About those vehicle sims. . .

When the six vehicle sims were brought online, there was a lot of hoopla - mostly people being flabbergasted as to why SIX, especially in light of a perceived mature sim shortage.

I think I understood the Lindens thinking in opening up the sims - a lot of it was marketing and trying to get new people into the game with the promise of different things to do other than build.

All well and good - what's good for SL is good for me

However. . .

In my trips to Cordova lately, I can't help but notice how terribly empty those six vehicle sims are. I don't think they are getting the use that was expected.

Now, I'm not proposing that we eliminate the vehicle sims entirely - I think the Lindens were on to something when they opened them.

My proposal would be a compromise: cut the number down to 3 rather than six. Take the three freed up sims and make Mature sims out of them.

The people who made arguments for having six vehicle sims mainly pointed to the fact that with high speed vehicles, you do need room to move.

Cutting back to three sims in a row really wouldn't eliminate any of the "length" of the vehicle tracks, so you'd still be able to get up speed. It would just make for a sharper turning radius at either end (which I think would be more exciting to boot).

I can't see where this solution wouldn't be a win-win situation. The small group of dedicated vehicular enthusiast would still have essentially the same playground, and the rest of the SL'ers would get the extra elbow room they have been asking for.

Any thoughts?

i'm not a vehicularee but i think that four in a box would be better than three in a row. that would still free up two. mature is okay but i wonder if they will use the olive method of prim distribution as well?

i said that like they would really convert two of the vehicle sims to standard ones. what i meant was. i wonder what the lindens are thinking of olive so far. is the experience proving successful? are they considering similar future sims? i ain't seein' no feedback from 'em.

Oneironaut, they're *supposed* to be empty. That's what makes them good for vehicles.

I think there should be two more vehicle sims beside Cardova, to make the whole things square.

I don't. Cardova needs to be isolated from the rest of the world as much as possible, so that experiments that escape from it don't cause problems elsewhere.

There's a group known as SLRA - Second Life Racing Association, that is working to try and put the vehicle sims to good use.

We're putting together a system for running a variety of races, and hope to run more racing events in the near future. If you'd like to get involved, build racing gear and courses, or help run racing events, get in touch with Satai Diaz or Athos Murphy.

I meant devoid of people, empty.

Not without prims empty. I understand they are No Build.

Did you mean they are supposed to be empty of players? If so, that seems weird.

does slra have a balloon racing contingency? i might be interesed in ballooning for fun and prizes. it's fun in real life. it's also very pretty when several take off at once.

If the Lindens were serious about the sandbox being utilized, they would put a telehub right at the border. Otherwise, I just get tired of flying across 5 or so sims to get there, the rolling, EMPTY landscape mocking me as each 10,000 prim sim potential sits nearly EMPTY with nobody racing anything, except.....THEMSELVES.....to the sandbox. (Although I did see a new LINDEN build out there, looks like remote control RC cars or something - that was cool).

Meh.

Olive is in great usage, from what I've seen. I dont' think the mvoement caused any sort of loss of sandbox usage.

If you want to get there quicker, I have a jet you can strap to yourself and speed up to about 5x what you normally fly at.

LF

I enjoy the vehicle sims. It's really the only place you can go to drive. The new racing loops being setup are pretty cool.

My only complaint about the sim is that its too hard to see where the track is going. The new loops help.

If you want to get from the telehub to the Cardova sandbox in a hurry, I've placed a red sphere on top of the telehub. Touch it, while standing where you teleported in, and it'll throw you to Cardova -- if everything goes right. Reduces a 45 second flight to 16 seconds.

I love the vehicle sims, and would love for even more to be added - with trees and more dramatic scenery. SL needs wilderness and if it means having the odd Kart whizzing by then thats fine by me. As we have no roads as such, we need somewhere to play with vehicles that is lag free.

