Space Station Questions

Hello!
Here's what I want:
I building a space station and I want it to rotate on a Z axis, but the TargetOmega function with NO-PHYSICAL ON only makes it LOOK like its rotating, but I need it to be REAL so I need to make it physical.
But if I make it physical, the station will fall... what can I do to keep it up in the air and still rotate in the Z axis?

Thanks in advance.

Try setting the buoyancy to 1... llSetBuoyancy(1.0);

http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llSetBuoyancy

I'm not sure. According to that page, bouyancy will also consume energy. I think for a large object like this, the only option MAY be vehicle functions, which I believe aren't subject to energy and don't change performance based on object (vehicle) mass.

That or non-physical movement (as in llSetRot(), not llTargetOmega() ), but the latter probably won't be very nice if you actually expect avatars to interact with the station.

you could use llSetPos() and have it check its location every .1 second but all depending what your are acculy doing with it, it may couse the vehicle to glitch avatars threw the floor

Enclose your station in a large hollow sphere. and paint stars on the inside, then rotate the sphere.

Makes it a lot easier to rotate space, than to rotate the station.. besides it would be a complete pain in the rear to be inside a MOVING space station! (try standing up in a car sometime while a friend drives slowly.. it's not pretty.

That's a clever, scenario idea.
Any more ideas on this?

Think it depends what "need it to be REAL" means. If the avatars in the space station need to "feel" it rotating--affecting, for example, projectiles fired within the space station--then slave scripts with llSetRot() would be needed. (The multiple slave scripts would be to get relatively smooth motion; llSetRot() has a 0.2sec built-in delay, so just calling it in a loop from a single script will look pretty jerky.) But I'm not sure in which senses the rotation should be "felt", and the rotating phantom hollow mega-prim outer sphere idea would be way less laggy, llTargetOmega being purely client-side. And also, having the space station be stationery has the huge advantage of not needing everything in it to be linked to the same set of prims (or the gruesome alternative of trying to rotate multiple linksets simultaneously about a single axis).

In theory, one could rotate the texture of the sphere instead of the sphere itself, but I'm not sure whether that makes much difference, since both llSetTextureAnim and non-physical llTargetOmega just set client-side prim properties. Either way, unless my mental geometry is wrong, I think the illusion will be less compelling looking vertically toward the sphere's poles than horizontally toward the equator, and that effect should be a function of the rotational speed and how far from the axis of rotation the cam is located.

Space stations rotate so as to get simulated gravity, so you really want not only a rotating space station, but for avatars to stand on surfaces which are not horizontal. I think this might be possible with a lot of work and ugly hacks, but it would be very hard to do. Winter's idea of rotating the outside space rather than the station seems like a good compromise. Just grab a 256m megaprim, phantom and hollow it, and presumably just giving it a standard llTargetOmega script should work.

forget it, anything that stresses the physics engine in such a way leads to major problems with the sim, if it doenst crash it to begin with.

Not sure to which approach this is referring. The llSetRot approach will of course use sim resources, but it would take a mighty elaborate spinning linkset to crash a sim. And a non-physical phantom megaprim doing llTargetOmega on the client is utterly transparent to Havoc.

(I'm not crazy about the suggested 256m diameter, though--unless we're sure all the space travelers have pretty deep drawing distances.)

the main problem with a rotating station, is that anyone INSIDE the station will always appear to be walking, even when standing still. Likewise, you will never be able to rez furniture, because the furniture won't stay with the station.

I think there might be some improvement to the avatar walking on a moving prim problem coming in Havok 4. Furniture would have to be linked to the station though.

Well, we will have plenty "faked" sit spots so you can stand in the station.
Thanks for the support guys.