16 November, 2009

karma's a trip now, you probably should turn around and take yourself home

Remember, when Evony launched, it was all grr-fighters-swords-kill-things?

Yeah, they've pretty much abandoned that angle entirely.

By way of Miss Samantha Poindexter, RCAF pilots find themselves in a quandary. And it's a serious one, as serious as the sailing quandary with the OpenSpace/homestead sims last year.

Linden Labs pushes this big get-away-from-it-all, sandy-beaches-and-sunshine, virtual playground world, and yet, when push comes to shove, they don't seem to care at all about recreational activities. Or at least, they don't care if they're not the sort of things they might be interested in doing.

And sure, flying machines are the focus, but aeronautics in general capture Miss Connolly, and many of the RCAF pilots--in fact, according to her Twitter stream, she had--at least at one point, it may be there still--a mock-up of the Apollo II Lunar Lander at the Penzance Aerodome. How cool is that?

But right now, the extreme lag involved in all sim crossings--and I do mean all, even walking over bridges that span two sims results in, on the best days, sinking beneath the sim surface and wandering the murky blue under the .raw file for a bit--is killing air flight. She says they're having a little more success with VTOL aircraft over prop jets, but be serious--how many VTOL craft did Victorian aeronautics have?

If the Lindens don't find a way to debug the system, simple vehicle-based flying is going to become as frustration-filled as sailing when the ocean is chopped into sections--or maxed out on prims in that location!

This may be a problem only the Lindens can solve, honestly. And the true tragedy is, it's a problem the Lindens caused. If this gets worse, that's another checkmark off the list of what keeps people in Second Life, and in Caledon.

Again, the question springs to mind--are they trying to kill their own platform?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just as a minor followup on one point... the Apollo 11 lander was at the aerodrome for a couple of weeks around the anniversary of the lunar landing. It was quite detailed, actually functional, and seriously cool.

You can see a few snapshots in this blog post, though they don't do it justice.

Emilly Orr said...

I kind of figured--I got all excited until I checked the date. :)

I need to pay more attention to Penzance, it still sort of zips past my consciousness as a place not to spend time in.

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...