"When I first saw a FireBlade I was as overwhelmed as everybody is when they first see one. Reading about them is impressive but seeing one face to face is a whole new experience. Ours was the 285th one to roll out of the factory, which makes about a forty of them each year. They are legendary for tackling rough ground, but even there 285 surprised me. I was not surprised that we were able to go over the rocks, but I was surprised at the incredibly smooth ride, even driving over boulders bigger than a family car. The intelligent ride system uses powered active suspension and a ground penetrating radar to assess the terrain, and it keeps the jolts away from the crew almost completely. If you're travelling over slopes it will tilt, but bumps barely affect the cabin at all. The suspension has over two metres of vertical travel and it can move pretty quickly." "A FireBlade is not fast but they are mighty. 285 has a small but well equipped laboratory and can support a crew of seven for about six months without resupply on a world with a breathable atmosphere, or one month if you need to carry air. We carry a solar panel array that can be set up by two people in less than an hour, and that can charge the batteries in a day or so on most worlds. We can drive five hundred kilometres on a full charge. There is an option to add more batteries but Daniel, the owner, says he doesn't like the extra weight." "I love this thing. I just hope we find that boron that's supposed to be here; the sale of the mining rights will set us up for life. I might even buy myself a FireBlade instead of a house!" I used Michael 4, the suit is from Xurge3D with a modified texture map. The sky is adapted from a NASA star map from the Scientific Visualisation Studio that I modified to suit the Terradome 2 sky dome. Other assets from Renderosity are linked below. I added spotlights with the FireBlade lights as parents and the modest volumetric effects were done in Photoshop CS3. One more prop to complete and this thing will done. I should get that prop out of Blender and into Poser today (Tuesday) or tomorrow. Once my beta testers clear it I will submit this beast to the marketplace. Best viewed at full size.