Physics questions related to motorcycles...

Hey all,

This is the deal. I ride harleys in 1st life. I got to SL a week ago and couldn't believe I could buy or build motorcyles on here. Should have seen my face (1st life and SL)

So naturally I'm excited about starting a bike project. And I have.

Upon joining SL I was given a motorcycle by a very nice SL resident, and have also purchased one. They were both fun models to move about in, but they were lacking a realism that I want in a model. (ie- objects were created and given textures w/transparancy to create the illusion of its structure and parts).

So I started building my own as a 1st life bike builder would. (For those of you familiar with motorcycles you won't have a problem following terms in this, if you're not - I hope you'll catch my drift at the end of this anyway)

I started with the swingarm (softail model) and continued from there. Backbone, downtube, etc etc. Added triple trees and forks (massive rake on this thing, lol). Then went on to add things like the seat, gas tank, tires, forward control assembly, etc etc.

The swingarm and frame, triple trees and forks were all made with tubes (cylinders). It involved using a lot of them. Too many, I soon found out.

I couldn't click the physics option. Excessive prims.

I assume that the physics option, when it says creates gravity effects, etc, is something a motorcycle in SL would absolutely need? Or can effects like keeping the bike running on the ground, and not launching into the atmosphere when hitting a bump in the road, be done with LSL?

I don't want to sacrifice the realism of the frame assembly and other parts, by just replacing them with texture illusions. Am I out of luck here? Will this bike, when it gets a script, be acting like a hovercraft without the physics option? Instead of cruising along roads, hills, etc with realistic gravitational limitations?

I know I could cut back on a few of the extra prims - ie, maybe make the frame rigid, and remove 6 or so prims from the swingarm assemly alone. But I still have so much more to add to the bike: V twin motor with rocker boxes (prims here, no illusions), headlight, brakes and brake lights, hand controls, etc etc. You get the idea - there are a lot of parts - even if this thing is a chopper and I leave out things like fenders, front brakes, headlight, etc.

I've got a very basic bike right now and am still over the limit, but realize with *all* the accurate parts this thing will be huge in number of prims used.

Will not being able to select physics mess up the realism of this monster when I go to ride it? Or will LSL be able to add the realism I'm looking for when I'm finished building?

I really don't want this project to turn into a large decorative item. I want it to be functional.

Any help, ideas, advice?

Sorry for the long post.

Omen

Yeah, you definetly need physics. In a while, SL will upgrade to Havok2, which is the best physics engine in the world. This'll allow you to use many, many more prims.

In the meantime, textures are probably your best bet, unless you just cut it down a bit.

Hint: use the twist feature on cylenders. This sometimes helps 'em look like more than one

I don't remember if the 31 prim limit applies to ground vehicles or just flying vehicles, which might also be a factor.

Hey,

Yeah I've experimented with twist. Only problem is, I'm not trying to gain a visual effect of more pipes or anything. If I could effectively bend shapes then this wouldn't be much of a problem. As a motorcycle frame in SL could probably be made up of just a few well bent cylinders. Owell. Looking foward to this new 'engine' then.

Although...is there any way to trick SL here. For example: could I set both tires to have 'physics' before I group them with the other prims which wouldn't have physics set?

Maybe I'll give that a try.

Thanks for the replies.

Omen

No. The link-technique physics trick was removed with 1.3 (Though you can find some old legacy vehicles with 100+ prims that still work, you cant make any new ones). The 31-prim limit is now pretty hard to get around.

You can't effectivly fudge physics with LSL. It was tried. Even with the best scripting its pretty bad.

Regarding Havok 2, no indication yet of any firm number the prim limit will be raised to, *if at all*. Last i heard, the official line was "It would be nice, and we probably will be able to raise it some, but maybe not right away, and maybe not at all, and probably not by a ton even if we do."

That said. When the servers come up, contact me in game. I have something to show you regarding this.

is there a way to have only some basic invisible block who do the physic and the rest would be turned as phantom it could save a lot of processing power if we were able to hava less than 10 physic prims for a 80 prims object

An an object can only be phantom or not-phantom, it cant have parts phantom and parts not phantom.

If you were so inclined, you might be able to take a page from the Float-makers handbook and attach some of the motorcycle structure to you. It would take a lot of work to get right, but might help you if you're absolutely devoted to getting your motorcycle working.