NewtonPlayGround 1.53 (Updated on 22.10.2006)

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NewtonPlayGround 1.53 (Updated on 22.10.2006)

Postby Sascha Willems » Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:16 am

Introduction :
Finally it's unleashed upon mankind! After countless months of work, countless learned lessons and countless lines of code the new version of the NewtonPlayGround is online. This is the perfect tool to play around with the myriad of Newton's features and it can even be used to create scenes/levels for your own games/apps. You can built almost everything possible with realtime physics, starting from simple box stacks to very complex motorized machinery.

Download :
I've also set up a small informational page for the NewtonPlayGround here, which also contains the download link. Direct download is here (~10 MBytes, Win32), but please don't directly link to this file.
After download, please take a look at the manual to get started. It covers the basic stuff and describes how you put things together and also how you can add your own content (models, textures).

Note :
This is the first bugfixed release (1.51) of the NewtonPlayGround and it should be mostly free of bugs (see changelog for the fixes/changes). But if you still encounter any problems or find any bugs, please report them here. Also try to tell exactly what happens and if you have a scene saved to XML that makes problems/doesn't work, please attach it or e-mail it to me so I can look into the matter.

Update to 1.53 on 22.10.2006 :
After a longer break, the newest version of NPG is finally here. Besides some smaller things like bugfixes and changes to the user interface, there are also some new features like magnetic objects and skinned ragdolls. New example scenes to demonstrate those features are included.
Also please report any bugs or problems you can find with 1.53, so I can fix them as soon as possible. Though I tried fixing every bug known with 1.51 I simply can't test anything possible with NPG, so there may be some bugs left

Screenshots :
(click for bigger view) :
New shots from version 1.53 :
Image Image Image Image
Shots from version 1.51 :
Image Image Image Image
Image Image Image Image
Image Image Image Image
Image Image Image Image


Post Scriptum :
So now please go and built some awesome stuff and share it with the community. I've put so much work into this piece of software, so now I'd like to lean back a bit and enjoy what others will create with the NewtonPlayGround.
Last edited by Sascha Willems on Sun Oct 22, 2006 11:33 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Postby Xpoint » Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:23 am

WOOHOO!!! Currently downloading, I'll get back in a few days when I'm done playing with it. 8) :lol:
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Postby Xpoint » Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:42 am

Ok, already got the first bugs. When I ran the program, I saw that the XYZ thing in the left bottom of the screen (no idea how to name it :P ) was a little (well, half of it) out of the screen. Also rays shot from the camera are wrong. (They spawn a little right from my mouse) Problem: Your nice program doesn't handle wide screen. My current resolution is 1280x800, so that's the problem I think.

Also, how to change those settings? I found a way by editting the 'settings.xml' in the data map, but maybe there is another way.

And last, those descriptions for the menu on the right.. very difficult to read because they are so small. :wink:
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Postby Sascha Willems » Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:47 am

Widescreen :
I must admit that I haven't thought about those wide-screen resolutions and therefore didn't test with them (I only have a normal CRT, no widescreen LCD or so). I'll see what I can do with this and that camera/ray difference.Edit : Just tested with 1280x800 and saw what you meant, I'll look into it.

Descriptions :
It seems to depend on the graphics card. I have noticed that on my new GeForce 6800 the descriptions get fuzzy with everything below 1280x960 (which is my standard resolution, and with it letters are easy to read). That wasn't the case back on my old ATI Radeon9700, and I also noticed that it get's worse when enabling anti aliasing. I'll see what I can do about it.

Changing settings :
There is a link in the PlayGround's program group which upens up a settings-dialog which also let's you select the resolution. You need then to uncheck "Use desktop resolution...".
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Postby Assembler » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:22 am

Very cool!

the sun in the planetary system is a bit small :P
has each planet a kin of gravitation? or are that all just joints?
Programming is just for 15 year old boys! Not for grown ups! :)

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Postby Thomas » Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:58 pm

wow, impressive work! :)
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Postby kallaspriit » Sat Feb 04, 2006 1:01 pm

Very nice, some thing could be bether though:
- the description texts are way too small, cant read them
- object menu should disappear when clicked outside it, choosing "close" is annoying
- turning off the shadows doesn't seem to have any effect


Great job on the Playgound :P
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Postby Glidisen » Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:00 pm

I won't work on my comp.
When I run it, it loads for a second then an error: "Zugriffsvertletszung beiAdresse 00000000. Lesen von Adresse 00000000.".
I have no clue what that is.

