X-flight, Please read if you use or sell this script.

Hello,

It has been far too long since I've been in SL. Work, and RL and that. Of course this does NOT mean I am back in SL. But I would like to tour around a bit.

In regards to X-flight, I have been getting numerous questions about it. And I have also been informed that is being widely distributed and used by numerous people. Which of course goes stricly against the comments I wrote explicitly into the script itself. So I would like to say a few things.

- Please stop distributing it. The script is outdated. There are far better flight enhancers now, the script was based on the physics engine pre-1.2. It was also buggy for its time, much less now. There are far better options available.

- This includes modifying it or selling modified versions of it.

- If you are or continue to sell an item or give an item away that has the X-flight script in any form, please contact me for permission and send the lesser of 20000 L$, or 100 L$ per item sold or given away.

If you have any questions on this or would liek to make arrangements, please let me know.

If you have and are currently using an object with the X-flight script, I would suggest looking at other options. From what I understand there are a number of other options available. Personally, I impressed by Huns Valen's approach.

Also, please post here if you have or currently use X-flight, I would be interested to get some feedback on it since it is so widespread. I'm not concerned with those using the script, but with does distributing and selling the script without permission.

Sincerely,
Goodwill Epoch

Heya Goodwill, I'd just like to express my gratitude to you for making the X-Flight in the first place. When I was a totally new Resi a little over a year ago, I obtained many versions of it in "newbie freebie packs", including many variants. Most of the variations were merely in packaging (i.e. Carbon Rod), and as I later learned, I could soon see into the script to see your wishes—to say the least, it's great to hear from you now!

X-Flight was a godsend to me. I wondered why I couldn't float at high heights (some inscrutable limit), and as you know, X-Flight solved the problem. I also set it to the max, and had to relog many times, hehehe—sim crossing in 1.5.x wasn't as good as it is now, and I would lose attachments along the way. That of course must be even relatively smoother compared to what came before.

I don't currently use X-Flight—I primarily use Francis Chung and Rathe Underthorn's ROAM for flight accel, and before that I used Rickard Roentgen's jetpack—and I also know that Argent Stonecutter has been working on an open-source "Flight Feather".

Part of my story has to do with being fed up with telehubs, and just wanting to fly around faster, saving time. This now manifests itself in the present in a funny way, since we won't have THs for much longer.

So, in short, I'd like to graciously thank you for what you've done. X-Flight is an enduring part of SL history and I'm almost reminded of that Simpsons episode where a "carbon rod" saves Homer in outer space.

Wonderfulicious to hear this from the "flying horse's" mouth!

Hehe, its nice to hear good feedback. X-flights origins started back in the Beta. It was one of the first scripts of its kind, I used to "Race" people just for the fun of it. The main reason the script arose is that it used to cost L$ to teleport somewhere, the longer the distance the more expensive. And flying there was prohibitive (something like 5-10 minutes to cross the continent)

Then the problems were worse, especially when I would test it when the login servers were shutdown. You used to be able to only login from about 7am till 10pm PST. But if you logged in before 10pm, you could stay online as long as long as you liked, or until you crashed (which usually came first)

I used to fling myself completely outside the environment, the script had no limits or attempts at safeties. There usued to be a bug that allowed you to make L$ doing this, it would give you back the L$ it used to cost to make your attachments, but when you spawned back, the prims would be reattached and you would have the L$ it gave you. Imagine doing that with a couple 100 prim attachments. I never actually exploited it though and it was hard to reproduce consistently, plus they took away the cost of rezzing prims which of course canceled the bug out ;P

Anyway, the script is horribly out of date. And I never intended it to be just given away, the reason it was meant for Kazenojin only, was because it was still in development, and I did want to make some L$ from it at the time. Collectively that script contains about some 100 hours of coding, testing, and tweaking time over its iterations.

Wowza. Lovely to hear your story.

