Rate SL vehicle performance.

I don't mind vehicles. I think it's a wonder we even have them at all. Often I find they work best when you stick to one sim and don't try to cross sim borders at ultra-high speeds. Overall they are fun though.

What other game can you build your own vehicles in?

Just thankful for what we got...

Update and final post for a while.

After visiting Della Street and friends for a moment I hopped in the Hornet and flew home to Carlisle.

700meters off the ground at 47meters per second I was clearing sims left and right and had no discernable problems going home. Max altitued flown was 1200meters but that was due to a steady nose up pitch I had on the mouse cross hairs yet the Hornet was screaming across sim lines with no issues.

Well take care everyone and see you in a week or so in world.

Shadow

I only have one car, by Cereal Milk. It's alright for racing around the vehicle park and in any chain of sims that are uninhabited, but it becomes undriveable in any sim where there is a lot of content.

My personal preference has always been planes, both for blasting around the vehicle sims and for travelling across the grid. I have loved flight sims for the better part of ten years, and in SL, planes are not prone to the thousand and one pitfalls of trying to drive places. There are times when teleporting is simply impossible, or rather unstable (water sim -> relog -> try again.) At those times I find airplanes are invaluable for getting around. In fact, if I'm going somewhere, I am more likely to fly than teleport, unless I would have to go to huge contortions to get there (i.e. "go around the horn" because of an unfilled void.)

That reminds me, I need to go rez a plane at my house, 'cause I know the 1.6 update is going to make rezzing stuff or teleporting very difficult for a day or so.

Anyway, yeah, border crossings are terrible. Sometimes I get taken out of my plane and set on the ground. I am hoping these things will get a lot better with Havok 2.

I ride my Trent Cycle all the time, and (usually) have a blast.

Yes... Sim boundary crossings are often a challenge. And laggy sims can be problematic. But all in all, with a little practice, one can get pretty good at maneuvering around.

And now for the obligatory nudge to Andrew and the rest of the Linden crew... When are we going to get Havoc 2.0?

- Ace

I absolutley love riding my bikes. When I owned the Road House it was a problem in Garmisch, because every 4th piece of road had phantom checked. You couldnt even walk on them. But in the newer areas, and the new road structures they have on the new continent its a blast.

Most people hate vehicles cause as soon as they get on them its a wide open speed rush. Now if you did that in RL what would happen ? You would crash and burn ... same as you do in SL. Slow down, try to enjoy the ride. Ill tell ya what, grab a 2 person bike and your special other, head over to the new continent, take a ride on those roads out in the woods, they lead no where and everywhere. Just beware when crossing RR tracks, they hurt here just as much in RL

I own a bunch of flying machines. I find that short trips are the way to go. Regardless of pacing, sooner or later some lag spike is gonna suck you out of the sky and send you scooting along a lake bottom on the seat of your pants. Which always necessitates a reboot to get you back in order. Would be nice to get some new software to make vehicles more stable when traveling between sims.

The vehicles in SL ride like crapola, and it's not due to lag. Well, to be more specific, land vehicles..... I have not tried planes and boats much.

Posted because all options were either "yes" or something to do with lag. My system is top of the line and my net connection is wide open. The only time I've experienced problems with lag is since 6.0 and the packet lost it brought with it.

I don't have any major problems with my vehicles. I've designed them to operate on a gear-type system. That is, they maintain a constant speed on a given axis with one button touch, which can be incremented. They don't go lightning fast, of course, but the latest versions of them have been quite stable. This is partially because they don't behave like any plane would. I guess they're more like blimps, as far as functionality goes. They work, though.

Group travil not bad. For yourself? I ask why? Flying takes not time other then Lag but hay you ge that with a vehical.

Flight Sim for the Commodore 64 had SL beat hands down. Your plane never fell through the earth or suddenly vanished.

Flight Simulator for Atari 2600 has it beat for the same reason.

Havok2 may change things. But right now there are still one or two good reasons to be in SL (OK, only one if you don't like Tringo). But vehicles isn't it.

Right now for me, a Francis Chung jetski in a quiet island sim with low lag, open water and sandbars to turbo-jump is sheer unadulterated bliss and a friend can snuggle on with you too, cool or what ?

I love flying but tend to prang slow-rezzing stuff a lot when coping with a vehicle, so I prefer my own dragon wings most of the time for the sheer liberated freedom of it, though I've been having fun in Jillian's Okuresha flyer lately. Oh and the tiny Fairchang gyrocopter was my first vehicle and still fun....must take it out again for a spin.

I guess flying higher would make it better to avoid obstructions and improve performance, but then there's nothing much to see up there, and I'm a bit of a sightseer

Only ground vehicle I've really taken to so far is the JadeWolf Hoverbike, that one is fun - though it needs some emissions control - I sunk into the GSLR while trying to follow the tracks and barfed a *huge* cloud of black smog

I've got used to the sim borders being a bit dicey, but things are rather spoilt by the sim-border crossing 'avatar sit up and beg' bug right at the moment, though I hear that may be fixed before too long

Yeah I was testing the JadeWolf hoverbike last night with Cessee and yeah we got the sit up and beg thing going on.

