Boating in Bellisseria

[Trinity Blakewell]

I just had my longest boat ride in Bellisseria this evening - over a half hour of winding around the islands and around the top of East Bellisseria to where the current development ends (it's beautiful up there, by the way, with stilts at the bottom of the mountains, and the high bridge, and "Bellisseria" spelled out in stones). Was thrown out of my boat at that point because the navigable water currently ends where the coastline has yet to be developed.  At any rate, I've had vastly different experiences depending on which boat or watercraft I am using. The Bandit Boss 225 that I am using has been the easiest to control of any boats I have used so far. Last week I was experimenting with jet skis and having a terrible time trying to control them. I can stick with the Boss 225 but it looks like a 50 year old speedboat, and not, IMO, in a good way. So...anyone have some other suggestions, especially those that are in a moderate price range?

And also while on the topic, what is your favorite boating route in Bellisseria?

[PrudenceAnton]

I'm a huge fan of the Bandit boat series. We have the Bandit60 Sailboat and I acquired the Bandit 170 small craft motorboat. Its very easy to navigate your way around the waterways of Bellisseria.  There's a nice article about the boat  here:  https://modemworld.me/2020/04/25/bandit-170-a-pocket-cruiser-thats-coming-second-life/

 

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

I love the Bandit 170! It's just the right size for me, and it looks cute parked next to a stilt home (when I still had a stilt home, that is!). 

[Evangeline Ling]

This is gonna sound so bad but I have bought so many Bandit boats now I cant even remember if I bought the 170

[Nika Talaj]

Bandit products are great,  I really enjoy my Bandit IF sailboat, but unfortunately Bandit boats can only be used if the original owner is on board.  Many boatmakers (e.g. Motor Loon, Berdav Marine, Trudeau, Piaggio Systems, Shippe & Saille) support a short list of named captains, but Bandit has always strongly resisted such requests, making it cumbersome for one's partner or alt to use a boat moored at one's property.

I've had a lot of fun lately with Shippe & Saille's Harbor Master.  It's a fishing boat, I think it's top speed is 15 knots or so.  That's probably slower than the 170, but actually it's still too fast for sightseeing.  The low gearing makes for very solid, easy-to-maneuver boating, without having to mess about with menu settings.  Its UI is wonderfully simple, it's GTFO ready, you can use the GFS fuel system if you want.  It's $L500 cheaper than the 170.  It's been updated 3 times since I bought it. 

If we want to really move, we use our old LittleBee.  It's long in the tooth, but in hydroplane mode (for which the animation is a HOOT) it really really moves, and with included wake board and parasail, it's still completely funtastic.

 

 

 

[Devin Heartsong]

The Bandit 170 is a lot of fun!  I also love the Captain's Launch, and the Loonetta, and that new jetski by Cigar Yachts that came out right around the time the Stilt regions were released.

Don't forget the new Bellisseria surf beach up on the Northeast edge of the bottom row of the stilt region. The wave generators are perfect, the wave runs are long, and there are rezzers for all the best surfboards. It's a delight to surf those waves on the X-3! Two people can ride the X-3 and the passenger gets involved in the paddling anims. It's really responsive and newbie-friendly! If you have your own surfboards, there's a public rez zone up at the west edge of the beach in the same region. Oh, it's also pretty fun to jump those same waves in the Cigar Yachts jetski too!

Edited May 5, 2021 by Devin Heartsong

[Trinity Blakewell]

If you're considering Bandit, don't just go to the Marketplace, make a trip to their in-world store - they've only got a few models on their marketplace page.

 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Dutch Harbor/104/186/22

 

[Lloyd Overland]

I love my boats and exploring the waterways in SL. The Bandit 280R and 380R are fabulous but for Bellisseria I'd give a special mention of the lovely Marlin catamaran by Rubber Bunny.

