Monarch Butterfly

Receive a 10% Discount if Purchased in Store (Just join the "Avatars Who Surf Megaprims" Group and then click the Vendor located in the store)

– These butterflies flutter around and follow the unpredictable wind.
– Yes, SL has wind and now you can watch it blow these butterflies about.
– Also obeys simple chat commands: fly in fixed directions or in circles.
– Will attack or follow an avatar on command.
– Beautiful textures from a photographic source.
– Each butterfly is a single prim, non-physical, phantom, scripted.
– If rezzed on your parcel, they will stay inside the borders.
– If rezzed elsewhere they will fly wherever the wind blows them and try to stay out of ban zones.
– Yes COPY! So you can rez dozens of them for one low price and watch them flutter around together.

These butterflies fly back and forth on your parcel depending on the local wind. The wind in SL uses a cool, interesting, complex, fluid dynamics simulation. See http://www.multires.caltech.edu/teaching/demos/java/stablefluids.htm for a visual demonstration of how this works and some references. This causes the wind to swirl around in ways that are impossible for us mere mortals to predict. The result is complex behavior in something as simple as a butterfly!
When the wind is uninteresting you can command the butterflies to travel as if the wind is blowing from any direction, or order them to fly in circles. They will follow or attack an avatar by name.

To see more products that use the wind, come see my Wind Wonders Store, Panthalassa (129, 118, 49)

Keeping Butterflies in Their Place:
When you rez these butterflies on your own property they will stay within the boundaries, bobbing up and down on the edges and corners until the wind blows them back. To rez them on property that is not yours, the owner of that property must have given you permission to create objects, to run scripts and sometimes permission for objects to enter. This is usually true on sandboxes, for example. If you belong to a group, such as a property owners association, you may have the right permissions only when you have that group active and displayed above your name. If you find someplace not on your parcel where you can rez a butterfly and it starts moving, it goes into an intelligent roaming algorithm to try and find the boundaries of this brave new world. It may be able to roam across several parcels and back. Sometimes a butterfly will get into trouble, sending back error messages , getting deleted for overstaying its welcome or going places it should not. This is to be expected when not on your own property.

Reducing Lag:
Creating too many butterflies, or too many prims in general, will increase lag. Each of these butterflies is a single prim and doesn't use a lot of server resources. The scripts were written in a way to minimize the burden on the severs as well, checking the wind infrequently. However, when attacking or following, even if the victim is not around, butterflies use more server resources to "sensor" scan for the victim. If you experience lag issues, try disabling this feature with the stop command. If you still have problems with lag, try deleting some of the butterflies and see if things improve.