[ODE] Two Dimensions?

[Chunky Kibbles]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 11:51:55AM -0700, S. Burden wrote:
> Greetings.
> 
> What is the most effective way to restrict motion of objects in ODE to two 
> dimensions?

I tend to have done two things:
1) Use joints suitably that restrict that extra degree of freedom; use a
hinge instead of a ball joint, with the axis coming out of the screen.
This slows everything down [performance of ODE is very very related to
DoFs removed]
2) Don't do anything different, and simply render ignoring the axis that
comes out of the screen

I've had most success with number two. The differences on screen are
negligible [point gravity in a suitable direction and mistakes will tend
to correct themselves over time anyways].

http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/20342/7908
Has some very old, out of date demos, that I wrote using ODE in Torque2D.
It was purely a T2D<->ODE demo, so don't expect anythign more than what
you see. For reference, it's using option two above; the joints are all
ball joints, and you simply never know. When I used option one,
everythign went a whole lot slower.

Gary (-;