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Lloyd Overland
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[Eowyn Southmoor]

I'll echo Nika's post above - the Shippe & Saille Harbor Master is a cute little boat that's a lot of fun, and very reliable. A perfect sight seeing boat. The Piaggio Little Bee is also great, regardless of it's age - also very fast when in hydroplane mode as mentioned.

Piaggio also has a cute watercraft called the SeaRoo - which looks  a bit like a shark or dolphin. It can carry one passenger, and it can dive underwater like a submarine, and also jump up out of the water too. You can even do backflips in it haha. It's really fun, and very small, so easy to manoeuvre in tight areas.

My favorite boat is the one LLoyd mentioned - The Rubber Bunny Marlin. Super reliable, full analogue throttle so you can go really really slow (or pretty fast too, it tops out at 40 knots!). Only has basic poses but can seat 4 and has plenty of clickable doors etc, plus a cool light system on the roof. It also has probably the most realistic wave cresting effects of any boat in SL too. It's also absurdly cheap - less than 1000L

Another two I'd recommend are the Sinplicity Libelle and the Hunter Marine Runabout. The Libelle is a gorgeous looking boat, almost like a 50's racing car body had been dropped onto a boat hull. Sounds amazing, crosses regions like butter, and is also very fast, but you can still potter round slowly if you want. Only seats two people though.

The Runabout is bigger, seats 4, and has much more of a traditional expensive motorboat look. It also sounds glorious too, and comes with quite a few animations as well, and a working fuel system. Both of these though are at the upper end of the scale pricewise (about 3000L)

A lot will come down to personal taste over styles though, because the Boss 225 mentioned in the OP i think is a beautiful looking craft

[Trinity Blakewell]

 Ironically, I picked up the Bandit 220, which is a more modern design, and tried it out yesterday, and it was nowhere near as smooth and easy to control as the 225. Not sure if that was due to the boat itself or other issues (network, etc.). I didn't even see the 225 at their in-world location, just on the marketplace. But they have a TON of boats and watercraft displayed at their in-world store and I may have just missed it. I think I'll try one of the recommendations from another store next.

 

[Trinity Blakewell]

Well, I took out the 220 again, with better results. I went through the stilt islands, west to log land, south down.the log land coast, around the southern tip, back up the eastern side, up to the houseboats on the east. At which point the lag became overwhelming and my boat misbehaved, running aground and leaving me unable to select it. That was a really long trip, and the first time I've skirted the coast of log land. It's challenging at times because there are some areas at the southern end of log land where the coastline is close to the edge of a region, and the next region out in the ocean hasn't been set up to allow boating. So, you end up having to go towards land, and then make a sharp turn at a buoy. There are several places like that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Maitimo]

I've been considering getting a Bandit for sailing for a while, and finally got one yesterday.  I took the advice of visiting the mainstore and I'm glad I did; after trying demos of five or six different boats, the one I ended up getting was not the one I'd have chosen if I'd bought off the MP without trying them first.

I ended up with the B55; bigger than I was planning for, but I fell in love with it and spent most of today just sailing round the Blake Sea and Bellisseria. 

Next task - making some custom textures for it.

[Trinity Blakewell]

Very nice.

[animats]

On 5/4/2021 at 8:18 PM, Devin Heartsong said:

new Bellisseria surf beach up on the Northeast edge of the bottom row of the stilt region.

Oh, nice! A good public surf beach. Post a link, please. And someone should get that into the destinations guide.

The Miami sim used to have a good surfing beach, but that closed down.

[Nika Talaj]

Stilt surf beach: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SSPE1768/214/38/21  It's really fun.

17 hours ago, Maitimo said:

I ended up with the B55; bigger than I was planning for, but I fell in love with it and spent most of today just sailing round the Blake Sea and Bellisseria.

Do people notice any performance difference between higher LI boats (the 55 is, I think, 113 LI, and the very popular Bandit 60 is over 130), and boats that are under 32 LI?  That used to be such a hard-and-fast limit that I'm still shying away from the higher prim boats.  Old habits die hard!

