Airline Help Please!

Hi not got much help from help island , so thought i would try here!

I got land just over 8912sqmetr which as a palace and houses on it, but I want to clear it to make my own airline and Airport called "Celestial travel"....

I was going to buy a fleet of boing 717s and build a small terminal where by way of a pay door, pasengers can get a virtual boarding pass. i already fly AirbusA320 in microsoft flight and im well versed in flying airliners to italy and spain in an and out of manchester Aiport uk etc etc.

The idea was to provide a service worldwide to holiday islands as a cool alternative to TP, I already have uniforms and staff ready.. but i have run into a huge problem... my land is at say 123.40.67
celestial islands. i need to build a runway and a small arrivals and departure building at summmer islands which say is 34.123.234

I bought a king turboprop to fly it there before i buy the boing fleet, but i cant seem to get there. I am well versed in map reading, so i know what my heading should be, so I take off and head out into the ocean to make a left turn bank towards a way point, but for some reason i keep going round in circles, eventually i gain more altitude, but then i suddenly find myself on the ground still in celestial isles????? Then it say im off world??

How do i fly the airliner to cross another region to land at summer islands new airport, is not the water international water as in RL.. if not who owns the oceans, do i have to pay access to fly into another region.....or get airspace permisions over the land/ocean that is on the flight path..

any help useful please

thanks

If you are taking off from an island chances are you are hitting the sim boundary. Is the island off by itself or is it connected to another island or land mass. If not, you will not be able to fly outside the boundary of that sim. Also , if your destination is a solitary island , you won't be able to fly into that sim either. There are also a lot of other obstacles to flight in SL unfortunately. For the most part it's "You can't get there from here."

The void between mainland and estates is not traversable other than to teleport.

Your service idea is not new by any means in SL, but I like it and suggest you open an airport on the mainland.

you should check out Privateer SIM, they have a spaceship challenge covering a area of the mainland, their note card gives some indications of problems with flight from one part of the mainland to the other.

you can't fly out of a single private SIM.

It's a very nice idea, really, but unfortunately it's not possible to fly overseas to an island. Mainland is the only place where you can fly from region to region - providing you don't run into any banlines that cause your vehicle to crash.

Slight derail to declare the number 13.

Ha! I will stand firm, albeit with trembling knees and somewhat pale around the nose!

thanks guys, i just learnt that the ocean isnt really an ocean at all , as somebody pointed out its a void, i suppose im so used to travelling at 30,000 feet in microsoft flight for up to 4 hours real time, im expecting the same here lol

But i have heard the mainland may be viable, but it would mean completely writing off the 160,0000L i spent on the land and objects there in at celestial isles and selling up the land ec etc.

I have never seen the mainland, only islands. im still a bit of a newbie, even though I been her since october. Do u search for flat land in sles xchange for mainland or somewhere else....yes i love the idea that with my experiance of flying airliners to eupopean cities, actually having second life pasengers in your plane going on holiday and having an avarter dressed in a uniform thanking them for flying "Celestial Airlines" at the end of there journey was an idea i was keen on making happen, but the problem will still arise where theres water concerned, obviously i need a glide path to land smoothly, and that normally means travelling over the sea descending towards the runway, by that time at 2000feet im going to be close to bumping into other barriers, anyway i look into mainland, but i would have to buy two plots of land, one for my airline we call it the hub. the airlines headqauters, and then i would have to rent or buy another parcel of land that passengers would be keen to travel too, like nice grounds woods or clubs, shopping, sea sand and sex lol So it sounds like an expensive set up, plus 5 boings or a few king turbo props are going to set me back about 7000L..so have to look into it more!!

many thanks for your replys)

You know I'm really sorry this has happened to you. How is it possible that you were never oriented to the mainland, never were taught the basics of SL, and yet were allowed to spend 160K on an airport that you can't use? Something in the system failed you in my opinion.

Your airport idea is reminiscent of the fun ideas from SL's older days, and in theory it could work if havoc 4 works out, people enjoyed themselves more, and LL would focus on the user base again.

Of course you would still have to move to the mainland. Long live the mainland.

