with privacy features, any other benefits to private regions over mainland?

[ohn]

owning a private region, or renting on a private region, looks lot more expensive than similar on mainland. are there benefits to being on a private region? i thought the benefit had to do with lag and having privacy but there is check box in my options for basically hiding from the rest of the world ... and so far, the private regions i visit seem to be about the same lag wise as the mainland places i visit.

i was looking at how much it would cost to buy a private region and its about a THIRD more than mainland for tier cost.  so ... what are the reasons for going private region??

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

Control. ()

With a private estate sim, you get estate side controls and menus unavailable on mainland.  You can set your own ground texture and water level.  You can look at script times for all scripts on the sim and stats for physical items.  And, you can run your own restart if need be without running a trouble ticket. ()

Beyond that, you get control of your entire view since you'll have no neighbors.  You can even use megaprim sim-surrounds which scale the size of up to 9 sims and give a much larger visual space.  In addition; no neighbors means privacy is privacy.  Nobody can go to a next-door sim and cam in on you.  If they can't get in, the can't get near either. ()y

 

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

With mainland you have  no control over what is built next to you, so a neighbor could put up an unsigtly build. Your neighbor could also put up something that draws heavily on the sim resources unless you own the entire mainland region. Also, with a private region you can request to have it restarted when necessary and have much greater terraforming options than most of the mainland.

[ohn]

prolly silly, but i most like the idea of changing ground textures ... and i have seen those prims off private regions, i forgot about that ... that is really neat

[ohn]

i totally understand the uglies. my way of dealing with it has been to control my draw distance when ugly things are off in distance and use big draw distance only in pretty places.

 

[Ceera Murakami]

On the Mainland, 51 M above the terrain, any person that you haven't banned explicitly by name can fly into your parcel, ignore your ban lines and/or group access restrictions, look down (or up, if you're in a skybox), and the 'parcel privacy controls' won't do squat to hide you.

While it is certainly nice that you can now hide the avatars on your parcel from anyone who is not on (or above) your parcel, that isn't even close to the control or privacy that you have living on a non-public, privately owned sim. On a private sim, if I say only a certain group's members can go there, that is what is enforced. A stranger can't enter the sim at any altitude, or by any means, unless they are a Linden staff member excercising super-user capabilities.

[Koltari]

I did the pro and con list before deciding myself what to get and money was the deciding factor in the end. But I guess it's all down to what is more important to you. Sure neighbors can be a challenge but if you're getting a whole sim you only need to worry about the edges. Alot more work if you got several owners on one sim.

There's alot of pretty dividers/screens out there but if you want to be the bigger (wo)man go for the dividers that look like real rocks etc and don't stoop to your neighbors level and but up ugly screens to escalate the matter For a long time I did not even need dividers between the sims of me and my neighbor as we had similar taste but she sold and I got a neighbor who loved great big tropical screens (sigh) but it was easily dealt with really and I try not to think about how much better it was when everyone got along lol. So yeah neighbors definitly something to remember since things change fast in sl.

As for terraforming and landscaping a mainland sim. Yes it has its challenges but I do love that challenge. The +-4 meter height is the main concern. Textures you can change by getting a landmapping system. They are really neat.

As for privacy. Yes private sims are private. Mainland sims are less private but not so much that it is a concern for those of us who aren't that interesting taht they'll have someone try and fail with the secruity system to get just outside the range of 96 meter ( if you decide to just secure a smaller parcel on your sim with a security orb and hide avatar) to then cam in just to see you standing there ideling or sitting on a sofa which is probably what people do most of the time unless they're rabbits. And by the time they'd positioned themselves and started camming they'd probably been ejected anyway by the owner if they didn't like them hovering there. Mini-map and an alert about people entering your region are nice tools.

But yeah much easier on a private sim but also more lonely as you don't get random traffic from roads, waterways and other explorers if you do want people to visit your sim.

Lag has not been an issue on my mainland sim. But I might just have gotten lucky I don't know. I have heard about laggy mainland sims but not sure what the causes are. Self created maybe or created by the other sims they share servers with. Remember the sim next to the sim youmight consider buying probably wont effect the lag on your sim as very rarly do neighboring sims share the same server. Atleats that's what I've gathered from some research.

 

Edited to make a bit more sense if possible

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

I'm a mainland renter and parcel owner:  I block views with privacy screens that are transparent on one side - I can't see the ugly whatever, but I'm not blocking their view of my lovely parcel. Fortunately, one side of my shop area is inhabited by a dragon who likes living in a park

 

Unless you are having pixel sex ... who cares.