[Evangeline Ling]

5 minutes ago, Nika Talaj said:

Stilt surf beach: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SSPE1768/214/38/21  It's really fun.

Do people notice any performance difference between higher LI boats (the 55 is, I think, 113 LI, and the very popular Bandit 60 is over 130), and boats that are under 32 LI?  That used to be such a hard-and-fast limit that I'm still shying away from the higher prim boats.  Old habits die hard!

This may not be as big of a deal as it used to.  Although I suspect ones under 32 without a lot of pose menus still are going to perform the absolute best, the big issue for me has always been whether a boat crosses region borders good or not.  Since the cloud move region crossings have been one of the better improvements.  And i did take out one of my bigger boats last week and had no issues in region crossings.  So i think they will likely work better then they used to but you will still get better performance out of a boat that is lighter on LI, lighter on scripts.

 

EDIT: Also when buying a boat I always recommend buying from someone who has a store on a region that when you demo the boat you can cross regions (same with any kind of vehicle).  If i can't test a region crossing in a demo I will not buy the vehicle.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Evangeline Ling

[Maitimo]

4 minutes ago, Nika Talaj said:

Do people notice any performance difference between higher LI boats (the 55 is, I think, 113 LI, and the very popular Bandit 60 is over 130), and boats that are under 32 LI?  That used to be such a hard-and-fast limit that I'm still shying away from the higher prim boats.  Old habits die hard!

That(and the script weight) was actually a concern I had, and is the reason I wouldn't have picked the 55 if I'd bought without trying them. When I tried demos, I tried the 50/3 and the 55 which are similar size and similar LI (the 50 is 90-something). Then I also tried the IF and the 25R and a couple of others which are both much smaller and with a LI of 30-50 or so. I honestly noticed no difference except that the smaller ones manage a higher velocity at the same wind speed. Region crossings - no problem at all.  After purchase I sailed round the Blake Sea and around Bellisseria for about 4 hours straight, and had not one single bad region crossing.

In the end I picked the 55 on account of a camera/instrument position that I was most comfortable with. 

[Maitimo]

9 minutes ago, Evangeline Ling said:

EDIT: Also when buying a boat I always recommend buying from someone who has a store on a region that when you demo the boat you can cross regions (same with any kind of vehicle).  If i can't test a region crossing in a demo I will not buy the vehicle.

Definitely good advice, and Bandit is well-placed for that sort of test, right in the heart of the Blake Sea regions. The demo gave me ten minutes at a time (I took a couple of them including the 55 out twice because I was having so much fun) and in the ten minutes I managed to get from Dutch Harbour to Siren's Isle with around nine region crossings on the way.

[Nika Talaj]

10 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

I honestly noticed no difference except that the smaller ones manage a higher velocity at the same wind speed.

I always wondered about this, thanks for sharing that!  It's counterintuitive in a way, because IRL a longer hull at water line, and larger sail area, would give the bigger boat more speed.  But from the view of SL physics & lag, it makes sense.

[Maitimo]

Just now, Nika Talaj said:

I always wondered about this, thanks for sharing that!  It's counterintuitive in a way, because IRL a longer hull at water line, and larger sail area, would give the bigger boat more speed.  But from the view of SL physics & lag, it makes sense.

Yes I think that's part of it but not all. I have some smaller boats (~32 LI) from other makers which are slower than the small Bandits, and another which is a bit higher LI (around 45) and is exceptionally fast. However it was interesting comparing different sized boats from the same maker and all using the same script engine.

But it's primarily cruising that I'm interested in. Racing is too scary. If I did race, I'd probably want a 25R or 22LTE 

[Nika Talaj]

I just cruise too, altho I've been tempted by the IF class races.   But, you know, if I were going to go through all the tension and skill-building to race well, I'd want to race a gorgeous beast like Reliance!

