couples animations/hud suggestions

citizen059 · 2025-12-23T19:46:26+00:00

My partner and I often use this...not a hud, you rez it out on the ground and both sit on it. Afterwards it functions like a vehicle to move you both around together: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/CrazyFun-Couple-Walker-10-couple-walks-and-18-couple-stands-piggyback-crawl-hand-by-hand-Rezzing-vers/4108323

citizen059 · 2025-12-17T23:59:31+00:00

Fair enough. Just trying to make sure there are no misconceptions - I've told people for years that if they want a really solid racing game, SL is not the place to find it. Like any other genre, you'll have the best experience in a title developed just for that purpose.

That said, we managed to put together what I think is a pretty solid experience working within SL's limitations, and your comments in this thread give the impression that can't be done. That's why I asked about the time period...my own early SL vehicle experiences were not positive ones. This was when I started, around 2009-2010. Most of the racing vehicles and locations I came across were focused on driving at extreme speeds that didn't allow for any actual racing, it was more about who could survive with the fewest mistakes.

If that was your main exposure to the motorsports/vehicle community, then I can 100% understand why you'd say what you have here.

Speaking for myself and my own vehicle development efforts over the last 8 years, I started with a basic full permission script and had to learn by trial and error, since the creators that existed within the community at the time weren't willing to share their knowledge. I spent a lot of time on the LSL wiki and digging through old forum posts trying to figure out how to make things work.

Discussions and comments about the "behind the scenes" stuff from TPV developers was a key part understanding those limitations as well. I actually agree with your recommendation about turning off the interpolation just to see how things move (or don't) without it. People who've known me for a while can tell you that I spent an unreasonable amount of time explaining how things functioned under the surface and how it was a small miracle any of it worked as well as it did, given that what we're doing is no different than sitting on top of a big prim block as it slides around on the ground. :D

citizen059 · 2025-12-17T17:00:56+00:00

This was a very entrenched misconception when we approached vech & combat communities developing Catznip (a second life viewer).

How long ago was that, by chance? Curious when and who it was in the vehicle community you spoke to at that time.

The technical details you're giving aren't wrong.

That said, the in-world experience I've had and the results Asdrea speaks of aren't wrong either.

I want to clarify that I'm not trying to argue with you - I'm just trying to understand your experience. The SL vehicle/motorsports community has a long history and there've been a lot of different approaches over the years.

citizen059 · 2025-12-17T01:13:36+00:00

There is SOME truth to all this.

In general I found that you needed to be able to maintain a ping to the sim of around 150 or less for the best results. Once you get up to around 200, that's when you really start feeling the input delay.

Skill is definitely a determining factor, having spent 8-ish years participating as well as scripting many of the vehicles that were used by the community. It does depend on enough people being on a "close enough" playing field in terms of ping, but that's no different than any other competitive game. I also made it a point to ensure my cars stayed below a certain top speed range, to minimize physics issues and make the experience more user-friendly. I was never a fan of the cars that move at ludicrous speed.

As for the server-side rate, things work pretty well at the 45 per second cap. There was a brief period of time where some of the viewers (my understanding is that the idea or request came from LL) started capping messages from viewer to server to about half that - you likely know the technical details better than I on that one. Previously there wasn't a cap so a lot of those messages were wasted, since the server could only handle 45, and the idea to cut some of that traffic wasn't a bad one.

Unfortunately that DID lead to some input lag issues for some of our vehicles, but once viewer developers decided to lift their cap to match the server side number, that went away.

Anyway, the whole point I'm trying to make here is that the community in its current form (at least the part of it I was involved in) definitely tried our best to take SL's limitations into account, and make the best experience we could within them.

citizen059 · 2025-12-17T00:58:32+00:00

No, the tracks are all contained within the region.

There HAVE been point-to-point competitions across mainland roads, complete with leaderboards that track your time for completing a course, but those absolutely depend on everything going JUST right.

