What's new in Bullet 2.86
May 18, 2017
- Has improved Python bindings, pybullet, for robotics, machine learning and VR
- Furthermore, the PGS LCP constraint solver has a new option to terminate as soon as the residual (error) is below a specified tolerance (instead of terminating after a fixed number of iterations). There are optional multithreaded optimizations, thanks to lunkhound. There is preliminary support to load some MuJoCo MJCF xml files (see data/mjcf),see Bullet VR haptic experiments with a VR glove
New in Bullet 2.8.1 (Oct 15, 2012)
- SIMD and Neon optimizations for iOS and Mac OSX, thanks to a contribution from Apple.
- Rolling Friction using a constraint, thanks to Erin Catto for the idea. See Demos/RollingFrictionDemo/RollingFrictionDemo.cpp.
- XML serialization. See Bullet/Demos/BulletXmlImportDemo for XML import and use the -dump_xml option in Bullet/Demos/SerializeDemo to convert from binary .bullet to XML. Note that the XML import is work-in-progress.
- Gear constraint, thanks to Dimitris Papavasiliou for the idea. See Bullet/Demos/ConstraintDemo.
- Improved continuous collision response, feeding speculative contacts to the constraint solver. See Bullet/Demos/CcdPhysicsDemo.
- Improved premake4 build system including support for Mac OSX, Linux and iOS.
- Refactoring of collision detection pipeline using stack allocation instead of modifying the collision object. This will allow better future multithreading optimizations.
- New force/torque joint feedback, see btTypedConstraint::setJointFeedback
- New work-in-progress Bullet Quickstart manual, with full LaTeX source. See Bullet/docs/BulletQuickstart.pdf
New in Bullet 2.8 (Sep 29, 2012)
- GPU rigid body pipeline running 100% on the GPU using OpenCL. This is a preview, Bullet 3.x will use this as a GPU backend. See Bullet/Extras/RigidBodyGpuPipeline. Requires very recent GPU and drivers (Radeon 5870 or NVIDIA 470 with 290.53 or newer)
- Physics Effects rigid body pipeline, with Android/NEON optimizations. This is a preview, Bullet 3.x will use this as handheld backend. Sony provides a VITA optimized version.
- See Bullet/Extras/PhysicsEffects .
- Option to override the number of constraint solver iterations for individual constraints. See Bullet/Demos/VoronoiFractureDemo, setOverrideNumSolverIterations
- The open source Dynamica Bullet Maya plugin is now deterministic when restarting the simulation. Also it has preliminary cloth and convex decomposition (HACD) integration. See http://dynamica.googlecode.com for source and precompiled downloads.
- Check the issue tracker at http://bullet.googlecode.com for other improvements.
New in Bullet 2.78 (Jul 12, 2011)
- Fracture and glueing demo that can break or glue child shapes of a btCompoundShape when certain impulse thresholds are exceeded. See Bullet/Demos/FractureDemo
- Breakable constraints, based on an applied impulse threshold. See Bullet/Demos/ConstraintDemos
- Improved binary .bullet file format with soft body serialization and See Bullet/Demos/SerializeDemo
- Polyhedral contact clipping and optional separating axis test (SAT) as alternative to GJK/EPA and incremental contact manifold, for btPolyhedralConvexShape derived shapes such as btConvexHullShape See Demos/InternalEdgeDemo
- OpenCL and DirectCompute cloth simulation improvements: GPU kernels for capsule collision detection and OpenCL-OpenGL interop See Demos/OpenCLClothDemo and Demos/DX11ClothDemo
- Speculative/predictive contact constraints as a method to perform continuous collision response. See Demos/CcdPhysicsDemo
New in Bullet 2.77 (Jul 21, 2010)
- support for the .bullet binary file format
- btInternalEdgeUtility to adjust unwanted collisions against internal triangle edges
- Improved Maya Dynamica plugin with better constraint authoring and .bullet file export
New in Bullet 2.76 (Feb 27, 2010)
- First version of kinematic character controller (non-rigid body). See Demos/CharacterDemo
- Improved soft body collision detection, using convex clusters. Thanks to Nathanael Presson.
- Added btMultimaterialTriangleMeshShape, see MultiMaterialDemo
- Thanks to Alex Silverman for the contribution
- Performance improvements for btDbvhBroadphase, and basic textures/shadow support, thanks to Nathanael Presson
- Havok .hkx to COLLADA Physics .dae file conversion, see hkx2dae
- Various bugfixes, thanks everyone for reporting!