[ODE] Non-deterministic behavior

gl gl at ntlworld.com
Sat Aug 30 08:53:03 2003


> Note also that if you have RANDOM_JOINT_ORDER (the default) defined
> in stepfast.cpp then the rand() function will be used to randomize
> the order with which joint constraints are solved.  rand()
> is deterministic but shares state with the app, so anyone
> who uses stepfast for simulation but non-deterministically
> seeds or uses rand() for something else in the application is
> guaranteed to get non-deterministic behaviour in the simulation.

That's right, I mentioned to Dave Whittaker (the author of StepFast) a while
back that he could include the source to rand() in the StepFast code, so
that it can use it's own local seed var which could be reset aswell.  He was
going to add it at the time, but it's easy enough to do this yourself.
--
gl