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Boat Extras  |
Boat /
Tetra 35
Tetra 35 - Cruising/Racing Sloop Below the feature list, I've included the user guide. I realize this amount of text may be excessive for an SLX description, but I prefer giving people the option to really know what the boat is about before considering. Tako-scripted boats have a bit of a learning curve, and there's a little more to sailing one than hopping in and mashing movement keys. If you've never sailed a Tako-style boat in SL before and you consider this manual too long to read, this may not be the boat for you. Shop smart, have fun, and let me know if you have any questions. :) Tetra 35A modern sport sloop based on the Tako 3.2 engine. v1.0 - September 20, 2007 v1.2 - January 14ish, 2008 (Info and screenshots about 1.2 are at the bottom.) by Seawolf Marine Verkin Raven - Modeling, Texturing Kanker Greenachre - Scripting, Advice Stickman Ingmann - Scripting, Animation Solar Ixtab - Modeling, Scripting Basic InfoCOPY/MOD/notrans + drag & drop texturing + PSD templates Length: 35' 10.6m Prim UseSailing: 25+255 prims Features
Layered PSD files available for modifying the mainsail, jib, spinnaker, hull, transom, and boom. A set of alternate hull textures have been included in the package.
Tetra Operations GuideA. Quick Start A. Quick StartPlease note that even basic use of this boat requires basic knowledge of sailing. If you don't know how sailboats work, I'd recommend reading section B, "Casual Use", which explains how it all works. 1. Rez "Tetra 35 v1.0 Vehicle" out on the water from inventory. 2. Right click and sit on the red arrow. (The green arrows are for sitting passengers and will disappear shortly.) 3. From your inventory, wear "Tetra 35 v1.0 Attach" 4. Type "hud" without the quotes in chat and accept both inventory prompts. 5. Push the button marked "raise" 6. IMPORTANT - If you're not near a sailboat start line, press the button marked "practice" 7. Use the left and right movement keys to steer the boat, and up and down to control the sail angle. The quick and dirty way to sail is to keep the sail angle approximately half of the wind angle. For instance, if WIND DIR reads 90, you'll want the sails at 45. You don't have to be precise for casual sailing. You can also glance at the sailing instrument to quickly see approximate wind and sail angle. The only other thing to know for basic sailing is to not sail with the wind direction smaller than 35 degrees (or the blue needle in the white arc). For more detailed instructions and advanced use of the boat, continue on to section B. B. Regular UseOn Attachment VehiclesThe Tetra 35 as it sails consists of two pieces which are assembled when the helmsman sits on the vehicle half and wears the attachment half. The reason behind this system is that full physics SL vehicles are limited to 31 prims minus one per passenger, and the boat is nearly 300 prims. The way many vehicle developers have found a way around this limitation is to have the helmsman wear most of the vehicle as a piece of clothing. Clothing doesn't count towards prim count on a vehicle sat upon. While this solution may sound strange, it's been adapted and used very often in the SL vehicle communities. This requires only an extra step on the part of the owner when using the vehicle, with the advantage of having a vehicle up to and beyond 8 times the detail. You can find popular examples of this system in use with Cubey Terra's biplanes and Trudeau's larger yachts. SailingThis section covers the basics on SL sailing. Those of you who are familiar with the Tako probably won't learn much here, but should be glad to know that the Tetra uses the same commands for every feature they share. Older Tako gestures will work just as well as the set I've provided (and vice versa). The behavior difference between the Tako and the Tetra is that the Tetra is heavier, has a somewhat slower high end speed, takes a little more time to reach that speed, and carries more inertia. The rudder is pretty big and will turn the thing in a pretty tight circle as long as you have water flow across it. Those of you who haven't sailed before shouldn't think about those gestures just yet. Let's figure out what's going on after we set the boat up in the water. Find a nice open expanse of water. A good spot would be a water sim near Hollywood (search "Hollywood" on the SL map). Lots of open water is a good place to practice on. Preferably if there are no other boats around. The best sailing experiences are to be had in dedicated sailing community areas, rather than the chaotic main grid. We've provided a notecard which has information and links to these communities. 