[ODE] C# Access [Axiom offtopic]

[Hutchison, Ben]

Hi Torsten,

Your screenshots are impressive and I would very much like to see Axiom
successfully use ODE. However, I too had got the impression that Axiom
either Dead, Dying or All-talk-and-no-action. I'm going to outline why
perhaps several people are (perhaps unjustly) reaching this conclusion.

* Go to the main page for Axiom and the top news item is entitled "Back
from the dead" and it doesn't really convey the impression that anything
is happening/planned to happen to Axiom.

* The previous item, back in *June*, is saying that CVS is going to
"fluctuate". No item is subsequently posted saying "CVS is fixed now".

* Going back in time, all the news items seem hurriedly written and
convey the impressions that things are half done and almost working...
there are no releases or roadmaps and no statements of who is working on
what when. This kind of details is what tends to distinguish
serious/successful OS projects from the chaff.

* It seems kind of surprising that an entire game engine can be written
over ODE without any trace or signs of activity showing up on the ODE
mailing list. At the least, a notification email saying "Axiom are
adapting ODE to C#" would be nice.

* The site has basically no documentation and no list of developers.
Putting the code-generated docs online at the least would be an easy
improvement. Very few bugs reports have been submitted and none seem to
have been responded to.

* Looking into the Axiom's forums and WinCVS its clear there is actually
more happening than would first appear. But there does seem to be a
failing in communication. I would suggest that Axiom needs a designated
webmaster role to manage the projects web & public face because that's
falling down right now.

And without more public involvement and enthusiasm, I think Axiom will
be limited in the size to which it can grow its advantage and its user
base.

I'd post this message to Axiom too (where it needs to go) if it had a
suitable mailing list...

Regards
Ben

PS A question - What, precisely is that nature of Axiom's
interaction/dependency with the platform graphics libraries?  I
understand it uses Tao (OpenGL bindings), yet in the FAQ, it states that
it needs DirectX 9. Is it DirectX or OpenGL based, or both?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ode-bounces at q12.org [mailto:ode-bounces at q12.org] On Behalf Of
> Torsten Stein
> Sent: Friday, 24 September 2004 8:04 AM
> To: ode at q12.org
> Subject: AW: [ODE] C# Access
>
> Hi!
>
> > I looked into Axiom.  The project appears largely dead in the water.
I
> > located a number of references to some kind of ODE interface, but I
was
> > unable to find the actual interface files.  Perhaps they are in
> > yet another
> > project.
>
> No, no! It's just the Axiom CVS that's currently being worked over. So
> looking into that
> CVS would not help much these days. You can download working axiom
sources
> from the
> download section at
> http://axiomengine.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=Downloads
>
> How to get my physics add-on to axiom running is described here
>
http://axiomengine.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopi
c&
> t=
> 711&highlight=
>
> You'll find screenshots there, too. For more screenshots you might
look
> here
>
http://axiomengine.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopi
c&
> t=
> 380&highlight=
> (quite long forum thread, so you must scroll and skip through the
pages to
> see all) to get
> an impression of what you can to with the physics library right now.
>
> My wrapper is based on David Walkers ODE wrapper. I made some fixes
and
> improvements.
> So some problems (exceptions and memory leaks) should have gone or at
> least
> been
> reduced ...
>
> Torsten Stein
>
> _______________________________________________
> ODE mailing list
> ODE at q12.org
> http://q12.org/mailman/listinfo/ode

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