Try the new highways!

I just tried the highway from Selby to Coniston. Eric Linden really hit on something by building this road right on top of the ground. This means that hovercraft (like my hoverbike) have a smooth, fast right along this stretch instead of grinding along on the road surface.

I hope LL makes all roads like this in the future.

You know... it'd be kinda cool if you could flag a prim such that it would appear to be 'ground', as far as llSetHoverHeight() and its ilk are concerned.

As I read Cubey's post it occurred to me, it might be amusing to hold a rally or hill climb style event from Selby or Mowry to Coniston, or vice versa. I'd offer my long roadside parcel in Mowry for vehicle rezzing and starting line -- especially if the Lindens would make some curb cuts for me... I'm sure races have been held many times before, but have we ever had such a lovely venue?

Some random thoughts:

= Scripted timing stations. Touch the starting line clock and finish clock to record/report your times.
= Entrants start at two minute intervals to avoid extra stress on sim crossings
= Might be possible to include a class for hover vehicles - something like a maximum height of 2-3 meters above the ground?

Does this sound appealing? Other thoughts? This might qualify as a lottery, since there's a huge element of luck in whether or not your vehicle will glitch on all those sim boundaries... ;^)

Zippity, that's a great idea. I haven't had a road race in a long time! Is anyone able to make race gates? I'd donate hoverbikes for the race.

Sure, I could take a stab at the starting/scoring/timing system. I've got a number of different projects going, have just started a new job, and yadda yadda yadda, so I'm not sure how fast it'll come together. Let's see if anybody else chimes in on this thread first off, see if there's some interest. I'll putter around with some ideas for the scripting in the meantime. If there is, maybe we'll put up an event thread for it?

Timing system shouldn't be too hard. Just gotta scan for the avs at checkpoints, use RPC or email to tell the checkpoints who is in the race, etc..

I'd do it if I still played.

Thanks for the pointer. I just took a 6.6km ride through that area (on a Terra Hoverbike 2 - I might add). I felt like I was on Skyline Drive over Palo Alto. Nicely done.

I'd be happy to build a finish line/clock. What would also be cool would be if you held an event the day before, where you built your racer, and registered it.

I've already got a timing system for SL racing. If anyone wants a copy, I'll be glad to give them one. It has support for starting lines, finish lines, and waypoints, and and is designed for "against the clock" racing.

Carnildo: Excellent, that'd be wonderful. And it has support for rally-style timing, where each participant starts and ends at a different time? Just making sure you saw that requirement...

I'm thinking that perhaps to keep things interesting we make the course Mowry -> Coniston -> Mowry. This way you not only worry about overtaking slower traffic, but also oncoming traffic suddenly reducing it to one lane in each direction. How does that grab you? Practical concern is, there woul d be twice the opportunity to get stuck on a sim boundary and be unable to rez a new vehicle. But hey, maybe that's part of inter-sim racing in SL?

This would also allow folks not racing have the option of spectating in one spot for both start and finish. We could conceivably get away with one waypoint in Coniston, which I reckon we'd need a Linden to plant for us...

Excellent idea! If you need cars, I've got a WRC rally car I can donate. I'll even make variations so everyone can get a different color.

Real rally cars hit hidden ruts/tree stumps and break axles. Bad luck. So I guess sim borders are the natural danger in our world.

You could avoid sim borders by slowing down your racer before reaching a new sim. Although this would easily mess with the race, because everyone is slowing down and gaining speed again 2 or 3 times in the race, you could make the car script accelerate faster, so that participants would be able to hit full speed faster.

Hmm, you know, I just might get back in-game for this

Can one's car be equiped with special... uhm... "Insurance Devices"? ^_^

I'm going to stay in this thread but post a comment that has long been brewing.

I'm glad you have better roads to drive your motorcycle on. I'm more of an off-road dirt-bike rider myself, I guess, but I've done both kinds of driving in SL, and have at times found it frustrating as you've noted due to the surface.

However, I just plain don't get it.

Here we have this whole utopian world -- or correct me if I'm wrong, I'm new. It's supposed to be like a fantasy planet on the Internet, right? Instead, it ALL looks like Cleveland. Or...um...Rochester, NY? No...a suburb of Denver? You get the idea. It's like mall strips and highways anywhere in the US or parts of Canada. There are pretty sims -- but ugly macadam roads run down them, and worse, they have yellow dotted lines on them.

You could ask -- why macadam? A road could look like anything in this world. It could be galvanized purple steel, it could be quaint cobblestone, it could be clear polyurethene with magenta streaks at dawn from particle generators. You get the idea -- it could look much, much more aesthetic than it does. OK, perhaps there are cost issues here? When programmers roll out sims, they don't have all day to tweak graphics with galvanized purple steel into a sim. Ok. So let's say they *have* to make the macadam. Why do they have to make a yellow dotted line? It's not as if there are actually vehicles coming in the opposite direction! Could we lose the yellow lines?