Running an airline in SL may be fun but aviation in SL is very dicey. Even on mainland, crossing sim boundaries can be a nightmare. You can be ejected from your ship, you can hit a ban line or security orb. You can hit a full parcel, amd again be ejected or crash. The quality of the scripting in your aircraft can be issue as your passengers themselves. The more people you add to the plane, the more lag you can cause, and not every passenger will have the same experience based on their equipment.

Some wierd things can happen when multiple avis get together in an aircraft, the test flight in Annabelle's drop Ship a few months back comes to mind. I'd suggest you just get comfortable with SL flight, take a couple of friends up , and see how it works, before investing anything else. Also, due to the Havoc upgrade some aircraft need updating. Flying is one of the few things I come to SL to do, I wish it worked better.

Lowen thanks hun for reply, i missed out on the basics when i joined in october, I was still on dial up connection..... I tried for hours to get it to work lol But it crashed almost as soon as it opened...but i did make it to oriente island but it never rezzed, when i got broadband, SL toook me straight to some where else when i signed on, because the dial up connnection didnt save my last place i visited, i do get tutorials now and then to help me, it was only when i went into Second lifes minimum requirements that i found it didnt support Dial up, I only went on broadband so I could go on Second life....... but i found it, speeds up downloads like nothing i ever expereinced before lol

Hun I have NOT bought the airport yet , it has the palace and 4 houses on it still, thats whats cost me that amount of money over 4 months.....I was going to remove it and have empty land and make airport, but celestial isles is a very small island, its boundary isnt even enough for a helicopter to make a decent trip lol

brenda thanks for input....nice to know theres someone who knows more than me lol
yes the boing 717 may not be a good idea, as it can carry, i think 50 pasengers. i see where your going... but i have the king turbo prop, its (copy) and the effects of starting and sounds are quite good, in fact very good, pity it hasnt got an altimeter or speed indicator. this only carries 10 in total.. what was annabelles test drop ship?? nice to know more about that brenda!!, if u see me in world or look for my name, be nice to chat, seeing as you appear to enjoy the challenge of flying. or u can go other way, find my profile add me as friend, i give u permission ) perhaps we could share some ideas, even try/look for a few pointers to help both of us, must check out the challenge/and privateer sim as mentioned by other helpful posters!)


thanks guys/girls
x

Privateer SIM may take a little bit of time to orientate to where things are, the items you would be interested in are outside on the space landing deck.

Your idea sounded like a lot of fun, but there are several incorrect basic assumptions.

First, as others pointed out, your flight path has to be entirely over a contiguous run of sims. There are some "openspaces" sims that are water areas, but most of the "oceans" seen from private islands are just an illusion. These spaces between the sims don't have servers to support them and you can't fly or sail a boat into them. If you look on the map, actual sims all have a name associated with the grid squares. If you look carefully, the navigable water/air spaces between islands or sims will be a different color than the areas that have no associated name and simulator. For example, between the North continent and South continent on the mainland, there is a strip of water sims that are specificly there to allow one to fly or boat from one continent to the other. But most of that 'water' gap between the two continents is impassible.

Second, your flight path needs to be at an altitude of at least 768 Meters above the ground level, or else at least some of your potential passengers may not be able to remain on the plane, due to explicit name ban lines. If you try to fly less than 50 M above the terrain, you'll hit so many general ban line areas that affect yourself and all passengers that you'll hardly be able to move.

Next, concentrate on much smaller aircraft. Think more like a Hawaiian or Carribbean "island-hopper" commuter service, with 1 to 3 passengers in addition to the pilot. Most SL vehicles are NOT going to carry more than 6 people, tops. Because the base of the vehicle can only be 31 prims, and each passenger space takes one of those prims. A more complex vehicle then attaches a large prim part section to the pilot, to make the illusion of a larger and more complex vehicle. But you're very unlilkely to ever see a 20 seat or larger plane in SL. And if you do manage to come up with a high-capacity plane, each sim you cross into must have enough free space to allow that many new avatars to enter. So if you had a 10-seat commuter jet, and tried to fly into a sim that already has 35 people in it, you couldn't do it, because most sims only allow 40 people at a time in that 256 M by 256M area!

