I tried out the bullet VehicleDemo and the similar ForkLiftDemo examples. The driving experience of both demos are very acrade alike.
As it seems from a quick look in the code both use the raycast method for the vehicle physics.
There are two methodes to simulate a vehicle as Erwin Coumans explained in 2006 (http://www.bulletphysics.com/Bullet/php ... 2284#p2284):
- raycast wheeled vehicles
- constraint hinge wheeled vehicles
In the source code of both demos, I found following comments:
Code: Select all
///September 2006: VehicleDemo is work in progress, this file is mostly just a placeholder
///This VehicleDemo file is very early in development, please check it later
///@todo is a basic engine model:
///A function that maps user input (throttle) into torque/force applied on the wheels
///with gears etc.
- Is it possible with the current Vehicle support to achieve a more real-life (non arcarde; e.g. off-road) vehicle simulation (incl. suspension, tire, etc.) ?
- How would one add a visible suspension to the vehicle (like in the screenshots below) ?
- What are the plans for the (near) future, related to the bullet vehicle support?
- Are there are plans to update/improve the vehicle demo(s)?
Screenshots from a decent game with a good (vehicle) physics engine (especially the visible suspensions are interesting):
Sadly, I found only bullet based vehicle implementations for Blender, no OpenGL or DirectX sample apps from third party developers. Unlike other physics engines, were there are dozens of such examples.
Although, I would like to use Bullet as it supports soft bodies, CUDA, etc., is more active and has a huge community.
Maybe someone who has used bullet for vehicle simulation can post some sample code or give me some pointers/hints were to look.
Best regards,
Klemens
Ressources:
http://www.carbibles.com/suspension_bible.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_(vehicle)
http://www.bulletphysics.com/Bullet/php ... 2284#p2284
http://www.tutorialsforblender3d.com/Ga ... elRun.html