[ODE] Hovercraft?

[Clay Larabie]

"For a hovercraft, you might try putting damped springs at each corner of
the chassis."

Can ODE be used for the springs, or is this something we'd have to
ourselves? For example, I looked through the documentation for "spring" and
didn't find anything. Could a joint be used to do this?

Clay

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nate W" <coding@natew.com>
To: <ode@q12.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 2:31 AM
Subject: Re: [ODE] Hovercraft?


>
> On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, Clay Larabie wrote:
>
> > I don't have an answer for you, but I'm interested in the same thing, so
I'd
> > like to hear any responses the ODE folks have, as well as any approaches
you
> > end up taking.
>
> I was working on a snowboarding game a couple/few months ago for which I
> used *much* simpler physics code.... the motion of the snowboarder's body
> sounds a bit similar to what you guys are doing with a sci-fi-style
> all-terrain "hovercraft."  I just implemented a spring-and-damper force
> between the center of the snowboarder's body and the surface of the
> terrain.  This made the snowboarder follow the terrain reasonably well,
> with a nice low-pass-filter effect that mimics what your knees do.
>
> For a hovercraft, you might try putting damped springs at each corner of
> the chassis.  Look at the surface normal directly below each corner of the
> chassis, and at the distance between the points on the ground and chassis.
> Use the normal for the spring direction... if the actual_ride_height is
> less than desired_ride_height, make the spring force proportional to
> ((desired_ride_height - actual_ride_height) - damping), where damping =
> vertical component of the velocity of that corner of the hovercraft
> chassis.  Apply the force to the corner of the chassis in the direction of
> the ground's surface normal.
>
> No promises (I'm making things up as I go along again) but it's worth a
> shot.  It seems to me that the forces you're wanting should come from the
> application code, rather than from ODE itself.  Just use ODE to handle the
> hovercraft's behavior as a result of your application-defined external
> forces (and things like collision detection).
>
> --
>
> Nate Waddoups
> Redmond WA USA
> http://www.natew.com
>
>
>
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