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Prototyping the perfect hoverbike

Someone approached me in Second Life the other day and was astounded that I’d been in SL since 2003. “Whoah, the oldest person I’d met until now was from 2005!” What keeps me in the metaverse year after year? In SL I can create anything I can imagine.

A motorcycle grip sculpted in Wings3D

In the past week, for example, I’ve been prototyping the next-generation Terra hoverbike. This means playing ideas and themes, sculpting shapes in Wings3D, and realizing the creation in three dimensions in Second Life. From there, all I have to do is drop in one of my scripts and I have a fully functional vehicle.

This latest hoverbike is a prototype of a racing bike, destined for a racing sim. It’s a first draft, to be revised and improved upon, but I’m happy with the direction it’s taking.

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Clogged intertubes keep SL offline

According to the official Second Life blog, a problem at their ISP has forced them to take Second Life offline “until further notice”. Further notices have been posted already, but they’re pretty much the same as the previous notices: SL is borked, come back later.

As US senator Ted Stevens pointed out a couple of years ago, the Internet is in fact a series of tubes. I’m no expert, but I think a really long plumber’s snake would probably clear the problem right up. See, whenever someone’s hair goes missing from their inventory, it just ends up clogging the tubes.

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Linden Lab to roll out new physics engine this week

This weekend, Linden Lab announced plans to roll out the long-awaited Havok 4 physics engine across the grid. As soon as Monday, up to 2000 regions will have their simulator code updated to include Havok 4. If all goes well, the rest of the grid should see the new physics engine by Tuesday.

The implementation of Havok 4 in Second Life is expected to vastly reduce the number of region crashes and incidents of “deep think” — a state where the simulator is simply overloaded by physics calculations and slows to a dead crawl. It also means that most items that rely on physics, including vehicles and skydiving equipment, may or may not work correctly starting this week.

To ensure that all of my products will survive the transition, I am spending extra hours in the beta grid testing each and every product for H4 compatibility. If there’s a problem, I’ll update the script to adapt to the new physics engine. At Abbotts Aerodrome, you’ll start to see the “H4 Tested” icon appearing next to products that I’ve tested and updated for use with Havok 4. If it has the icon, you can be certain that it’s OK for Havok 4.

Already, I’m in the process of testing products.

[UPDATE: All products but the Abbotts Float Plane have been tested and are fine for Havok 4. Thanks to the Linden devs who ensured that the transition would be so easy.]

Skydiving

  • Skydiving Pod – OK
  • TerraSport parachutes – OK
  • SkySurf skyboard – OK (updated to version 3.4)
  • Terra E-Chute – OK
  • Terra Skydiving Target – OK
  • BubbleTargets skydiving game – OK

Hovering aircraft
All hovering aircraft are presently broken due to a buoyancy bug in Havok 4 (see bug SVC-1947). These include: CLAWW, Futura, SkyBike, Terra Taxi, and all helicopters. As soon as the Lindens fix that bug, they should work fine again.

  • CLAWW – OK
  • CTH-100, CTH-100M, CTH-200 – OK
  • DS3 Drop Ship – OK
  • Futura – OK
  • SkyBike – OK
  • Terra Taxi – OK
  • Magic Carpet 5 – OK

Airplanes

  • Abbotts Float Plane – Floats low in the water due to H4 buoyancy bug
  • Airco DH.2 – OK
  • Cormorant plane-sub – OK
  • Cricket tiny plane – OK
  • Dogfighters – OK
  • Kingfisher – OK
  • Manta – OK
  • Nieuport 17 – OK
  • Orca plane-sub – OK
  • Ornithopter – OK
  • Sparrow – OK
  • Stearman – OK
  • Starling ultralight – OK
  • Tachyon – OK
  • Tachyon M – OK
  • Talon – OK
  • Tigershark – OK

Lighter-than-air craft

  • Wind Rider hot air balloon – OK
  • Terra Airship – OK

Speed boost

  • Terra Z scooter – OK
  • Terra Speed – OK
  • Rocketeer pack – OK
  • Infinity pack – OK

Bookmark this post: I’ll keep this list up-to-date as I go.

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Take this script and shove it (into your own submarine)

You know what we don’t see enough of in Second Life? Submarines. With all the water available across the grid, I’m surprised that there are so many boats, and so few subs. In a world where there are deep oceans and hidden grottos, underwater travel is an amazing way to explore.

To boost production of submarines and to promote the submarine as a pleasure craft, I’m re-releasing my Herring mini-sub with a new open-source script licensed under the Creative Commons. What this means is that you can get a Herring 2.0 free, rip out it’s script, and use it in your own creation.

There are terms of use, of course, outlined by the non-legalese version of the license:

You are free:

* to Share — to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
* to Remix — to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:

* Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
* Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license.
* For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
* Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
* Apart from the remix rights granted under this license, nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights. (link)

It’s my hope that vehicle builders will use the Herring as a starting point for new submarines, either collaboratively or competitively. It’s not a perfect script by far — I know there are flaws in it — so it’s up to you to innovate and improve on it.

You can pick up a Herring 2 at The GNUbie Store, at Stillman Bazaar, and in the underground submarine dock at Abbotts Aerodrome.

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Flying with a keyboard

Each day, hundreds of visitors teleport to Abbotts Aerodrome to experience the thrill of being a virtual pilot. And while Second Life is not a proper flight simulator, like Microsoft FSX, Linden Lab has given us the tools to create aircraft that are both entertaining and capable of reasonably realistic flight. Part of the appeal of Second Life over FSX is that SL is a social environment: unlike FSX, you can sit your friend in the passenger seat and take them on a tour.

Flight in Second Life also has serious shortcomings — in particular, there’s the annoying absence of joystick support. This single failing has frustrated and confused many novice pilots who aren’t familiar with standard keyboard controls. I hear the question, “I’m pressing ‘up’… why isn’t the plane going up?” surprisingly often. It might seem counter-intuitive, but there is a good reason why the keyboard controls work the way they do. Even as long ago as the early ’80s, with subLOGIC’s popular flight simulator for the Apple II and TRS-80 , the basic controls for keyboard flight were clearly established. These controls are still the standard a quarter century later, in FSX.

Flight control systems (Wikipedia.org)Imagine your numeric keypad as an airplane’s control stick, with the stick planted in the centre on the “5” key. Left and right arrows control the aircraft’s ailerons, which make the plane roll left and right. Up and down keys control the elevators, and making the plane pitch down and up. This is actually the part that many people find confusing: You push the stick forward (up arrow) to make the elevators go down, which makes the plane’s nose go down; you pull the stick back (down arrow) to make the elevators go up, which makes the plane’s nose go up.

So that’s why pressing “up” definitely won’t make your plane go up, and hence your passenger’s screams of “PULL UP! PULL UP!” as you hurtle towards the end of the runway at take-off speed.

Part of the fun of flight in SL challenge of becoming a virtual pilot. Sure, it takes a little while to get used to the controls, but once you do, you’ll be surprised at the precision of control achievable, even without a joystick.