Looking for Experts in Race Course Building

I am discussing a mixed RL/SL project with an RL client of mine for which we would need much better "vehicles" (cars) than are available in SL now. No, I am not thinking about Need for Speed or GTA in terms of realism, but the cars and their behaviour should resemble RL vehicles a little more.

Biggest obstacle just now seems to me, that vehicles constantly "run into the ground" when crossing sim borders (and at some other occasions, too). Is it possible to optimize a race course (and the vehicles) so this might happen more seldomly - or not at all?

Any help greatly appreciated!

Opinions (well founded) gladly accepted, too

Are better car races possible in SL anyway?
- with better vehicles?
- with race courses optimised for the defiencies of Second Life?
- how many cars (and visitors) could a sim in current SL technology support?

If interested in working with such a project please contact me ingame or via Privte Message! (Pham Neutra; please IM, even if you see me offline!)

1.7 is right around the corner. The incorporation of Havok 2 at that point will solve some of your problems, although it's unlikely that you'll ever get the feel of real driving in SL. In the mean time, if border crossing is your biggest obstacle, then I'd suggest either containing your track within a single sim, or else make each sim one leg. When a driver completes a leg, he or she would simply stop, and wait for the next leg to begin. Score could be calculated cumulatively for all the legs, which would give you the same results as if it had been kept as one unit for the entire race.

Don't firget that since you're not very limited in height, it's possible to build a one-sim track that spans hundreds, even thousands of miles, simply by spiraling. Who says it has to be all one level?

If you are falling through the road at sim borders then my first question is: How are you building your road?

Are you relying on a single large prim as your road as you cross the border? If Yes, then you will not succeed.

When a prim is placed so that it crosses a sim boundry, it becomes phantom in the new sim. Therefore, when driving along you road, if you are in sim A on a large piece and you cross into sim B on that same road piece...well, you're going to fall through the road to the ground.

The way around this is to have a road piece on each side of the sim border. Overlap them a bit to avoid any space between them. Take a look at the Linden road system...right click "edit" on the road at the sim borders and you will see what I mean.

Champie