Though changes will need to be made to accommodate the changes, the new engine will offer much improved features and stability in the long run. breve> is now using portions of the Open Dynamics Engine library. See the file PhysicsNotes for more information.
The default iteration and integration timesteps have been changed.
Control.tz has changed the default timesteps and integration steps to match the timesteps used by PhysicalControl.tz. This way, objects from regular simulations will behave the same way in physical simulations.Simulations written in previous versions will run very slowly because of the small timesteps. You should increase the velocities of the objects so that they run at a reasonable speed.
If you need to return to the old step sizes, you can set the integration step to 0.5 and the iteration step to 3.0. For new simulations, however, you should use the default values. A number of demos have been modified to accommodate this change.
The "scale" of the world has now been fixed at "1 world unit" = 1 meter. The world is now effectively 1/10th the size of the world in version 1.0.If you are using the class PhysicalControl then you will probably want to scale down the objects in your simulation to 1/10th of their original size. 1 unit in the simulated world is now fixed as 1 meter. This means that objects created in version 1.0 may now be much larger than intended. You should modify your simulation to scale down every object to 1/10th of the original size and modify the forces applied to objects and joints; the accelerations, speeds and positions of the objects and the camera locations accordingly.
Bear in mind when adjusting forces applied to objects and joints that the mass of the object will not scale down by 1/10th but instead much more--in the case of a rectangular solid, the mass is scaled by a factor of 1/100th. This means that maximum joint pressures should most likely be scaled down by at least 100.
If you are not using the class PhysicalControl then the only effect of the changes will be that the textures on objects are very small and that the default starting camera position may be closer than desired. You can fix these problems by following the same directions given above for those using the class PhysicalControl.
Initial release.