[ODE] mutable bodies

[Yordan Gyurchev]

I raised the question about bodies that are not dynamic bodies but have
physical presence and properties.

So far Geoff answered to that (thanks Geoff your answer on the PS2 stuff was
most helpful) - putting just simple geoms that are moved from outside "game"
code.

Unfortunately I think just simple bodyless geom won't suffice. Why? Mutable
bodies are supposed to interact with other physical dynamic or mutable
bodies. During these interactions and physical solutions the system needs
more information about the mutable body (angular and linear velocity is
must) in order to create proper physical response.

Imagine a animated moving platform that has some boxes on it...  if you
don't what the boxes to slowly slide off the platform... the platform needs
to be updated not only with proper position and orientation but also linear
and angular velocities (easily derivable from animation).

In our last modified version of ode we had mutable bodies put in. Now that
I'm trying to move to ode-0.5 I have to redo the work again.

I imagine that most games need these kind of bodies and probably will be a
nice addition to the ODE library.

Is this the right forum to discuss this or there is an alternative forum for
dev stuff?

-Yordan