Questions about flexible prims

Oh. My. God. So cool! Inspired me to build when I haven't in a while. Too bad my skills are lacking. XD

Anyway, had a few questions. First of all, why are only certain types of prims available as flexible? As a furry av builder, this causes some annoyance in trying to do tails. Also, along those lines, any plans of having a set of linked prims all following the same path? I tried to make a linked object flexible but it doesn't seem to work well... had to do it prim by prim and, well, it separated itself.

Any chance of somebody writing up a tutorial on these things to explain what they can and can't do?

OMG LYRAK!!! You're just in luck. Yeah we have a flexiprims (as they're quickly becoming coloquially known) guide! It's right here:

The Way of the Flexible Path
/16/1a/100115/1.html

and ummm more tutorials in References & Policies section!

/16/1.html

Wewt.

Now as for why it's just some prim types (box, cylinder, prism) and your other question, let me ask Yedwab Linden, who worked magic on these flexiprims...

Thanks for asking, Lyrak.

The reason that only certain prims can be made flexible has to do with the way they become flexible - they can move freely along their "path", which in the case of cylinders, cubes, and prims is a line, but in the case of tori or spheres is a circle. Since a flexible object is only fixed at one end, it cannot close into a torus or a circle, the ends would fall apart immediately into what is essentially a flexible cylinder or cube.

As to your second question, flexible prims can be linked but they are all linked to the rigid center, not to each other, since parent/child relationships are not yet supported. I suppose being able to make a bunch of selected objects flexible at once is a simple UI feature to add. In short, there is a lot of room for improvement for flexible objects in the future.

Hope that helps, and enjoy the flexibility.