My advice: Get a decent two-seat plane, and practice flying that around various places in SL. It's quite different than playing MS Flight Simulator or other dedicated simulation games. There are several existing airports in SL that sell planes and allow people to take off and land with their own planes. Cubey Terra has a nice one, and there is one near the Serenity Woods sim, as I recall. With some experience, you may actually find a way to make a scaled-down version of your dream a reality.

Happy flying, and good luck!

Go to Abbot's Aerodrome. They have a couple of automated airline flights you can take. see how those planes operate. Take a couple of friends if you can, so you can compare experiences.

Michael,

If you haven't already, check out Abbott's Aerodrome. They have all sorts of aircraft for demo and for sale. They have skydiving (and that's what the dropship is for -- skydivers). They have a scheduled airline operating from their runway. Take a ride on it to get an idea for what is possible.

A 50 person airliner is not, IMO, ever going to travel with a full passenger load in SL. An entire sim can only support about 40 avatars maximum. Fly 50 in at once and...whee, sim crash!

The most you should consider (again IMO) is your King Air.

ANY vehicle in Second Life has trouble with crossing region boundaries. All the data from the vehicle and its occupants has to be transferred from one region to the next. This often results in odd vehicle performance...such as unexpected altitude loss, or even diving underground. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you emerge again. Not exactly a comfortable passenger experience.

Sightseeing is a better idea than point to point transport. After all, any transport system is competing with the instantaneous and free teleport system. The advantage you can offer is to see the stuff in between Point A and Point B.

Sightseeing can be set up on a small number of regions, or even in just a single region, negating the sim crossing problem. The key ingredient is to have interesting sights to see! Much of SL is shopping malls and rather ugly builds, but there are also many visually beautiful things and places.

You need a low, slow vehicle to do it. Helicopters will work. My friends have all enjoyed getting rides in my helicopter. Airships and balloons are also popular sightseeing vehicles.

The other possibility is re-creating a unique flying experience. Fly passengers in a copy of the Memphis Belle WW II bomber. Give rides in a supersonic F-16, or an aerobatic biplane, or the Millenium Falcon. In this case, the flight itself is the product you're selling, rather than the sights along the way, or arrival at a destination.

Ceera! thank you so much for that brilliant information Gosh u been here a long time!!

Oh! brenda according to search theres no such place as Abbot's Aerodrome
I look for Abott's as well nothing! have u got a LM sweet?

Ceera, theres lots of info that gives me some answers to questions!!

First I have never been to a mainland, as such, perhaps I have by visiting a club, but up to now. I have had no need to look at map lol I do see the differences in water colours, as a (Trainz user: another simulator running railways) water that is dark means deep and lighter means shallow, this is where i thought the oeceans were in fact deep water and international waters! ok ok perhaps im a dork, but again this is a new part of SL I have not got into before! i will have to find these two continents and have a nosy round!!

But i have to land obviously, which means i cant remain at 2000feet like u say.

I had no idea about how many people could be in a sim at one time, but if im flying over the sim at 25000 feet i am out of the sim correct? im no where near the ground, unless u mean that the airspace above also counts the number of people!

You said get a smaller plane, but this a comercial airline, not a fun thing! im giving up my palace in celestial reluctantly because its for generating a real income from the renting of homes and income from the palace...
so The turbo king with 10 passengers x times several of them would create an income and pay land fees, as i said there would be a terminal pay door at departures for a boarding pass with a digi clock and a what flights flys when and where, on a board!

A two seater plane would not generate enough income to pay for the land tiers for several land plots i would have to buy too put down JSA runways and a small terminals, even if i had several small planes! i think this idea of mine is dead in the water, ok i like flight sim, I know how to fly a jumbo jet even and enter ILS codes and how to enter a holding pattern, but, its so boring without passengers and no other staff.... what gets me is theres aircraft makers in world making DC9 looking KLM airline planes for sale with attractive seats, what u going to do with it if u cant use it for the purpose its meant for!! I really like the king turbo, but its a swine to get yourself in it, as its got no opening doors, the start props and sounds are brill, but how people would get in it i havent worked out yet...lol

Only consolation is to keep the palace and work myself to the bone, and build a few small airfields on main land and get a few passengers to pay for a decent tour, but doing both i would need 25 hours in a day plus RL hours lol...I can mess with my king on the mainland for a while, there are copy so, i can try various ideas out, thanks very much anyway, bye the way what is **HAVOC** and upgrade that Brenda was talking about.?

bye for now
m

It does show up in a search for "airport", that is how I found it last night.

