"Character facing derived from velocity flips 180 degrees on every pendulum reversal"

A rope-swing or pendulum visual snaps the character's body around every time the arc reverses direction. The player sees: "I go forward then start going backwards and I turn the other way — weird; a kid on a swing keeps facing and swings backward." The flip happens exactly at the arc endpoints where velocity momentarily passes through zero.

The visual's forward direction is set each tick from the horizontal velocity heading: fwd = horizontalVelocity.Normal. On a pendulum, the horizontal component's sign reverses at every arc endpoint. Normal of a near-zero vector is numerically unstable, and even when it's stable the heading is discontinuous — it jumps 180 degrees at the reversal point. Any body whose velocity oscillates (pendulum, ping-pong platform, reversing patrol) produces the same strobe effect.

Pick a facing azimuth once at attach time (from the initial swing impulse direction) and hold it constant throughout the motion. Only re-aim it on deliberate steering input (e.g. A/D past a threshold rotates it a fixed angular step) — never from the velocity sign. Feed the locked azimuth to the visual through a dedicated continuous channel (e.g. a SwingForward property), keeping it decoupled from the physics velocity.

This is the same pattern that works for spinning bar traversals: the spin tangent is continuous over the top of the arc, so the facing channel stays stable. For point-anchored pendulums the azimuth lock is the specific fix needed.

A pendulum's velocity heading is mathematically discontinuous at its reversal points — it has no well-defined limit from left and right. But the player's intent (which way they're facing) doesn't change at a reversal. By snapshotting the azimuth once and only updating it on explicit input, you decouple facing from a discontinuous signal and make it a smooth, player-controlled quantity. General rule: any time a visual's facing is driven by a quantity that oscillates or reverses, replace it with a latched/steered heading.