Can Vizard/OPAL create a perfectly elastic collision?

[performlabrit]

I'm currently trying to have a ball bounce upon the ground so that the interaction is perfectly elastic. THus, upon bounce, the amount of energy lost would be equal to the "coefficient of restitution (COR)" that arises between the two colliding objects.

A COR of 1 would mean that a dropped ball would always return to its original height after the bounce, and would bounce forever. A COR of .5 would cause the ball to lose half its energy upon a bounce, and thus each consecutive bounce would reach half the height of the previous bounce.

Using open dynamics engine (ODE), one could do this by simply creating a plane. By default, the plane would have infinite mass and perfect hardness for a completely elastic collision. Thus, to simulate a coefficient of restitution of .5, one only needed to set the ball's bounciness to .5.

OPAL doesn't seem to create physical objects in the same way, and so energy is always lost upon a collision. I believe I need to manually set the density/hardness of the floor for a perfectly elastic collision, but it's unclear how to do this.

Any advice?

Thanks,
- Gabriel Diaz