[Opensim-dev] Using ODE for vehicles and ragdolls

[nlin (message)]

Hello,

There's been some discussion about SL-compatible vehicles in OpenSim
recently, with its higher-level abstraction of how vehicles work. This would
have the long-term goals of compatibility and ability to swap out physics
engines while still using the same vehicle layer.

SL-compatibility and abstracting vehicles from the physics engine are good
goals for the long term; sort of a top-down approach (start with the vehicle
abstraction, map it to many different physics engines).

Complementary to this, I'd like to explore and start discussion of an
alternative way of handling vehicles by using a bottom-up approach. Starting
with the specific physics engine of ODE, can we use ODE-specific features to
make simple vehicles?

I did some experiments with OpenSim and ODE and the answer seems to be yes,
we can make simple vehicles with ODE by using joints. We can also make
ragdolls. I posted some videos to YouTube of the preliminary results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYIh-eIwmjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9bedzIuxdM

This is only prototype work for now, put together sort of quickly as a
proof-of-concept with just enough "plumbing" (data flow) to work. There are
a number of issues that need to be solved for this to work cleanly. As far
as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong) there hasn't been much work done
to try to get ODE joints/vehicles/ragdolls working in OpenSim, but I think
it's an avenue worth exploring.

Is there interest in pursuing this approach for OpenSim vehicles? I would
look forward to discussing some of the issues that would need to be solved.

Thanks,
N Lin (nlin)
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