Then I Click 'Ok.'. And the program continues loading/leaking memory.
Probably leaking memory.

Checked the log.

Code: Select all
[20:52:11]  NewtonPlayGround build 04_02_06 starting...
[20:52:11]  Windows version is Windows XP Service Pack 1
[20:52:11]  Initializing OpenGL subsystem...
[20:52:11]    Vendor : Microsoft Corporation
[20:52:11]    Renderer : GDI Generic
[20:52:11]    Version : 1.1.0
[20:52:12]  Finished
[20:52:13]  Creating NewtonWorld
[20:52:13]  Minimum framerate set to 75Hz
[20:52:13]  Newton version is 151
[20:52:13]  Newton initialization finished
[20:52:13]  Creating joint manager...
[20:52:13]  Finished
[20:52:13]  Creating primitive manager...
[20:52:13]  Finished
[20:52:13]  Creating user interface...
[20:52:14]  Finished
[20:53:30]  Log closed


Doens't seem to be anything wrong here...
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Postby _Tux_ » Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:12 pm

Glidisen wrote:I won't work on my comp.


it looks like you havn't installed any display drivers, try installing them
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Postby Sascha Willems » Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:18 pm

@Glidisen :
Code: Select all
[20:52:11]  Initializing OpenGL subsystem...
[20:52:11]    Vendor : Microsoft Corporation
[20:52:11]    Renderer : GDI Generic
[20:52:11]    Version : 1.1.0


As Tux said. This usually should tell what graphics card is installed and what driver version you're using. But on your system there is either no hardware support for OpenGL or no current driver is installed and it uses the generic OpenGL Software implementation for rendering, which won't work with the PlayGround. Maybe you still have the graphics drivers installed that came with Windows XP, cause Microsoft stripped those default drivers of OpenGL support (to hurt competition I guess). So please update your graphics card drivers and try again.

@Kallaspirit :
- the description texts are way too small, cant read them

As stated above they look good at 1280x960 and above, so I guess I'll scale them for lower resolutions in the next update.
- object menu should disappear when clicked outside it, choosing "close" is annoying

That's true and that's what windows does too, so I'll implement that.
- turning off the shadows doesn't seem to have any effect

Will look into that. It used to work at some point, so I may have fubar'd this by hardcoding the flag for shadows.[/u]
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Postby Glidisen » Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:35 pm

Thanks for that.
Installed the latest NVidia drivers, so now it works!

Very nice program :wink:
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Postby walaber » Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:20 pm

this is so cool. fantastic job Sascha! by far the best example to show people interested in Newton.

I am going to try and make some kind of walking robot when I get a chance :)
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Postby haffax » Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:28 pm

Extremely cool program. Fun to play with and it feels very professional and fine tuned. :D

Two points I noticed: The mouse picking is a bit off when you move the mouse away from the center. In center it pics the exact point, but the more you move to the screen border, the more the picking errs toward the center.

Second thing is, that the character controller doesn't feel like you are actually going by feet, but more as if you sit in a car or some other vehicle. Acceleration/Deccaleration could maybe a bit faster, letting controls feel more responsive.
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Postby kallaspriit » Sun Feb 05, 2006 5:15 am

I tried out more things and the program is fantastic :P

Couple more problems though:
- I can kind of see through some objects, a screeny will follow later
- when setting up the joint, it would be nice to be able to move around with the camera like when adding a new object in the scene. Then you could see exaxtly where the joint attachment point will go.


I've always wanted to implement custom suspension to use for a car (buggy actually) but it seemed to hard to do, but with this visual editor, I got the basics in place.

Pictures:

Image
This is what it looks like in real life

Image
This is what I got in Playground (notice that the cilinder does not look right)

There is no actual suspension yet or anything but is this approach possible to simulate suspension?

Here is my scene setup XML
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Postby Sury » Sun Feb 05, 2006 6:11 am

Excellent application !
I encountered two problems though.
When loading "Human catapult" - throws an exception that is in german, but i guess i says "0,00001234 is not a valid floating point value"
"Wheeled tank on terrain" cannot load the tank and states that it can't find a mesh with a message "TDirectXMesh->GetMeshByName->Mesh->Geosphare01 not found"
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