I am a school teacher and as I explain various functions to my students I need to understand them fully so that I'm able to teach them properly. I've come across phent_setdamping and I'm a bit confused. I understand it's used for airdrag/friction but don't quite understand the following;
1) is linear damping the force (air) directly opposing the movement of the entity? That is, if a ball is moving to the right the air is opposing the ball's movement and that opposition (air drag) is linear damping?
2) if that's the case with linear damping, what's up with angular damping? I'm not quite sure what the need is for angular damping... isn't it essential the same as linear damping except from another angle, what I mean is, if the ball is rolling to the right linear damping is opposing the ball's movement (air drag) so what exactly is angular damping doing?

I think the way to simulate airdrag in the physics engine is very simple. I think the engine has one vector with the linear speed of the entity and other with the angular speed, and each frame, these vectors gets scaled to a factor depending of the linear and angular damping that you've set.

I think I may have it, please confirm if I'm correct

linear damping is movement along the x, y, or z axis disregarding rotation (torque)

angular damping is movement along the x, y, or z axis regarding rotation (torque)

is that correct?

linear damping affects only to the linear movement of the entity, and angular damping affects only to the rotation speed of the entity, so you can set linear damping to 0 and angular damping to 50 the entity will move indefinitely, but if you rotate the entity it will stop. If you set linear damping to 50 and angular damping to 0, the entity will stop moving after a while, and if oyu rotate the entity, it will continue rotating indifinitely.

thank you painkiller, that explanation is exactly what I was hoping for (and what I was trying to get at w/my second post). You've helped me a lot, thank you so much!

you're welcome