Any decent tutorial on making a Vehicle work with Bullet?

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Mars_999
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:48 pm

Any decent tutorial on making a Vehicle work with Bullet?

Post by Mars_999 »

I know there is a demo with the SDK, but was looking for some online tutorial that steps you through the whole process. I have ran the demo, but I want to be able to control the car with acceleration "fwd" and deaccleration "back" and when the user keeps hold back the car moves in reverse. Also I would like to slam on the breaks with another key press but this will not stop the car immediately but apply more break pressure to stop the car. I have never used or looked at using a physics lib, so this would be my first time. I have no clue on caveats on implementing the physics lib with a car model. What kind of car model should I use? e.g. one model with all the car parts in a single mesh? Or 5 parts 4 wheels and 1 body? I am making a crash up derby game so if that matter or helps. I would like to have cars, tank like vehicles "tracked instead of wheels" <- if this is a huge issue I can drop it for now.

Thanks

BTW better yet is there a book out for Bullet and how to use it one could buy? HINT HINT!!!!
Mars_999
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:48 pm

Re: Any decent tutorial on making a Vehicle work with Bullet?

Post by Mars_999 »

Anyone? Anyone? I been waiting for some guidance, and haven't even started working on it yet.
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Erwin Coumans
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Re: Any decent tutorial on making a Vehicle work with Bullet?

Post by Erwin Coumans »

The only thing I can recommend is to experiment more with the VehicleDemo, and provide some feedback so others can learn from your experience.

Hopefully it isn't hard to customize it and add logic that performs breaking etc, but that goes beyond the core physics engine functionality.
Thanks,
Erwin
DannyChapman
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Re: Any decent tutorial on making a Vehicle work with Bullet?

Post by DannyChapman »

You could also look at the demos for other physics libraries, since the demo code will normally be open source even if the physics library itself isn't.

There's a "raycast" car with my jiglib (http://www.rowlhouse.co.uk/jiglib, also search for jiglib and jigglex on youtube) that is quite fun to drive, and it's not too complicated - would be easy to port to any physics engine I think.
hiker
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Re: Any decent tutorial on making a Vehicle work with Bullet?

Post by hiker »

Hi,

have a look at the doxygen documentation for btRaycastVehicle at
http://www.continuousphysics.com/Bullet ... hicle.html
There is a function setBrake.If this braking is too strong for what you want to do, you can always set a larger negative engine force for the wheels instead. I've use the latter approach, and it works fine.

Best regards,
Joerg
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