[SOLVED] How to get the terrain normal vector or plane at certain coords?

[Ser]

Is there a way to know the terrain normal vector or plane at certain coordinates? I need it to properly calculate friction if the wheels are on a slope.

Edited May 18, 2016 by Ser

[Padishar]

3 hours ago, Ser said:

Is there a way to know the terrain normal vector or plane at certain coordinates? I need it to properly calculate friction if the wheels are on a slope.

This is the code that KER uses to determine surface slope.  It basically does a raycast down from the vessel's CoM and looks for a terrain hit.  The raycast returns the normal at the hit point (along with some other data).  This requires the surface to actually exist (i.e. it doesn't work for far from the vessel).  If you need it for far from the vessel (or otherwise when no raycast is possible) then you would need to query the PQS directly.  There are various mods that do that but it sounds like the raycast method should be fine for you...

[Ser]

12 minutes ago, Padishar said:

This is the code that KER uses to determine surface slope.  It basically does a raycast down from the vessel's CoM and looks for a terrain hit.  The raycast returns the normal at the hit point (along with some other data).  This requires the surface to actually exist (i.e. it doesn't work for far from the vessel).  If you need it for far from the vessel (or otherwise when no raycast is possible) then you would need to query the PQS directly.  There are various mods that do that but it sounds like the raycast method should be fine for you...

I was hoping that there's just a function to get that info. Thanks a lot.

Isn't raycasting heavy if done every FixedUpdate()?

[sarbian]

It depends how many you do but the stock game and a lot of mod do a bunch of them each frame. Don't worry.