Oh I am glad you like it, yes I went back to our mission statement
Newton Dynamics implements a deterministic solver, which is not based on traditional LCP or iterative methods, but possesses the stability and speed of both respectively. This feature makes Newton Dynamics a tool not only for games, but also for any real-time physics simulation.
That I abandoned for a while with early versions of 3.xx, then I tried to put the responsibility on the end user with skeleton interface, but finally I decided it was too complex for any user and decided to make transparent to them.
This is the same theoretical solver we had in 2.xx and lower but it has been refined to deal only with bidirectional joints at first then improved to deal with all kind of joints except contacts.
Soft joints was something that bothered me a lot and I had to address.
On the solve modes 0, 1, 2
mode 0, means the code will use that as a hard joint whenever possible. this is good for almost any kind of articulated model.
mode 2, mean the joint will use the iteration solve every time, this is good for joint that are issue in real time and can form estrange configuration, stuff like picking joints, dry frictions, breakable joints, etc
mode 1 is the most interesting this is for when the user want the joint to be hard, but the joint can form a kinetic loop with other joint and decision has to be made. For example say you have you have a human ragdoll with a two handed weapon.
The arm, the body and the weapon form a closed loop so one joint need to be part of the generic LCP solver, if we let the algorithm to pick which the joint, it may pick a bad candidate like the arm joint,
the user in these cases would know that the point when the weapon attach to the arm is a better candidate, so he can tell the SDK that that joint is the one to blame.
Basically this option is a tide breaker decisions. the joint are all solved exactly it is just the one is selected for the slower solver path.
In most cases you do not have to worry about because the custom joints already made that decision.
As to what next, yes we are going to address the soft bodies and cloth, we will probably leave for a new release.
immediately I will try to elaborate more on the vehicle module, tanks, for wheel drive, and other things. and we will close 3.15 with at least the beginning of a self balancing character.
If you have any particular feature you would like to see please tell me.
I always give priority to user demanded feature specially of the do put the to good use.