1. Rez "Tetra 35 v1.0 Vehicle" out on the water from inventory. You're going to start moving. Look up at the text below the sailing instrument on the upper left of your screen. You'll see WIND DIR and SHEET ANGLE. Chances are this is riding at around 45-50 degrees, and creeping up past 50. Tap the up arrow until the sheet angle is roughly 25 degrees. Without being too precise, you've set the sheet angle which gives your boat the most amount of boost for the relative wind angle. Try turning until WIND DIR reads 90 (the minus sign doesn't matter at the moment) and set the sheet angle to roughly 45 degrees. The general rule of thumb is to keep the sheet angle half of the wind angle. Don't worry about negative wind direction numbers. You'd want the sheet at 45 whether the wind direction reads 90 or -90. Avoid sailing with a wind angle below 35 degrees. At this angle, the sails are unable to generate any amount of thrust relative to the wind angle, and will in fact luff and brake the boat quickly. You'll only want to bring the boat's bow across the wind when you're tacking into it. Sailing with the wind at 35 degrees is the fastest way to sail into the wind. If your desired direction requires you to go directly into the wind, you can tack the boat back and forth from 35 degrees to -35 degrees, using the boat's momentum to carry the bow across the wind. Spinnaker UseThe spinnaker is used only for wind angles greater than 90 degrees, essentially when the wind is behind you. If you put the spinnaker up and don't trim it, it will fly always directly opposite the wind, but you're not going to be the maximum benefit of boost. A properly trimmed spinnaker is an incredible boon to downwind sailing and is well worth the practice and risk. Use C or Page Down to trim the trim the spinnaker, and E or Page Up to let it out. You'll notice that if you trim the spinnaker too much, it will collapse and quickly brake the boat. In Second Life, this has the effect of slowing the boat down, but in real life this also carries the danger of broaching, which can snap the mast off and capsize the boat if the wind is strong enough. The following are excripts from Kanker's guide to spinnaker use:
Gesture UseGestures aren't necessarily more advanced than regular sailing, but it's important to understand the basic functionality and operation of the sailboat before getting accustomed to gesture use. Gestures mitigate a lot of the work required to optimally trim the boat at all times and all angles. You can think of gestures as shortcuts and guides, like how a sailor may mark the sheet on their real life sailboat for specific angles. While gestures make things a lot easier to the sailor, it won't magically help you win races. An experienced and skilled racer not using gestures can still beat out a racer using gestures every time. However, you might have noticed that using the forward and backward keys to trim the sails is very imprecise. It varies quite a bit, depending on how long you hold down the button and how laggy the current sim is. One of the great things about gestures is they can help you control the sails to exacting degrees regardless of the condition of the sim. What gestures also do is point the sails and spinnaker in very specific directions for the boat's most efficient points of sail. In the Gestures subfolder of the package you received with the Tetra, you'll find ten gestures. Activate them all. F2 - Wind 35 The first five gestures are "points of sail" configurations for their marked degrees. These will quickly set the sails to near where you need them. You can use F7 through F10 to fine tune the sails to a degree. These gestures also affect the spinnaker, if it's up. Wind TypesSailboats are controlled by wind, which is obvious enough. However, Tako 3.X-based boats, including this one, can read three different types of wind: Race Wind - by far the easiest type of wind to deal with, this wind simulation is activated by the presence of a windsetter, usually found near sailboat finish lines. The windsetters found at most of the popular sailing locations in SL have consistent, pleasant wind which is perfect for sailing. Other sailboats in the area will be reading the same wind, which makes competition viable and the whole scene realistic. No use having each boat in it's own weather pattern! See our notecard on sailing locations for nice sailing spots which have windsetters. To activate windsetter wind on your boat, you only have to sail in the general area of one. See our notecard on sailing locations for the spots which have these. Practice Wind - Practice wind is controlled through commands by the helmsman, and is a good way to create a realistic wind pattern for your boat to sail with if you're nowhere near a winsetter. You can control wind direction, speed, as well as the amount and rate of variation on either. SL Wind - SL has it's own wind simulation, and while Tako-based sailboats will read it, sailing through it is a nightmare which should only be experienced after trying your boat with practice wind or a race windsetter. It rapidly switches directions and wind speed. While this wind type is nearly worthless, we left this capability in as a reminder of what the original sailboats had to deal with. The following commands pertain to practice wind mode. C. MooringMooring this boat gets it's own section because it has several options available. Please note that if you're renting a dock or slip that the service may have a prim limit for boats. Check with the owner on whether rezzing a 255+ prim 35' sailboat is okay. The Tetra is a prim-expensive model that can usually fit in rental spots meant for 30 prim boats. I left the fenders and mooring buoy as basic moddable objects. There's so many different and proper ways to dock a boat, and types of docks, that I'm leaving the accessories configuration up to the owners. Water Mooring1. Find a patch of water approximately where you want the boat moored. Make sure you have at least 255 prims, 288 if you want the boat to do the fancy special effects, 3 extra prims for each fender if you want those, and 7 extra prims if you want it tied to a mooring buoy. 2. "Rez Tetra 35 v1.0 Attach" out on the water. 