Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

Dark Physics & Dark A.I. & Dark Dynamix / Collision detection and the demo version of DarkPhysics?

Author
Message
VRMan3D
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 3rd Apr 2005
Location: New England
Posted: 30th Oct 2006 22:05
Hi folks,

Maybe I'm missing something that tells a rigid body to report back collisions, but I can't seem to get it to work.

I'm doing a while loop to check for collisions like the docs suggest like this:



It never enters the while loop even once and I can clearly see my 'pieces' hitting the base and each other endlessly. Is there some command you need to call to tell the objects to pay attention to collisions?
This is kind of a project killer for me, I was excited at the performance of DarkPhysics compared with Newton, but I have to be able to track collisions, and find out the resulting velocity of impact and normals and such.

I noticed this command:
------------------------------------------
PHY SET RIGID BODY CCD MOTION THRESHOLD
Set the continous collision detection motion threshold for the rigid body
Syntax

phy set rigid body mass ID, threshold#
------------------------------------------
But if you look carefully they have the wrong command listed in the syntax section of the help explanation. AND when you type this in, the syntax highlighting doesn't highlight this nor "phy set rigid body ccd 101, 1" nor "phy set continous cd 1.0". I thought perhaps those might be what I needed to turn on.

For example in Newton you need to create a callback for collisions, and they won't trigger unless you've assigned a material to the rigid body. Is it something like that?

Any ideas there Richard? Anyone?

Also, I was very very disappointed to find that your ray casting commands were disabled in the demo. The game I'm creating was making extensive use of these in Newton, and I was really really hoping to try it out in Dark Physics. Is the performance there? I found ways of making my game work without the DarkPhysics ray casting, but it really takes a lot of the fun away. Any chance you could make a different version of the demo (lol), or maybe compile something for me to try out before I shell out the 60 bux?

Thanks, and best regards,
-=VRMan=-
PS> Your answer regarding game licensing still scares me Richard. You said that no one has had to pay yet, but you didn't say what one would have to pay if they had to pay. Is it a percentage of profits? A $10,000 fee? I can't really afford either, so I hope my game won't warrant anything. Is there any way to tell what will make them require a licensing agreement? There's no indication anywhere which seems kind of scary and risky for a little developer like me (spending a ton of effort using this tool, only to find out (hopefully not) I have to rip it all out and go back to newton???), and I wish it were just spelled out clearly for us to see, or at least some hints of any sort.

World Famous 3D Screensavers
-- http://www.vrman3d.com --
Mike Johnson
TGC Developer
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Sep 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 31st Oct 2006 09:45
Collision feedback was removed from the demo version as were many other features. The demo is a very cut down version of Dark Physics but allows you to get a good idea of what is included.

Here's some code showing how to use CCD:



I have found the ray casting to be very fast and efficient. As of yet I haven't run into problems with it slowing things down.

If you want to make a commercial title using Dark Physics then the best thing to do is contact Ageia and discuss things with them. They require that you support the hardware and take advantage of it and in return you can release commercially without paying anything extra. Freddix has gone through this process with Ageia and got an agreement set up and he doesn't have to pay anything.
VRMan3D
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 3rd Apr 2005
Location: New England
Posted: 31st Oct 2006 17:17
Ok that sounds fine. Thanks for the reply. It's too bad there wasn't another way to do your demo version that had everything enabled, as I'd really like to check out the collision feedback commands before commiting to it. I noticed in another thread in here that most of the collision feedback commands aren't implemented (such as float = phy get collision normal force x ( ))... How soon will I have to wait until the product is complete?

Also I'm wondering if you have a version of DarkPhysics for the Dark GDK? Would I have to purchase that separately?

Oh and one more question, is there already, or are there any plans to make a laptop version of the Physx cards do you know? PCMCIA? Probably not but thought I'd ask. It would be nice to have one in my XPS Gen2 laptop here (geforce 7800GTXgo) which is faster than any of my desktop machines =)

Thanks,
-=VRMan=-

World Famous 3D Screensavers
-- http://www.vrman3d.com --
VRMan3D
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 3rd Apr 2005
Location: New England
Posted: 31st Oct 2006 18:07
One more thing...

There has been a lot of discussion regarding ATI and NVIDIA using the FX shader engines for physics processing. Has anyone heard if Ageia is going to stick with discreet PPU hardware only or do we know if they are going to write drivers to support other hardware for physics processing like using the shader engines?

-=VRMan=-

World Famous 3D Screensavers
-- http://www.vrman3d.com --

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2024-03-28 19:07:36
Your offset time is: 2024-03-28 19:07:36