Sl Rollercoaster

Hello all!!

Now this may be out of my programming capabilities, but sometimes I surprise myself with dedication. I am trying to find out how to build a rollercoaster in SL. I've searched the net, looked through forums and even inworld. No luck.

Can anyone point me in that direction, or help by providing some simple starting points regarding types of scripts and/or prims following a designated path?

There are a few coasters for sale in SL, all no-mod, but I really want to build my own.

Thank you to all the SL geniuses for any time you take aiding me in this pursuit.

there a variety of ways to go about building a roller-coaster in SL. The one that would probably be easiest to implement would be a sequence of points that your physical cars would travel to using llMoveToTarget() and llRotLookAt() to move it's position and rotation. of course with llMoveToTarget's non-linear speed this won't look realistic, and you also have to worry about your cars being too massive and losing all their energy for the llMoveToTarget() calls to work.

Another method would be to create your own non-physical vehicle and use a rapid/distributed system that calls llSetPos() and llSetRot() to move and turn the cars on your track. this will probably produce the most reliable results, and when programmed right (which takes a good bit of trial and error) is nearly indistinguishable from physical movement at moderate to fast speeds.

A third option would once again be a physical vehicle that is looped onto the track (that is, the track passes through a loop in the vehicle), and uses llApplyImpulse() or llSetForce() to propel the vehicle forward. this would probably be your most unreliable solution, as your object could run out of energy very quickly (and thus not propel itself after a period of time), as well as all kinds of bumps and jitters could enter in due to the (relatively) primitive nature of SL's physics engine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUIqvkzfdQ

Physics stuff can cause a sim to crash. Be cautious when experimenting.