[sldev] Physical Object Prim Limitation

[Thordain Curtis]

As anyone who's tried to develop a vehicle well knows, the 32 prim limit (31
prim if you're planning on letting somebody sit on it) limitation for
physical objects can be a bit of an irritation.  The limit is hit pretty
quickly when trying to create anything that actually looks compelling and
realistic.  Vehicles supporting more than one passenger are left w/ an even
smaller prim limit.  Add in particle emitters for special effects and you
run out of prims _really_ fast.

The 32 prim limit is a good thing, IMHO.  Nobody wants physical objects
floating around their sim composed of 256 cut tori colliding with things all
the time (Well, I can't think of anyone who would want that, anyways).  The
limit is an effective limitation on how much havok (pun intended) a single
object can inflict upon a simulator.  That still leaves people trying to
create compelling physical content in an undesirable position.

An interesting solution would be to allow all linksets to become physical,
but only use the first 32 prims as the actual collision model.  The designer
will generally be able to flesh out the basic shape of the object in 32
prims or less....everything else is usually just decoration.  Add in a
function like llSetObjectCollisionPrimCount() and physical objects could
have even _less_ impact on a sim when designed properly.  A car, for
instance, could use the 4 wheels plus an arbitrary (invisible) box for the
collision model, bringing the objects physical complexity down to a mere 5
prims.  The designer now has up to 251 prims (depending on the amount of
desired passengers) to add detail to their vehicle, and the simulator is
even happier than it was before with a 32 prim car.

This solution is also backwards compatible with all existsing physical link
sets, and would require zero scripting changes.  Designers who wished to
make their vehicles more collision "friendly" could do so, but all existing
content should continue to work unmodified.

Anybody have any thoughts on this?
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