Being into planes and boats in SL can be a little taxing. Not just on the purse / wallet, but also in where to park things. Even if, like us, you have a place near water where you can moor your boats and seaplanes, providing space for all of them can be a little hard – every LI given over to vehicles, moorings and so on, is one less for the house, furnishings and garden. Sure, you can always putt things out of your inventory when you want them – but where’s the fun in that? Having at least something out on your docks or slipway is part of the pleasure in owning vehicles.
In our case, we have numerous vehicles, some of which get considerable use – notably our two DSA G58 Barons and M33 Debonair, plus the Little Bee and FoilStream by Ape Piaggio, and the Bandit 210. Having all of these rezzed at any one time along with our Loonetta 31, which tends to be permanently rezzed, gobbles up 263 LI – and quite a lot of space. Add to that some of the vehicles have multiple finishes to them (different registrations or colour schemes), and of which we might want to use at any given time, even more LI can get eaten in trying to have all of them out at once.
Of course, hauling some of them of inventory when needed is always an option, it’s still a little boring and negates the idea of having “home space” for vehicles. So is there a compromise that allows for a quick swapping between vehicles while allowing some to be parked / moored and ready to go? If your vehicles have both copy and modify permissions, there is: a simple scene rezzing system.
This is pretty much what we’ve had at Isla Pey for a good while – and note I am not talking any kind of temp rezzer here; they are a blight that should really be avoided. There are several scene rezzing systems available that fit the bill for vehicle rezzing, and I’ve been using a couple for the last few years. However, my unit of choice at the moment is the RF Device / Multi-Scene Rezzer.
Priced at just L$250, this is a low-cost, very easy-to-use system, comprising a “control panel” object and a single script. Simply rez the “control panel” object, rez and position your copy / modify vehicle(s) where you want it / them to be parked / moored when rezzed, drop the script inside the contents, then take the vehicle(s) and drop it / them into the contents of the “control panel”, and you’re done. Touching the “control panel” then displays a list of objects within it, with a corresponding set of buttons used for rezzing the vehicle(s) of your choice. You can even move the control panel around within your parcel / region and the vehicles will still rez correctly in their original places.
Thus, using this system, we have direct access to a fair number of my boats and planes (some of which are copies with different registrations / paint finishes) which we can swap between quickly and easily, and without messing around with inventory and positioning things manually (particularly handy if you can’t use RTLP on your parcel).
The RF system, like many others, includes an “auto clear” function. So, if you only have space to rez one vehicle at a time, this will remove any currently rezzed vehicle before rezzing the next. But if, like us, you have room to have several (but not all) of your vehicles out at one time, the “auto clear” can be disabled, and you can manually delete any individual vehicle before using the rezzing system to display another that might occupy the same spot when rezzed.
Obviously, using rezzing systems like this isn’t a new idea – it’s actually as old as the hills in some respects. But, if you haven’t considered it before, and do have limited space for your vehicles and would like a more convenient way of displaying them / swapping between them in-world than having to refer back to your inventory – trying out something like the RF Device / Multi-Scene rezzer might be worth considering.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 