Hello.

I am using Bullet Physics 2.82 and am getting some weird results. I build some voxel terrain and pass the mesh information to Bullet Physics (via btTriangleIndexVertexArray with btBvhTriangleMeshShape). It works fantastically, except that in certain spots basic shapes can fall through the terrain. Here is a video of it:

I have tried quite a bit to fix it, and post here as a "last resort" of sorts. Help is very much appreciated! I have tried:

• Rebuilding Bullet Physics with double precision.
• Increasing the cycles-per second to 120 and even 240 simulations/second.
• Increased all objects' collision margins (btCollisionShape::setMargin()) to larger values (0.1, 0.5, 1.0).
• Reversed the vertex winding order (in-case it was a backward facing polygon allowing the fall-through).

And still objects fall through the terrain! There is no visual deformity-- the terrain is built and displayed correctly. The debug drawer also shows the terrain is built in that area. The physics shape is built off of the same data that is used for the rendering. Any idea on what could cause this?

Terrain initialization (performed on each chunk of the terrain's octree):

// pre-filled, just here to show you the declaration
s32 * indices;
btScalar * vertices;

physicsMesh = new btTriangleIndexVertexArray(mesh->indices.size() / 3, indices, sizeof(s32) * 3, mesh->vertices.size(), vertices, sizeof(btScalar) * 3);

physicsShape = new btBvhTriangleMeshShape(physicsMesh, true, true);
physicsShape->setMargin(0.04); // tried changing to 0.1/0.5/1.0

btVector3 inertia(0, 0, 0);
physicsShape->calculateLocalInertia(0.0, inertia);

physicsMotionState = new btDefaultMotionState(btTransform(btQuaternion(0, 0, 0, 1), btVector3(0, 0, 0)));
btRigidBody::btRigidBodyConstructionInfo rigidBodyCI(
	0,  // mass
	physicsMotionState,// initial position
	physicsShape,      // collision shape of body
	inertia   // local inertia
);

physicsRigidBody = new btRigidBody(rigidBodyCI);
physicsRigidBody->setLinearVelocity(btVector3(0, 0, 0));
physicsRigidBody->setAngularVelocity(btVector3(0, 0, 0));
physicsRigidBody->setFriction(1.0);

// This is done in a separate threads.  Making it single-threaded made no difference.
bulletManager.lock();
bulletManager.addRigidBody(physicsRigidBody);
bulletManager.unlock();

Basic shape initialization:

physicsShape = new btSphereShape(minGroupRange);
physicsShape->setMargin(0.04); // tried 0.1/0.5/1.0

btVector3 inertia(0, 0, 0);
physicsShape->calculateLocalInertia(1.0, inertia);

btRigidBody::btRigidBodyConstructionInfo rigidBodyCI(
	1.0,   // mass
	this,  // initial position
	physicsShape,  // collision shape of body
	inertia // local inertia
);

physicsRigidBody = new btRigidBody(rigidBodyCI);
physicsRigidBody->clearForces();
physicsRigidBody->setLinearVelocity(btVector3(0, 0, 0));
physicsRigidBody->setAngularVelocity(btVector3(0, 0, 0));
//physicsRigidBody->setActivationState(DISABLE_DEACTIVATION);

BulletManager::get().addRigidBody(physicsRigidBody);

And updating Bullet Physics:

dynamicsWorld->stepSimulation(timer.getDeltaTime_Seconds());
//dynamicsWorld->stepSimulation(timer.getDeltaTime_Seconds(), 10, 1.0 / 240);

Bullet debug draw should give you the ability to draw contact normals and so on which should help.

Does this problem occur with all collision shapes for just spheres ? 2.82 seems to have have a few new issues with heightfield and triangle mesh collisions which previous versions didn't so that might also be worth looking at.

What is the size of your sphere (minGroupRange ) ?

I had same or similar problem

Try changing m_fixContactNormalDirection from 1 to 0 in constructors of btGjkPairDetector

That helped me.

Thank you to everyone the help! It turns out it was the "sliver" problem. Marching cubes was making some triangles that where simply too small and narrow in certain places. Tweaking the scale was able to increase the stability. Thanks again.