As many of you will be aware, there's a persistent bug involving certain types of havok objects. To reproduce:

• Enter an interior cell.
  
• Drop a lockpick.
  
• Use the console and GetPos to get its XYZ coordinates.
  
• Pick up the lockpick with E, carry or fling it to some other location in the cell.
  
• Get its coordinates again. They will be the same as in step 3(!).
  
• Leave and re-enter the cell.
  
• The lockpick will be where you originally dropped it, not where you moved it.

This, of course, is the root cause of the so-called "display case bug" that causes the contents of your carefully laid-out display cases to be strewn about on the floor after you leave. To my knowledge this bug has been present since release.

The bug does not affect all objects equally: Books, Weapons, and a few other objects like Amulets and some Ingredients update their position as expected.

So far, all I have been able to do is create long lists of what doesn't work. This includes

• Disabling/Enabling the object (warps it back to its entry point).
  
• Changing the object's MotionType to Keyframed (still reports entry point XYZ rather than current XYZ).
  
• Setting MotionType to KeyFramed, then Translating the object. The object instantly warps to its entry point and then translates.
  
• Setting MotionType to Fixed (does nothing).
  
• Nudging the object with ApplyHavokImpulse (nudges the object, but still reports wrong XYZ).

So, as far as I can tell, there is literally no way to determine the object's real position, because even the game engine itself doesn't know the item's not hanging in the air, exactly where it appeared when you dropped it. Interestingly, using MoveTo, SetPosition, or TranslateTo(after changing motiontype) appears to set a new "Entry point" for the item, and it will report that new XYZ after being moved, but there's still no way to get its original position.

Has anyone found any method to retrieve the actual position of a dropped havok object without leaving/reentering the cell?