3. Ach! It's floating and the nose is pointed up! Let's fix that. Touch the boat and select "seek water" from the menu. Edit the boat, go into the object tab, and set all the ROTATION (degrees) fields to zero. DO NOT edit the POSITION fields! Why does the attachment always have it's nose up when it's rezzed? This is an SL bug which occurs when you attach an object to yourself, detatch it, and rez it in world. The pitch ALWAYS gets off kilter. 4. Slide the boat around to where you want it to sit. 5. Let's play with the options menu. Touch the boat and select "Rez Detail" from the menu. You'll see the hull reflection int he water, and a hull shine effect on the boat's actual hull. Touch the boat again, and select "Show Sail". Repeat the process for the Jib and Spinnaker. You'll notice the reflections match the configuration of the sails. If you don't want reflections to occur at all (or the hull shine), you can toggle those off in the menu. "No Reflect" and "No Shine" accomplishes this respectively. The "No Lapping" button will toggle the water lapping sound on and off. "No Textures" will reset the detail's custom textures if you changed them. For information on modding the Tetra, see section E, "Modding" later on in this document. 6. Remember that if you don't want any of the special effects or sails showing on the moored boat, that you select "No Detail" from the menu, rather than manually shutting each element off. "No Detail" will de-rez the extra effects object and save you some prims. DrydockingThe difference between drydocking and water mooring the Tetra is that you place the Tetra on a stand. We've provided a simple moddable stand that fits the boat ("Drydocking Stand"). Your best bet is to align the Tetra on the stand before moving both around at the same time, since they both rez facing in the correct direction relevative to one another. Remember to set the Tetra's Y rotation to zero if it rezzes that way. When you rez the extra detail through the menu, you'll definitely want to shut reflectionss off. Turning shine off is a good idea as well, unless you're drydocking the Tetra in shallow water. As for placing the drydocking stand, it's meant to clip into the ground so the shadows are just above the ground. The extra geometry you see below is just the effect of being as prim efficient with it as I could. E. ExtrasPassenger ManagementWhen you rez the Tetra vehicle attachment, you'll notice several down-pointing bright green arrows and a single red arrow. The red arrow is for the helmsman (owner) to sit on the boat to control it. The green arrows are for the passengers to sit. Note that the green arrows will disappear by themselves after a short period of time. When a passenger sits on the arrow, it disappears, just like a poseball. The difference is that the passenger will automatically hike to the upper side of the boat as it heels against the wind. Despite that the forward three arrows are positioned on the left side of the boat, the passengers will appear on the right side if the boat is heeling to the left. On most real life sailboats, crew and passengers usually sit on the upper side to offset the balance. Important commands: LightsThe rocker switches for the lights are located on a panel along the rear wall of the cockpit, behind where the helmsman sits. The switch for the cabin is located on the wall just inside the cabin door. These are toggled by touching, and will rock back and forth. The lights work both while sailing and while moored. If you want to see the lighting effects in full force, set "Nighttime Brightness" to 0 under the Adv. Graphics tab in the Preferences window (under the edit menu). If it's not night out at the moment, you can force midnight by going to World -> Force Sun -> Midnight. You can set the sun back to default with "Revert to Region Default" in the same menu. MotorThis command will start and shut down the inboard motor. This automatically lowers the sails if they are raised. The inboard motor is useful for navigating where wind power is impossible or unrealistic, such as in a tight marina or going up a thin strait directly into the wind with no room to tack. Motor Movement Keys: Please note that similar to sailing mode, the boat needs water flow for the rudder to be effective, so you need at least a little bit of movement speed to change direction. CameraInside "Tetra 35 v1.0 Vehicle" is a script called "Camera". This is a simple script from which you can modify the location and direction of the helmsman's third person camera. The comments within explain the changes. v1.2 UpdatesFixes
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