Cancelling gravity, naive physics question

My understanding based on the wiki http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=mass is that SL gravity is <0,0,-9.8> m/s2. Therefore, I perhaps naively assumed that I could cancel gravity and have a floating, stationary physical object by using this:

float mass = llGetMass();
llSetForce(mass * (<0,0,9.8>), FALSE);

It kinda works, but the object slowly falls down to earth. However, increasing the Z component of the vector simply makes it rise. Could someone explain if it is possible to have a floating, stationary object?

look at llSetBuoyancy(); You can modify the constant force on an object this way.

yep llsetbuoyance work to. even as an attachment to your avatar will make your avatar 'inherit' it.

as for stationary you could have it move to the same location over and over. but then it's likely to go back and forth like a pendulum.

llSetBuoyancy works just great, thanks very much Shadow and Scott.

I remember from "huge prim" discussions, that gravity in SL is not fixed, but depends on the objects around you... I recall that in theory you could reverse gravity in a region thru using enough huge prims (possibly they need to be physical)... I know it's not any help and you've already fixed it, but it maybe explains why your initial idea which should work, didn't.