SurfWatch Asks: Results of Board Scripts Survey

To allow or not allow surf board scripts other than SSi's has been an on-going debate for some time now. Waves from other developers such as HP and Lusc have long been accepted in official SLSA competitions but the board scripts have always been SSi created. Earlier this week, SurfWatch asked for your opinion on whether the SLSA should allow board scripts other than the SSi scripts into the surf competitions as is done with wave scripts. Ten of you responded and here are the results. Thank you for your participation and stay tuned for all the latest!


Question 1: Would you be in favor of the SLSA allowing other board scripts in surf comps? 
60% answered Yes
40% answered No


Question 2:  Would you be in favor of allowing multiple board scripts in the same surf comp? (ie: SSI, HP, Lusc, Action) 
20% answered No
80% answered Yes


Additional Comment Section: We left a section so those who responded could expand on their opinion. They are below.

As of 2011 ...just havent seen enough to justify metasurfin comps in SLSA. What we have is the best. Others are fun and alternatives, yet not strong enough to justify this proposed change

I think it's more realistic to allow multiple board scripts because just like in RL you should be able to choose the board you surf on! The trick will be training judges to be able to fairly compare technique between boards. Style wise, and length of wave ridden components of judging though would be exactly the same. Also given the amount of time you can spend on a single wave, technique and tricks will probably come out pretty fair as well since to maintain style a surfer will probably still be limited by time as far as how many tricks / techniques they can perform while the wave is on the water. Plus things like turning at the edge of the wave seem to be equally difficult on any board.

It's hard enough already for judges, especially when it comes to estimating technical difficulty of a trick or tricks. Mixing boards up would then have effect of making it a style contest. As far as SSI scripts go, the 5.2dlg script kinda became an accepted script by default. SLSA had been awaiting the new script, rumor was that it was going to be 5.3 script or something like that. SSI quietly released the dlg script without any fanfare. People started competing on them unaware. I believe performance wise, except for being adjustable, the 6.4 script persorms much like 5.2dlg script does. The main difference being that settings are adjustable and the animations are different. So I think it is possible that the 6.4 script could be legal with some limitations. There have been a few comps were boards were mixed, I really don't know how the judges score the surfer and not the board in such cases.

I only support the use of multiple board scripts if it's reasonable to expect the judges to be able to distinguish the relative skill of surfers regardless of board script.

here's the thing. The SLSA afterall IS about having its champion, too. And while in RL a good surfer can surf anything, in SL it doesn't work this way. Surfing another board is like playing another game. If it was all about the style, I'd say it doesn't matter what you surf as long as you got it. But it's not only about the style. It is also about tricks and MOST of all about difficulty.

Why NOT allow other boards? How would the judging work with multiple board scripts in one comp? 

 Pic courtesy of: http://www.geekphilosopher.com

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