Dice rolling simulation: landing on the edge? - unity3d

I'm trying to implement my own version of a dice roller.
So far I've reached a decent result, my solution is not very flexible yet but I like the realism of the physics.
I have an issue, though: sometimes a dice lands on it's edge and it keeps that unnatural position for the rest of the time.
How can I avoid it?
I tried to tweak the physics materials, the rigid body simulation, the scale of the dice and the system gravity with no success.
Maybe I did not find the right mix or maybe I'm missing something.
I will appreciate any suggestions thanks

you can iterate thorugh your dice, find ones that are sleeping (Rigidbody.IsSleeping) and for those that are check the angles are not wierd (i.e. one of the angles should be close to multiplies of 90), and apply some random torque for those that are likely to stand on edge

Related

Unity bouncing ball miraculously gains height

I have a sphere with bounciness set to 1
The ball has no drag and uses gravity
It hits a platform, which has bounciness set to 1 and no friction
Yet, the ball bounces higher on every bounce, going to infinity. How is such a thing possible, when I have not given it any extra momentum?
The issue comes from the fact that physics in games happens in discrete frames, and that a moving object will be "inside" another at the frame where there is a collision. The physics engine then has to separate the objects before the next frame, and figure out how much energy to "bounce" with.
One of the steps to do this involves figuring out how much the objects overlap, and that's where this phantom extra energy is comin from. Less error in the overlap equals less error in the energy.
Don't fiddle with the bounciness; those are naive solutions, not to mention they sidestep the issue rather than solving it.
What you should do is to fix what's wrong with your collisions. That can be done a number of ways, the most appropriate/performant of which depends on each specific game:
Increase your physics frame rate (decrease fixed delta time). This reduces overlaps and makes physics frames "smoother". It doesn't really solve phantom energy though; only makes it's causes and effects smaller (maybe so small they become unnoticeable, which is all you need).
Set your sphere's collision detection method to Continuous Dynamic,
and set your ground to static. If you need the sphere to collide with
other stuff, those other stuff present similar issues, and those need
to be non-static, set their rigidbodies' collision detection method
to Continuous. (This is the method I most often find to be the best, but I've had projects where others were better for various reasons)
Increase your Default Solver Velocity Iterations
Change your solver type to Temporal Gauss Seidel
I have had a similar issue with javascript/html/css canvas animations. I have no explanation for this. Use a number like 0.99999 or 0.969399 and that should do the trick. I do get what you mean though it's weird. Just get close to 1. That's all I can say. I hope this helps anyway.

Forward facing vector is a bit offset

I am making an FPS game and I need for the forward facing vector to hit exactly where the crosshair is aiming.
This is my current blueprint.
It takes all references from the camera position where the players head should be. (as it usually is in FPS games).
When "shooting" the vector it is slightly offset though. (pink dot near crosshair)
Things I have tried:
Increasing distance of vector makes the problem go away but it then becomes inconsistent, which means it's a bad solution to the problem :(
Manually changing axis values, but that was also very inconsistent.
Changing between 3 different nodes of taking rotation from the camera, they all (didn't) work the same way :/
Maybe there is an issue of the values that I am taking, although the starting position of the camera seems to be correct.
Thank you for any insight you may have!
Suggested by user Ruzihm the issue was that the crosshair was off-center. My blueprints were actually okay.
So for anyone looking see if your crosshair is in the center.

Unity3D: stack of thin boxes toppling despite perfect alignment

Here is what happens when I copy&paste a few thin boxes, and then vertex-snap them to the ground and each other:
Pressing "Play" leads to the stack toppling.
I tried reducing the BoxCollider y to 0.99 and 0.95. No luck still.
Does anyone have recommendations to easily get a stacked wall to just stay up (until a real force is applied)? Maybe there is some sort of "glue" component to prevent two faces separating until a force exceeds some threshold?
Try setting their positions manually so that they are right under each other.
You shouldn't expect to be able to make a stack of 20-30 box colliders stacked on their smaller faces because of physics simulation inaccuracies, floating point errors and so on. If that's your intention and/or the above doesn't work, try using Fixed Joints with a manually set Break Force and/or Break Torque.
You can also try increasing the Solver Iteration Count to something like 10 or 15 (which should do the trick in most cases), but it won't be good for performance in scenes with 1000s of objects.
Increasing the Sleep Threshold will also help in this specific case, but can cause problems like small objects sleeping when they have small (but not infinitesimal) velocities.
EDIT:
A similar thing happens with my own custom physics engine. Another workaround you can do is to align the bodies and set them to sleep in Start. That way they'll stay upright (not moving rather) and topple when something collides with them.

How to make Hinge Joint more rigid

I'm trying to create a chain in unity3d. A player should be capable of grabing one side of it and pull it to different location. So i created some grids and connect them together. It all works fine, the problem is only when user pulls a bit faster, then I got some spaces bettwen seperate grids. Is there anyway to set max distance on that?
Btw. I'm doing these in 2d so i have 2d Rigidbody and 2d Hinge joint.
Thanks!
The solverIterationCount of rigidbodies affects the smoothness of physics when they are moving fast. You should try increasing it or dynamically adjusting it according to the speed of the rigidbodies to increase stabilty
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Physics-solverIterationCount.html
There a number of ways to tackle this issue, all with the up sides and down sides:
increasing accuracy:: this is usually the first place new game designers go, and crank up accuracy to the max. But then end up playing the price later when performance plummets. So be gentle, try to find a good balance, and if it does not cut it make up the rest with other tricks.
The main ways to increase accuracy are, increasing fixed times interval, and increasing ridged body Iteration count
.
Increasing restrictions::This often requires the most time, but cutting corners allows for smoother more predictable physics and can increase performance
small example:: the top link of the chain only needs to simulate rotation on the ridged body
.
Cheating:: find any way to make things easier, fake it
for example:: does the image really need to match the physics? Why not make sure the sprites stick together, but alow the physics to have small gaps
playing with the same concept more or less this week, experimented some with 2D Unity joints, I think the issue you are having is identical to one I had yesterday, the force you are applying 'breaks' joints for some frames, hence that almost 'spring' joint effect, make sure the mass and/or force applied are not too heavy, also maybe increase the chain parts mass, makes the joints more solid too.
In Editor, Hinge Joint -> Use Spring = true; Spring/Damper/Target Position = 0.

How to get a ball/sphere to stop

I got a field in unity3d that has some depressions in it (like small holes). The field's slope always leads towards the nearest depression.
A sphere is dropped at random somewhere in the field, rolls around a bit until it stops in one of the depressions.
The problem is, this is taking too long. It could roll around for 5-10 seconds until it stops. I'd like to stop faster.
Any ideas how I can achieve this?
Edit: The main issue is when the ball is next to the depression, but it has speed that is 90 degrees from the hole, then it starts going in circles and takes a while to stop.
Ok, after getting some advice in the comments, and experimenting, this is the way I solved it:
Apply a small measure of strength towards the depression
If the current velocity is more than 30 degrees away from the center of the depression, slow the ball (apply strength in the opposite direction of the velocity)
IF the ball gets very near the center of the depression, stop it and place it in the center
Thanks for all the tips. If anyone comes up with a better way, I'm still open to suggestions.