 

[Rufferta]

I have a number of boats, but if I'm away from a rezz zone I put on the 'wearable' rowboat I got in a gacha at What Next - currently 50 Lindens. Also, I don't have good reflexes, but with the rowboat so far I've avoided some of the disasters I've had with faster boats (went up a tree once in a kayak, for example).

Edited May 10, 2021 by Rufferta

[Eowyn Southmoor]

The LI of any vehicle actually has very little to do with its ability to cross regions smoothly. What is far more important is the size of the linkset in the vehicle ie: the number of links.

Most vehicles (especially more modern ones) contain most of their scripts in either just the root prim or that plus a few others, and they use link number or link names to communicate with the rest of the vehicle to animate parts etc. The more links you have, the longer that process is, so simply, less links is better, all other stuff being equal.

Where it gets confusing is that something might be low LI but a high number of objects (join 20 standard prim cubes together as convex hull and they will only count as 10LI - but they are still 20 items), or alternatively, something might be high LI but low number of objects (think of a large complex boat hull, it might be 15LI, but it's still just one object).

So a tip is to right click any vehicle you're interested in, select edit, select Edit Linked, then click on the little left-pointing arrow under that. That will go to the last link in the vehicle and tell you how many objects there are, ie "Link number = 81" means it's 81 objects.

[diamond Marchant]

On 5/11/2021 at 2:45 AM, Eowyn Southmoor said:

Most vehicles (especially more modern ones) contain most of their scripts in either just the root prim or that plus a few others, and they use link number or link names to communicate with the rest of the vehicle to animate parts etc. The more links you have, the longer that process is, so simply, less links is better, all other stuff being equal.

You are very wise but I don't think so :)  Recall that linked messages are addressed to one or more children and are heard by all scripts in that child. A good scripter targets linked messages to only the child that needs it. My point is that problems related to linked message pathology are not always related to  number of child prims and a well scripted vehicle is not compromised simply by having many child prims.

I have always said that I can crash any vehicle any where, any time, any place. The point is that region crossings have been  historically unpredictable regardless of what counter measures you take. What I have learned (from sailboat racing and analyzing script performance at well attended events) is that the thing that most influences vehicles in general is the number of avatars and child agents in the vicinity. Travel alone and things usually go better. And of course, if a region/simulator is sick, there is nothing you can do with a vehicle that fixes it (except putting it in reverse).

The tragedy of region crossings is that we went so long  (17 years?) with them being so bad. The fix came at the end of 2020 when, as part of the uplift to the cloud project, someone noticed that some networking protocols involved in region crossings were suboptimal (to be polite) and then FIXED them. When the software fix was rolled out prior to the uplift, region crossing instantly were improved (no cloud needed).

There are still issues involving synchronization of the vehicle and the sitting avatar during crossings. When it doesn't work, you are unseated or your animation is "compromised" or your camera is messed up. So please Linden Labs, keep working on it.

The only (superstitious) advice I would give as to the selection of vehicles is to go with the newer ones that have been tested and tweaked under the current generation of Second Life Servers and/or vehicles that are still being updated. It is possible that older vehicles have scripting that was better suited to the "pre fixed" servers. Also, avoid 4-corners (point where 4-regions meet) as they tend to stress the synchronization issue.

[Nando Yip]

2 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

 

O único conselho (supersticioso) que eu daria quanto à seleção de veículos é ir com os mais novos que foram testados e ajustados na geração atual de servidores do Second Life e / ou veículos que ainda estão sendo atualizados. É possível que veículos mais antigos tenham scripts mais adequados aos servidores "pré-fixados". Além disso, evite 4 cantos (ponto onde 4 regiões se encontram), pois eles tendem a enfatizar o problema de sincronização.

I wonder about buying a new boat, do you get some citizing that you already have been in the condition that you have suggested above? Think of a layman, I do not understand anything of scripts, I do not know how to check if it is new or old. I just want a tip of a boat that is renovated.