Unlike real life paint, virtual paint doesn’t get all over your clothes and stain your hands for days. And I very much appreciate that because for the past couple of days I have been slathering the paint onto the soon-to-be completed Stingray amphibious jet. It’s funny how a new paint job can make a plane feel faster.
Incidentally, a great place to test marine vehicles, like ampibious planes, boat, and submarines, is Gulliver Airport in Zatzai. Not only does it have a runway and boat launch, but it’s also part of the of Second Life’s sailing sims — a truly ginormous body of water that’s dotted with attractive islands.
whoa..
did it get a LOT bigger since the last update?
Heh. Nope. The plane looks smaller in the previous picture due to a trick of perspective.
Yay for particles! The double-telescoping of the wing looks good. Hopefully the stall speed is relatively low. That's the main reason I like slower stuff, you don't feel as tempted to circle inside a sim to avoid the crossings.
That's a strange thing about Second Life. As a designer, I want to make my planes behave as realistically as possible, but they also have to respect the limitations of SL. This means that planes have to fly unrealistically slowly, or the pilot gets disconnected from the grid at the first sim border.
Most SL planes cruise happily at between 15 and 25 knots, though with the Stingray, you will need to fly at least 25 kts to achieve maximum lift.