you get, but this invariably means the Land Impact (LI) or Prim Equivalence (PE). Interchangeable terms that mean the same thing.

And so long as your bath costs 1 "prim", even though its made of two parts, this should not matter to your landlord, as the server counts the combined object as 1 prim. Period.

So yeah, smells like a jerk landlord to me. This is certainly not the case if you rent a bigger parcel from one of the larger land barons. I have never had dealings with the smaller ones. Your landlord may have mentioned this prim restriction in their terms/land covenant. If the price seemed too good to be true, this is probably why.

I would guess they are using the extra headroom to squeeze in more rentals and therefore more profit per sim/area.

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by AnnabelleApocalypse

[Wilma Philbin]

Find another place to rent and make sure to ask the owner/manager about the way they count prims before you pay. I've rented a couple of times for fun even tho we have homes of our own and never come across a place that counts prims the way your current landlord does.

[Jaylinbridges]

Objects are listed in LI.  You can still find the prims in edit Object (More Info) under land impact, but honest landlords should list the land capacity in LI just like LL does in their land.

She is either stupid or a crook, imo - find another landlord. 

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, LunaThyme said:

So my lovely bath which is only 2 land impact, but has 10 prims

I think you need to recheck because that's not possible. The land impact for a lnkset can never ever be less than half the old style prim count.

My best guess is that not all parts of the bath are linked and you only checked the LI of some of it.

Edited June 10, 2021 by ChinRey

[LunaThyme]

Thanks to everyone for the replies so far.  I'll certainly be sure to ask any future landlords to clarify what the prim/land impact allowance is before renting! 

[LunaThyme]

50 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I think you need to recheck because that's not possible. The land impact for a lnkset can never ever be less than half the old style prim count.

My best guess is that not all parts of the bath are linked and you only checked the LI of some of it.

It's the Crane bathtub from Fancy Decor.  The normal land impact of the bath is 8, but I made it a bit bigger so the land impact is 10.  When I hover my mouse over the bath (either at it's original size or at the increased size), it says "Prims: 2, Land impact: 8 (10)".  The bathtub & plumbing etc is all linked into one item - when I move it about, it all moves in one, not in separate parts.  I get what you are saying about that being impossible - I build a bit myself, so I know it doesn't make sense! 

[ChinRey]

1 minute ago, LunaThyme said:

it says "Prims: 2, Land impact: 8 (10)".

But that's the opposite of what you said in your original post. 😉

The text is only the description the creator wrote anyway and not actual stats.

[LunaThyme]

18 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

But that's the opposite of what you said in your original post. 😉

The text is only the description the creator wrote anyway and not actual stats.

Duh!  Ignore me, I think I just had a bit of a brain-fart!  😊  Like I said - prims are confusing me today!  🙃

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, LunaThyme said:

Thanks to everyone for the replies so far.  I'll certainly be sure to ask any future landlords to clarify what the prim/land impact allowance is before renting! 

In SL ... absentee landlords are the best.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

9 hours ago, LunaThyme said:

do rental property owners usually mean 'prims' when they say prims, or do they actually mean 'land impact'?

Ever since the introduction of mesh in SL, there's no longer such a thing as prim count on any land.

If there are still landlords/ladies out there who actually mean 'prims' rather than Land Impact, I'll eat my mousepad.

[Prokofy Neva]

17 hours ago, LunaThyme said:

Hi everyone,

I recently rented a property in SL for the first time, and I was told I could have 100 prims to decorate with.  I know a lot of people use the word 'prims' when what they actually mean is 'land impact', so I presumed she meant I could have a land impact allowance of 100 - as surely, it's the land impact of objects that counts, not the number of prims, right?  So I decorated the house, carefully counting up the land impact of my objects as I went along, and linking items together to save on land impact, to make sure I didn't go over my limit. I was quite pleased with the result, and also pretty chuffed that I'd managed to decorate the place so nicely for only 95 land impact. So imagine my consternation when I received several messages from the owner's prim counter telling me I was way over my prim allowance, and I must remove several items immediately - or else!!  It turns out that when the owner said 'prims', she actually meant prims, and not land impact!  So my lovely bath which is only 2 land impact, but has 10 prims, and my nice cupboard which is 4 land impact but actually has 8 prims, and several other items besides - all had to be hit with the delete button.  Now the place looks very bare! I've looked through loads of ads for rental properties here on the forums and on Marketplace, and they all mention a prim allowance, and not a land impact allowance.  So I was wondering if all you experienced SL renters out there could tell me - do rental property owners usually mean 'prims' when they say prims, or do they actually mean 'land impact'?  😕

 

It's always amazing to see the animosity to landlords and the assumptions that they are crooks. AnnabelleApocalypse is simply wrong in her claims. The landlord need not be a crook if all he is doing is READING THE LAND MENU and seeing that in fact the impact is indeed more than the literal prims. The OP says she slightly enlarged this multi-piece bathtub -- that may have been enough to make it show more land impact than its original stated description. That's a well known fact about mesh, LI can increase sometimes dramatically when you enlarge the item.

The difference between number of prims actually in the individual items and the figure for land impact usually do not differ that much. When they do, and you have not enlarged the item, it's because a twisted prim has been linked to mesh, or some other aberration has occurred to jack up the land impact. But yes, they can differ, and it might be the difference of a few prims that you will then have to shave off.

A landlord is not going to sit there and count the number of individual prims in each individual object you have -- manually -- because that's what they would have to do. And what on earth would be his motivation to harangue you over a small overage if it didn't exist? He needs customers.

So no, when they say "prims" in the old usage they mean "land impact as shown on the land menu".

They will go by the land impact number *on the officer's view of the land menu*.

It's this part that becomes confusing to the tenant because *he cannot see that menu in the same way*. ChinRey, you know that and could have mentioned it.

The landlord has a view of the "about land" menu that shows every prim on that parcel by name; without officer status and increased powers in the group, the tenant cannot see that list. So it will clearly say in the list "Luna Thyme" and a number, be it 95 or 100. If that list says 110, the landlord will have to tell you that you are over -- because it is literally taken away from the entire prim count on that sim for that group (I'm assuming this is group land).

Automated counters attached to rental cubes are merely taking the same information from the land menu.

You can get a prim counter and deed it to the group and it will count only your prims. It is widely believed these "don't work". But that's because people don't realize they have to deed them to the group, and then they read the prims only of that person who clicked them.

Linking your items can reduce them sometimes, if there are several convexed items they might end up the same or even lower, i.e. 3 items each of 1 land impact that are convexed, when linked might yield you only a 2 li (convex is an option on the object menu that can help reduce prims -- if the item is made of prims and not sculpties). But linking can also occasionally make a land impact go up, particularly if the items linked are prim and mesh or sculpty or mesh, especially if the prim is not just a regular cut prim but twisted - you can see land impact go up 500 points at times like that which is why it is not recommended. But more commonly some linked items can indeed make the count go a bit higher than if not linked.

So while it is frustrating to literally count the prim number in your items, your land impact shown on the menu with your name and visible only to group officers can indeed be higher, and linking things may be what caused this problem or simply that yes, there is a divergence of a few prims between prim and land impact. There is no substitute for just taking off the prims and putting them out one by one and checking the line of "land impact" on the "about land" menu.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Prokofy Neva

[Jaylinbridges]

18 hours ago, LunaThyme said:

I know a lot of people use the word 'prims' when what they actually mean is 'land impact', so I presumed she meant I could have a land impact allowance of 100 - as surely, it's the land impact of objects that counts, not the number of prims, right?  So I decorated the house, carefully counting up the land impact of my objects as I went along, and linking items together to save on land impact, to make sure I didn't go over my limit. I was quite pleased with the result, and also pretty chuffed that I'd managed to decorate the place so nicely for only 95 land impact

 

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So no, when they say "prims" in the old usage they mean "land impact as shown on the land menu".

