DoMoCo

Two styles are available, ornate or simple.

Teleport to DoMoCo.

Greetings.

This story started a year ago, when I had the opportunity of introducing the Dominus Shadow to Second Life. This is the story of how I got to build my dream car in SL. It’s been an interesting adventure ever since, with its share of heartaches and joy.

Now, today, on the anniversary of its introduction, I have the pleasure of introducing you to the long anticipated Dominus Shadow 2.0.

I want to let you in on a small secret. As feature-full as the Dominus Shadow was, it was never fully complete. So many smaller little improvements I had in mind never quite saw the time they deserved in the four months of development that lead up to our first release.

That all changes today. This car is finally finished.

..

The most common question I get about 2.0 is “So what’s new?” I still haven’t figured out good answer other than to say, “a lot.” To give you an idea of the magnitude of changes that 2.0 brings, let me just say that there’s probably around 150 new textures, and the changelog for 2.0 is longer than our original feature list. I still don’t have a good way of communicating the spit & polish that went into this latest design.

..

Normally, in this part of the announcement would be reserved for saying something like, “I hope you’ll enjoy this as much as I’ve enjoyed making it.”

But that wouldn’t be honest. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t pleasant getting up to here. Lots of late nights and hair pulling over the bugs and design weaknesses in SL, uncountable number of hours wasted on tests and experiments - it’s been a big long fight between SL and and my patience. It’s with some relief that I can now say, “It’s finally done.”

So let me close like this - I hope you enjoy this as much as I’ve hated making it.

-Francis

To visit Dominus Motor Company in world, search classified for “Dominus”, or teleport from Francis Chung or Rosa Ray’s Picks. (slurl coming soon soon as the sl site cooperates)

These items and more: available 10/18/06 Noon SLT in Port Seraphine and Chartruese.
Keep checking back with us, more information coming soon.

Dominus Shadow - A Dominus Motor Company Project
- A new interpretation of the 60’s muscle car. Excel in all directions.
===========—————————————
For technical support, please contact Chage McCoy.

Permissions:
- The Dominus Shadow is sold as nomod/copy/notransfer. We wanted to give Shadow owners the ability to make copies to use as accessorize their builds. Most importantly, it allows us to send out free updates & upgrades. You’re not just getting a Shadow: you’re getting an entitlement to the Dominus Shadow and all subsequent upgrades.
For this reason, we cannot offer refunds. If you wish to purchase it as a gift, please contact Francis Chung directly. Francis will be glad to deliver a Dominus Shadow upon receipt of payment to a recipient of your choice.