Having said that, the vehicle sims need some landmarks - the scenery is just not distinct enough for me. The odd log cabin as a nice meeting place, a scenic bench atop a mountain and so on. More trees (well off the racing line) would be nice, and getting rid of all those poles and signposts that litter the ground. There are far too many of them and they get in the way.

..and I'd love a long underground tunnel section but I realise that isn't easy to create.

We could have a long trench roofed over with prims; done properly, it could be very cool.

A suggestion to the wonderful people at Linden Lab:
Please make more sims exactly like Olive! Olive is da bomb!

I want scenic log cabins that blow up when we crash into them.

i think that the lindens should hold a build off for different landmarks and such to place in the racing sims, with the top 20 or so having their builds placed in the vehicle sims, the contest should be long, to allow people time to build, and there should be a cap on how many prims you can use.

My first reaction: God no!

My second reaction: God no!

The racing sims need to be as prim- and script- light as possible. Racing is more time-sensitive than any other activity in SL, with the possible exception of firefights in Jessie. Anything that slows down the physics engine should be avoided, anything that increases load time should be avoided, anything that reduces framerate should be avoided, anything that reduces script run speed should be avoided.

The just-in-time content delivery of SL, combined with the movement speed of racecars, means that small objects are freqently not loaded until you're past them (for example, I've hit Xenon Linden's discarded hoverboard four times, and each time, I didn't see it until after I'd bounced). The racing sims need to be kept as clean as possible.

I am for keeping the racing sims intact, although I am really hoping that we will get more Mature sims. If you look at the world map, there is a two sim hole to the west of DaBoom. Looks like a logical place for more "M" sims. There are already other neighboring "M" sims. I was at first somewhat dismayed about the appearance of new sims being devoted to a non residential cause. That was before I built my Airboats. Without that lag free lake to speed around on, I wouldve never gotten the script tuned properly. I tried in other sims, believe me, even in the wee hours of the morning, with very few people online, and the buildings still lagged me so much, I would suddenly find myself in someones front yard. Hopefully in anticipation of the Christmas rush more sims are brought online prior to the Holidays. We will just have to wait and see.

*Shameless Plug*: Anyone interested in an Airboat let me know, I will do custom color schemes to suit your taste. They Run very smooth and have a neat fan animation.

That's the spot due north of the racing sims? That would be almost as bad as letting people build in the racing sims -- M sims tend to be very prim-heavy.

I guess that depends on how heavily used the northern portions of those two particular racing sims are. I mean something will go in that gap, and I think there are more ppl fighting for mature space than there are for a set of racing sims. A compromise may be in order. Assuming of course that the Lindens see fit to create more "M" sims in that gap.

What the Lindens might be able to do is to modify the flight sims to load everything in one or all six sims at once when you enter. If they keep the landscape clean, they should be able to get away with that, and then all that would be needed is to send positional updates on objects. That should increase response time quite a bit at not having to load stuff in at high speeds.

Hmmm. I wonder if they could make sims 512x512? Empty ones like the flight sims seem like good candidates.. then they would gain lots of extra space without having to use more servers.

And of course, the ability to use collision bounding boxes to turn 30 prim vehicles into 2 or 3 would be a great speedup.

Not sure what all the technical limitations are of course... but half the fun is speculating in wild ideas.

Hehe I feel its only a matter of time before I lose my ocean view in Da Boom I'm facing that hole. I count my days but I agree, that would be a great spot for another mature sim since it borders 2 others.

If the vehicle sims stay as they are, I doubt you'll ever see that hole filled. Cutting off the view from adjacent laggy sims is crucial to the lag-free (or less lag) aspects of the vehicle park. Don't know if you've noticed but when you come around the bend next to Oak Grove, it's like hitting a wall whereas the rest of the park has pretty smooth transitions.

If there's any way to expand the size of these sims to 512x512 meters (or bigger), yes please! I'd gladly trade prim space (in an empty sim lol) for more room to roam.