[ODE] search and old questions

[Adam D. Moss]

Michael Powers wrote:
> 1) how do i get out an old version of ODE (and what is
> that last semi-stable version - if its the current one
> then great)

Old (and new) releases:
http://www.q12.org/ode/release/

Also see |cvs --help checkout|:
cvs checkout -D DATE ode
or
cvs checkout -r VERSION ode
(Where you can usually do a |cvs log ode| to get a list
of tagged version numbers, though it looks like Russell
doesn't use that convention or the last real release
pre-dates the move to CVS.)

That said, the current CVS tree at the time of writing
seems pretty stable from my tinkerings.  Not bug-free,
certainly, but stable for the uses I've put it to so far.

> 2) if i run with just the body updates my blocks seem
> to fall to the ground correctly - when i switch on the
> collision checker all of a sudden my blocks fall super
> fast

Are you saying that you simulate more often than you
collision-check?  I also find that this does not work
as expected, sadly, yielding the sort of problems you
describe.  I suspect that it's an actual bug, something
along the lines of the simulation accumulating forces
on the bodies which it expects something in the collision
step to reset.  Maybe that's expected and there's just a
documentation omission.

> 3) how do i make a position a Box geom that i want to
> use as a ground plane - since geoms dont have position
> yet i need this box to be under everything??

I don't think I understand the question.  dGeomSetPosition() ?
I suspect you want dCreatePlane(space,a,b,c,d) though, ideally.
a,b,c is the x,y,z normal vector from the plane and d
(conventionally) is the distance along that normal vector from
0,0,0 to where it hits the plane (so for example
a,b,c,d = 0,1,0,3 would create a completely horizonal plane
where y=3).

Regards,
--Adam
-- 
Adam D. Moss   . ,,^^   adam@gimp.org   http://www.foxbox.org/   co:3