At first I tried the dGeomSetContactBounce() after geom creation as you suggested and it had no effect - hence my confusion. But more experimentation has shown it works as it should EXCEPT on a plane - dCreatePlane(ODE_space,0,1,0,0).
Setting per object bounce to 1.0 has no bouncing when they land on a plane. Whereas global Bounce affect everything including plane. Which is where I couldn't fathom it as my tests were dropping objects onto a plane!
I've just found that rather than calling dCreatePlane(ODE_space,0,1,0,0) as it's used in the JV-ODE demos, I should assign it's results to a variable and I can handle it's geometry, so
ground_geom = dCreatePlane(ODE_space,0,1,0,0).
dGeomSetContactBounce(ground_geom, restituion) works.
Woohoo!
Setting per object bounce to 1.0 has no bouncing when they land on a plane. Whereas global Bounce affect everything including plane. Which is where I couldn't fathom it as my tests were dropping objects onto a plane!
I've just found that rather than calling dCreatePlane(ODE_space,0,1,0,0) as it's used in the JV-ODE demos, I should assign it's results to a variable and I can handle it's geometry, so
ground_geom = dCreatePlane(ODE_space,0,1,0,0).
dGeomSetContactBounce(ground_geom, restituion) works.
Woohoo!