After seeing that I tested a few other vehicles and so far it seems to only affect "Linden Lab" preset animations.

Apparently if you use ones made individually its not an issue.

So I Imagine I will be updating the JWH bikes with a new sit animation this week sometime.
For owners of the JadeWolf Hover bike drop me a note card and I will drop you an update soon as I fix them.

Shadow

LOL PS i will work on the exhaust but steam driven hoverbikes tend to be a little smokey..LOL

LOL thanks Shadow - I gather that the 'sit up' bug is a problem with some replacement sit animations being themselves over-ridden by the standard Linden 'sit' animation being started on priority 4 at sim borders (see feature vote #179). Apparently, the Lindens are now aware of this bug in detail courtesy of Jillian Callahan, so hopefully it'll be fixed sometime and my jet-ski will behave too ! If you update the bike, please let me know anyhow

I've spent 5 K atleast (not all at ocne Heh) on vehicles, but these days they are jsut sitting in my inventory with the new lag, but when I can I ride them around ^_^

Well I tried a bit more flying last night to get a feel for it more myself, after a visit to Abbotts Aerodrome for some new toys

Cubey's Ornithopter is so cool. I love it. Flew myself up to the new continent and did some acrobatics up there. Had three major flight crashes though around sim boundaries including an SL client crash, and went crazily off world at one point - in fact all went so odd at that point that my AO got broken and I had to remake a new one. I have a feeling one 'thopter of the three lost may still be laying around up there but I can't locate it and auto-return hasn't kicked in.

Also tried a big Klingon Battlecruiser, huge and slow, unfortunately when I crossed over into my neighbouring sim gaining altitude at full thrust, it exploded spectacularly in mid-air, showering its component prims across my neighbours land parcels, so then I had to spend some time hunting down and deleting my litter. (I even found something like a black box but it didn't tell me what went wrong )

My apologies if I have left any junk around that I haven't managed to find and remove - I do try hard to clean up after myself - but yeah, flying in SL is 'interesting' if not always for the expected reasons

Garth Fairlight, building on the work of many previous scripters, has a fairly good train script running on the GSLR, from Olive to Purple ... but sim borders still cause mischief.

I've built a lot of aircraft for the Kazenojin, and have always preferred "older" aircraft types ... nothing wrong with jets and such, but SL performance better suits biplanes and dirigibles.

Ships and boats usually work fine in my experience, again I'm talking s-l-o-w here though.

You forgot: A Great way for a group to travel together!

One of my favorite planes to fly in SL is an ultralight I got at Cubey's Areodome. I can't rember the name of the builder (sorry *blush*), but it's variable speed, and at low speed you're almost at a standstill. It's perfect for low altitude flying thru river gorges. You can fly happly along enjoying the view until you hit a Stupid! security script, that grabs your plane and sends you flying along your way, sans plane! i know they're a nessecary evil, but god I hate those things oh also the cyber junky stunt plane looks like a cartoon biplane but flys fast, does tricks, and is very nimble

As far as lag goes, mainland vehicle travel is a nightmare on the ground. Mainland flight is slightly better until you get to around 1000 meters up. It's always fun when your vehicle crosses a sim border and you rez inside someone's floating loveshack in the sky.

Also enjoyable is straining passengers (or pilot) out the back of the vehicle at the sim border.

I usually keep vehicles on Chaos Island sim lots of open land still for ground vehicles. set up a firey ramp-o-doom for motorcycles or whatever you want to fling yourself in really. Also set up various Avatar flingers throwers pushers and bouncey things for various acts of daredevilry.

Vehicles are nice and a lot of fun if you can keep em in one sim.

I would love to use flying vehicles more often, in fact, I really would like to make myself a snazzy flying saucer. However, sim crossings are still a pain.

Cubey's jetpacks (and most hovercraft, slow as they might be) work relatively well, because you can fly Nap of The Earth pretty well with them and for some reason, the asset server or the sims or something can figure that out better than when you are 250 m or above. (during the Great Teleport Failure, I found that I could only cross the continent sometimes if I dropped down near 150 m frequently)

Also, I recommend the Meanderer. (airship created by Karsten Rutledge)

For some reason, this thing is way more stable than the other airships I've tried. The movement is fairly "blimpy" and that might be why.

I suspect there might be a way to make a script that can detect approaching sim borders and somehow protect you a bit from sim-to-sim mishaps.

*within sims however, I find flying at around 300-500 m is best. Less lag for some reason.

I really enjoy the vehicles in Sl and can defiantely appreciate the amount of work that has gone into them. I own quite a few and do wish that there weren't so many sim border carshes and such. Is it even possible for SL to improve vehicle performance in a future update?
?

Francis' jetski rocks! My Wife and I each have one,and jumping on them and exploring in the new continent is a blast(except for hitting those darn red lines at full throttle, hehe). I have had maybe two bad simm crossings, and both recovered no problemo. Oh yeah Dee, jumping them is coolies, even made a jump in my lagoon just for the fun of it, and some great pics to boot
Planes, trains, and automobiles, very rarley use them , with the exception of my 05 Mustang GT and Trent Cycles Enforcer. Both work well enough to have a little "fun time"