Greenlaners Core Values
Goals defining my build concepts


Working with bare terrain

Since the very beginning, I have strived to make my vehicles hug the terrain and behave in a realistic manner. The first vehicles I bought (and many still being sold) used to behave very strange, flying off into the sky after climbing a hill, flying through the sky when going down a drop and other such weird behaviour. I hated this and have spent many many hours over the months understanding the vehicle parameters and how to tune them to best effect.

Every single vehicle/update I work on goes through the minimum of a 37 sim test drive, along a route which covers some road and a tricky trail across Snowlands, as well as some thrashing about in the Forest of Kahruvel. Each vehicle is tweaked, as the prims affect the mass and the centre of mass. Some vehicles perform better than others though, as prim size/layout affects a vehicles interaction with the terrain as well as with the physics engine and this is unavoidable.

One common problem is the way some people add too much "vertical attraction" to help prevent their vehicle tipping over. This ruins the performance when driving along side slopes and often makes them fall down mountains rather than traverse them. Another common problem is vehicles sliding down slopes when not under power. I have avoided these behaviour attributes and strive to keep my vehicles behaving in as real a manner as possible. I added the "Recover" function to deal with flipping over after accidents, as unlike in the real world, there are not a bunch of by-standers around to turn your vehicle back over, and editing the vehicle back into the right way up is annoying.

A side note about realism: I have kept the flight mode with my vehicles as there are some accidents where recovery in a normal way is not possible, and flight can be an invaluable aid in these situations.


Low script use

Due to most of my vehicles being aimed at mainland travel I avoid resource heavy scripting (although my 1st 5 vehicles have some systems I have since stopped adding...I didn't know better back then!), such as colour changing, gimmicks, posing on the vehicles and various detection systems which some others are keen on. When crossing into another sim, such scripts make the hand-over tougher and more inclined towards failure to cross intact. This is dependant on the performance of the grid too though, so bad hand-overs are always possible, even when walking, but at least I aim to lessen the impact my vehicles make on the servers.

A note on trailer vehicles: trailer vehicles are unable to cross into another sim intact. It would be possible (though rather complex) to script them to cross, but this would mean adding follower type scripts and their inherent demand on sim resources, so I haven't taken this route.


Ease of use

It has always been important to me that my vehicles remain simple to use. Now all of my vehicles have a chat-command free script and use menus, I have strived to make the menu systems consistent across the range, as many customers own more than one vehicle.


Off-road vehicles only!

I have had requests to build cars in the past, but this will never happen. There are many many more car builders with all levels of talent around in SL, and I have no intention of entering their over-crowded sector of the market.


European vehicles only

There are already a huge number of vehicle builders who concentrate on American vehicles. Before I began building vehicles I was constantly frustrated by this and yearned to buy an off-road vehicle that wasn't a Hummer or Jeep... besides, in real life, nothing comes close to an 8x8 Tatra!


Unique models

Another thing which frustrated me was the huge amount of builders making the same vehicles. It made things confusing and I also made some disappointing choices. Once I begun making replicas of real life vehicles, I decided to concentrate on ones which don't already exist in-world.

Since making some (such as the Unimog), some of the other vehicle builders have made their versions of them, but as we all offer different levels of quality and different abilities, I have decided to keep my versions as part of the range. I have had requests for vehicles which are already available in other places and always turn them down. I am here to fill in the gaps as much as anything else!


Unique vehicle types

When I began making my trailer vehicles, there were few other trailer vehicles which worked using physics alone, as many builders believed it wasn't possible since H4 was rolled out (many trailer vehicles before H4 no longer worked). I managed to find a way though and now others have also found other ways, though most others rely on resource heavy "follower" type scripts, rather than pure physical connections.

Another unique vehicle I created was the road-rail unimog. I have heard of one other builder making something similar since, but I believe it isn't in general release.

Filling the gaps in vehicle types out there has been a strong motivation for me.





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