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Stingray in beta testing

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQVthNe7Qt4]

It’s official. Today the Terra Stingray enters final beta testing, in which a crack team of testers puts the plane through its paces and uncovers those little bugs that I missed in development. Since I last blogged about the Stingray, I added five more paint schemes, a selection of tail decals, a passenger seat, a glowy heads-up display, as well as a few other less visible details.

I don’t think I’ll release Stingray this weekend, since this weekend is the annual SL Relay for Life event. The folks at SLRFL are raising hundreds of thousands for The American Cancer Society (that’s US dollars, too!), so keep an eye on the official Linden blog and the SLRFL site for info about that event.

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Terra Combat System is now open source

What’s the single most common question that aircraft makers ask me about the Terra Combat System? “Does it do bombs and missiles?”

The answer is, not yet. But now is your chance to do something about that. As of today, I’m releasing the TCS source to the public under a CC license. This means that you can take TCS — the long-established sensor-based combat standard — and make it better. Adapt it to your bombs, missiles, mines, exploding penguins… whatever.

In return, all you have to do is share your updates with everyone. (I’ll provide a link to a place to do that shortly.)

Let’s work together to make TCS even better, and establish a single sensor-based combat system that we can all share.

Get the full-permission TCS 2.5.4 at Abbotts Aerodrome or at Xstreet SL (click here).

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Taking the new paint for a spin

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.

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Making a mesh of things

With most of the script features in place, though not polished, I now turn my attention to the plane’s appearance. I’ll need to sculpt this amphibious plane one piece at a time, import the mesh into Second Life, try it out, refine the sculpt, etc., until I’m happy with the shape. I have to admit, my first attempts came out like frankenplane, but I think I’m getting a feel for how this one should look.

In this picture, you can see the pod-shaped boat hull with a pit in the top for the pilot. This is just one of at least seven sculpts going into the model.

Once the model is complete, I’ll texture it and polish up the scripts in preparation for beta testing.