Features:
———-
- Beautiful and efficient 26-prim model
- Configurable! Over 1,028,764,80 ways to pose your shadow.
- Able to accommodate 5 passengers with no need for unreliable physical tricks!
- Weeks of prim and texture work in this project
- Low-flicker design
- Over 150 textures exclusive to the Dominus Shadow
- Ultimate driving experience
- A maximum speed over 210 mph! (340km/h)
- Great for off-road, city, and track driving
- Agile enough to climb vertical obstacles. Never get stuck.
- Tight enough controls to pull a 3-point turn on Midnight City sidestreets.
- Powerful enough to drift through the corners of the Silver Motorsports track
- 6 gears for convenient speed control
- Actually turns the right way when in reverse
- PowerSlides!
- Tight turns at low speeds, smoother turns at high speeds. Fine control and stability!
- Hovercar mode
- For travel appropriate anywhere. Land, sea and air in one vehicle.
- Never need a tow! Fly yourself out of trouble if you ditch it!
- 9 throttle levels for careful control and high speeds
- Realistic bobbing effect
- Cruise control! Hands-free driving, letting the driver chat while you enjoy your ride
- Automatic mouselook control
- Prefer driving with mouselook steering? Just hit “m”. No need for user configuration!
- Useable in both groundcar and hovercar modes
- Working doors
- Not only do they open and close naturally, but can be totally tricked out!
- Suicide and scissor doors at the touch of a button.
- Windows that roll down
- Fully-integrated elegant HUD.
- No ugly llSetText displays anywhere.
- Fun Effects:
- Squeal the tires! Nitrous purge!
- Physics Interpenetration resolution
- Physics Watchdog - You never have to reposition your vehicle due to a bad sim transition.
- SimX Sim Guard enhancement - virtually eliminates rubber-banding effect prominent in most SL Vehicles.
- Neon & Shadow
- Lighting is a particular consideration in our designs.
- Optional visible ground shadow
- Neon lights in 9 colours!
- Undercarriage lights, engine neon and VTOL Purge glow
- Let your friends drive!
- As long as you’re seated, the vehicle can be driven by anyone
- Enjoy the ride, have a chauffer!
- Touch-menu configurable
- Incredibly easy to use, intuitive interface.
- No silly voice commands to remember.
- Sound modeling
- Hear the purr of the engine. Feel the power of your ride.
- Honk the horn, squeal the tires, turn over the engine
- Over 25 sounds
- Hard-top convertible!
- Toggleable hood scoop for that tuner look
- Working taillights
- Autoupgrade system
- Particles, plentiful and tasteful
- Burning rubber baby!
- Nitrous Purge effect
- Groundcar conversion hydraulics flush effect
- Ground effects, see the dust and water blow across the ground as you hover across it
- VTOL takeoff/landing jets
- Animated to the hilt
- Over 12 exclusive custom animations.
- Back seat accommodates 3 avatars. Automatically makes room for people as they sit down!
- Multi-priority animations - always see when people are typing/chatting.
- Tall avatars in the back seat automatically crouch when the roof is up
- AO friendly script - no need to “/ao off”
- Blower option
- Intakes actually open/close in reaction to the engine and throttle
- Spoiler
- For that sporty image
- Hydraulics system!
- Configure the groundcar’s hydraulics with 7 selectable positions
- Rotating tires, steering control
- Selectable rims
- 9 rims for your ride, with just a touch of a button
- Spinners
- 3 selectable spinner rims on top of the 9 selectable rims, for that ultra-tuner look
- Ejection system
- Eject unwelcome riders by name, with the touch menu
- Toggleable headlights, complete with high and low beams
- Open the hood, see the engine!
- Looks great with and without hardware lighting!

Instructions:
————–
- Hop in! Drive!
- Touch the vehicle or the HUD while seated to activate the touch menu.

The cruise control can be activated by touching the [Cruise] button on your HUD or using the supplied gesture.

Groundcar Mode:
Use WASD keys to control, ‘E’ and ‘C’ to gear up and down.
FWD and BACK together to switch to hovercar.
Optional mouselook steer by hitting ‘M’.

The current gear level affects the groundcar’s maximum speed.
Gears 1 & 2: Recommended for touring around town. Cruise in style.
Gears 3 & 4: High Speed driving. Recommended for clear ground, highway, and tracks.
Gears 5 & 6: Jet-assisted driving. For incredibly high speeds. Recommended only for tracks.

Gears 3 and above are best for climbing obstacles.

Hovercar Mode:
Use WASD keys to control, ‘E’ and ‘C’ to move up and down. Use HUD controls or supplied gestures to control the throttle.
FWD and BACK together to switch to groundcar.
Optional mouselook steer by hitting ‘M’.

The current throttle level affects the hovercar’s maximum speed. The throttle can also be increased and decreased by touching the [+] and [-] buttons on your HUD or using the supplied gestures.

Menu:
——
Main Menu:
[Info] - Obtain Help information
[Hovercar] - Convert to hovercar mode.
[Groundcar] - Convert to groundcar mode.
[Sounds…] - Sounds menu
[Options…] - Options menu
[Eject…] - Eject menu
[Next Seat…] - Next seat menu
[Hydraulics…] - Hydraulics menu
[Rims…] - Rims menu
[Headlights…] - Headlights Menu
[Colour…] - Colour Menu
[Neon…] - Neon Menu

Sounds Menu:
[Ignition] - Turn on the engine
[Squeal Tires] - Squeal the tires! Warm up the rubber!
[Honk Horn] - Honks the horn
[NOS Purge] - NOS Purge effect for intimidating others at the starting line!

