[ODE] code quality again

[erwin@erwincoumans.com]

Lack of ODE code quality was one of the many reasons to start Bullet Physics 
Library from scratch. 

>>You will find that the other free or free-ish systems (Bullet, Gimpact, Newton, etc) 
>>have their own problems, with performance, stability,  flexibility, or a combination thereof.

Open source Bullet Physics (http://bulletphysics.com) is different in this 
perspective: 

Several professional paid engineers are contributing to Bullet, including 
some ex-Ageia PhysX and ex-Havok engineers and console developers (PS3, XBox 
360, Wii). Sony let's me work on this project with SPU optimizations, 
support licensed developers while maintaining it open source. They even let 
me do public talks about collaborations,  the next one is at 
Sandbox.siggraph.org. 

I'm still intending to contribute collision detection parts from Bullet into 
ODE, so it would replace OPCODE. But unless there is more interest from ODE 
developers (rather then users), focus is on Bullet. 

Erwin
http://bulletphysics.com 


J
on Watte (ODE) writes: 

> 
> There are two problems facing ODE, or any fundamentally hard open source 
> project: 
> 
> 1) Solid physics simulation is actually a hard problem that requires 
> significant rigor. Such rigor is actually not commonly found among open 
> source developers or hobbyists. 
> 
> 2) Everyone working with ODE want to "make a game" or "finish their 
> thesis" -- they don't want to "make ODE better." Thus, there's a real 
> shortage of people's time to actually improve it substantially in the 
> ways that you suggest. 
> 
> Yourself, you have the same attitude: it's not what I want, and I'm not 
> going to spend the time making it so. 
> 
> You will find that the other free or free-ish systems (Bullet, Gimpact, 
> Newton, etc) have their own problems, with performance, stability, 
> flexibility, or a combination thereof. The only system I'd use rather 
> than ODE (if source didn't matter) is PhysX, which is free (on PC) and 
> high quality, because people have gotten paid, daily, to address those 
> hard issues. 
> 
> Open Source is a great model when several somewhat inexperienced 
> developers with free time on their hands can get a kick out of 
> contributing. It starts falling down as soon as the problem becomes such 
> that the people who can best work on it, are already busy working long 
> hours on things they get paid for. 
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
>           / h+ 
> 
> 
> Gero Müller wrote:
>> I think it is a pitty because of this i actually consider using another
>> library. Which is not worth mentioning as my project is too small, but
>> it MAY reflect other possibile users/contributers opinion as well. So
>> PLEASE increase code quality before patches are merged.
>>   
> 
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