4.14.4 The new collision and physics framework

This section describes the new framework to be used for both collision detection and physical simulation.

The main changes introduced by this plugin versus the previous solutions are:

• Both collision detection and physical simulation are managed by the plugin, allowing to use both of them at the same time although this was not really possible previously.
• There is now a clear correlation introduced between sectors managed by the 3D engine (iSector objects) and physical worlds (CS::Collisions::iCollisionSector objects). There is now also the possibility to define collision portals in order to link together several different worlds.
• Still similarly to the objects manipulated by the 3D engine, there are now concepts of object factories that allow to define collision and physical properties prior their instanciation.
• The API now uses heavily C++ inheritance, hopefully being more easy to use than before.
• There are several new object primitives such as physical actors and vehicles.

General presentation

The collision and physical functionalities are split API-wise within the CS::Collisions and the CS::Physics namespaces. Most objects from the the CS::Physics namespace will inherit from an interface of CS::Collisions and will improve it with additional physical functionalities.

The namespace CS::Physics::Bullet is part of the initial physics plugin and should be ignored here.

Migrating from the previous physics plugin

To migrate a code written for the initial physics plugin, the main things you would have to manage would be:

• The name of the object interfaces should have changed, mainly through the move into the CS::Physics namespace. Hopefully the name and signature of the methods of those interfaces have not been changed.
• The API now uses inheritance so you shouldn't need anymore to access a specific interface through SCF queries.
• The objects are now defined through factories, and that changes radically the way they are initialized.
• For the additional external tools that were previously in Crystal Space such as the soft body animation controller and the ragdoll animation node, there are now alternate versions of those plugins to be used instead (namely the CS::Animation::iSoftBodyAnimationControl2 and CS::Animation::iSkeletonRagdollNode2 interfaces).
• The former interface iDynamicSystem has now became CS::Collisions::iCollisionSector.

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