Land

This article is supposed to give an overview about land in Second Life and OpenSim, going from the smallest to the largest scale.

## Parcel

An area of land owned by a single user or group, which is at least 16m² and at maximum 65,536m², all within one region. Parcels are composed of square blocks measuring 4×4 meters, but the blocks do not have to be contiguous. Parcels have both an integer local id and a global UUID. Parcel settings are modifiable in the About Land options.

## Region

### Second Life

In Second Life, a named 256 m x 256 m (65,536 m²) area hosted by a single simulator process (sim). In common usage, the term "simulator" or "sim" may also refer to a region, but in fact a single server process can host multiple regions. They can be flagged as General, Moderate, or Adult.

There are currently three types of regions: *Full*, *Homestead* and *Openspace* (also known as *Void*). All have the same size, but differ in their avatar-, and primitive limits, as well as in their price.

#### Full Region

There is one full region per server host CPU core. A region can hold up to 100 avatars and 22,500 Land Impact.

#### Homestead

Homestead regions were introduced in January 2009 and are only available for Residents who own at least one full region. It can hold 20 avatars, 5000 Land Impact and the amount of running scripts might be restricted in the future.

#### Openspace

Openspaces are, like Homesteads, only available for Residents who own at least one full Region. They support a maximum of 10 avatars and 1000 Land Impact.

### OpenSim

In OpenSim, regions are behave identically to their Second Life counterparts but may be as large as 8192 m x 8192 m (67,108,864 m²) with Varregion. Multiple regions may be hosted under a single process when in *Standalone* mode or as a mesh of other servers hosted by other people in *Robust* mode.

## Estate

A collection of regions with a particular shared set of rules, such as banned users, sun position, etc. Estates have integer identifiers.

### Second Life

#### Mainland

The Linden-designed continents (known as "mainland") are the largest connected land-masses in Second Life, consisting of hundreds of regions connected to one another with roads, railroads and open oceans. The “mainland” is estate ID 1 and owned by Governor Linden. Residents with a premium account can buy mainland parcels and need to pay a monthly tier when their land exceeds 512 m². A mainland region supports a maximum of 40 avatars.

#### Private Estate

Private estates are collections of Resident owned Regions. Some of these Residents rent out the land inside their regions, and Basic Account holders can rent land from these residents without maintaining a Premium membership.

### OpenSim

Mainland-equivalent estates are created during the setup phase. Private estates in OpenSim are identical to Second Life's but are they're free unless said grid requires a premium for region owners.

## Grid

### Second Life

The SL grid provides a set of other services, including presence, inventory management, and asset store, that integrate with but are independent of the simulators. Read the discussion What is a Grid? on the SLDev mailing list for further information.

Linden Lab runs several grids for internal and external testing. Asset transfer and teleporting from the main grid (Agni) to another is not possible.

Many of the Grids supported by the client are either inaccessible to the public or no longer active. To change the Grid you'd like to connect to, choose the grid from the drop-down menu on the login screen of your viewer.

#### Agni

The primary Second Life grid to which users connect.

Some images of the Agni grid are available in this wiki.

#### Aditi

The beta test grid available to Residents for testing the Second Life server software before it's deployed to the main grid (Agni). Read more about Aditi in the preview Grid article.

#### All Other Grids

All grids other than Agni and Aditi are for internal development and are not accessible to the general public.

### OpenSim

OpenSim is a grid server written in C# and based on a older version of the Second Life protocol. Recent advancements in the software allows for residents to travel between other OpenSim-based grids through the Hypergrid protocol, or create regions larger then standard regions, or larger then standard regions.