I dropped a on-purpose inquisitive and naive mail on
comp.games.development.programming.algorithms where John Nagle can be
reached. Here is his answer, for what it's worth.
Pierre
============================================================
Hi there,
I recently heard rumors about a new patent regarding collision
detection/collision response. As far as I know, this is a patent from John
Nagle, related to Animats's Softimage plug-in called "Falling Bodies".
I'd really like to have more information about that one. You know how rumors
can be. Crazy things are said. For example one reported it was covering most
collision detection methods, which have been used in games for years. Which
is, let me find the appropriate word.... oh yeah: grotesque. And shameful as
well.
I think I'm wrong in the way I understood that patent, am I not?
I'd love to hear what's the exact issue here, what it is supposed to change
for game developers, and so on.
Regards,
============================================================
Sure. See
http://www.animats.com/topics/patents.html
Read claim 1 of the second patent listed for what's covered.
The general idea is that older "penalty method" systems
break down on the hard cases, but this one doesn't. Most other
demos of physically-based animation have simple blocks or balls
banging around. Even then, they usually don't get motion
that makes things look like they have weight, one of the
hardest things to do in animation. We have human figures falling
downstairs, and they looks right. And it's not vaporware; we
have demos, downloads, videos, and a shrink-wrapped product,
and we've had them for years.
We took a technology that sucked and made it work. That's
a patentable improvement.
I'd be glad to discuss this with industry people who have a
problem with this. I'm also willing to consider licensing
games or academic work that are 100% open source and covered
under the GPL at no charge.
John Nagle
Animats
www.animats.com
Menlo Park, CA
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