Flex. Prim Questions

I've read the preview, looked through other threads such as the feedback threads and such as well. I can't find answers to a couple questions about the flexible prims - if someone can either link Me to a page or answer these I'd really appreciate it. I did look for My answers, but I must be missing them, and most of the stuff that I did find was more on the lighting changes. I'm at work right now so I can't just jump into the preview section to test stuff either, unfortunately.

1) Are there new script codes to alter prim movement? I can see how you can select "wind" to have a prim affected by the wind in SL but what if I want to put a flag on a house but the direction of the wind doesn't make it look right - can I force it to go in one particular direction, and force it to bend in more specific ways? I'd really like to see a list of codes and paramaters if there is one.

2) I read that the lag increased by flex. prims is going to be the same (or similar to) particle affects on the client side only. Since I think it's obvious that this feature is going to be used heavily from now on, isn't that going to crush client-side delays? I have a really nice PC setup, but in a big room full of people, particle effects can sometimes take a while to load and I'm just looking at grey boxes all over the place. That brings up another part to this question - with a flexible prim, does it have to load like a particle affect (and thus you see grey boxes or whatever) or is it client-side physics and may just look "slow" the first time the movement loads?

I see a ton of potential for this, as I'm sure most people do. Bendable prim dresses so that women sit down their legs aren't sticking through the front of the dress, for example.

Again if I've missed a thread or threads that answer these questions, please point Me that way, I just maybe don't know where to look.

Thanks!

-Drake

actually one other small question related to the test area - is your friends/chat still in tact, meaning can you talk to people not in the test area - is it still lined up with the regular chat servers?

Thanks again!

-Drake

You use llSetPrimitiveParams() and llGetPrimitiveParams().

[PRIM_FLEXIBLE, BOOL Enabled, Integer Softness, Float Gravity, Float Friction, Float Wind, Float Tension, Vector Force]
No, it's significantly less than particles. "flexible prims" are handled in the background, and if your client has no CPU time to spare it'll just stop flexing them as often. I *wish* particles had the same restriction.
It's client-side like particles, but there's no texture loading associated with it. You would see a grey object if the flexible object's texture was slow loading, but that's got nothing to do with whether it's flexinble or not. The PRIM_FLEXIBLE attribute list is (as you see) short, so it loads (and the object starts flexing) pretty much immediately.
Nope, since flexible objects are phantom and non-physical, the "legs sticking through the dress" problem is even more severe.

I've made some smashing arm-tentacles though.

Argent - thank you for your answers.

Unfortunately when I got home after work last night to try stuff out, I found out about a truck hitting a pole near My house and internet was down - still is apparently. Ahh well, such is life.

Thanks again!

-Drake

Woo, tentacles!

Not totally true, flexprims can be linked to physical objects, but have peculiar behaviours when mixed with physics. Combining the two tends to send objects flying off-world, in fact.

Well... yeh, but you're too close to the trees. Remember, we're talking about an attachment, and attachments are always phantom and don't collide with the rest of the avatar... so that wouldn't help someone making a skirt anyway.