Prismatic, Fixed, Point in plane, Point in line joints & Pulley

Hi,
in fact I am in a very need for the prismatic joint and I just tried to compile the PhysX source for Gamestudio under VS 2005 and face already while including NxWheel.h some problems:

http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=384637#Post384637

Whatever, before I waste time and I bet you are more into PhysX at the moment (for example because I posted another bug report), I kindly ask if you could add the remaining simple joints to Gamestudio, at least the Prismatic joint

The other joints, which are Fixed, Point in plane, Point in line joints (and maybe Pulley), would be nice as well, but I am bit frustrated that even the simple prismatic joint is not available... from my perspective it would be just copy and paste of the Cylindrical Joint, because -- as I see in the NVidia PhysX SDK -- it has the same parameters, so, even setparams1 and setparams2 can be handled the same way! The only difference is, that PhysX removes the degree of freedom for rotating around the axis automatically - that's it!

Best regards,
-Christian

Ok, I finally was able to compile your PhysX plugin under VS 2005... and adding prismatic joints is really a work of 5 minutes.. just copy and paste the parts of where you check against PH_SLIDER and ->isCylindricalJoint() and replace with PH_PRISMATIC (I introduced a new define with = 7 for this) and ->isPrismaticJoint().

It just works!

It could be awesome if someone could setup a source control for phys plugin where people can contribute their additions/fixes.

https://sourceforge.net/p/a8physx/home/Home/

Thanks, I'll add later the clothing and soft bodies functions.

Jcl may define this as sticky!?

Awesome! Thanks!

We'd need someone to offically manage the repository. If HeelX is willing to do that, we can make the link official. It requires though that source changes are tested and documented.

Well, since I created the repository and I am willing to work on it when I need to (for physics in my project), I am for sure maintaining it.

But since this would be an open source project, this includes also custom additions by me and other users which extend maybe the API towards PhysX. I for example would change and extend the API, having functions like pXcon_setparams1 and pXcon_setparams2 is so ugly to me, or I would enforce the user to use correct PhysX names like PH_REVOLUTE or PH_PRISMATIC, or have functions like pXcon_addRevolute with parameters that target the creation of a revolute joint, or making constraint descriptions available in Gamestudio and and and... I really dislike the idea to support the old physics instructions introduced with ODE just for the sake of compatibility.

You said "It requires though that source changes are tested and documented". To what certain degree do you think should this be done? I see two problems: 1) for correct testing, I would provide samples for each existing and/or new feature, like I do in all of my projects, as you can see in the SSAO demos. But I don't see, that you provide tests for all physics features, like the PhysX SDK, so, as long as I add features for my own projects, I for sure have to test it, because.. well.. I need it. If others add features, do you think I should make tests for it, too? 2) How am I supposed to document it, if the PhysX plugin is documented in the Gamestudio manual? I just made a CHM manual for SSAO with the style of Gamestudio, it would be no problem to maintain a seperate CHM manual of it.

Third, since this is an open source project, I can not guarantee, that I sit here 8 hours a day to maintain, work, bugfix, test and document it. During the development of SSAO v0.6 I also had times in which I didn't worked on it, because more important work had to be done, like for university or paying clients.

What I am trying to say is: I like the idea that you opened up the PhysX plugin, because users can work together on adding own features to it and I would enjoy working on it, too. But if you want to use it for your official Gamestudio releases, I would advise you to either to

1) look regularily on the source and add changes to your own version and maintain the "official" plugin by yourself (this includes testing, documentation and your own degree of quality) --- and leave the version on SourceForge as untested, unreliable and un-official "user" version for which you don't give any guarantees

or

2) You pay me to work for you, e.g. for one-two full days in a week and I would develop it in this time further under your conditions (in terms of code/feature quality, testing, documentation and so on).

Other than that I would say "yes, I maintain it", but I can make no guarantees to any of your other statements and requirements then, sorry. I hope you understand my concerns...

Yes, of course. Maintaining a source repository can be a lot of work. We'll then keep our source version as the official release, but will look from time to time what other users have added, and will test and document it when it's useful.