Wildefire Walcott

I'm not sure how I feel about an increasingly-common practice in rental estates, and I'm curious what the general community consensus is on it. More and more often, I'm finding openspace sims cut up into as many as 16 individual parcels up for rent (sometimes residential, sometimes unzoned)- but without any mention AT ALL about the fact that it's not a regular island.

The only indication you have that it's an openspace sim is the reduced number of prims (1/4 the number of prims for a given parcel size on a mainland sim or a 1.0-multiplier regular estate sim) and, occasionally, a lower-than-normal rent price for that size of parcel.

The prim bonus exploit has been fixed, so I don't consider renting an openspace to 16 different tenants as outright fraud, but a fully-packed openspace sim WILL behave differently from a regular island, and it seems to me like this is something you should mention in land listings and the covenant. There isn't any indication in the Second Life UI that a given island is an openspace, so potential renters need to already be familiar with common prim/parcel ratios and understand the differences between sim types in order to know what they're getting into.

As I mentioned, these places usually seem to charge lower-than-normal rental rates (per parcel size), but they're not 75% lower like one would expect, considering you only get 1/4 the prims, and worse performance than a regular sim with an identical script/avatar load.

So... I'm really struggling to make up my mind how I feel about this. I don't really consider these estates serious immediate competition, since I don't cut up openspace sims... but I sort of have this lingering fear that many first-time tenants who rent on these estates, with no previous land owning/renting experience in Second Life, are going to have a really sub-par experience on an overcrowded openspace island, and think "Sheesh, owning land in Second Life sucks! Let's not do this again!" when that same tenant might have had different expectations if they had known that there was a REASON their rent was so low, and that their experience might have been much better on a regular sim, or an openspace with fewer neighbors.

I really start to bristle when I think folks are engaging in a practice that can damage the industry for me, my competitors, and our customers. So. Are my niggling fears warranted?

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ZATZAi

I'd say it's a problem all right, though I don't know how widespread. A lot of tenants think there is no or little difference between a full and openspace sim performance wise (Or expect that). I don't think they're getting that just from these landlords mind you, I think just that many folks don't realize what impact their sexbeds have and etc. It's definately causing an exodus for many landlords as tenants move to or want their own sim, even if they don't know if it can do what they want it to do. If some unscroupulous landlords are renting out openspace sims like they would a full sim, I could indeed see that causing issues in the long term if it's widespread enough.

Openspace sims are less profitable than a regular sim (Because they're more volatile), and in a way they are harder to rent as well because you have to rent out large plots due to performance. Of course you could rent out a lot of little plots like these landlords are doing but the performance is going to be abysmal. Still there are a lot of people who want small plots and that's really only possible on a full sim where it can handle the performance requirements of a lot of people. I've been waiting for, and I'm just beginning to see, people wanting what an openspace sim can't deliver.

That is low cost high capability plots of land. Some people want a whole island or half a sim to themselves and openspaces are great for that, but it's still a significant cost as far as entertainment budget goes. I think thats the point full sim owners are going to have to touch on to win back tenants who think they want an openspace sim, they need to show how a full sim can get them more prims and more script resources at a lower cost.

Education may be the only real defense here, perhaps coupled with an ad-campaign. What I'd really like to see is have the SL media actually ya know, do some journalism on this matter. Take a look at openspace sims and full sims, interview landlords and tenants. See what they can be used for and what they can't, get the facts out there. There is far too much FUD and BS out there on the matter of openspace sims.

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Dnate Mars

I think in the end that people will realize how limited open-space sims really are. For some they are great, for others, not so much. I think you will have people trying to scam people no matter what happens.

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Maxx Monde

Any system has its parasites, unfortunately.

Sarah Nerd

I have a few sims that are open spaces divided into 4096 lots that cost the same as having a 1024 on a regular estate. It's just another option for people who don't need many prims or scripts and don't want to be right against the neighbors. They sacrifice performance for a little more privacy. As long as they understand the situation I don't see anything wrong with it. I live on an open space and I love it.

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Wildefire Walcott

Well my main concern is that in the cases I've seen, people are not being informed that the islands are different from regular sims. If you're on an unzoned openspace sharing an island with a casino and a mall- even if nobody goes there, all those scripts are going to have an impact. It's appropriate to charge less, but I believe it's also necessary to explain- in terms that a newbie tenant can understand- what the potential issues and limitations of an openspace sim are.

Sarah Nerd

Yea i can agree with that. And I would never allow one to be commercial, because the scripts would kill it.

ZATZAi

Commercial openspace sims do work, but only if you have one, or at most two stores in it. And the store owners have to design for low resource usage (Even though residential tends to use more resources, commercial demands high performance). I would never mix residential and commercial in an openspace though.

Colette Meiji

how do you control what the other people sharing the computers with the open space sims do?

I mean aren't they set up by up Sharing server space?

Eirik

You can't control that, sadly. However, I believe that if you do a hard reset of your openspace it changes to another physical machine.

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