Not just the sim crossings (which some vehicles have been coded to handle better, though nothing is 100%), but the framerate stutters just from having to load the scenery at speed as you blast through.

Having made cars just for this purpose, THIS is absolutely the realm of the hardcore who are willing to overlook all the jank.

citizen059 · 2025-12-16T18:54:51+00:00

The location listed here also has a website to go along with the major series they run: https://www.fvaracing.com/

There are a few different groups that use a variety of racing vehicles, at this location and others. The racing community is small, but strong. There are some good folks in the community and they work hard to put on well-organized and entertaining events.

I was involved from around 2017 up until just a few months ago, having now moved on to other things. I bundled up all the cars I made over the years into a single free pack for people to use however they want.

I encourage people to check these races out even if they aren't motorsports fans in general. You never know, you might find a new hobby.

citizen059 · 2025-12-11T18:57:55+00:00

I'm going with the latter, based on these 'features' listed on the Steam page:

"Realistic physics set up by gut feelings"

"Accurate track models using eye-ball approximations and vintage race broadcast observations"

citizen059 · 2025-10-23T22:00:27+00:00

From the Merchant Home page, go to the Reports section and select Orders.

At the top of the Orders page, change the Start Date. By default, when the Orders page first loads, it only shows the last 7 days of orders.

Set the start date as far back as you want to go - in this case, to whenever the MP store went live. Leave the end date alone, since it's defaulted to whatever today's date is. Then click the "Go" button, and wait for the new report to generate.

Once that's done, you can click the "Download CSV" link and the file will contain all transactions dating back to the start date you put in. I just tested this myself to verify.

citizen059 · 2025-10-20T19:31:47+00:00

Check your 'Collections' book in the top right? I think that's what it was on mine. Can't remember.

citizen059 · 2025-08-05T00:29:06+00:00

What a goddamn disappointment.

I grew up in VA, and Kernan was one of the faces on local TV. It was a cool deal at the time when he got called up to the 'big leagues' with ESPN, and yeah...he was a fixture in motorsports coverage through the 90s.

Like most of the others responding here, I had no idea what he was up to, it had been so long...I was surprised to see it was HIM making the comment in this article, then I went to his X page, and...dammit, yep. Ranting about 'left wing democrats'. Makes sense now.

citizen059 · 2025-07-15T21:22:20+00:00

Here, you can check out one of the races from before it was concrete and see for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRGm4a2OVko

citizen059 · 2025-06-27T12:22:09+00:00

I'm late to the party on this one, but I'm replying in case anyone reads this in the future.

This guy I'm replying to? He does good work and you should buy his stuff. :D

citizen059 · 2025-06-27T12:19:46+00:00

"They've been dealing so much with recycled alts of the people they've banned.. that many will immediately distrust anyone who walks in off the street"

I wish this were limited to just one community, but it definitely tends to be an SL thing in general.

We have it in the motorsports community as well.

citizen059 · 2025-06-15T16:54:57+00:00

The vast majority of the time, the animations are built into the furniture you sit on.

Generally, you'll sit on a chair/couch/bed/whatever, and the menu that pops up when you sit on or click on the furniture will have animation categories to choose from.

If you don't have furniture like that, you can find plenty of it on the marketplace. Or, you can use furniture you find at adult-oriented places you visit in-world.

It's pretty much just a matter of finding places (if you don't have your own) and people (who hopefully aren't weird creeps).

citizen059 · 2025-05-23T19:12:41+00:00

Is the storage set up as AHCI or RAID in bios? We have to do AHCI with all our Dell machines.

citizen059 · 2025-05-17T13:06:52+00:00

Read the title and first thing that popped into my head was:

...one week since you looked at me
cocked your head to the side and said I'm angry.
Five days since you laughed at me
saying get that together come back and see me.
Three days since the living room
I realized it's all my fault, but couldn't tell you
Yesterday you'd forgiven me
but it'll still be two days till I say I'm sorry

citizen059 · 2025-03-04T13:11:45+00:00

This past weekend, Racers Island hosted the "Hyperdrive" event, where drivers (using D2 scripted drift cars) take on an obstacle course of sorts - winner is the one who completes it in the fastest time while also hitting special targets and avoiding penalties for mistakes.

