Does anyone know of such a tool?  I'm working on getting a 200K line
base of ObjC code translated to ST.  Of course I would like to optimize
this process.  Help is appreciated.

\t

--

Please remove dot nospamski dot from the return address.

----------
>From: Jeff Pierce <jpierce at cs.cmu.edu>
>To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
>Subject: Re: Alice and Wonderland Status
>Date: Fri, Dec 10, 1999, 9:41 PM
>

> As Andreas pointed out, implementing physics isn't necessarily
> straightforward.  As an extreme simplification, you can think about two
> sides to the spectrum:
>
>
> Fast,                                       Slow,
> Simple,    <----------------------------->  Complex,
> Wrong                                       "Correct"
>
> To use collision detection as an example, on the left side you have simple
> bounding box collision detection.  It's fast, it's easy, but unless
> everything in the scene is a cube it's a gross approximation.  On the right
> side you have collision detection that uses the actual mesh.  And then in
> between you have things like OctTrees.  The more computational and
> intellectual effort you're willing to spend, the more realistic your
> collision detection will be.
>
> Gravity follows the same spectrum.  It's pretty easy to make every object
> fall until the Z coordinate is 0.  However, if you want objects to fall
> until they collide then you suddenly need good collision detection.  And
> God help you if you want your objects to bounce realistically.
>
> So "basic" physics is easy.  WonderlandActors know how to return their
> bounding box, and a method to determine if 2 bounding boxes overlap is
> fairly straightforward.  And you can add an action to move objects toward
> the ground each frame.  But "realistic" physics is still problematic for
> real time 3D graphics.
>
> It'd be a great project if someone wants to tackle it, though.  If you
> could plug in a C module (like UNC's VCollide) you could leverage someone
> else's work. Maybe we could talk one of Mark Guzdial's students into doing
> it.  Or y'all can wait until after I get my PhD.  =)
>
> Jeff
>
> At 01:53 AM 12/11/99, Luciano Notarfrancesco wrote:
>>Jeff, I don't know if this is good idea for extending Squeak Alice. Neither
>>I know if this concerns to you... but this is what I'd like to see: 3D
>>worlds with some basic but realistic physics, such as collision detection,
>>gravity,  elastic materials, etc. I think it should not be hard to implement
>>collision detection and gravity.
>>
>>Peace,
>>Luciano.-
>