[ODE] New release?

[Martijn Buijs]

Jason Perkins wrote:
> On 12/21/06, erwin at erwincoumans.com <erwin at erwincoumans.com> wrote:
>> Indeed. Other libraries like Bullet and SOLID have the same issue, and
>> require a #define to enable double precision. Usually an application needs
>> either one or the other, not both at the same time.
> 
> I was the one who originally suggested the idea. In my application
> (and I doubt I'm alone in this) I don't care about the physics
> precision, I always use floats. For some uses of my application, I
> want dReal to be float, for others double. dReal bleeds up into
> anything that touches the physics code, which IMHO is annoying.
> 
> The other part of that conversation was that dReal is used
> /everywhere/ in ODE, even in places where double precision doesn't
> matter, like quaternions and box lengths. It would be nice if the
> precision were only used where it mattered. Especially in the
> collision detection code where, for example, it took a long time to
> get all of the OPCODE float/double issues worked out.
> 
> Jason

Perhaps a third precision path, that uses both doubles and floats, would be interesting? For example 
doubles for positions (very large worlds), and floats for rotations and wherever the precision 
allows? Best of both.
Though it would not make the code much cleaner, maybe someone can figure out a clever solution?

Martijn