You could always cancel all your flights for unspecified reasons, then set up pose balls in your terminal for passengers to sleep with their luggage. Inventory loss could add to the realism of travel, as well. Don't forget to refuse to refund the tickets.

(Sorry! Had to say it. But do have fun with the airplanes, and post here when the aerodrome is set up--it sounds like a really interesting idea. Just don't expect to make money at it, unless you sell aircraft)

Hey Michael, what a FUN idea!

For Abbotts and some other good aviation-related picks, check out Cubey Terra's profile. He's the founder of Abbott's. He has a link to a good flying area.

I would concur with the caution about flying with a lot of people ... try it with a smaller vehicle that has a really high-quality flying script. The problems arise when you cross between sims ... you simply cannot do that at really high speeds very well, the servers need to transfer all the attachments etc. for you and your passengers, and if things are a little slow and not everyone makes it at the same time, well ... somebody ends up on the ground or crashed!

This is why a very popular mode of airtravel is via balloons! They go slower and lower, so you can see the landscape too.
.

Don't forget to charge four or five times what something is worth at the concession stands.

Abbotts. Two b's, two t's.

You are still in the sim, no matter what altitude you're flying at.

I have to tell you bluntly, that I don't think anyone is going to pay for traveling on a traditional airline. Point to point travel by teleport is free, instantaneous, and you're not constrained to an airline's schedule.

You don't have to buy a whole lot of land to run an "airline" though. Here are some alternative ways to look at it.

1. Sell the in-flight experience. I saw a mockup of an airliner cabin once that was rigged out as a sex fantasy room. The "stewardess" fantasy, you know? You could build this on a small plot. It wouldn't actually GO anywhere, but you could pretend that it was, by putting animated sky and cloud textures on the windows, and appropriate sounds. Rent it out to escorts and their clients.

2. Build an airport for small planes. Rent out hangar space. You should do this somewhere there is room enough to fly, such as the mainland, or on a chain of islands.

3. Establish a sightseeing service. It doesn't have to be over your own land. So all you need to do is buy a small plot to put your plane/helicopter/airship on, either in or near the picturesque area over which you want to offer tours. Note that aircraft in SL don't need a lot of runway. We've launched planes from the roof of a smallish building!

4. Alternative to #1. Build your airline similar to a gadget called a Paradise Blanket. This thing works a bit like a holodeck in Star Trek. You sit on it, and it raises up to a high altitude, and rezzes any of a number of fantasy environments for your enjoyment. You could probably script something (or hire a scripter) to do something like this to simulate air travel. The actual "travel" would be by teleport...but there would be a simulated airplane flight in the middle. Maybe clicking on the "Fasten Seat Belts" sign would teleport a passenger from the cabin of one "airliner" at point A to the cabin of another "airliner" at Point B. Go down the airstairs and whaddaya know, you're in Tokyo. Or wherever.

HAVOK is the software that drives Second Life physics -- and, therefore, vehicle motion. SL was just upgraded from a very early version, HAVOK 1, to HAVOK 4...and they are still working some of the bugs out from the transition.

I had similar ideas when I came to SL that were quickly scuppered.
I did make a few L$ a while back flying a 10 seat UH60 as a skydivers ferry it was good fun for all concerned but was limited to a single island,It was a 4 or 5 minute ride to FL20 or so but more immersive than a chair boost also the skydivers have to wait for the ride to land again .

BTW small world a UK resident myself I also fly FSX out of Manchester Ringway EGCC
about 3000 hours on a Beech KA and now many hundreds on a Flight 1 ATR 72-500 and when I want an adrenelin rush take a small Hawk from Valley AFB and fly Snowdonia or the lakes low and fast .

Whaddya mean "woop woop . Pull up/Don't sink" ? Get out and walk or quit bitchin'.

Regards.

Abbotts has already been mentioned and is a great place to visit when getting into SL™ aviation. I’ll also throw out there my skyport in Suisun. I don’t have exact coordinates handy, but if you search places for “skyport”, it should be high on the list. If you take off from runway 36, you’ll cross a sim border (and see how much fun that is, lol) and end up in a water sim. That sim is connected to a handful of other water sims so you can fly around without having to worry running into ban lines, builds, and security devices.


