[ODE] Suspicious suspension

[Steve Yates]

>From: Nate W <coding at natew.com>

>
>On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Steve Yates wrote:
>
> > Thanks Nate, that buggy looks great! Would that kind of suspension work 
>well
> > on 'rough' terrain? By that I mean in an off-road vehicle type game.
>
>It works OK on the rough terrain I've been driving it over, but if you're
>working on a game I think the hinge-2 method would probably be greatly
>preferable, mostly because it will take less CPU time.
>
> > I haven't a clue where to start with vehicle suspension, although I have
> > been staring at the screenshot trying to reverse engineer your buggy!!
> >
> > Have you any advice for me to get me started? (if you could give me at 
>least
> > some of the source code that creates your buggy I'd be so happy).
>
>Most of what I know about suspension came from building radio controlled
>car kits years ago.  The car in the picture was built in Juice, an editor
>that I wrote shortly after ODE was released.  So, there's no "source code"
>for the car itself.  The Juice source is available at the web site
>(http://www.natew.com/juice/) but it probably won't help much if you just
>want to build better cars.
>
>If you download Juice you can examine the car from whatever angle you
>want, push it, pull it, drive it (if you have a joystick) and you can look
>at the data file that generated the car.  The Juice file format is
>basically XML so it's not too hard to understand.
>
>Juice doesn't support hinge-2 joints though.  For help setting up hinge-2
>joints, you might look at Si Brown's Freefall buggy demo, his source is
>available too: http://freefall.freehosting.net/downloads/buggydemo.html
>The demo has flat ground with obstacles, and the car's suspension works
>really well, it has great "personality" when you steer it hard or bounce
>off of things.
>
>--
>
>Nate Waddoups

Thanks again Nate.  I can see that there are many ways to simulate even very 
simple suspension.  I'll take a look at the above and hopefully things will 
become clearer!

Regards

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