Kantbe Serious: FrankenBreak

submitted by Kantbe Thursday

Ever wonder how much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood? Yeah, me neither. Ever wonder how many waves you could load up on a Homestead sim and still have a crazy fun surfing experience? Yeah, me neither. But I've found one!

Our Rock N' Roll ukulele surfer, Nash Laville and Luscious Starship have put together a surf'n spot that had, at the time of this writing, 12, count 'em, 12 waves of various types running. They've got one wave after another rezzing with about a minute between each wave generation. You don't have to spend much time at a buoy waiting on a wave for sure!

I thought that surely this would be a killer to sim performance, so I asked Luscious Starship about it. She promptly replied, "Don't call me Shirley!" She went on to say that the sim stats have looked pretty solid with FPS staying mostly around 44.5 and almost never dipping below 42, with Time Dilation staying around .995 with dips down to around .96 when the wave first rezzes. Nash, of course, has had to be careful about running scripts and prims, but the atmosphere of the surrounding beach hasn't suffered. Nash has had to give up wearing a prim or two… mostly his hula skirt, I think. One of the biggest problems with running this many waves Luscious said is Inventory management…. boy can I relate!

VW Sands and Lissa Pinion dropped by to take a look. I don't have permission to quote VW, so I can't tell you that he said things like, "Its......farkin off the charts", or came up with the name FrankenBreak.

When I was there, some of the waves running were a Maverick, a Sunset, the Cortes X2, the LDS waves named after surfers such as Kimmy Jigsaw fluffs, Colleen, Nash, Mick, along with the Phatty (Starship Giant), Crying Tiger, and Shipstern's Bluff. The Nash has to run last in the series because, as Luscious put it, "the Nash clobbers everything. If there's a wave in the way, the Nash takes it out."

There was some discussion of a new namesake wave, who's name would be taken in vain will remain anonymous (can you have an anonymous namesake wave?). If it does ever sees the light of day, it might be called the Smart-As*. When it rezzes, it would rise up, turn around, moon the beach, and then drop back into the sea. Shall we take a poll for who's wave that would be?

Many hours were spent setting up and testing various configurations. Many surfers suffered - boards had to be retired. But the end result seems to be worth it.

If you've not been there yet, pop over to Zug and check it out. It's a hoot!

Photos courtesy of Nash Laville and Kantbe Thursday. Boards sacrificed by surfers unknown.

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