My reply yesterday was a little bitter, sorry about that. I'm getting tired of seeing people complaining about any new change before even know if it is good or not.
..I agree.. maybe ll puts features sunddenly with poor or inexistent explanations. Yesterday (before complaint) i was trying to figure out how this new stuff works reading the information provided on the wiki, but i found it dont explain lots details, and dont give an idea of how useful could be this for residents. Asking around SLU forum some advanced users gave me an idea of what this means.
This is not a fail at all and this dont break any content. I will give an example: You did a 23 prims chair on 2003 using just prims, you rebuild it on 2006 using sculpt and you got 16 prims. If you rezz those chairs today you will notice that the "weight" on the parcel its the same but if have different name 23 LI (land impact) instead of 23 prims and 16 LI instead of 16 prims. If you click "More Info" button while editing both chairs you dont get information on downloads, physics, server and display weights.
What the different then? If you upload a mesh, or change the physics shape type other than prim shape (of a prim) you will be able to get this info. So what is this information for? It will let builders get accurate values of what they are building, will be much easier make efficient less laggy & less primy content: If you use a texture with medium or low resolution you will get less "prims" or less Land impact than with a high one, if you use 1 script instead of 8: same result, if you use a simple physics shape instead of a complicated one: same result. Makes sense the term Land Impact now? "Land impact" involves all those values, "Prims" are just.. boxes. Once we will get use to it, this little world will be bit better getting efficient and less laggy stuff from creators.