Curiously Consistent

Scripters are very accustomed to differences between the way things appear in the viewer and the way they're represented sim-side. For example, the common non-physical "smooth rotation" effect, generated by the llTargetOmega LSL function, only happens viewer-side; the simulator only knows the spinning object has the property but it doesn't keep track of how far the object has spun.

A very active senior contributor to the Scripting forum, Rolig Loon, recently noticed that the simulation seems to know more than it should about where the object has rotated, based on how a script can take advantage of its current VISIBLE rotation using the llDetectedTouchNormal function. How is this possible?

Details and sample scripts demonstrating the effects are in Rolig's forum thread.

As the discussion developed, it became clear that the llDetectedTouchNormal wasn't using information the sim normally knows about objects, but rather information it gets from the viewer that does the touching. It's that viewer's idea of where the object has spun that is sent to the sim as part of the touch event itself.

There are other llDetectedTouch* functions, too, that use the touching viewer's representation of the object's local, visible state. In my post to the thread, I demonstrated how llDetectedTouchUV uses the instantaneous offset of an active texture animation, another viewer-side property.

This way the script is able to respond to touch in a way that's consistent with how an object is shown in the viewer doing the touching.

On further reflection, though, this "consistency" is local to just that single viewer. Different viewers of the same object see smooth rotation and texture animation differently, for example depending on when the object first rezzed into that viewer's scene. Hence a "curious" consistency.

Reporter Qie Niangao 

190701