[ODE] Springs

[Amund Børsand]

Are there any functions for springs in ODE? I am trying to make an
off-road car simulator, and I'm wondering how to resemble the behavior
of the good old leaf springs. The best ideas I have so far is to attach
some long springs from the axle to the chassis on each side of the axle,
one forward and one backward (per side).

Should I make my own functions which calculate and apply forces directly
to the rigid bodies, or should I for instance use ball joints with very
soft cfm / erp values? One problem is that I should have lengts on the
springs to make this work, that is, a fixed length between two points
that the springs try to keep, another problem is that if I use ball
joints (or some other kind of joints) they will be working on the same
object, maybe against eachother, and I'll need at least three to keep
the axle in place. There is a strong discouragement against this in the
ODE documentation, right?

Any and all ideas and/or comments are greatly appreciated.

-- 
Amund Børsand <amund@c2i.net>