[ODE] Tank Tracks

[John D. Gwinner]

Folks:

  What would be the best way to simulate tank tracks?

  I could do the bogey's as a series of wheels on simple hinge joints
(could even be non-rotating, and do the rotations programmatically), but
there would be a constraint on the overall 'shape' of all the torsion
bars to be no greater than the track circumference.  I'm not sure how to
set this up. 

  Or - I could model the entire track as a series of hinge joints, and
model all the collisions / friction, etc.  This could make for a really
impressive video of a link breaking, but it would be a large number of
collisions.

  Would ODE be capable of handing this many objects, say 140 separate
track links (at least), 10-20 wheels, and a ground (height field)?

  Before I start the programming I thought I'd check to see what was
practical.

               == John ==