Options:
[Shadow] - Turn on/off the ground shadow. For better groundcar handling, turning off the ground shadow is recommended.
[SimX On] - Turn on the sim crossing guard enhancement for better sim crossings
[SimX Off] - Turn off the sim crossing guard enhancement off for better performance.
[Easy Hover] - More stable handling for the hover mode, easier to drive, harder to do quick & wild turns
[Quick Hover] - Faster handling of the hover mode, very fun, some people find the handling a bit twichy
[Hood] - Open/Close the hood
[Hood Scoop] - Toggle the hood scoop
[mph/kmph] - Toggle units between mph/kmph on the HUD display
[Lock] - Lock the vehicle so that only the owner can utilize the touch menu.
[Unlock] - Unlock the vehicle allowing anyone to utilize the touch menu.
[Top Down] - Remove the convertible roof.
[Top Up] - Put the hardtop roof up.
[Hints On] - Turn on driver hints. This will also turn on sim crossing notification if SimX sim crossing guard has been activated.
[Hints Off] - Turn off driver hints.

Eject Menu:
Select the name of the person you wish to eject from the vehicle. Only the owner is allowed to eject occupants.

Next Seat Menu:
Select the seat that the next person to sit in the vehicle will occupy. The back seat will accommodate up to 3 passengers.

Hydraulics Menu:
Configure the hydraulics system, raising and lowering the car. Select [Demo] mode for to demo the hydraulics for 30 seconds.

Rim Style Menu:
Put on new rims on your ride! 9 choices!
[Spinners…] - Accessorize your rims with spinners

Spinner Menu
Select a set of spinners to put on your wheels

Headlights Menu:
[On] - Turn on the headlights.
[Off] - Turn off the headlights.
[Beams On] - Turn on the headlight beams. These are only rendered when the vehicle is non-physical.
[Beams Off] - Turn on the headlight beams.
[Halogen] - Use halogen headlight beams.
[Xenon] - Use xenon headlight beams.

Colour Menu:
[Highlights….] - Highlights Menu
[Colour] - Set the body colour

Highlights Menu:
Adjust the tint level for the vehicle. Higher is more appropriate for daylight settings, lower is more appropriate for nighttime settings.

Neon:
Select the colour of neon used for the vehicle, or turn them off. This selection affects the underglow neon, underglow colour, and nitrous purge.

Notes:
——-
- For better handling in groundcar mode, turn the shadow off. (Or attach the ‘DoMoCo Shadow Accessories Attachment’)
Touch Menu -> Options -> Shadow
- For better handling in isolated island sims (sims without neighbors), turn the sim crossing guard enhancement off.
Touch Menu -> Options -> SimX Off
- To avoid the “falling though the ground”/rubberbanding effect when crossing sims, turn the sim crossing guard enhancement on.
Touch Menu -> Options -> SimX On

FAQ
—-
Q: How do I use the auto-update function?
A: You’re already using it. Every time you rez your Dominus Shadow, it will check for updates. It’s that easy.

Q: Why don’t my headlight beams/blower/spoiler/spinners show up when I’m driving / using hydraulics?
A: Attach the “DoMoCo Shadow Accessories Attachment”. You can find it in your “Dominus Shadow HUD” folder. This attachment normally attaches to your pelvis.

Q: When I cross sims in my Dominus Shadow, I look like I’m falling through the ground!
A: Try turning on the sim crossing enhancement. Touch Menu -> Options -> SimX On. This works by crossing sims non-physically.

Q: How do I know when the SimX sim crossing is being used to cross sims?
A: Turn Hints on. Touch Menu -> Option -> Hints On. This will give you the message,
“Simline detected, entering new sim…”
whenever the sim crossing system is being used to cross into a new sim.

Q: The Shadow leaves stuff behind when I delete it/take it into my inventory.
This is the expected behaviour.
The reason for this is because vehicles in SL can only be a maximum of 31 prims - desired number of passengers. In the case of the Dominus Shadow, that’d be 26 prims (5 passengers). This isn’t a whole lot to work with to make a nice looking vehicle
So we came up with a trick! Whenever you need extra prims, like suppose you wanted to stick a spoiler on the back, you’d just rez it as you need. So it looks like it’s part of the car, but it’s not actually attached.
In the case the doors being open - when you open the doors, the geometry of the car gets more complex. Basically, you need to cut a hole in the side of the car to represent where the doors would go to. Try as I might, I can’t do this inside 26 prims.
When you open a door, the Shadow will rez the doors and a subframe that represents the car visually, with the doors open. So this is all just to get around the 26 prim limit.
So when you delete the the Shadow, the doors/subframe might remain. However! They are smart enough to notice that you have deleted the car, and will self-derez so you’re not left with clutter.