I feel for ya man, I really do. I think you do deserve something, but unfortunately I doubt you're gonna get anything. Like you said there are far better choices out there and the only ones using X-Flight anymore are noobs and basic users with little to no money. Basicly X-Flight has become a poor man's flight accel. Trying to get money off of people who use it is a lost cause as they don't have money to spare to give to you (otherwise they'd be using said better products). As for distributers I can tell you right now a majority won't even hear of this and those who do will probly just ignore you as many aren't making any profits off of sharing this. At this point in time X-Flight is a SL equivalent of Abandonware. I dunno how object permissions were pre-1.6, but with current no-mod permissions you'll have a hard time proving anyone is using your code in any objects for profit. To me you're fighting a war that should have been started ages ago because now its a losing war. Sorry to be a kill joy, thats just how I see it.

Check out the jetpacks at ARMORD. secondlife://Miramare/160/50

They have graduated boost so you can still move around in tight places and have your high-speed too. The anti-gravity code is improved as well.

The script is also copiable so you can use it in your own objects.

</self-promotion>

So good to hear from you Goodwill; the Kazenojin build in Gray was one of the things I saw in my first weeks that inspired me to stay in SL so it's nice to hear from one of the early lights

Like Torley I used to use and rely on my X-Flight Carbon Rod a LOT in my early days (back in early 2004).

As for the script, I reckon in my attempts to be helpful I would probably have given away between 10 - 25 of them back in the day, and I'll drop an appropriate payment of L$2500 on you when I'm next in world as some form of restitution.

Best of luck and I hope to see you in world sometime!

Hear, hear!

I still always use my X-Flight that I received when I was a member of Kazenojin back in the day. I guess I just got used to it. The only thing I didn't like about it was the size, so I made it alpha. I tried to make it smaller but it didn't work the same. Now I have it attached at a HUD point, so the bulkiness is not a problem. There may be better versions available now, but I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Thanks for 3 years of fast flight, Goodwill.

Thanks! I have no problem if you want to continue using it yourself, and especially those in either Kazenojin or who have my permission can do what they like with the script. I'm mostly concerned with those who do not and have been propagating it on items and with other items. I get about 2 IM's a week regarding something new my script is in that I've never even heard of. And its usually a question about something I never actually coded into it.

@Goodwill: sounds like you want to kill it (X-flight) off .. tuff to do .. has a life of its own now .. why worry ? p.s. cool story about its origins !

As a history lesson for relative youngsters such as myself, what did/does X-flight do?

I'm a bit of a UI freak. I couldn't figure out the command syntax, even by looking at the code. I was asked if I was using X-Flight code in a script in my flight assist attachments call XLR8 (named off the top of my head). I know I took peices of the script from other flight code, but looking at X-flight and XLR8 side by side I'm pretty confidant I'm not using any X-Flight code in my script.

Also, your script is freaking HUGE. Awesome and effective, but HUGE.

A pox on the people that distro it for a fee.

I use x-flight all the time, and I'm certainly not a newb. It's quick, easy, uncomplicated and about the right speed for me. I have a copy in several of my most often worn outfit folders. The only bug I've experienced is that I tend to float upward when hovering.

Simply, it makes you fly faster.

In addition:
- It (allowed) you to hover easily at all altitudes
- It used techniques to allow it to be easier to fly (Acceleration, and cornering improvements vs fulltime thrust)
- It made use of an (at the time) innovative UI that allowed for customizable and scalable commands, This was before you could chat in a specific channel
- It had safety features built in to prevent accidentally launching you off the sim. This was before the physics system had certain restraints. I was able at one time to achieve the distance of about 5 sims in about 1-2 seconds. Which would then immidiately crash your client, leave you locked out of a sim, lose your attachements, and occasionally bring down one of the sim servers.

All of these features are now fairly unstable, broken, or unusable now. It also was, as someone put it, a HUGE script. At the time it was 5 charachters away from being a Heap Overflow Error. Which is why sometimes it caused these when processing commands or text spoken by the owner.

Originally posted in Building... I should have checked General first.

Thanks for clearing that up. I've been concerned about the provenance of X-Flight since I first opened up a copy and saw your comments, and I've been urging people to use something else ever since, simply because it seemed so likely that it was being distributed against the will of the original author(s). Needless to say I haven't used it myself either...

I hope that I'm not the first one who found the widespread use of X-Flight disturbing, but given the timing I suspect I stirred something up by asking around about where this software came from and whether it was really supposed to be publicly available.

