Second Life Review

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Houses and Buildings

Prefabs:Houses and Buildings in Second Life -  by Hottie Something

For those of you who don’t know, houses and buildings in Second Life that you buy already built are called Prefabs. This is short for "Prefabricated." In Second Life prefabs come in all shapes and sizes. They can be houses, skyboxes, apartment buildings, stores, malls and more. They can also come with a few different permissions. Most commonly they come as copy/mod. This allows you to modify them and make more than one but does not allow you to give it away or transfer it to anybody. Sometimes they come with transfer rights. In that case you will almost never get copy rights unless you paid a lot of money (because you can effectivly make millions and resell them) or it was an error or it was stolen from the original creator.

Each of these various permission types have appeals to different uses. If you just want one house for yourself and you never need to give it away to anyone or if you have a house rental business in which you will rez many houses for people to live in for a fee, then the copy/mod version will be best for you. This let’s you rez as many copies as you like and modify the house to customize it to suit your needs. Copy is also important if you intend to modify your house. This allows you to keep a copy of the original in case you really mess up the modifications LOL. Prefabs that are no copy but allow transfer are desirable when you wish to be able to give or sell the prefab to someone else. This is perfect, for example, if you are trying to sell a piece of land and want to add to its desirability by putting a house on it and offering it for sale with the land.

Before you buy a prefab for your land you need to understand prims. All land has a limit of how many prims can exist within it. All objects are made of one or more prims. Your prefab will use up some of the prims allowed on your land. If your prefab uses almost all of these prims then you won’t have much left over for furniture and fun stuff. Choose your house with prims in mind. If you have a parcel that allows 937 prims then you could comfortably have a house with up to 300 or so prims and have lots to spare for the extras. Good prefab sellers will have the prim count somewhere in the description of their product. Before you go house hunting decide on a maximum prim number for your house and look for houses that you like which are in that range.

Another important bit of knowledge when buying a prefab is the footprint and the maximum parcel size. Footprints are tricky to figure out, but basically they are telling you the dimensions the house will take up. If you know what the dimensions are of your parcel of land then you will know what sizes of foot print will fit on it. Sometimes the information you will get is what parcel size the house fits on. Be forewarned however parcel size is not an exact science. A parcel can take up the same square meters and be different sizes. So even if it says it will fit on a 1024, if you have an oddly shaped 1024 it may not.

The really big prefabs usually come with an auto-rezzer to make your life easier. These allow you to rez the prefab and put it in place even if it isn’t linked. Make sure that if you are buying a really big prefab that it comes with an auto-rezzer. There are some tricks that you can use to rez a house without one but its all very complicated and anybody who is a professional prefab dealer should include this convenience with all large unlinked prefabs. Other features prefab houses come with are privacy windows, lockable doors, and ways to control access, etc. If you are sharing the house with others then you may want to allow them to control the houses features and although privacy in Second Life is never guaranteed, a locking door or close-able blind is usually nice to have in a house.

Pictures are worth a thousand words but nothing is better than seeing it for yourself. Most places that sell houses will have them on display or have a rezzing system that will show you what the house looks like and let you try the features and see if you actually like the way it looks when rezzed. Try before you buy. That’s the best way to shop.

• Bobz Design Studio
  Bobz Design Studio reviewed by Hottie Something. 117 Prefab Houses 299L and up. 3 stars.
  
  
• Damani
  Damani reviewed by Hottie Something. Unique styles, low cost low prims. 3 stars.
  
  
• Dominion
  Dominion reviewed by Hottie Something. High cost, high prim but perfect and highly detailed prefabs. 4 stars.
  
  
• Park Life
  Park Life reviewed by Hottie Something. Decent prices, good quality and low prims. 4 stars.
  
  
• Scofield Designs
  Scofield Designs reviewed by Hottie Something. A great place to buy a cute little beach house. 3 stars.