Q: Why don’t you make more cars?
A: The design philosophy of the Dominus Motor Company is significantly different than most in Second Life. We would rather devote our energy to realizing a single vision to perfection, rather than bringing several mediocre projects to fruition. In this way, we can offer a more fulfilling and exclusive experience, and carry a quality that is our hallmark.

Q: I’m having trouble trying to invert the Dominus Shadow in groundcar mode. This happens when I’m driving a verticle loop like on a rollercoaster track, or on the inside of a gigantic sphere.
A: The Dominus Shadow is equipped with an advanced traction control system, so it is more stable over rough terrain. It tries very hard to make sure you never get inverted, so it’s fighting what you’re trying to push it to do. You can turn off the traction control system by saying outloud, “DOMINUS_SHADOW_DISABLE_TRACTION_CONTROL”. This will turn off the traction control system until the car is restarted.

Q: Sometimes after I cross into a sim, my camera gets stuck in a funny position.
A: This is a bug in Second Life. To correct, stand up, and sit back down

Q: The doors/blower/headlights/spoiler/spinners behave strangely above an altitude of 768m.
A: This is a limitation of LSL - llSetPos() has a maximum operational service ceiling of 768m.

Q: I shift-copied my vehicle/Recompiled all the scripts and now my Shadow doesn’t autoupdate anymore and I get these warning messages!
A: The scripts are constructed in a manner that does not allow script resetting/recompilation, as a security measure. Just rez a new Dominus Shadow from your inventory.

Q: When I got out of the vehicle, I got flung into the sky! What’s up with that?
A: That’s SL being stupid. Blame Havok. (Havok is the physics engine that powers Second Life)
To avoid this, you can right-click->Edit your car just before you get out. This will hold it in place to avoid confusing Havok.

Q: What are the collectible series?
A: The collectible series are a set of unscripted 1:5 scale model replicas of the Dominus Shadow. Every outfit in the Dominus PD collection from PixelDolls comes bundled with a randomly selected model. Trade them to collect them all !

Q: How can I race around at insane sim-crashing speeds?
A: We were mostly hoping you wouldn’t read the whole manual, but the owner can temporarily disable the speed governor by getting in the driver’s seat and saying “DOMINUS_SHADOW_DISABLE_SPEED_LIMITER”. Disabling the speed limiter is not recommended. Higher gears are risky because it is uncontrolably fast.

Q: What tricks do you use to do feature XYZ?
A: We don’t use any tricks. There’s no easy button. The Dominus Shadow was created using equal parts determination and hard work.

Q: I want a Shadow with custom graphics and textures!
A: We are in process of setting up a custom shop. Contact Khanaar Ingmann for further details.

Q: Why “Dominus Motor Company”?
A: There are several reasons.
“Dominus” is Latin for “Lord”, which reflects our aggressive values. It is part of the design philosophy for our projects, to grant our creations to be “Lord of the Machines”.
Visually, “Dominus Motor Company” is balanced, left to right.
We are also partial to the abbreviation “DoMoCo”, which roughly translates in Japanese to “Thank-you Corporation”

Q: Why 2368?
A: This was the MSRP of the original pony car in 1964. It just seemed appropriate.

