Cheating in Second Life Racing Part 1

Hi readers and racers, this article is the first one of a series of articles that will talk about cheating in Second life racing. Just like real life racing is heavily tested and looked upon for cheating, keeping an eye opened for cheating in Second Life racing is a must. As such, the series of articles will talk about how it is possible to cheat in Second Life racing, what must be done to prevent cheating from occurring, and how to detect someone that is cheating.

Cheating in races

Cheating in a race can be done in multiple ways that will be presented here:

Using a speed script: A script can be used to “push” your avatar or vehicle faster than what the vehicle script would allow. These scripts can be found at various locations and may require some tuning to allow the car to still drive correctly. It is easier when races are made on feet, such as snail races, as multiple scripts already allow an avatar to walk/run faster without any tweaking required.

Using a modified vehicle script: This option is opened for races where cars have modifiable scripts, which is pretty rare nowadays. It means changing the script values to allow someone to have a faster car. While this option remains closed for most racers now, it is still opened for one type of racers: The vehicle creators who are racing. As they created the script and the car, it would be possible for them to modify the script so they can be advantaged.

For cars that allow you to add or remove scripts, it is also possible to delete the script within the car and create one that would replace it, renaming it to the same name of the previous script, to have it go unnoticed. The script will need to mimic the normal script for a better effect.

Using a modified car body: For races that allow someone to bring their own car body, or modify the existing one, it is possible to cheat by modifying the car body to make it larger, or give it weird shapes with the goal of sending other opponents flying and off-track. For better results, the modifications should be done with invisi-prims, so that unsuspecting racers receive the surprise.

Wearing a different avatar shape: Some vehicles will behave differently (and go faster) depending if the avatar is small or big. While not technically cheating as it is simply modifying the avatar you're wearing, it is still not really sportsmanship to abuse this possibility. In any case, when you drive a new car, testing different avatar shapes could show you whether it will have any effect on the car handling and speed.

Driving around the gate: A pretty simple trick: For races that don't use checkpoints, pass the starting gate, go around it and drive right through it. You'll be able to complete a lap in no time!

Using shortcuts: On poorly designed tracks, or multi-level tracks such as at 2Raw, it is possible to use shortcuts by avoiding turns and as such getting faster laps. On multi-level tracks, it is possible to fall down from a higher part of the track to a lower one, and shortcut the track in the process. Simply keep an eye opened for the shortcuts and use the opportunities. As for falling down on a multi-level track such as 2Raw, while one can hope to fall automatically after hitting a bump on the track , the most sure option remains to edit the car so it falls down at the desired location.

Cheating in Time trials

The same as above applies, but a special type of short-cutting can be done: As time trials are typically made with invisible checkpoints around the track, you can press control-T to make them appear (They will be appears as gates on the track). From there, you simply need go through all of them in any fashion. The fastest way to go to point A to point B is in a straight line, in which case using a hovering vehicle can make you reach the checkpoints in no time. Even better is a script allowing you to fly faster as handling while flying is usually better than a vehicle. This will allow you to easily top the leader boards for time trials!

Special ways of cheating

Second life being Second life, it is possible to use its limits to your advantage. To do so, you can put the sim or the racers under stress.

Putting the sim under stress: There are typically two ways of doing that: You can rez objects, which will create lag spikes. The more prim-heavy the object is, the larger the lag spike will be. The limitation of this technique is that you can't do this while you're driving, for obvious reasons. It however makes it perfect for qualifications, as small lag spikes will prevent the racers to do good times. On a creative basis, if you need to reach out someone in the standings, it may be preferred to lag out only that person so that person may end up starting further back, increasing your chances to finish in front of that person as that person will then need to deal with other racers first.

The other way to create lag spikes is to attach and detach objects with a very high rendering costs (like very high quality textures). The sim will struggle to bring everything up in a timely fashion and will have heavy lag spikes. The benefit of this method is that it can be used, even with build turned off.

Another special but effective way of cheating is to create horrible video lag to the other racers. The computer needs to keep in memory what the user is seeing in Second life to ensure a smooth experience. A way to make the others struggle is to make your memory cost (Avatar rendering cost) huge. A typical avatar will be below 100 000 ARC. By wearing attachments with high quality textures, and keeping them on, it is possible to rez that value to the millions. This will cause a very large drop of FPS (easily 33%) to anyone looking at the direction of your avatar. Anyone with a medium computer or slower will have a very hard time to drive, thus causing them to miss their turns and do very slow times.

This concludes the part on how to cheat in Second Life racing. This post is not one to incite people to cheat, but to raise awareness on how it can be done. The next posts in the series will show you what can be done to prevent cheating, and how to detect cheating. Until next time, readers and racers!