How land in Second Life is organized.
A region is a 256m x 256m (65,536 m²) plot of land and/or water which extends thousands of meters into the sky. The basic unit of land management in Second Life, regions can be chained together to form a continent landmass or further broken down into "parcels" of land which may be rented out. Regions are also commonly referred to as "sims" (short for "simulator"). For the technical usage of the term "sim" see the official Second Life Wiki.
Regions are surrounded on all four sides by sim boundary lines, which can be crossed if there is an adjoining region to travel to. Due to the nature of Second Life, there is usually a lag delay on crossing region boundaries as data is effectively moved from one location to another. To compensate for the delay, Second Life attempts to predict where the object crossing will be on transition; often resulting in the pilot's aircraft briefly stuttering. If there is not a connecting region to cross into an aircraft will simply bounce off the boundary wall.
Region types
There are currently three types of regions offered by Linden Lab: 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.
| Region type | Description | # avatars supported | # prims supported |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Region | There is one full region per server host CPU core. | 80 | 15,000 |
| Homestead | Introduced in January 2009 and are only available for Residents who own at least one full region. The amount of running scripts might be restricted in the future. | 20 | 3750 |
|
Openspace |
Like Homesteads, only available for Residents who own at least one full Region. | 10 | 750 |