Virtual vehicles for the metaverse
Topics relating to virtual reality and various online virtual worlds.
Work progresses on the new balloon. In this snapshot, you can see some of the exquisite prim sculpting by Reitsuki Kojima as Arrekusu and I take the unfinished balloon for an early test flight. Believe it or not, those sixteen cables attaching the basket to the balloon are actually only four prims!
Well it’s another productive day at my ultra-secret development lab in Second Life (it’s the one in the corner marked “lab”). While Reitsuki has made solid progress sculpting bits of the new balloon gondola and rigging, I improved my balloon HUD controller and added a couple of new features.
If you have my Wind Rider balloon, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m addressing some common customer requests, including:
Those features will all appear in the next Wind Rider version (sometime soon… don’t know exactly when) as well as in the yet-to-be-named sculpted balloon that Reitsuki and I are currently working on.
At the best of times, SL is a tricky environment to work in. Upgrades and changes to the simulator code can sometimes mean that old, reliable scripts stop working. I just confirmed that the hard way when one of my customers let me know that the automated, looping tours in my Aerius blimp stopped working. Instead of restarting a tour, the blimp would go dead until the owner manually restarted the tour.
That’s kind of weird, especially, since several people tested that feature thoroughly. As tested, the blimp ended one tour, slept for half a minute, then started again. But now, the “sleep” period starts and never ends.
The problem is now fixed in version 1.1.1. To my customers who bought the Terra Aerius blimp and want to use looping tours: just drop me a line in SL and I’ll send you the update (version 1.1.1). If you don’t need looping tours, the update isn’t necessary.
I know this image looks unremarkable, but the beginnings of any creative endeavour always start this way. With a little trial and error — fitting pieces with other pieces to see of they fit in an interesting way. What you don’t see, however, is Reitsuki Kojima carefully modelling and crafting each individual component so that it’s just right. So that it fits his concept of the perfect hot air balloon.
The last time Rei and I collaborated on a vehicle, we produced the Terra-Kojima Starling: a two-seat ultralight that’s not only fun to fly, but ideal for exploring new parts of Second Life. You can pick up a friend and go sight-seeing in an aircraft that flies like a plane, but is extremely forgiving. It’s perfect for the novice pilot.
This time Rei and I have teamed up to produce a vehicle that has been popular since the very beginning of SL — the hot air balloon. Besides my own balloons, which I first made in late 2003, balloons have been a fixture in SL since the days of beta in 2002. “Oldbies” will remember the hot air balloon at the Welcome Area in Ahern, back when you could count the total number of sims on one hand. Then there was Hank Ramos’ balloon that became a tie-dyed icon in early SL skies. Garth Fairchang (of Fairlight Flight) also produced a good balloon back then.
For my part, and inspired by these precedents, I made my own attempt at a balloon as a newbie in 2003, and continued to innovate on my early designs until the Wind Rider, which I first released in 2006.
Now, three years later, I’m taking the next step by putting everything I’ve learned about vehicles and balloons into the next generation balloon in a collaborative effort with Reitsuki Kojima. Rei designs the balloon’s appearance, and I script its behaviour. Already I can see great improvements over the Wind Rider. This new balloon will have a more efficient script and HUD control, as well as offer owners more flexibility to allow friends to fly. If you own this one, you can let other group members fly it, or set it to allow anyone to take control. Other new features will soon follow, but I don’t think I want to be too specific at this point.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll keep posting updates on the balloon’s progress, as well as any other new vehicles in the works.
Today I spent some time setting up displays for five additional aircraft in Abbotts Aerodrome. Now you can try out or buy some classic designs that haven’t been available for a couple of years now.
Tigershark 2 is the immediate predecessor to the popular submersible combat plane. It’s sleeker and more futuristic than version 3, which was designed to reflect a WW2 theme.
Tigershark 1 was the original diving combat plane.
Cormorant is a twin-engine, single seat submersible plane that was the contemporary of the Tigershark 2.
Also included in the lineup are the Futura 5 (a pod-shaped, retro-styled hovering pod), and the Terra Taxi (a hovercar with a working meter).
Drop by the aerodrome and take a look!