Basic Flying Guide

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Introduction

All of Daryth's Wyrmlings, Wyverlings, Wyrms (except Tiamat) and Wyverns have a saddle included in the egg. This saddle allow you to take a passenger (in some cases two) for a ride.

Flying is not without it's difficulties, and before taking passengers, practice is recommended!

How to Use the Saddle

The saddle is a vehicle and must be rezzed onto the ground in order to use it. In order to do this you need to find a build enabled location. If you are in the Isle of Wyrms Citizens group, the Limbo sandbox is available to you. If you are not, then the Hatching Circle is set to open build as is the Eragon sandbox.

Do not wear the saddle! In earlier versions this would send you flying skyward. The current saddles do not do this, but the saddle will not function when worn.

Saddle Types

There are a number of different saddles that have been produced over the years:

• Wyrmling/Dragon Saddle (drop to use, dragon/rider controlled) - this is the original saddle and is not compatible with Havock4. If you have one of these, get one of the latest saddles.

• Egyptian Wyrmling/Dragon Saddle (v2) - this comes with the Anubis and Bast dragons, it will work in Havok4 although going from air to ground mode does not always work.

• Dracolich Clutch Saddle (v2) - this is a special saddle for the Dracolich dragon and wyrmling where the passenger(s) are clutched in the claws. This works with Havok4.

• Wyrmling Saddle v2.1 - these are the saddles packaged with the current wyrmling eggs, these do work with Havok4, but similar to the Egyptians, going from air to ground mode does not always work.

• Wyvern/Wyverling Saddle v2.2 - these are the saddles for the wyverns. They use special animations and are not compatible with the dragons/wyrmlings. They are however, compatible with Havok4 and because they use a HUD for control, going from air to ground mode has no problems.

• Dragon Saddle - these are the saddles that came with the dragon eggs released at the Summer 08 Hatching. These do work with Havok4.

• Wyrmling/Dragon Saddle v3.1 - this is the latest saddle which is fully Havok4 compatible.

Saddle Options

Depending on the type of saddle you have, the saddle might pop up a blue dialogue box for you to set the options. This will allow you to set the saddle to either dragon or rider controlled and the default species positioning.

Once you dismiss this blue dialog, it is difficult to get it back up, therefore you should either set the options before take-off or make sure you don't "ignore" the dialog at any point.

If you have a hud controlled saddle you can use the HUD to change the saddle options at anytime, although again it is best to set them before you take off.

If you neither have a hud or a blue dialog box, the saddle does not have any options to switch as will be either fixed dragon-controlled mode or fixed rider-controlled mode.

Pre-Flight Checks

Prior to flying, the following checks are recommended:

• make sure you are in a script enabled area; the saddle will not work otherwise
• set the saddle settings that you want (if applicable)
• ensure that your passenger(s) are not wearing an animation overider, this can disturb the sitting position.
• make sure all passenger(s) are securely seated

Flight Controls

Most saddles have a dual-mode and work both on the ground and in the air. These are the basic controls, your saddle might support extra abilities.

Ground Mode

The ground mode controls are very similar to your usual dragon controls:

• Left Cursor Key: Turn Dragon anti-clockwise
• Right Cursor Key: Turn Dragon clockwise
• Up Cursor Key: Walk forward
• Down Cursor Key: Walk backward
• Page Up Key (short tap): Small jump

To change to Air mode you should hold the Page Up button for at least 2 seconds. If your saddle uses the HUD, you should use the HUD "Fly" button.

Air Mode

The air mode controls are very similar:

• Left Cursor Key: Turn Dragon anti-clockwise
• Right Cursor Key: Turn Dragon clockwise
• Up Cursor Key: Fly forward
• Down Cursor Key: Fly backward
• Page Up Key : Gain Altitude
• Page Down Key : Lose Altitude

Note: because of the way physics works in SL, when you gain and lower altitude you are likely to tilt in the direction of altitude gain. The faster you ascend or descent, the steeper the tilt. This can be very useful for having appropriate dragon flying pose, but can also make for interesting landing accidents (dive nose first into the ground - Ouch!). Older saddles are worse for this then the newer ones.

The dragon also has a certain amount of mass, and therefore when you take your hands off the controls, your dragon, saddle and passenger may continue for a short while (the newer saddles are better for this).

To change to Ground mode and Land you should hold the Page Down button for at least 2 seconds whilst stopped on the ground. If your saddle uses the HUD, you should use the HUD "Walk" button.

Landing

Landings can be more akin to crashes at first. The general rule is that a quick landing will usually end up being painful! Just take the landing slowly and everything will generally be good.

If you have a saddle with a HUD, one method for landing is to come to a hover stop above the target position and select the "Ground" option (but not too high above the position).

Dangers and Annoyances

Here are a list of common annoyances and how to deal with them....

• Sim Crossings: these are the bane of every vehicles life. A bad sim crossing can result in a loss of passenger and saddle and potentially a client crash. The best advice is to take it slow. Come to the sim boundary and carefully nudge across. Also, do not cross two-sim boundary lines in quick succession.

• No-Entry/Ban Lines: these just are ouch! Generally if you hit a ban line you are pretty much guaranteed that dragon, saddle and rider will be separated, and not necessarily in the same location. Try to avoid sims with ban-line and if your sim does have them, know where they are. Recce unknown sims first.

• Laaaag: this is one of the most common occurrences on any sim, if you see really bad lag (sim fps below 20) then it is better to stop flying and find somewhere else. The biggest risk is that rider and dragon can get separated. The easiest way to manage this is to use your mini-map and keep it fully zoomed in. If you notice the two green dots that are rider and dragon separating - slow down! (tap the controls instead of holding them down)

(combine all of these above and you can have a really painful situation)

If you do lose you saddle, don't forget to go back and pick it back up!

Client Settings

There are two schools of thought on client settings for client settings for flying;

1. that you should fully maximize everything (draw distance, etc) such that your client does not have to load anything during the flight
2. that you should turn everything down as much as possible, to minimize the stress on your computer

The correct setting is probably somewhere between those and depends on the health of the SL network and the sim in question as well as the capabilities of your computer. Don't forget to take into account the settings of your rider, you might be using the latest whizz-bang! Graphics card, but they might be running something much older.

In the new client the custom graphics settings can be found by selecting the custom check box in the graphics tab. The following is some information on some of the settings and how they might affect you:

• Draw Distance: A larger setting means that more of the objects and textures are loaded into your graphics memory and don't have to be loaded whilst flying around (reduces server load lag, but increases client lag). Setting low means that you load objects as you fly around (increases server load lag, but lowers client lag).

• Post-processing (Windlight): A higher setting means that you get pretty effects, at the cost of client graphics cpu time (increases client lag)