[ODE] Racecar game uses ODE.

[Matt Barnett]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marco Grubert" <mgrubert@conitec.net>
To: "Matt Barnett" <gunther@dial.pipex.com>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 7:48 PM
Subject: Re: [ODE] Racecar game uses ODE.


> > This is a shamless plug for the second test of an ODE based racecar game
> > i've been working on ( currently called oracer ).  Only a Win32 version
is
> > available so far, but i intend cook up a linux port soon.
>
> Nice, very nice and a lot of fun to play with :) There is one problem I
> noticed when driving across steep terrain- the gauges are covered by
> terrain; guess you need to adjust the depth values.
> But the main question is: how do you manage to have your car going at high
> speeds without the infamous wheel-bending/ sliding common to other ODE
> simulations ?
>
> - Marco Grubert

Thanks for the kind words.  Yes, the gauges need some depth or stencil trick
to keep them infront
(this also happens on some of the camera views).

As for the wheel bending problem, i was aware of it, but i could never quite
decide if i was seeing it in my game or not (for instance, the back wheels
sometimes twist). The main thing that i am doing different from test_buggy
is that i calculate the slip (for the contact with the terrain) for each
wheel dynamically based on the dot product of the wheel direction and the
normalised wheel velocity. This makes the car slide and spin rather than
grip the track and turn (you can use the so-called Pacejka Magic Formula for
a better approximation to wheel slip).  I expect that the wheel-bending
problem is present but not so noticable under the changing slip values.

http://home.planet.nl/~monstrous/tutcar.html (look at the section 'high
speed turning')

Regards
Matt Barnett