MC Motors in-world store
MC Motors at Marketplace
Mesh technology definitely makes a huge difference for all Second Life residents - both creators and users. I already have a mesh car, but this become my first mesh bike.
Ought to say, bikes and mesh things are my weakness. I love drvivng bikes a lot, but don't have much time for it lately, so I couldn't miss an opportunity to mix business with pleasure and decided to review my new ride.
So I've headed to my office at 2RAW Extreme to test it on this sim's roads.
First of all, what I love about Envy Melody's manufactures is that every product is delivered in the elegant low-prim box, not a single prim, or, what is worse, overloaded with different needless decorations. No, it's not about MC Motors or, for example, MC Yachts. That's where accuracy is present in details.
But, of course, what is box without its contents? In mine I've found a ReadMe notecard, a landmark to the main store and, of course, the bike itself and the HUD to it.
I started with the close reading of the ReadMe notecard... Oh, I'm lying, you know that. Who can resist a brand new vehicle to try right away and see how it handles instead of reading the notecards? It's not me!
So, I've rezzed Viper and wore the HUD. The HUD should be connected to the vehicle manually - nothing complicated, you just click on the vehicle and it's connected.
Let's take a look on the HUD. It stores all the functions in 464 kB, what is absolutely acceptable for the vehicle HUD.
I really like the speedometer - big digits are driver helpers. The HUD itself can be collapsed if you don't need it at the certain moment.
Once I've touched the bike, I've got the dialog box, so I've compared it with what HUD offers, and guessed right - everything can be easily changed with the HUD, what turned out to be a good news for me - HUD works fast as racers like, and hell, we all know how laggy these dialog boxes are, don't we?
Viper is based on the latest KCPACS script, v5.11, and contains almost all the features this script offers - from picking the transmission (manual/automatic) and flight mode to alarm system and different camera views. You can even pick how to shift gears - with E/C or with Shift+Left/Right arrow. My personal favorite is turbo and NOS boosts - what is not a good news, there's no hotkey to toggle them on while racing, and personally, I use arrows, means my left hand is to press the hotkey when needs. There's actually no hotkeys for anything what racers would really use - only regular ones, for the wheelie and nose down. But it's a usual problem of the bikes in Second Life, so I don't stick too much on this.
Also, while testing it, I've ran into a friend of mine, Tudy Araw, who asked a good question - can 2 people ride it? Turned out it's single-seated. So be warned - there's some adjustments for the passenger seat, but you don't need them, due to the fact the passenger seat does not exist.
I also tried the mouselook driving, when you need to click the LMB permanently to accelerate. It actually just sounds hard, the hardest part is steering - managed by the mouse! Move your mouse to the left or to the right to steer. Well, maybe somebody likes...
Okay, it's about controlling, I can't wait to move to how Viper handles. And I'm delighted to say that riding this bike is a big pleasure - smooth, not jumpy at all, gets stuck in the prims ONLY if you seriously want it to. But it needs to say that the steering is not sharp (and there's nothing about how to make it sharp in the manual), and that's a big omission for the sport bike - because you need a huge angle to turn without letting off or you end up bumping the wall, and we all know that KCP script doesn't have an R gear. Might not to be a problem on the wide tracks though.
Well, there'plenty of sports bikes in Second Life, but how many of them are this beautiful?
God bless mesh! Viper is greatly detailed and looks precious - seriously, looking at it, I rejoice the fact I'll never make it dirty or dusty in Second Life, and no matter what road I'm driving it will always remain this shiny and graceful. So I can race on other ones, but this one I'm saving for the pleasure rides.
Maybe this one is not capable of a faster gait. Maybe you'll never get the best time on the board.
Doesn't matter! It wasn't built for this! But if you race just for fun, or just want a pleasant ride, or want to impress everybody around strolling through the traffic - you've found the right one. And I'm telling you, you'll enjoy every minute riding it.
K.T. Burnett (KayT)
No comments:
Post a Comment