After weeks of bashing away at scripts, mashing prims, and tweaking textures, the Terra Tigershark 3 is ready for the world!
New in this version:
- Control panel HUD attachment, with altimeter, speed indicator, artificial horizon, and status indicator. Attaches to your camera so that it's always visible to you, but not to others.
- Smoother flight model. Gradual application of turning forces means easy, controlled turns.
- Improved, retro-style model design.
- Textures are now more tigery.
- Choose shiny or matte finish paint -- paint your aircraft any color at all.
- Improved collision damage detection. The optional collision damage detection causes damage to individual parts. If you strike an object, that part of your plane becomes damaged and affects the flight behaviour.
- Improved sound effects.
Other features:
- Seats 2 avatars.
- Dive into the water and it converts to a sub. Converts back to a plane when you speed up and break the surface.
- Changes colour. Choose from several preset colours or specify your own by RGB code.
- Moving parts: retractable wings, rectractable landing gear, opening canopy, and moving control surfaces.
- Change keyboard controls: choose between first-person shooter key setup and standard flight sim key setup.
- Can taxi on the ground (steers like a ground vehicle when not flying).
- Optional hovertext display shows: speed in knots, altitude, landing gear position, and throttle.
- Variable-speed throttle.
- Ejection seat... plane vanishes after you bail out.
- Engine sounds.
As always, the Tigershark 3 is available at my shop at Abbotts Aerodrome (click here).
It never fails. I begin what I
expect will be an quick project -- say, a few hours work -- and then it spirals out of control. What began as a simple "point release" upgrade of the Tigershark, my simple addition of a HUD attachment, turned into a major revision.
This week I've put in countless (and often frustrating) hours testing and rewriting the Tigershark flight script. The controls now use a gradual, cumulative force in the angular motors. Instead of slamming into a full-force turn when you press an arrow key, the force is applied gradually, which ensures a smoother flight.
Like the Talon, the Tigershark now has a HUD attachment which includes, altimeter, speed, artificial horizon, throttle, status indicator, and assorted buttons. The status indicator was interesting to make -- it shows which parts of the plane are damaged by highlighting that part in red on an overhead view.
And since I was rewriting most of the scripts anyway, I thought I'd make a few modifications to the Tigershark's appearance too. It now features a WW2 style canopy, larger engine pods, shorter fuselage, and a new tailgun design.
I'm not done yet, either. Give me another week of testing and bug-fixing, and it'll be ready to take to the skies.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. -Lao Tsu
This morning I had an enlightening chat with SL entrepreneur, Mark Coffee, who has gone into the taxi dispatch business. After buying a Terra Taxi, Mark rezzed several copies of it, assigned pilots, and sent them out. "It pays more than camping," he said.
Instead of eating up server resources, away-from-keyboard, for endless hours while parked in a camping chair, these pilots are now earning their way by providing fun tours and rides for a small fee.
You might ask why you'd need a taxi when we all have point-to-point teleport. The answer is... Why not? It's fun! Hail a cab and take a tour. It doesn't cost much, you'll see beautiful builds you may have missed before, and you get to meet interesting people along the way.
If you want to get your own taxi, drop by my shop in the northwest corner of Abbotts (click here).
The busy holiday season is finally over. Well, alright it was over a couple of weeks ago. I suppose it was some kind of holiday hangover that kept me from being productive in Second Life. My "to do" list isn't growing any shorter, so it's time I started making things again.
First off, I released a minor fix to the Terra SPEED flight boost attachment. That's the HUD attachment that works a lot like the Terra WARP, but has an on-screen button panel.
Second, today I finish the Terra Taxi. It's kind of a novelty thing, since point-to-point teleporting renders taxis obsolete. But... should you ever have the urge to drive around picking up fares, now you can!
The Terra Taxi is available for L$200 only at Cubey Terra Aircraft in Abbotts (
click here).
Next up: adding HUD attachments to my other aircraft.
Cubey Terra