I have spent some time working on my own open source flight script to replace it, one that uses no X-Flight code. You can get the latest version of Cyberflight at Skyhook Station, above Avalon Lagoon in LostFurest dAlliez. The source is freely redistributable under the BSD license, and can be used in closed-source products provided it's acknowledged in the documentation.

Cyberflight is not a replacement for all of X-Flight's functionality. It's less aggressive, and as smooth and natural as I can make it, and all it does is provide just enough boost to keep you flying beyond the normal "ground effect" layer without being obvious about it. It doesn't make you fly super-fast, or include many options or commands... in fact the only command is the one to toggle the plain text heads-up display through three settings: OFF, ON, and ALWAYS-ON. And you do that by clicking on its icon in your HUD.

There's a token L$1 fee for Cyberflight, simply because I'm interested in knowing who's getting it. You're free to give the flight feather, or just the script, to anyone, or to include it in your own freebies, or use it in any kind of scripted object for free or for fee... it's open source, after all.

And if you want a speed booster, buy one from the folks who specialise in such things. I'm not going to add that functionality... if anything I may be putting code into Cyberflight to slow down the initial acceleration in flight to make it easier to negotiate close quarters at low speed...

My script has the same problem, and all I'm doing when hovering is countering gravity with an upwards force when you're over the altitude where the "ground effect" lifts you. I suspect there's some subtleties of the ground effect in some sims or at some altitudes that I haven't figured out.

Hell. They happens to me sometimes right after I get off a vehicle or chair at high altitude. Not when with a flight attachment.

Also, scriptor to scriptor, what's a good timer setting for checking for height? As it is now the XLR8 checks every 2 seconds in OFF mode and .5 seconds when activated.

The amount of energy available for the llSetForce and llApplyImpulse calls in a flight script is going to depend on the volume of the object it's in. For my "Flight Feather" I simply stretched it out in the Z direction. Since it's a HUD attachment you can't see that depth so I can make it pretty much as small in X and Y as I like.

I originally compensated for that in X-Flight back in 1.1 & 1.2, There is an upward force below a certain height above the ground or water. Use get ground, and water height function, I believe it was within 20m of the ground or water that it affects you, so it won't be the exact same height in meters in all locations, unlike the ceiling on pushing you downards (70m I believe?). Then you just have to determine the vector force pushing you up and compensate for that by doing a vector force down. It should be equivelant to the vector force that pushed you down above a certain height.

Also, you can determine forces better by using the llgetmass (umm I think thats it) and get vector function, or at least you used to. this function when used on an object attached to an avatar returned the Mass of the Avatar.

I apply the boost when pos.z>=72 and pos.z>=llGround()+36 if I recall correctly (they're actually constants in the script). I hadn't thought to consider llWater(), and I'll experiment with that next time I'm in-world. I also use a feedback loop to adjust the boost factor as you fly, because the right amount seems to vary somewhat depending on the sim you're in, your altitude, and other factors I haven't bothered to figure out explicitly.

[PS: Yes, I calculate the boost as an acceleration and multiply by llGetMass() before applying it.]

[PPS: I wan't actually planning on advertising this generally yet, but then I suppose if I'd waited until it was perfect I'd never have released it]

Just looked through the thread quickly, sorry if someone mentioned it already.
Are you aware the Lindens are giving the script away at Help Island?

Hmm hey now, are you sure about that?

When I get back in-world I hope to make a smaller XLR8 ui with an AUTO mode similar to Argent's fine feather.

Of course, I was hoping to build in some llTeleportAgent functions as well.... I guess it'll finally be available when I get back.

Goodwill,

I bear some responsibility for the widespread distribution of X-flight, and I'd like to apologize if you feel your generosity to Kazenojin was taken advantage of. As a former Admiral, I brought nearly 100 people into the group, and most of them I'm sure recieved a copy of X-flight, along with a number of other items that were benefits to new members. I don't doubt more than a few of them ignored your instructions regarding it.

I'm sure many people now tend to think of scripts like this as free to the community because they are open-source. X-flight actually predated the ability to secure scripts from view. Anyone could see it, and pass on the code. As such it depended on the honor of those who had it to protect the creator's wishes.

I still use X-flight myself. Despite its age, it remains one of the most elegant and useful additions to SL. It's good to hear from you again, Goodwill. I hope you at least feel honored to have made such an important contribution to SL's richness.

-Ana