[ODE] Car simulation (with no wheels) - clever ideas needed

[Jon Watte]

> But I'm pretty sure that trying to field, say, a full pack of nascar cars,
> each with more accurate chassis than a box, with hinge2s for the wheels, is
> going to bring your PC to it's knees.

Let's assume they're all not touching, so that they're all their own islands. Further, let's assume they're driving on some mesh that has no body, so it's the fixed environment. Are you sure that a modern PC wouldn't be able to handle this? Make sure to turn on all optimizations before profiling this. I don't know how many cars go in a full NASCAR field, but I know they USUALLY don't collide all that often compared to how often you step/render.

How to detect pile-up and switch to box-only simulation (and when to snap out of that) is probably a black art, and where you get to show your skills, but AFAIK, that's how you can make seemingly intractable simulation problems actually work in real time for a game.

Cheers,

			/ h+