As twenty aught six draws to a close, we can look back upon the year and truly comprehend how much it was a time in which things undeniably happened. From the very first happenings to the very last happenings, which as I write these words are still in the process of becoming things that have happened, and therefore are yet things that will have happened, each happening enters our group conciousness for an ever-fleeting moment of awareness before rattling around and falling out the hole in the side that we forgot to patch up last year.

Time and time again this year, we looked at our watches, at our calendars, at our organizers, and at the microwave clock that we forgot to reset after the last power-outage, and we knew with a certainty derived from having done it only a minute earlier that now -- which is to say it was then, but at the moment in which we thought about it, it was still "now" -- now is the time in which we are living, and the last minute earlier is no longer "now" at at all.

With these weighty thoughts pressing on the year's final moments, 2006 edges towards the precipice of history, below which lies a cascade of tumultuous years that gather dust and become homes for small rodents who use the digits to build nests for their young. I would like to pause for a moment, at the very brink of the dark abyss of 2007 and raise high a beacon to light the way forward: To all who have travelled with me, near me, and occasionally in the opposite direction to me for as many days as there are in the year, of which each is numbered consecutively and unrelentingly from 1 to 365, I wish you a very happy and enjoyable new year! May your days be lively and prosperous, may your refrigerators be always full of your favourite beverages and snacks, and may each of your minutes arrive consecutively and in the order in which they were expected.

Happy 2007, everyone!

To everyone who help make Abbotts Aerodrome possible -- the owners, members, visitors, customers, and all of the Lindens -- Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2007!

It's done! Countless hours of building, texturing, scripting, and bug-hunting are finished. The Airco DH.2 is now for sale next to the runway at Abbotts Aerodrome, as well as at SL Exchange.

If you have ever shopped around for a vehicle in Second Life, you may have noticed vehicles aren't particularly detailed. They are generally simple shapes that rely on textures to add detail.

Why is that, you may ask? All Second Life objects are composed of linked primitives, or "prims" as they're known to builders. Primitives are the basic building block of the virtual world. Builders will take cubes, spheres, cones, cylinders, and other prim types, and size, cut, hollow, twist, and generally torture them into various shapes before linking them to form the object they're building. Everything you see in SL is made of them.

To make a vehicle move, SL needs to make the object become "physical" -- it will have mass and velocity, and will be affected by gravity and collisions. Due to a limitation in the SL physics engine, no object that's composed of more than 31 prims can use physics.

As if that wasn't restrictive enough for vehicle makers, that limit includes any avatars that happen to be seated on the object, where each avatar counts as one prim. A vehicle with two seats, for example, can be made of no more than 29 prims, or it will exceed the prim limit. An eight-seat passenger plane can be made of no more than 23 prims. As a result, the prim limit is the bane of vehicle designers: it's extremely difficult to achieve an attractive vehicle and stay under the prim limit.

Well, I say to heck with the prim limit. That's right, I said to heck with it! And I mean it. I apologize if that offends some of my readers.



In development now is my replica of the Airco DH.2 -- a British World War I warplane. The model itself is over 240 prims. And in total defiance of the prim limit, this baby flies.

That's right... it flies. I have done an end-run around the prim limit. The DH.2 not only flies, but flies better than any plane in my inventory and is packed with features. It comes with a control panel HUD attachment with altimeter, speed indicator, and artificial horizon. The plane carries a Lewis gun that can be used in air-to-air combat with any other Cubey Terra aircraft. In flight, it's responsive and agile, with enough realism in the flight model to perform stunts like rolls, loops, stalls, and more. Easy enough for a novice to fly, yet engaging even for a pro pilot.

In only a few days, you'll find the Airco DH.2 with my collection of airplanes beside the runway at Abbotts Aerodrome, and you can expect more high-prim planes to emerge from my lab over the coming months.

Only in a virtual world would I (or my avatar) ever appear on the cover of a magazine. SL Business magazine has done a feature on Cubey Terra. Check out the lovely photos by Dalian Hansen.

SL Business Magazine (Dec. 2006)

Abbotts Aerodrome is happy to welcome an exhibit of images of Manchuria by photographer Dalian Hanson. Please visit Terrabucks Coffee on the top floor of the tower.

Dalian Hansen is located in Manchuria, China, and currently works with the staff at SL Business Magazine.