I wrote the original version of this flying script quite some time ago, perhaps 2012, when my understanding of rotation math was a bit weaker. Way back then I wanted the Pelican to bank when it turned, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. Since then, I have felt embarrassed to see my flying critters making some rather stiff, unnatural looking turns. I finally got around to fixing this and I'm sending out new versions to everyone who ever bought a Pelican or two other fliers that use a similar script: The Albatross and Pteranodon.
While I had the lid up to add banked turns, I also made a bunch of other improvements:
- These fliers can now cross SIM borders in OpenSim 0.9 (and still work fine in 0.8.2).
You can give them a list of safe SIMs that they are allowed to cross into by themselves.
They read the default list of safe SIMs from “the cloud” and every grid has a different list there.
Their documentation comes from a WEB page (http://magic.kayaker.net/fliers.html) instead of a note-card.
The camera POV follows smoothly behind your avatar when you are riding them.
A transponder option reports your critter's position to a WEB page so you can find them when they wander off.