Slippery Physical Objects

[Leggg]

Hi. So I'm missing something. Or a lot of things. I put a table into SL, and it seemed like a good idea to check Physical in the Edit options so it would find the ground on its own. But if I walk into it, it takes off as if it's on ice and weighs half a pound. Where do I tweak that stuff? Or is the common practice to leave Physical unchecked for a table (and maybe check it once in a while when I wanna take my table for a ride down a snowy hill :P)?

[ChinRey]

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Leggg wrote:

Or is the common practice to leave Physical unchecked for a table.

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It is common and very sound practice to leave physical unchecked for any object you want to stay in one place - and most moving objects too for that matter. The physical option should only be used on some very rare special occasions.

You can sometimes use physical to make objects drop into place but if you do, uncheck it as soon as it's done. And check if it actually got into place too. Depending on the surface, it may well be quite a bit off.

[Drongle McMahon]

"Or is the common practice to leave Physical unchecked"

Yes. It still works for collisions without being made physical. You only need it to be physical if you want it to respond to pushing, gravity etc. In that case, you can adjust various parameters in the edit dialog. Bear in mind also that making things physical places a large burden on the physics engine in the region server, contributing to lag. So it should be done only where necessary for the function of the object (such as sliding down a hill). If you want, you can set your table to physical to find its position, but that's not as good as doing it by eye, as there's usually a small offset between physical objects. If there wasn't, they would be continually agitated. If you make objects physical that can't maintain that separation, you can get very destructive effects.

[Leggg]

Okay, awesome. Thanks.