I posted the OP's comment above.  Clearly she is saying her Land Impact was 90, and the landlord claims she is over her 100 prim limit.  This is because OP reduced her LI by linking some prim and mesh objects - a normal thing to do when it is possible, to REDUCE the LI to less than the internal prims. This not a case of sizing up a mesh object to get a larger LI than prims, It is just the opposite.   What the landlord did not say was what the actual LI she was reading for the parcel.  But you don't substitute prims when you mean Land Impact. 

Many of these cut rate sky rentals use old rental boxes that claim 100 prims for XXX $L.  Do they mean old prims, or the actual Land Impact?  The landlord needs to get a modern LI counter for her parcels - OR state that I only look at prims NOT the LI.  So if you have mesh objects that use 20 prims but have a 12 LI, I am charging you for 20 prims.  In other words,  Mesh objects do not exist in their mind.  I call that stupid.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Prokofy Neva]

1 minute ago, Jaylinbridges said:

 

I posted the OP's comment above.  Clearly she is saying her Land Impact was 90, and the landlord claims she is over her 100 prim limit.  This is because OP reduced her LI by linking some prim and mesh objects - a normal thing to do when it is possible, to REDUCE the LI to less than the internal prims. This not a case of sizing up a mesh object to get a larger LI than prims, It is just the opposite.   What the landlord did not say was what the actual LI she was reading for the parcel.  But you don't substitute prims when you mean Land Impact. 

Many of these cut rate sky rentals use old rental boxes that claim 100 prims for XXX $L.  Do they mean old prims, or the actual Land Impact?  The landlord needs to get a modern LI counter for her parcels - OR state that I only look at prims NOT the LI.  So if you have mesh objects that use 20 prims but have a 12 LI, I am charging you for 20 prims.  In other words,  Mesh objects do not exist in their mind.  I call that stupid.

 

 

 

 

Re-read the OP's later comments. She noted that she enlarged the bathtub. That may have upped the land impact.

And once again, yes, usually by linking mesh or convexed prim you can keep or lower your land impact but NOT ALWAYS. Are you in the land business?  It does sometimes happen that in fact you increase them. I have handled zillions and zillions of prims, mesh, sculpties and I see what behaviour there is in world. Do you? I have numerous occasions when tenants swear they are not over their prim limit/land impact as stated in the lease, but the "about land" menu showed that they are. I send them screenshots. We go over what's on their parcel. Sometimes it's a linkage issue. Sometimes something has happened like they drop some jewelry that is very high prim and don't realize. Or they put out a double copy of something. Or they link a twisted prim. I'd have to see what she did to figure out why there is a discrepancy of 10, but it *IS POSSIBLE* without the landlord being a crook, a liar, or any of the other slurs slung in this thread. He could just be reading the land menu with her name on it. The end.

They can't possibly mean "100 prims in the old meaning that we sit and count ourselves, yes every one." Again, that's what I'm trying to explain. No landlord especially in a cheap rentals is going to right click on every single object and count its prims, then total them all. They go by *what is on the land menu* which does that totaling automatically. That's instant and visible by name. Since their own prims in the form of a building, with sometimes multiple managers will also show up, they look at the *list by name*. So they 100 *going by that list*.

[Lucia Nightfire]

I've only ever heard of a posted "prim limit" mean land impact, not prim/link count.

[Jaylinbridges]

6 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Re-read the OP's later comments. She noted that she enlarged the bathtub. That may have upped the land impact.

And once again, yes, usually by linking mesh or convexed prim you can keep or lower your land impact but NOT ALWAYS. Are you in the land business?  It does sometimes happen that in fact you increase them

Yes, it's not  clear what the OP's real LI was.  But the landlord should not use prims, when she is seeing LI in her list, if that was the case.  Counting LI can be tricky if you miss a linkset, when clicking on your creations.  

