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Good news on the TerraVend front

Owners and operators of TerraVend vendors should be happy to know that the TerraVend 3 vendors are almost done and so far they’re working quite well. You will notice a very fast setup time — no more long delays or hanging while the vendor waits for updates from the server. The new vendors should be available in about a week. Keep an eye on this blog.

To those who aren’t familiar with TerraVend, it is a vendor system in Second Life that lets you sell Terra Aeronautics products on commission. I provide the vendors, products, and displays, and you run your own shop and earn Linden dollars that you can spend in Second Life or sell on LindeX for real money. The vendors are free and you get paid your L$ commission immediately at the time of sale.

When TerraVend 3 is available, I will post a link here.

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Inter-object email failures force temporary TerraVend closure

This is a notice for all members of the Terra Authorized Dealers group, who own and operate TerraVend vendors.

As most have noticed, there have been serious technical issues with the vendors. Email communication breakdowns between sims have made running the system almost impossible — a significant percentage of the total number of vendors are not able to properly communicate with the servers. For that reason, I have decided to shut down TerraVend until I can design a system that does not rely on email — email in SL has proven just too unreliable. By tomorrow, TerraVend vendors will no longer be able to register with the server, and after that I will completely remove the servers. The vendors will automatically go into an “offline” mode, in which they accept no payments.

It could be anywhere between two weeks to two months before I can redeploy TerraVend. When I have a reliable replacement, I will announce it at www.cavers.ca. I apologize for any inconvenience this long downtime may cause. I hope all of you will want to try the new system when it’s complete.

For those of you who wish to continue selling skydiving gear, one proven method of reselling is to buy a small stock of equipment and sell them from boxes. You may wish to try that until the new TerraVend is up and running.

Thank you all very much for taking part in TerraVend!

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New Starling ultralight is now available

I’m happy to announce the release of the first collaborative effort of me and aircraft designer Reitsuki Kojima. Like real-world ultralight aircraft, the Starling is light and has forgiving flight characteristics. Gentle turns and slow cruise speed makes this plane very approachable for novice virtual pilots. The Starling follows the classic ultralight designs of the 80s — its open metal frame is topped with a hang-glider style wing, and the HUD panel features retro-style LED readouts and flip switches.

Terra-Kojima Starling ultralight

Features…

  • Two seats.
  • Pilot can give control to the passenger in flight.
  • Paintable! Choose from several preset colors and textures, or use your own.
  • Includes a HUD attachment with:
    – LED-style readouts for throttle, speed, and altitude
    – Dial readouts for engine temperature and fuel
    – Engine on/off switch
    – Acrobatic smoke on/off switch
    – Buttons for options menu and control-swap
  • Includes a “painter” HUD attachment for customizing the plane’s colors and texture.
  • Advanced flight model — easy to fly with a realistic feel.

The Starling is available now at the Abbotts Aerodrome hangar and on SL Exchange.

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New features for the Stearman PT-17

The Stearman biplane is a trainer — it has duplicate controls so that a flight instructor can take a trainee up and teach basic flight. Oddly enough, until today it hadn’t occurred to me to add that feature to my Second Life replica of this plane.

Today I released version 1.1 of my Stearman in both the US Army and civilian variants. It includes a new button on the HUD panel that switches control between the back and front seats. Also, I upgraded the follow-cam. Previously, the passenger had a fixed-camera rear view of the plane; it is now a dynamic follow-cam.

I have sent out free updates to many people who have purchased version 1.0. If you own version 1.0 and would like version 1.1, please IM me for you free copy. If I were really clever, I would have an automated update script to send these out. Eventually I’ll get to that.