Re: [Closed REQ 5267]: Geomview and kinematics/collision detection

["Daeron Meyer" <daeron>]

> 
> Date: Mon, 27 Feb 95 18:48:38 +0100
> From: mczane at verdi.eng.unipr.it (Francesco Zanichelli)
> Message-Id: <9502271748.AA05021 at CE.UniPR.IT>
> To: software@geom
> Subject: Geomview and kinematics/collision detection
> 
> 
> Geomview is surely a great piece of work.
> I was wondering whether are there external modules
> to deal with collision detection among objects as well as
> with kinematics capabilities.
> Best regards,
> 
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
> Francesco Zanichelli, Ph.D.			
> Dipartimento di 			+39 521 905710 (905723 fax)
> Ingegneria dell'Informazione		mczane at verdi.eng.unipr.it
> Universita' di Parma			ZANICHELLI at PRVXIN.CEDI.UNIPR.IT
> Viale delle Scienze - Campus 
> 43100 - PARMA - ITALY			What's up Doc ?
> 
> 
> 

Hello Francesco,

  Thanks for your inquiry. I guess the short answer is no. We aren't
distributing any external modules with these capabilities. However,
I have seen Geomview being used for displaying some very complex motions.
In particular we received a series of OOGL files showing an athelete
performing a high jump. That was done with video sampling though, not by
simulation. Also, for internal use I've written a program that shatters
an object made out of QUADS, causing the resulting pieces to fly all over
the place, come crashing to the ground and bounce.

  In general, there has been little effort to make external modules that
do realistic collision detection etc... The main reason for this is that
Geomview is mostly used by mathematicians who are more interested in
visualizing exotic algorithms than simulating some well understood
phenomenon like motion. I suspect it wouldn't be hard to adapt some other
collision detection/kinematics package to generate output for Geomview.
We just haven't tried it here.

cheers,

Daeron Meyer
daeron at geom.umn.edu