What Is “Primmy” Now?

Recently I read a comment by a critic of Kitely, calling it a “primmy” world.

Well, yeah, Kitely is primmy. It gives you more prims than anybody else!

But that’s not what the critic meant, of course.

Usually the implication of the word primmy is: “It’s not a good build because it uses too many prims.” We’ve all heard that one many times before. We’ve all said it ourselves.

But, with Kitely offering 100,000 prims per account, which you can spread over 16 regions or spend all in one region if you want to…what exactly is “primmy” these days? What is “too many” prims? And, more to the point…

Why is using a lot of prims a bad thing?

Well, why WAS it a bad thing in the past?

In Second Life, the obvious reason was that, there was a limit to how many  you could use. 15,000 prims seems like a lot when you’re a newbie but once you get building a town or some other environment, you quickly find out just how low that ceiling is.

Yes, there’s a limit in Kitely too. But with 100,000 prims available, I can’t imagine that ever being considered a low ceiling. Especially not with sculpties, convex hull, megaprims and mesh as part of our daily virtual lives. Yes, we’re just at the beginning of having a sim with 100,000 prims available so maybe I am being naive. We are all newbies in a world like that. Maybe someday we’ll build such complicated sims that we will get close to that 100,000 prim mark in one region regularly enough to complain about it but I really can’t see it now. Sure, it may someday be a ceiling that we have to contend with but a “low ceiling” – I don’t think so.

So if we use a lot of prims and still have way more left over, what is wrong with primmy?

Lag? Ain’t no lag in Kitely.

Rez time, load time? Call it wait time. The time I have to wait between clicking the button  to go somewhere and actually being able to see and use that next place.

I have to wait in Kitely and I have to wait in SL. The logistics of waiting are different but I’m waiting either way. The total wait time is longer in Kitely but not enough that it is a deal breaker. You will get to the next place in SL faster but you will have to wait longer for things to rez, not a deal breaker either. But Kitely is working on the load time of a world already. I’ll bet you they improve that to the point where there is no difference in wait time and I’ll bet they do it sooner rather than later. Is SL even working on this issue? I’ve been there for five years and I don’t notice any difference. Talk about a long wait!

Which brings me back to…

What is “primmy” and why is it bad?

Is using a lot of prims bad just because there are a lot of prims? Why?

I think some people try to imply that there is some artistic or aesthetic aspect of using “too many” prims. There isn’t. That build looks the same to me, either way.

Again, I know why it used to be bad…but why is it bad now? More specifically, why is it bad in Kitely?

In Kitely, there are so many prims available, I don’t see how “primmy” can be used as an insult.

A “foreigner” can come to Kitely for the first time and look at your fantastic build and say, “Yes, it’s very nice. Kind of primmy though.” And you can turn to them and say, “Yeah, what’s your point?”

What is the point?

We are all newbies in a world like that. So we need to rethink our preconceived notions.

What is primmy now? Is there such a thing?

 

Another recent article about our concept of prim count can be found on Ener Hax’s wonderful blog…

Wrapping my head around Kitely’s 100,000 prim limit