Further development of the Advanced Vehicles project

oxplay2 · January 15, 2021, 11:45pm

this looks really awesome! good work a lot of details were made.

adi.barda · January 16, 2021, 5:35am

Amazing work sgold!
I liked the new gauges, the new vehicles look, the smoke options… everything! looking forward to adapt it to my project
Thanks!

adi.barda · January 21, 2021, 11:20am

I think jeyfella’s advance vehicles project should be removed from JME’s store because it has a broken link to github

sgold · January 21, 2021, 7:46pm

In that case, all of Jayfella’s projects should be removed from the Store.

adi.barda · January 21, 2021, 8:13pm

I think so, yes. There is no point kipping un existing projects. It reduces the integrity of the store

sgold · January 21, 2021, 9:23pm

Thanks to timely forking, most of Jayfella’s projects still exist, just not at their original URLs. For instance, forks of his “Advanced Vehicles” project can be found in many GitHub accounts:

adi.barda · January 22, 2021, 5:35am

Well, after spending quite a lot of time on the migration to the new code, I had to roll back to jeyfella’s original code. The new components are more tightly coupled to the application then the old once up to the point where I find myself remarking and refactoring a lot of code to make things work.
When I have time, I will create a separate project just for creating a lib out of this demo which can be used by my main project.
Anyway as I said , it’s really a good demo for showing JME’s capabilities and attract devs for using it.

sgold · January 22, 2021, 6:38am

I realize it’s difficult to work with MAV right now. Someday there will be a library with a stable API.

adi.barda · January 22, 2021, 9:20pm

It’s fun testing all those new cars

I also saw this nice clip where someone managed to setup a buggy with so much power that it makes wheelies and hard drifts. I wonder what would be such setup? it’s probably using rear wheels driving and high COG but how much power needed to achieve such wheelies? I’m going to try…

sgold · January 22, 2021, 9:54pm

I’m glad MAV is providing fun. Thanks for the side-by-side screenshot; I’m glad to see that the relative sizes are roughly correct.

Sketchfab has plenty of downloadable vehicle models. Yesterday I added Rémy’s “Enhanced HoverTank”, so MAV is up to 7 vehicles now. The next vehicle will be a motorcycle, I think.

sgold · January 23, 2021, 3:27am

As for popping wheelies, I look forward to hearing the result of your trial. I expect the basic ingredients would be:

rear-wheel drive
good traction (for the rear wheels)
high center of gravity
low-weight vehicle (low-mass or low gravity)
powerful engine

adi.barda · January 23, 2021, 5:49am

As a motorcyclist I’m very interested in a motorcycle demo but do we have physics support for it? I mean does bullet’s vehicle support 2 wheels vehicles physics? what will happen in idle for example, will the motorcycle fall on its side like in real life?

adi.barda · January 23, 2021, 7:21am

The new cars tested in a small playground.
My target is to make them fun & crazy, not realistic so further tuning for the engine & suspension is needed.

Pavl_G · January 23, 2021, 9:12am

Nice work , how can I draw lines like these on playground during doughnuts ?, Are they particle emitters emitted from the wheels & have zero gravity ?

adi.barda · January 23, 2021, 10:05am

I didn’t do anything. It comes out of the box with the advanced vehicles lib. I think the class responsible for it is: SkidMarkManager

sgold · January 23, 2021, 8:18pm

If Bullet’s vehicle doesn’t support 2-wheel vehicles, then I’ll find that out and build something using rigid bodies and constraints that does support them. The only way to know for sure is to try!

I expect a 2-wheel Bullet vehicle to fall over unless special arrangements are made. I have 3 possible solutions in mind:

locate the vehicle’s center of gravity below the wheels (will probably create other issues)
add a dynamic controller to balance on 2 wheels
add a kickstand (when the vehicle isn’t moving)

how can I draw lines like these on playground during doughnuts ?

As @adi.barda said, it’s code from the More Advanced Vehicles project. No particles are used. Each wheel generates a decal, a dynamic custom mesh that floats 2 cm above the pavement. Here’s the heart of it:

github.com

stephengold/jme-vehicles/blob/46f910d2923c337a1605af55aac6ea8a44387a70/src/main/java/com/jayfella/jme/vehicle/skid/SkidmarkSection.java#L117


      
          // *************************************************************************
          // new methods exposed
          
          /**
           * Append 4 vertices (2 triangles) to the specified Mesh, in order to
           * connect this section to its predecessor.
           *
           * @param mesh the Mesh to modify (not null)
           * @param sectionIndex the index of this section in the list (&ge;0)
           */
          void appendToMesh(Mesh mesh, int sectionIndex) {
              if (previous == null) {
                  assert sectionIndex == 0 : sectionIndex;
                  /*
                   * The first section is ignored,
                   * since there isn't anything to connect to yet.
                   */
                  return;
              }
          
              IndexBuffer indexBuffer = mesh.getIndexBuffer();

adi.barda · January 24, 2021, 9:04pm

The thing which made a huge difference in the ability to popup wheelies was changing the wheels size and hence raising the COG.
I have made a test with the GTR Nismo having 1500 HP engine and the Buggy only modest 60 HP and the Buggy pops up wheelies without any effort while the Nismo is planted on the ground but of-course drifting as hell because of the monstrous engine and rear wheels driving.
It’s so fun to do crazy things with them:)

sgold · January 31, 2021, 6:10pm

After a storm of refactoring, there’s now an MaVehicles library. Version 0.5.0 was released last night and is available from JCenter:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.github.stephengold:MaVehicles:0.5.0'
}

The library includes the basics (Vehicle, GearBox, WheelModel, World, Sky, SpeedometerState, CompassState, and so on), but none of the example assets and no Lemur-dependent features. It’s designated “v0.5.0” because I don’t promise a stable API yet. However, I expect the rate of change will be much slower from now on, and I encourage people to use it in their projects.

In addition to the classic Lemur-based demo, there’s a new sample application (named HelloMav) that’s so simple it fits into a single class. It’s great for casual experiments, and it should help you (@adi.barda) get started using the library if you so desire.

As soon as I get the “readme.md” file updated, there’ll be a v1.3 release of the project. And then I have a backlog of Engine maintenance to catch up on…

adi.barda · January 31, 2021, 6:41pm

Amazing!! I thought “someday” will take a long long time… I will start the porting ASAP. It;s important to me to be able to control (replace) the input keys, disable / enable the input , start / stop the engine etc.
As long as the lib has no dependencies to any application I can use the sources to adapt it to my project but I prefer using the compiled jar if possible.
Thanks Stephen!

sgold · January 31, 2021, 6:47pm

I’m glad you’re excited. I look forward to feedback, including:

what you like/dislike about the API
what should be added/removed from the library
bugs/issues/difficulties
screenshots and videos!