Physics Analyzer - detecting over-constrained systems

We are releasing a tool that will help the devs to detect bad physics configurations (under PGS solver).

These situations may arise when building systems that contain multiple constraints and/or colliding parts in such a way that the solver is unable to find a working solution. This often leads to jitter and misbehaving simulation.

An example of a bad configuration (over-constrained system) is a sphere attached by a hinge to a frame in such a way that the sphere also penetrates this frame:

The solver won’t be able to solve this configuration as there is no solution: the hinge and the collision can’t be both respected.

The Physics Analyzer will help you identify these situations in your mechanisms. To enable the Physics Analyzer got to the TEST tab in Studio and click on “Physics” under the “Analyze” group:

You will see an overlay window titled “Physics Analyzer” with “status: ready”.

You can now run the game either with or without the player.

The analyzer will pause the game if it detects a bad configuration, and list the parts that are directly involved in the Physics Analyzer window:

Clicking on the parts list in the Physics Analyzer window will focus the camera on them.

Normally at this point the dev should try to resolve the problem before re-running the game. It’s possible to attempt to continue the game by disabling the analyzer and continuing.

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Ooh. This should come in handy.

Will we be seeing any new joints anytime soon?

That’s awesome

Yes, new joints are coming. Beta this spring!

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Will we be able to program our own versions of this? The way the data is displayed is rather unusual.

EDIT: also, is this limited only to overconstrained systems or will it apply to other things? I want to know why trains stop working in PGS.

For now it’s only about the over-constrained systems. We might be adding other issues in the future.

Wiki article

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