Simboarding
Didn’t find the time to write about the Stampcard Rally like I promised, and by now it’s over anyway. As you might/might not know, I’m in the middle of finding a RL job, so going through some times where my SL time has been severely limited.
But I found a new toy to occupy me the times I do hop into Second Life anyway: a simboard. I guess the best way to describe it is as a hoverboard. It looks like a snowboard, but it floats above ground. It comes with a bunch of tricks and is moddable – you can change the sounds, prims, textures, and even animations. There’s even a completely organised Second Life SimBoard Association, with pro competitions and its own TV channel.
A friend showed me how it worked a while ago, so I started to learn it myself. As far as controls, I guess you can compare it a bit with Tony Hawk Pro Skate games. It’s got a very arcade feeling with 1080 jumps, triple backflips, wallclimbing and other insane tricks that aren’t possible on any real life board. Then again, it’s a fracking hoverboard – it’s not meant to be a life-like simulation. And it’s fun! Screw physics.
Simply having an arcade feeling doesn’t mean it’s easy to control however. I can’t count the amount of times where I ended up buried in the dirt or landing on my face during a trick. Luckily, the board also supports floating over the water surface, so I’ve started learning the controls and tricks by surfing on the lagoon outside our home island. I figure falling in the water hurts less than falling on concrete.
I also modified the texture on my simboard. Not by much – I took the freely included template and change the top of the board into something more fitting for me. Maybe once my texturing skills get better I’ll work on the sides and bottom as well.
The board also has a built in engine to modify its behaviour, though I haven’t tweaked that too much yet. I don’t know which would be good settings.
The board costs 500 L$ at SLSBA World – and trust me, it’s all worth it. This cost includes the texture template and a huge manual to read through. One more thing: I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the options yet this board has. I’m still learning myself. But I love it so much already. ^^
Oh sweet dude, just looked at the blog, nice review you made there ^^ glad i got you started on simboarding