velocity/impulse

[Bombadilo101]

Is there some built in way to find the velocity of an object?  Was hoping to build in a maximum velocity and variable impulse for my spaceship game but was having trouble finding out whether or not an object was moving in space.

 

Currently using cannon.js for the physics engine.  Apparently if you use cannon with Three.js you can just do object.velocity.y or object.velocity.norm() but it doesn't seem to work in babylon.

[RaananW]

When creating a physics object you get its body as the return value. You could use this body just like in three.js. You could also get the physics body of a mesh using the physics engine object of your scene.

[Bombadilo101]

strange... seems there's no velocity check after all.  Not sure if they took it out or renamed it, but I ended up going with this:

 

  var zCheck = true

var veloZ = PC.absolutePosition.z;

  scene.registerBeforeRender(function(){

  if (Math.abs(PC.absolutePosition.z - veloZ) > 10)

  {

  zCheck = false

 }

 else {

 zCheck = true

 }

 veloZ = PC.absolutePosition.z

});

 

not pretty, but it seems to work.  I feel like there's got to be an easier way though.  What's a physics engine without a built in velocity checker.  Also I'm not certain whether renders are over a variable length of time or not so my checker could be seriously flawed.

 

just a z-axis check for the moment, still deciding whether to go with a 2-d or 3-d speedcheck in order to limit max impulse.

[Wingnut]

Hi Bombadilo101, welcome to the forum.

 

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1NMU7M

 

Watch your console.  Built-in velocity... in CannonJS.  Yay!

 

Like Raanan said, when you setPhysicsState on a mesh, a physics "body" is returned to you.  (line 27 - "sbody")

 

In line 30, I am printing the Y-axis velocity of sbody.... to console.

 

Here is the CannonJS API... for 'body'...  http://schteppe.github.io/cannon.js/docs/classes/Body.html

 

As for CannonJS unpredictable behavior,  I can't help you there.  I prefer using OimoJS, actually.

 

Below is the same thing in Oimo, but notice there is a change in line 30. Now it's sbody.body.linearVelocity.  And, I did some minor adjustments to the restitution (bounce) values.  And of course, line 8, switched to the Oimo plugin.  Notice the bounce is more predictable in OimoJS.

 

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1NMU7M#1

 

OimoJS does not have a published API, but see http://urbanproductions.com/wingy/babylon/misc/j2h02.htm - search for com.element.oimo.physics.dynamics and then look for RigidBody nearby... property #12. 

 

Go get em, Bombadilo!  You got the tools to get good and confused now. 

[nittrus]

I know this is rather old but I feel this should be updated so others searching for a solution have up to date information so here ya go.

mesh.getPhysicsImpostor().getLinearVelocity();

To get the velocity of rotation of an object use getAngularVelocity.

mesh.getPhysicsImpostor().getAngularVelocity();