[ODE] XML Formats

[Bill Sellers]

I don't think there is a standard. The various big commercial  
simulators have their own formats some of which are XML and some of  
which aren't. There are some XML libraries for ODE but the last time  
I looked they didn't have enough options to be really useful  
(certainly in my case) and this is probably because a full simulation  
needs ODE and several other things that ODE doesn't provide  
(controllers, springs, graphics, force generators) but that you  
probably want to include in the XML specification. It then becomes  
easier to roll your own to add all the extra bits rather than adapt  
someone else's. I had a play with H-Anim and as I remember it's  
basically a VRML tree with all the segments specified relative to the  
previous segment which makes sense but isn't how ODE looks at the  
world - you end up doing a fair bit of your own geometry to get it  
all working. H-Anim also doesn't (or didn't) include any inertial  
properties. However there are various VR/graphics projects that embed  
ODE and they may have all you need.

Cheers
Bill

On 6 Feb 2007, at 04:36, Dave Grundgeiger wrote:

> Hi. I'm interested to learn what XML formats are relevant to game  
> and simulation programming. I did some searching and found X3D and  
> H-Anim. Are these widely used? Do these formats include the  
> physical properties of objects or just the display and animation  
> properties? Is there an XML format specifically for physics  
> engines? Are there other important XML specs, perhaps for AI or  
> game scripting?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Dave
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