[ODE] GTA3 and Physics

[Kenneth Holmlund]

The probably most advanced vehicle simulator around is the
harvester simulator by Oryx Simulations.
See http://www.oryx.se/
It's using Vortex from CM-Labs, and Russ had a key
role in it's early development. (see http://www.cm-labs.com/)
In this simulator you have full vehicle dynamics
plus highly advanced interaction with many objects
in the environment. Upcoming simulators for "heavy
vehicles" use physics for adding even more realism
and generality.
If you would tear off the hardware (for control and
display) the whole thing could quite easily be made
into a "game like" application (there's a reason
why Russ talks about "Harvester wars" in his notes! :)

ODE and Vortex were quite similar one year ago,
but Vortex has quite a few more features nowadays,
as well as an improved friction model and better
stability for rotating bodies.
In fact, MathEngine Karma, ODE and Vortex all bear
influences from the same people (including Russ),
but they have been developed independently for some
time now (though I really don't know much about
Karma these days).

/Kenneth

Aanand Narayanan.P.P wrote:
>>>I would like to hear from other people who have used ODE for full
>>>fledged physics simulations.
>>
> 
>>What do you mean by "full fledged?"
> 
> 
> 	Like in GTA3 (or any other similar game). Not just for vehicles,
> but for other objects in the world (lamp post, dust bins etc.). What I
> am interested is in the stability and robustness of the system when
> several simulations occur (several different active joints). I did read
> about the posts on direct LCP and iterative LCP. So I wanted to know if
> anybody knows about the physics in GTA3 and the stability of ODE itself
> when used for such simulations (GTA3). 
> 
> 	Also can anyone point me to some literature on Dantzig algorithm
> (used by LCP solver in ODE). 
> 
> Cheers
> AN
> 

-- 
Kenneth Holmlund
Director VRlab
HPC2N, Umeå University, Sweden
holmlund@hpc2n.umu.se