[ODE] From unstable to trunk...

[Russ Smith]

> Where's Russ?  Has he abandoned the project?

no: i still read this list and (slowly) maintain the web site, though i
haven't done anything in the way of development lately. unfortunately the
amount of time i can donate to the community is quite limited these days.
i still maintain a to-do list for ODE, which has grown to enormous size
and includes such vital tasks as rewriting the trimesh collision system
(currently ODE's weakest point), making the iterative solver fully
stable, and getting collision without penetration.

to fix these issues and bring ODE up to the level of other commercial
toolkits (and beyond!) will take a serious investment of time.
realistically, this means i'd need to get funding. a few companies have
approached me over the last year with vague interest in funding further
development, but no one has yet committed the resources. i'm (quite
slowly) looking at other funding options.

a brief word on ODE's place. as many people have noted, Novodex is (sort
of) free and is a robust and useful toolkit - adam and pierre have done a
great job. so why bother with ODE at all? the answer: i believe that a
genuinely open toolkit is valuable to many people who want to
(1) get into the internals of things if it doesn't quite fit their needs
or (2) learn from it. ODE is still fairly unique in this regard.

anyway, that's where i'm at.

russ.

--
Russ Smith
http://www.q12.org/

On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ode-bounces at q12.org [mailto:ode-bounces at q12.org] On Behalf Of gl
> > Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 6:00 AM
> > To: ode at q12.org
> > Subject: Re: [ODE] From unstable to trunk...
> >
> >
> > Given the state of the community, I'd be tempted to merge
> > promising patches directly into the main codebase.  Yes, it
> > will occasionally cause problems, but you will certainly get
> > feedback on them : ).  And if something doesn't get any
> > feedback (as now), you can assume it works, at least without
> > detriment.
> >
> > If the mountain won't come to Mohammed...
> > --
> > gl
> >
>
> It seems to me that's basically what Adam is trying to do.
>
> BTW: Where's Russ?  Has he abandoned the project?
>
> --
> Gary R. Van Sickle
>
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