In fact, to be honest, I've been in here 2 months and I've never seen a single vehicle on a single road. I sometimes even go to the middle of the road and stand out there with my friends because it's a nice flat surface to test out animations or clothing rezzes. I never fear that we will be run over by motorcycles. So I have to wonder: why yellow? why dotted? Why anything? Come on, this is supposed to be SECOND life!

I have a vision of a Works Progress Administration in reverse. I want LL to hire corps of road workers to go to some sims and undo the ugly roads that really have no business being in this world because there's no objective need for them other than some silly vestige of our old ways in First Life. The WPA would be paid for undoing ugly roads and laying down let's say one of 6 other choices that communities could agree on -- pine-needle strewn paths, galvanized steel high-speed monorails, whatever. Somehow, LL would give those trusted workers permissions to terraform just the road spaces with just those graphics or however it works -- surely it's doable. Instead of dancing at parties with sexay avatar contests and getting $500 stipends for doing nothing all week but looking fabulous, the WPA workers could undo the aesthetic damage in SL and earn their way.

Another option: stop making roads like that with the macadam and yellow in the new sims. Until communities vote on what kind of roads they want -- if any. Everyone hates governments and town councils and whatnot in a game. But if there's just one thing they can have the power over -- like chosing a road style -- they might come to enjoy the challenge of meeting and debating and planning for future needs.

But really, I want to know: why are there roads anyway in a world where you spend 90 percent of your travel time flying or teleporting?

It may be a matter of personal taste but I find tarmacadam and yellow road markings far more aesthetic than purple steel...

Having roads gives ground or low hover vehicle enthusiasts a way to enjoy their vehicles. They can use them for inter-sim travel instead of flying or teleporting. Roads are frequently an interesting landscape feature, and they are sometimes useful as a neutral boundary between parcels. I for one get irritated when my neighbors build 50m tall walls *right* on the border of my parcel, but I digress...

True I don't see a lot of traffic, and rarer still is bidirectional traffic. But I've seen enough to know that there are a number of other people using them. I think the volume may increase when we don't risk losing the vehicle every time we cross a sim boundary.

As for making the roads suit the sims better -- hey, haven't you seen the roads in Hidden Lakes have roadkill? I'll sit back now and wait for a mob of outraged PETA activists to petition LL to remove it...

Sim crossings are still too kludgy for my tastes. No matter what sort of vehicle you use -- you risk being tossed, falling through the road, some anim perms glitch coming up, etc. I tried to do some solitary journeys along the roads of SL, and it was just too inconvenient to have to consciously remember to slow down before each sim crossing, endure the "hiccup" afterwards, and speed on for a little while before repeating that process.

I like the idea of a race and would find it way cool to spectate or even ride along (as a passenger) in such a thing, but the crux of the matter still lies on "sim crossings" because in a real race, it's very much about precision, and sliding across borders and becoming disoriented could be viewed as a skewed "added challenge" of sorts, but I'd rather not see it that way.

The growing pains might be exciting in their own way, however (old newsreel footage of early carriage-cars bumping and sliding and colliding in the mud comes to mind).

Yes, it does. IM me in-world for a copy and instructions on how to set things up.

Relay Road Rally....

Start with 4 drivers, 4 vehicles and one passenger

at the starting line - driver 1 and the passenger

at checkpoint 2 - driver 2, passenger switches vehicles to driver 2's

at checkpoint 3 - passenger hops into driver 3's vehicle

at checkpoint 4 - passenger hops into driver 4's vehicle

....

To spice things up have it cover various vehicle types, why confine yourself to roads with so many types of travel available?

or... the Void sims...

.....submarine races.......

I use the roads for roller skating, when I want to see what shops are selling, rather than flying over them. Sometimes I ride my bicycle I got from Olde London. But anything else you can't rez. Same with rivers and water.

I can't even rez Arthur my bulldog and take him for a run while i'm skating.

Latonia

PS - don't want to see purple roads either

(warning, too much coffee consumed. this post skippable)

In the toilet paper roll (Toilet paper over, toilet paper under?), they are bouncing around the idea of a sensor to orient the roll to the oncoming user. Made me think...

I like the idea of macadam roads. And purple steel. And a hundred other varieties. I like random. So now we're talking about personal preference.

How about a new preference: road skin. You can choose from some standard styles (boring yellow line, snow, Hidden Lake), or perhaps any texture you own. Including special Handmade Road skins that someone sold you (purple steel). Or transparent, if you want the roads to "disappear" from your beautiful tree-lined snow view.

Once that is implemented, the next step is some kind of road skin script ... so each section can change (or emit particles, or whatever) as you approach/leave. And so I can have the random roads I want. But that can wait.

All kinds of things could be personalized per client. Guess that could be good or bad depending on your viewpoint. But we each already see the world in our own personal way.

Having spent months building railways across half a dozen sims, the main reason for roads is ... you can't go back later and add them in! Terrain limits and property acquisition would be an impossible chore, even for the Lindens.