[sldev] Coming down to the ground

Kelly Linden kelly at lindenlab.com
Wed Oct 17 14:07:55 PDT 2007


Boroondas Gupte wrote:
> How is the (obviously non-physical but also non-phantom and sometimes
> continent-spanning) ground handled by the physics engine?
>
> Is there any reason why huge non-physical non-phantom prims  (not
> necessarily the current Megaprims) can't be treater the same (or
> similar) way?
>
> Boroondas
> _______________________________________________
>   
'static' objects in SL are actually key framed in the physics engine,
which sort of means 'static but may move or change shape'.  The ground
is actually static in the physics engine.  Static objects don't effect
simulation islands but there is a non-trivial cost for changing their
shape, position, rotation etc and for moving them between static and
non-static groups.  This cost has not been thoroughly investigated yet.

Also nothing in the physics engine spans more than 1 region.  The ground
spans exactly 1 region (including about 5m overlap into neighboring
regions).  Objects (including avatars) that cross region boundaries or
teleport are moving from one physics simulation to another separate
simulation.

 - Kelly


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