[ODE] Re: Bendy wheel problem

[David McClurg]

> On another subject, in order to simulate the wheels I'm using ellipsoids, and have written my own code to clip them. When driving across an edge between 2 polys with a very small change in angle of slope betwen them, two clip points can be generated very close together. Sometimes this wreaks havoc with the physics, as I think Russ mentionned might happen in this case. At present I'm tempted to just check for this case and combine close contact points into a single average one, but I'm wondering if anyone has found a more physically accurate alternative?

AFAICT, it sounds like you need to use a better friction model.  i had a similar problem.  see

11.13. My rolling bodies (e.g. wheels) sometimes get stuck between geoms
http://www.q12.org/ode/ode-latest-userguide.html