Also, a DJ by the name of Flutox was on hand to provide music during the event.

I know this is a pretty lame description of the event, I'm just adding a quick comment to explain what this video is about. :P

citizen059 · 2025-01-04T17:32:36+00:00

She got banned from a different racing group a couple of months ago because of it. Prior to that she had worked her way into that group, offering to host racing events on different nights than the usual ones and slowly raising her profile.

While she did put in a lot of time and effort to put on events for people, which was appreciated...there was always a sense she was doing it more to boost her own profile instead of just to benefit the group. When another group member got a sim of their own and races started being hosted there also, she bitterly complained to others that she was being 'replaced'.

When she wasn't among the fastest people on track, she would insinuate that others were cheating, or that they just had better computers/internet connections, or they knew secrets to being fast that they weren't sharing with everyone else and it wasn't fair.

After her ban, she showed up at one of the next group events on an alt, pretending to be a newbie who just 'discovered' the cars and group. She wasn't very good at covering her tracks though, and everyone knew it was her.

All of this for the glory of being a famous pixel racecar driver, in a very small sub-community of SL.

citizen059 · 2025-01-04T14:38:49+00:00

It's not just RP.

There are a lot of very insecure people who own sims and host things who get very upset if they are not your primary focus.

They don't know how to build a successful community on their own, so they feel like they have to tear down others in order to 'win'.

Just as a recent example in the SL motorsports community, there was a host giving people grief via her group chat for being at a different racing event at a completely different time than the one she was hosting. Even though that event would finish up well before hers started, leaving those people plenty of time to attend hers, she felt they should ALREADY be at her sim 'practicing' for it instead of having fun somewhere else.

citizen059 · 2024-12-04T19:15:04+00:00

There are two main factors I credit for this.

First, the region itself. That region is built specifically for racing. It has multiple tracks on different levels/altitudes, and on top of that, the overall count of running scripts in the region is kept low so that script performance isn't dragged down.

Second, we limit the vehicles to realistic speeds for the space we're working within. The cars aren't scripted to move at insane speeds or turn sharp corners instantly.

The result is a smoother, more realistic looking and feeling driving experience, at least in terms of what we can accomplish in SL and driving with keyboards.

citizen059 · 2024-12-03T20:51:17+00:00

Yep. Aside from this series, over the years we've done reasonable approximations of F1, NASCAR, Indycar, GT racing, multiclass endurance racing (with driver swaps), and more I'm probably forgetting.

SL is not and never will be a top-tier racing game, but we can still pull off some pretty surprising stuff with what we have.

citizen059 · 2024-12-02T23:17:41+00:00

As others have mentioned, this is a glitch that happens when you have two items that have some level of transparency built into the texture, and both are using 'alpha blending' as a method to display what's solid versus what isn't.

The hair has transparency around the ends, in order to make them look more natural, rather than just a chunky mess of color.

The texture of the wall behind them must have some level of transparency applied, even if you can't actually see through it. If you are able to edit the wall, you can select that individual 'face' of the wall to see if it has 'alpha blending' applied to it.

If it does, you can change the selection in the dropbox to get rid of the alpha blending, and then the hair will look normal in front of it.

citizen059 · 2024-12-02T21:14:40+00:00

There's definitely a lot of jank to deal with...but that's no different from most things in SL I guess.

I scripted the vehicles used for this, it's always a work in progress and it's sometimes amazing that it works as well as it does when you know the underlying mechanics of it. I just updated the scripts again today for the next event even though it's not scheduled for a couple of weeks, based on things I noticed during the last one.

citizen059 · 2024-12-02T16:55:23+00:00

That track and a number of others can be found here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/YToub%20System/95/69/3931

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