I have been the region administrater for parcel renting land companies, so I have seen the same region info you do and many "unusual" renter builds.  But I mainly build and have been using prims, sculpties, and mesh for about 10 years.  I also landscape regions.  I am sure you have seen more than I have, since I have other businesses besides land and building, but don't assume you are smarter than everyone else here.  I'm also one of those communist technocrats with a fancy bunch of degrees in hard sciences - not much use in SL though.  My minors were Sociology and Political Science, while most engineers and physics majors chose computer programming as a "minor".

 

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

11 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Yes, it's not  clear what the OP's real LI was.  But the landlord should not use prims, when she is seeing LI in her list, if that was the case.  Counting LI can be tricky if you miss a linkset, when clicking on your creations.  

I have been the region administrater for parcel renting land companies, so I have seen the same region info you do and many "unusual" renter builds.  But I mainly build and have been using prims, sculpties, and mesh for about 10 years.  I also landscape regions.  I am sure you have seen more than I have, since I have other businesses besides land and building, but don't assume you are smarter than everyone else here.  I'm also one of those communist technocrats with a fancy bunch of degrees in hard sciences - not much use in SL though.  My minors were Sociology and Political Science, while most engineers and physics majors chose computer programming as a "minor".

 

 

 

So let me say again: there is no "counting" that has to be done here. That you keep talking about counting linksets lets me know you're not getting the simple proposition here.

No landlord is going to be right-clicking and counting individual items in an object or linksets.

He is not going to be looking at linksets -- again.

All of that is sheer folly, and would only be done if a dispute arises and you need to find the source of a problem.

What the landlord does is LOOK AT THE ABOUT LAND MENU LIST OF NAMES WITH LI.

As you yourself just said you do.

I'm not the one who has made any assumption about being smarter. What I have done is explained three times now that there is a simple transaction here: looking at the land menu and telling the customers what her land impact is. If that is still called "prims" that's just a language habit like "sims" versus "region" and there is no need to fixate on it. 

It's not about greed, no-show status, rapaciousness, evil, etc. as implied by all the nasty comments here to this landlord who cannot speak for himself in this thread -- a very common phenomenon in this section which I battle when I see it.

It's not about link-sets or counting each individual item of furniture. It's a list on "about land". The end.

It's great you have degrees in hard sciences. I don't believe an engineering degree is required to look at the land menu and understand it. It's a few clicks. 

There is also a very, very simple reason why landlords use the term "prims" in lease terminology like "100 prim limit". And that's because many, many customers have not heard of land impact; don't understand it; don't realize it can differ. The term had many years of usage before about 2011 when "land impact" was introduced. People don't know to look on the "about land" menu which is quite simple to look at, either on the ground or at the "i" at the top of the viewer. That's all there is to it. It's not proof of an intent to deceive.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Prokofy Neva

[Polenth Yue]

19 hours ago, LunaThyme said:

So I decorated the house, carefully counting up the land impact of my objects as I went along, and linking items together to save on land impact, to make sure I didn't go over my limit.

How did you check your land impact? I say that because you said you counted it carefully, but that implies you're checking each object and doing the sums, which is prone to error. A quick way to know is to drag a selection box over all your objects (with "Select Only My Objects" checked).

[Jaylinbridges]

21 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So let me say again: there is no "counting" that has to be done here. That you keep talking about counting linksets lets me know you're not getting the simple proposition here

I was of course talking about the renter, the OP here counting her Land Impact.  Not the landlord.  So the rest of your comment to me was totally irrelevant.  You still like to talk down to people here.  Your choice. 😐

I said: "Yes, it's not  clear what the OP's real LI was.  But the landlord should not use prims, when she is seeing LI in her list, if that was the case.  Counting LI can be tricky if you miss a linkset, when clicking on your creations. " 

The landlord would not click on the OP's creations, since it was the OP's creations. I should have moved the last sentence to the middle, so you would not think I was speaking about the landlord clicking on creations - English is my first language, but my thoughts can run out of order.

