Racing

Racing has been mentioned here in this blog before, but only briefly and only to point out yet one other aspect to activities available in a virtual world. To be sure, racing in Second Life pales in comparison to racing in Real Life or even racing in a video game. In RL, you can feel your body slam into the sides of the seat when you corner. You can feel the accelerations, smell the smells, and that concrete wall doesn't look very soft at all! In a video game, body leaning, sound, even control feedback can be simulated. In SL, not so much. You have 4 cursor keys for accelerate, brake, left and right turns. Not very controllable. No feedback at all. Yes, you can setup a steering wheel or "joystick" in SL. I have tried it but didn't care for it. That was years ago though. Maybe they have improved the interface? I might try it again someday and report back to you here. But for now, I only race a couple of times per week and for only 20 minutes at a time.

Neva's garage area in the center of the track. The oval track is above

There are numerous places to go to for racing. There are many places that have racing groups or leagues. They meet at specified tracks and dates and times and have competitions. They have beautiful, challenging tracks. There are drag racing tracks, oval tracks and winding road course tracks. There are also winding tracks with dips and hills. Very challenging and exciting racing. Nearly all of these tracks have some sort of scoring/timing system which is activated when you drive over/through the start finish line. Due to this fact, you do not really need someone there to race against, you can race against time and see your best time up on the scoreboard.

The road course and ramp system.

That's what we have at our parcel, Goetz. I built two tracks. One is a winding flat road course and the other is a low banked oval. Both have timing/scoring devices. The timing on a track in SL is a bit tricky. Because just about anything is possible in SL and your ground vehicle can actually fly if you want it to, built in gates have to be included to ensure that each one is passed through so that nobody cheats at their lap times by constantly crossing the finish line, circling back quickly and passing through it again, over and over. So these gates are placed at various strategic locations around the track and are rendered invisible so that the racer does not know where they are. So long as the racer stays on the track and passes through the gates, their times will be recorded properly. But if they cheat and skip a gate, their time is disqualified. This also means that the racer is required to go around the track in the proper direction. It's always going to be counter-clockwise for any oval track that I create.

The banked oval track

So the group of us me, Neva, Joe, cat, Dylan and more, can race around these tracks and try to beat each other's times. The winding track can be reached from the infield. There is a metal gate to open and a ramp that runs up to the raceway. This track has bleachers on it for spectators that Neva purchased for me as a gift. This track has 12 turns if you count in and out as two separate turns as I do. At the time of this writing, Dylan holds the track record with her Jet Bike. I realized that her time could not be approached unless using the same type of racer that she used, so I went out and bought me one. It turns on a dime! I was able to get within 1 second of her best time but so far, that seems as close as I'm going to get. At some point in the near future, I will be resetting the fast times just so that we all have fun setting new fast times. But for now, she is the fastest on that track.

Me, in front of the scoreboard next to the finish line

If you leave the track and drive past the gas pumps and up the ramps, you will end up in the pit area of our oval track. There is a concrete barrier which swings aside when you click on it for access to the racing surface. This track also has a scoring/timing device and Joe currently holds the lap record. I am able to manage 2nd place on both tracks so far, but I plan on breaking at least one of these track records before resetting the scoreboard. This track has some banking in the turns as well as the straights. You can get up to some ferocious speeds here. This is a very good track for testing out new vehicles.

Despite the high walls on both tracks, drivers manage to fly over them and onto the neighbor's parcel or fall down onto the ground or water of the sim. I try to maintain a small fleet of go-karts and cars there for visitors to use down at the garage area. Feel free to drop in anytime. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Goetz/214/120/1803

There are other places to visit too for racing. There's the 777 group sim. They have tracks and ramps that lead way up into the sky to race on. Just following the ramps up into the air is fun to do and you don't need to race against time or someone else. Just drive as fast as you can. Then there are other sims that you can enjoy multiple tracks on too. But some of those require you to join a group and be a member of their league before you can race. One of them, with a couple of very nice road race tracks is EMH motors. The only way you can join their group is to purchase one of their cars and contact them via Instant Message and wait for them to get back with you and invite you to the group. You can purchase a 24 hour pass from them for use of the track, but that's not really practical. The cars do not cost very much and are worth it and once you are in the group, you have free access to the tracks indefinitely.

So racing against an opponent or an opponent's time is yet one more aspect of SL that you can get into. It's challenging to say the least. I see no reason I should ever have to hear a friend of mine contact me and say "I'm bored".