Weird vehicle question...

That is it's a question about a weird vehicle... Or I guess it's also a weird question about vehicles. Let's just say it's darn weird

I'm not even remotely certain how to do this much less whether it's possible. Here's the low down. Someone asked me if it would be possible to build "real" gears - that is a set of gears where one would turn and by meshing with the gear next to it, cause it to turn on down the line.

Building a gear is easy enough and my thought was that if gear number one as a vehicle, and the subsequent gears were all physical, that I might be able to make it work.

The trouble is that when I'm working on vehicles I'm usually trying to make them... You know, move not spin in place

Ignoring the challenge of getting the other gears to work, is it possible to script a vehicle which will simply rotate on a single axis but not move linearly? Umm, and if so how

Thanks a ton!

I have a gear set I built that does exactly that... The problem is, the phys engine is EXTREMELY unstable in this matter and the assembly often explodes. Plus, once any one gear is selected, it gets halted and depending on the pressure that's on it by the driven gear, it could lead to another explosion. (>_<

So.. In considering to add something like this to a vehicle, I suggest not. The limited prim count aside, the gaps and instability of H4 are enough to say it's not worth the detail. (=_=)y

Oh it won't be in a vehicle, it will be more of a moving statue. I've got a gear statue I use at some of my shops and I just use llSetOmega in each gear and rely upon no one looking closely enough to see that everything is turning independently but more or less at the proper speed and in the proper direction.

What I was asked was a way to make a set of gears that act like real physical gears and the only thing that came to my mind was to make the drive gear a vehicle itself, and have it simply rotate around it's Y or Z axis without actually moving along any axis.

Hmmm, not a whole lot clearer is it

How about this, is there a way to make a vehicle which does nothing but rotate on a single axis?

Probably. Tyring using the angular motor but not the linear motor. Or maybe set the linear motor to actively keep the vehicle still.

Talk to Ms Nakamora in Caledon She is an expert at this sort of thing, She has a group called virtual mechanics you may wish to join as well.

Cheewha

I actually tried making a gearbox meshing 10x10x1 and got plenty of explosions, I actually trued putting an axle through the hole of the gears, and best I could get was making the drive gear non-physical and the other one driven by it.
Also a physical gear with a rotate script can travel a couple of sims before being returned.

Ah, okay, that's exactly how my gearset works... But, it reacts to interference very poorly. You can almost watch it react to someone teleporting in. And, explosions are frequent. (>_<

Hee, explosions might be fun.

I did play with a null vector for the linear motor but it almost seems as it the angular motor won't engage unless the linear motor is in use as well. As I typr this it occurs to me that perhaps a tiny amount of linear damped over a very great time might work.

I'll check with Miss Nakamora and see if she has any suggestions.

Thanks for all the help, I'll keep plugging away.

Oh. Hmm. Make SURE you are NOT using banking. I believe that will look something like:

[ ...
VEHICLE_VERTICAL_ATTRACTION_TIMESCALE, 99999.0,
VEHICLE_VERTICAL_ATTRACTION_EFFICIENCY, 0.0,
VEHICLE_BANKING_EFFICIENCY, 0.0,
VEHICLE_BANKING_MIX, 0.0,
VEHICLE_BANKING_TIMESCALE, 99999.0,
... ]