Credits:
——–
Francis Chung: Lead Developer

The Dominus Shadow was made possible through the contributions of the following people:
Rickard Roentgen: modeling, scripting, texturing, animation help
Kris Ritter: sound help
Neil Protagonist: effects help
Chage McCoy: technical help
Candy Peart: testdriving help
Spider Mandala: customs shop help
Khanaar Ingman: custom shop help

And thank-you to all the beta testers, too many to name here

Changelog:
————
v1.0.99k
- Initial Release

v.1.1.14g
- New code for handling sim transitions (SimX Sim Crossing Guard Enhancement)
- Added cruise cruise control
- Allow groundshadow to be toggled while car is physical
- Fixed bug where hover-jets would turn off in VTOL mode if the driver stands
- Fixed bug where drivers wearing animation overriders might play the wrong animation after transitioning to and from mouselook mode.
- Smoother handling at high speed in VTOL mode
- Driver’s arms now move when they’re chatting/typing
- Smoother mouselook control
- Realigned hood prim
- Reengineered animation system to reflect the new SL1.9 animation semantics

v.1.1.14h
- Patch to fix permissions change between SLv1.9 and 1.9 preview (new flaw introduced by 1.9.0(15))

v.1.1.15d
- Patch that fixes extra error message, introduced by a new flaw in how permissions are implemented in Second Life 1.9.0 (18), that fixes a flaw introduced in Second Life 1.9.0(15).
- Work-around to avoid playing extra convert-to-groundcar anim due to LSL bug, when a vehicle temporarily loses physical status when someone unsits themselves
- Groundshadow now rotates on the Z-axis with the vehicle, in VTOL mode. This makes it easier to handle in confined spaces.
- Aggregated easter egg controller into UI script

v.2.0.39f Beta
- Added sensor() events to try to detect when llAvatarOnSitTarget() is lying
- Realligned backseat/trunk top prim
- Textured top of trunk jets
- New hydraulics mode - can lower the suspension
- Fixed bug where jet particles wouldn’t play while drifting and converting to hovercar at the same time
- Added ability to remove speed limiter
- Front grill texture now does lights on/off/halogen/xenon
- Redone Rear-panel
- Retextured lights + added hi/low beam options
- Windows made shiny in case GL shaders are ever reimplimented in Second Life
- Working doors (Normal/Scissor/Suicide modes)
- Redid lights to use SL 1.10’s hardware lighting
- Added ability to disable the speed limiter for extreme speed boosts
- Reworked hood & headlights plumbing for better interactivity
- Added sounds to hood
- Retextured headlights, added high-beam option
- Cleaned up menus
- Added Blower
- New easter egg
- Added ability to leave jets up after getting out of the car
- Optimized internal communications
- Added Spoiler
- Fixed bug where next seat menu would pop up while selecting “back” from the headlight/eject menu.
- Added ability to turn off traction control
- Added colour changer
- Over 100 new textures
- Driver hints are automatically supressed when switching to VTOL mode to recover physics
- Rezzed car a bit higher off the ground to make sure Havok realizes we’re not interpenetrating the ground
- Added Spinners
- Added new tinting/highlight option, “Dark”
- Realligned hood prim to compensate for a new bug in the rendering engine for torus prims introduced in SL1.10.2
- HUD now updates faster in faster sims - it also defaults to llGetVel() before simcrossings for more accurate measurements.
- New attachment option, so spoiler/spinners/headlights/blower can be rezzed while in motion
- Added new easy hover handling mode
- Workaround for LSL bug - new passengers would unset the camera for all passengers
- Now defaults to easier settings for new owners, instead of keeping last owner’s settings
- Communication between HUD and car changed from llSay() to llShout() to compensate for when Havok does dumb things.
- Strafing in hovermode now follows a flatter trajectory

v.2.0.42f
- Fixed typo in options menu
- Windowsills now colour the same as the body
- Realligned door open shape
- Updated the manual
- New underbody texture
- Optimized HUD
- Fixed bug introduced by SL1.11 that duplicates sensor() events
- Removed potentional divide by zero error if llGetTime() returns 0 in HUD (Should never occur)
- Realligned hood prim to compensate for a rendering patch in SL1.11.1(1) that fixes a bug in the rendering engine for torus prims introduced in SL1.10.2
- Some menu buttons shortened because of a bug introduced in SL1.10 where llDialog buttons were truncated earlier
- Tightened up steering when in hovermode, using mouselook with easy hover settings
- New tread textures
- New hood animation
- Improved steering animation
- New engine textures
- Realligned door prims to reduce z-flicker from rendering bug introduced in SL1.12.2