NewtonPlayGround 1.53 (Updated on 22.10.2006)

[walaber]

that is really, really cool!! can't wait for an updated version where we can fool around with it.

I still think it would be a good idea (while you're adding features) to add a distance parameter to your springs as well though, just for completeness.

the Playground is a fantastic prototyping tool!!

[aidave2]

very impressive

good job Sascha

my dominos didnt go past the box conveyer belt tho

[Sascha Willems]

my dominos didnt go past the box conveyer belt tho

I knew I should have taken that conveyor belt out of that sample (which I may do for the next release). I did that scene some longer time ago and back then Newton behaved a bit different and it worked as supposed, but depending on your system due to the numerical differences it may be possible that such things behave different than on my system.

[Thomas]

the "truck with trailers" demo can cause an access violation of the newton.dll if you drive onto the road. can anyone confirm this?

[Sascha Willems]

That's true and seems to be a problem with the connection of joints whose parent and child can collide and the supersampling of the vehicle container. Julio has been informed and is working on it.

[Sascha Willems]

Could all those with problems (others are open to use it too) please test out this beta release of NewtonPlayGround 1.51 (only the exe, ~500 KBytes, zipped)?

Fixed/Added things :

• Picking position differs from cursor position in widescreen (e.g. 1280x800)
• Descriptions are bigger now
• Object menu disappear when user clicks elsewhere
• Give out warning if OpenGL renderer is MS software (to avoid crashes)
• Culling for some objects is wrong, see sample of kallaspirit (suspension)
• Camera rotation possible when finish joint dialog is visible
• Ragdolls use the "," again, fix that (again)
• Value for scaling of convex hull in create body dialog had a wrong decimal separator
• Axis helper and pick sphere are rendered correct now
• When removing last spring of a body, AV was thrown
• Dampers for slider joints

Hopefully all known bugs reported here and fixed in the above changelog are now really fixed, so I'd like to get your feedback on this. As also noted, this also includes the dampers (only for sliders).

[Thomas]

another thing i noticed is that the gravity can't be changed. it always snaps back to the original value.

[Sascha Willems]

Could you please elaborate on this? I tried out and there really was something wrong, as the gravity was set back to it's default value whenever you opened up the scene settings dialog. Was that what you meant? If yes, then I've fixed that (though not in the dl above).

[Thomas]

yes, that's what i meant!

[Xpoint]

Update works fine here, so far everything runs nice.

[walaber]

wow, the buggy s really, really cool now with suspension!!! anyone interested please re-download the xml file I posted above!

fantastic work Sascha!

[Sascha Willems]

Next step on my way to world-domination : Dampers for Hinges

It was easy to implement (as suspected, once you've gotten into Newton's custom joint interface you're only limited by your imagination) and so I decided to create another buggy based on kallaspriit's suspension he earlier posted :


Looks nice static, but is even more interesting in motion. So as usual, there is another movie (maybe I'm gonna put out a "The best of Newton"-DVD somwehere in the future ) :
Buggy with Hinges - Movie (600 KBytes, WMV)

[walaber]

[Julio Jerez]

I am speachless I have no speach

[Sascha Willems]

New release :
Seems that no more (serious) bugs are left, so I just uploaded the final NewtonPlayGround 1.51, grab it here (Installer, 5.6 MBytes). A changelog is included, as well as the buggy scene I posted above.

User contributions :
I'll soon add a section to the webpage of the NewtonPlayGround where I plan to let people download user-created scenes (like the buggy from Walaber), so if you have made anything interesting post it here, or send it to me via PM/E-Mail and I'll add it to that section (along with your name and webpage, if desired).



Now I'll see if this is free of bugs and than I'll start making promotion for the PlayGround around the net, though it already started to spread through forums and different pages and has been dl'ed almost 400 times since my announcement here. So hopefully this wont let my traffic limit explode