[ODE] Fixed stepping

[John Miles]

I don't see any drawback to dWorldSetTimeStep() and dWorldWhateverStep(int
n_steps).  This would encourage, but not demand, the use of fixed timesteps.
It would break the API, but only trivially.

It could also lead to optimization opportunities -- maybe there are some
calculations that could be moved out of the step function into
dWorldSetTimeStep().

If you wanted to get really hardcore, you could even force people to declare
the time step in dWorldCreate(), which would allow it to be baked into
various object properties that don't change often.  That would make life
rough for people who actually need variable time steps, but right now, the
API makes it easy to do the wrong thing.

Is there any valid reason to support variable time steps... ever?

-- john

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ode-bounces at q12.org [mailto:ode-bounces at q12.org]On Behalf Of Jon
> Watte (ODE)
> Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 9:35 PM
> To: Geoff Carlton
> Cc: ode at q12.org
> Subject: Re: [ODE] Fixed stepping
>
>
>
>
> Geoff Carlton wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I don't think its a good idea to fundamentally change the way all
> > existing (correct) code works, which may well be implementing fixed
> > stepping logic outside ODE.   Two ideas:
> >
>
> I actually think it is. This is SUCH a common problem, that we can break
> the code. It's not like it would be hard to fix in the cases where you
> actually want to compile something old.
>
> Btw: I think the world stepping function should take a world id, and an
> integer count of number of steps.
>
> Cheers,
>
>           / h+
>
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