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Aethelwine]

It would be very odd for a landlord to count their rental in prims rather than prim equivalents. 

With 100 prims I could easily use 20,000 Li

It seems much more likely the tenant has miscounted.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Aethelwine

[LunaThyme]

Thanks everyone for your replies - and oh dear, I do seem to have opened a can of worms!  😟

Let me try to explain - when I first decorated the house, I checked the land impact of each item as I went along by right clicking and going into edit on each item. Where I linked items together, I right clicked/edit on the linkset afterwards, to check the land impact of the linkset. As for the bathtub, I am aware that making stuff bigger often increases the land impact. The original land impact of the bath was 8, but that became 10 after I stretched it. I put the figures for the land impact and the prim count for the bath the wrong way round in my original post (duh!)🙄, probably because I had spent so many hours adding, subtracting, counting and recounting both land impact and prims, until my brain was scrambled! 😵  After I'd finished decorating, I did an area search for all objects owned by me. That bought up all my objects, and showed the land impact and prim count of each object. I added up the total land impact from there, and double checked it to make sure it agreed with the amount of land impact I thought I had used - and it did.  Although I was under my land impact allowance by 5, I kept getting repeated messages from the owner's prim counter telling me I was 40 prims over my limit. I checked and rechecked my items again - and then realized the owner must have actually meant prims when they said I could have a prim allowance of 100, and not land impact - as my prim count was indeed 140!  So I deleted several items, and did an area search again and added up my prim count, double checked again, and I was down to 97 prims and 83 land impact. I thought I had it sorted - then I logged into my emails this morning and found about 20 emails telling me I'm still way over my prim allowance!  So I deleted several more objects, did an area search for my objects, double checked it, and I was down to 69 prims and 67 land impact.  Then I get a message saying I'm still 12 prims over, so I delete some more objects, checked and double checked again, and I’m left with 53 prims and 53 land impact.  I haven’t had any more messages (yet!) from the prim counter to tell me I need to delete any more prims – but I’m now down to almost half the prim allowance I was supposed to have!  I have contacted the owner a couple of times about the problems I was having with the prim counter, and she was very nice and said she had sorted the problem – but clearly she hadn’t, as I was still getting messages, so there is definitely something weird going on with her prim counter (it can’t count?!)  I don’t think any of this is a deliberate ploy on the owner’s part – she does seem to have been trying to be helpful.  Although she has been in SL for many years, I think she’s quite new to the rental business.  I gave up asking her to try and sort it out in the end, as it seemed to be a problem she didn’t know how to solve.  At this stage I’ve just decided to put this one down to experience – it’s actually become quite funny, deleting objects and then waiting for the next message to say I’m still over my limit! 🤣  It was only a cheap rental, and luckily I only paid for 1 week, so at the end of the week I’ll just move on and forget about it.  It’s given me a valuable lesson, anyway – next time, double check with the landlord/lady about the prim/land impact allowance before you pay!

[Nova Convair]

It makes no sense to limit for prims. Usually every mesh prim has several LI. I can easily rez 50 mesh-prims that consume 1000 LI.

If you use prims only then the lowest possible LI is 50% of the prims. So 100 prims = 50 LI - BUT - with the right shape a single prim can consume several 100 LI.

If she rent it that way she will run out of LI most probably.

Would be interesting to know what the counter really counts though. 😁

[Jaylinbridges]

2 hours ago, Nova Convair said:

It makes no sense to limit for prims. Usually every mesh prim has several LI. I can easily rez 50 mesh-prims that consume 1000 LI.

If you use prims only then the lowest possible LI is 50% of the prims. So 100 prims = 50 LI - BUT - with the right shape a single prim can consume several 100 LI.

You don't use Mesh to scale large objects, unless you have unlimited LI   Usually my Mesh objects use LESS LI than prims.  For example:

Edited June 11, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Aethelwine]

Her region wouldn't have enough land impact available for 100 of these prims.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Aethelwine