A good tip for smooth walking on stairways

I have no idea why it works, but I was just passed a useful tip for making your avatar walk smoothly up and down straight and spiral stairs, which is used by the great Bill Stirling on his fabulous Galaxy Cruise Ship. I tried it out, and yes! I can recommend it!

Add a thin prim to run over the stairs (sculpty or ramped), and then make it full transparent. Voila! Smooth elegant walking not stumbling fumbling runs! Hurrah!

Best wishes from Ainee Kohime

The reason it works is the difference in shape.

With the 'block stairs', you are hitting the edge, stopping very briefly (Or slowing way down), and then 'hopping' up the little ledge, and repeating. With a ramp, it's one smooth plane, with no edges to run into, so it's a much smoother walk.

Well, thank you, I agree about the 'block' issue, but I remain baffled why a transparent prim should so effectively smooth movement on a ramp which is spiral (or in my case, helical) stairs: is it something to do with the interaction of our complex shoes with the surface?

Anyway, I hope you will all try it, for the benefit and grace of all our avatars? lol!

Btw, Happy Birthday to me, 47 today and loving every minute of it!

Best wishes from Ainee

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

And anywho, transparent prims are still just as interactable as not. The 'phantom' parameter makes them not do anything but look like whatever they look like. Then you can't touch them at all, walk through them, etc.

Them being transparent just makes it so it looks like stairs, but acts a lot nicer. It's how all sculpty stairs are done, since they aren't geometrically shaped how they look.

I put up an invisible prim wall just so I don't fall off my dock into the water. Works great.