Product Review: Second Skies Teleport System

Last Updated on Thursday, 30 April 2009 09:02 Written by PaisleyRaven Foxclaw Thursday, 23 April 2009 04:15

While putting the finishing touches on a club and mall my group, CleoRaven is opening soon, I spent about four hours trying different teleporters. We have the Mall on the ground and two skyboxes. One is the Club, the other is an open air live venue.  The skyboxes are above 300 meters, and I wanted visitors to be able to easily travel between all three places without having to dig out landmarks.

 

 

The first Teleporter I tried was HippoTech’s Free Teleportor. I trust HippoTech because we use their HippoRENT and I use HippoVEND in my store. I ran into problem because the teleport pads only have a range of 300 meters. I didn’t realize thisuntil I fell to m doom while testing the three pads I put in place. The two between the club and venue worked wonderfully. Of course, they are less than 200 meters apart. When trying to teleport from the ground to either one of the skyboxes, I fell.

 

The Hippo Teleporter offers a landmark feature for locations out of teleport range, but the point of the pads was to eliminate the need to grab a landmark.

 

In an attempt to get around the distance obstacle, I rezzed to chairs and loaded a Teleprtor script. In the script, I entered the location vectors for each point I wanted to reach. One chair was for the club, the other for the venue. Neither worked. It appeared as though the script was limited by distance as well.

 

Pawing through my Freebies –because there is a lot of stuff in there that I haven’t even begun to look at- I found a named teleport system. It came with a prefab castle I picked up somewhere. The object is a small ball, one prim only. You name the ball then copy it, and place the second ball on the spot you want to teleport to.  I rezzed and named two balls for the club and venue, I copied them, and Took them back into my inventory. I used my landmarks to TP to the club and re-rezzed the club ball, then did the same at the venue. It didn’t work. All I did was assume a sitting position when I clicked for teleport.

I assumed the catch was a simple one: you have to leave the balls rezzed so their counterparts can keep a lock on them.

So I deleted the venue and club balls and went back down to the Mall. I rezzed a third ball for the Mall and named it. I moved it several meters away from its original and clicked. It worked!! Both ways even!

Then I began the laborious task of flying all three balls up to the skyboxes. I decided I would try them before I placed them all. Returning to the Mall, I clicked the club ball.

And took another long fall. It seems the balls lock onto a location and do not reset when moved. So when I paused during my flight up, the balls locked on a location somewhere between where I wanted to be. This time I fell so hard I was underground for a few seconds.

 

Frustrated, I consulted a group that has been far too good to me in Second Life: the Happy Hippsters. They are a building group owned by Victoria Paule. She also owns and operates the Happy Hippo Education Center. I begged for an inexpensive, multipoint teleport system with a range over 300 meters. Victoria, bless her heart! Told me about the system she uses.

 

I followed her landmark to Second Skies: Airships, Airplanes & More. They sell all kinds of flying items, apparently. Victoria and I  agreed it was a strange place to find a teleporter. Reflecting on it later, I rethought hat. What is teleporting but flying at hyperspeeds without benefit of a flying machine?

What hooked me about this teleporter was the price. It was only 99L. I am a frugal creature, and spending money when I can get an item free cuts my Inner Miser to the quick. What excited me about the teleporter was Victoria’s assertion that distance was no object. I was sold.

I popped in and nabbed it, then hustled back to the Mall. The carton contained the notecard with step by step instructions, but I can summarize the entire set-up for you here:

 

1. Rez one of the 3 included Teleport pads

2 Open EDIT and rename it in the General tab.

3. Change textures, size etc if you wish

4 Close Build and click the pad to activate it.

5. Repeat.

 

The pads automatically detect and network with each other. It took me less than five minutes to set it up. I spent most of that time changing the textures. Really.

 

I was so excited about this thing that I took it home and set it up in my house. Once again, smooth sailing, no hitches, no “oh damn”.

 

Each pad, once rezzed, seeks out and connects with other pads. With a click, you get a menu showing the other pads. Simply click the pad you want to go to, and ZOOM! There you are.

 

 

 

Another outstanding feature of the Second Skies teleporter is its ability to communicate with pads owned by different people. The notecard explains how to set this up and form a wider, open network of interconnected pads. Once again, the process is as simple as making sure all the pads share a channel and network key.

 

The Teleporter also offers the ability to teleport between SIMs, with a caveat. Second Life can be glitchy, and the teleport can fail. The mere concept, however, is delightful. Having pads in the places I frequent most often would simplify my Second Life beyond measure.

 

For the price, this Second Skies Teleporter is a steal, plain and simple. Instead of digging through hundreds of is the one and only system I would recommend to others. Its so wonderfully simple a two-hour old newbie could do this. I owe a massive thanks to Victoria Paule and to Second Skies for offering such a simple, powerful and affordable tool.