Rezzing a flashlight beam

I have a physical linkset and I want it to create a light beam on demand. My first thought was to link a small phantom cone to the linkset and change its size and light properties when the light should go on. But the wiki says that linking a phantom prim to a physical object causes all prims to become phantom, which I don't want to happen.

Any suggestions on how to create a iight beam that will be attached to the linkset without losing any of the physical properties? If I make the cone physical, I'm afraid it will unbalance the existing object.

Apologies if this should have gone to the building forum, but I'm thinking it may be a scripting challenge.

If your physical object is stationary, you could make the light cone a particle effect. It could look pretty cool. That's not a good solution if you're talking about, say, headlights on a car, because a moving vehicle will overtake the particle stream or make it look all wonky as you turn. Under the right circumstances, though, particles might work on SOME mobile physical objects.

Thanks, but yes, it's more like headlights on a car. Doesn't sound promising, does it?

Make the cone Flexie and make it stiff. A very slight flex might make an interesting effect.

You could make the whole thing phantom, and use another non-linked no-phantom object buried just inside the part that shouldn't be phantom. Because it won't be visible, it won't matter that it won't move exactly in sync with the model proper, but it should cause the same collisions etc.

Wow, this works great. Just thought I'd let folks know for posterity. Great suggestion.

Another option is a particle effect coupled with an invisible prim that becomes a point light when the particle effects are activated for the light to turn "on".