--Hugsy

All the airspace above each 256 M by 256 M land area is run on one simulator, to infinity... There is no height that "does not count". Prim counts and avatar limits apply all the way up. Normal building works from zero to 768 Meters elevation. Above that, there are still ways for prims to be placed in a parcel, or an aricraft can fly through. But those people and prims are still 'in' the parcel, no matter how high up.

When you own land, the prim allocation for that land counts any and all prims that are over your parcel. So for example, if you owned a 2048 M2 parcel, you would be allowed to use 468 prims. Now, if you built a house on that land, and used 300 prms, and someone else tried to place a stationary floating building above that land at 700 M up, and that building used another 168 prims, then you would be out of prims. Land owners can use in-world settings to ban others from building in or enering their area, and can also prevent object entry or scripts run by people who don't belong there. These things all interfere with the ability of others to fly, but also ensure that the person who pays money each month for that land can enjoy the full use of what they pay for.

So for example in the sim "Magenta", you have a 256 M by 256 M area on the north shore of the Southern continent. There are sims to the E, SE, S, SW, and W, but none to the NW, N or NE from that sim. There used to be an airport that was either in that sim or the one immediately to the West of that sim. They had the air strip itself elevated about 80 M above the ground, because there was a big cliff in the terrain on the south edge of this row of sims. You generally took off facing South, and flew out over the Southern continent, then returned and landed facing North. Most of the pilots would climb fairly fast to a decent altitude after takeoff, and would use a fairly steep descent slope for landing.

At one point, I used to live on a parcel that took up almost 2/3 of the Magenta sim, just East of that airport. Didn't own it myself. I was a guest of the person who did. For you to fly over that parcel when ban lines were active, you would need to be at least 50 M above the ground level. If the parcel owner banned you explicitly, you would need to remain at least 768 Meters up to avoid the ban lines. If you tried and hit the ban lines, several things might happen. You might just 'hit a wall', and not be anle to proceed. You might find yourself ejected from the plane and the plane returned to your Lost and Found. You might find yourself ejected from the plane and the plane stuck in mid air where you left it. You might find yourself ejected from the plane and the plane crashes to the ground. We had to return a lot of small aircraft that ended up crashed on our parcel.

This may seem like a very unfriendly thing, but that same area also had a store that attracted a lot of newbies with cheap or free starter items, and if we didn't have ban lines up, we were constantly having to eject newbies who would come to our parcel and start building a house, mistaking our front lawn for some sort of free sandbox, or who would invade our home at the most embarrassing moments! These were mostly people who still didn't know that SL wasn't a game like Baldur's Gate, where you could go anywhere and user/take anything that wasn't nailed down, because it was all game resources.

In short, you'l need to try your proposed flight plan, to make sure you have a clear approach path to your intended runway. But be aware that at any moment, some land owner along the way may choose to turn on their ban lines. Even right at the end of your runway...

Havok 4 is the new Physics Simulation game component that LL just installed in the servers for Second Life. One thing it *should* allow soon is for people to be able to build at altitudes greater than 768 Meters, which was a limit of the older version of HAVOK that just got replaced. We will need a new LL Client application (viewer) to take advantage of the higher build limits. But when that increases, then it is also likely that the maximum height for explicit bans (where a land owner bans an individual by name) will also increase.

I don't know that you'll be able to make an airline that goes point-to-point in SL and makes a profit doing so. After all, your potential customers can all fly or teleport for free. Making the flight itself the attraction is the key, I would thing. Sightseeing, or juet a cool in-flight experience, will be worth more in SL than mere transportation.

Also, do try to check out some of the automated air travel options that some others mentioned. Governor Linden used to operate a hot air balloon ride that was pretty fun, and it was entirely automated. There are also trains and other modes of transport that don't require an avatar pilot. If you can apply what they do to your commuter airline idea, you may be able to eliminate pilot costs and have a larger fleet of small planes. And you could still pilot some routes personally with 'live' pilots.

Good luck.

Oh, a new place to fly. Thanks.