Difference between revisions of "LlGroundNormal"

Revision as of 04:04, 16 June 2012

Function: vector llGroundNormal( vector offset );

Returns a vector that is the ground normal from the current position + offset.

• vector

The requested position needs to be in the same sim.

This function is defined as: <lsl> vector llGroundNormal(vector offset) {

   vector slope = llGroundSlope(offset);
   return <slope.x, slope.y, 1.0>;

} </lsl>

There seems to some confusion be between a Surface Normal (the direction from the surface) and Normalized Vector (a vector with a magnitude of 1.0, AKA Unit Vector). This function does not return a unit vector. Surface normals may encode additional information in the magnitude of the vector.if you need a Unit Vector, simply use llVecNorm.

Signature
function vector llGroundNormal( vector offset );

@@ Line 14: / Line 14: @@
 }
 </lsl>
-|caveats=*Despite the name, [[llGroundNormal]] DOES NOT RETURN A NORMAL UNIT VECTOR!!! If your calculation requires a unit normal (for example if you are using the result as an argument to [[llAxes2Rot]]) then you must force it to be a unit normal with [[llVecNorm]]([[llGroundNormal]](offset));
+|caveats
 |constants
 |examples
@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 |also_events
 |also_articles
-|notes
+|notes=
+*There seems to some confusion be between a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_%28geometry%29 Surface Normal] (the direction from the surface) and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_vector Normalized Vector] (a vector with a magnitude of 1.0, AKA Unit Vector). This function does '''not''' return a unit vector. Surface normals may encode additional information in the magnitude of the vector.if you need a Unit Vector, simply use [[llVecNorm]].
 |cat1=Ground
 |cat2=Region