Three spawn heights - 455, 395, 469 - produced identical captures, and the in-game probe names
the surface every time: mesh=Road_Hollywood at Z 366. The north sidewalk exists, carries
collision and its top is Z 380, so the character stands 14 cm BELOW the pavement and reads as
floating against the kerb; its shadow falls on the road because the road is genuinely lower.
That is why lowering the spawn changed nothing: the capsule falls through to the road whatever
height it starts at. The question left is the player start's XY footprint, not its Z - the
sidewalk is right there but the capsule never lands on it.
Player start set to 469 (sidewalk top 380 + capsule half 88 + 1) so that, once the footprint is
fixed, the height is already right.
Two cameras were added at pavement height - one on the feet, one on the wheels - because the
wide shots cannot settle whether anything touches the surface.
The feet shot settled it, and not the way I expected. Lowering the player start from 455 to 395
changed NOTHING in the capture: same framing, same float. The capsule falls onto the collider and
always rests at Z 456 with its feet at 369, while the rendered pavement is about a metre lower.
So the float is not a spawn-height problem, and no amount of tuning player_z will fix it: the
sidewalk's collision extends above its visible top, and the player stands on an invisible ledge.
The earlier 'top surface under player: Z 366' measurement was not wrong - it was measuring the
collider, which is the thing that is in the wrong place.
Next: measure the sidewalk mesh's rendered top against its collider and fix the asset, not the
spawn.
Also pulled the wheel camera back; it had been inside the bodywork.
zwitschi
