What's the deal with the weird spam?

[manny]

While OP is spam, too, I have to admit that the spam is getting to much on this forum. Would be awesome if the security on this board could be tightened up.

[Julio Jerez]

yes spammers seems to be the only thing that visit the forum in a long time.
I am keeping the forum open because I paid for the hosting but the reality is that the engine is dead.
the people making internet papers succeeded in marginalizing it.

[godlike]

yes spammers seem to be the only thing that visit the forum in a long time.
I am keeping the forum open because I paid for the hosting, but the reality is that the engine is dead.
the people making pare succeeded in marginalizing it.

The engine is dead? Do you mean that you stopped developing Newton? That's very sad

[Julio Jerez]

no, Early I focus on things that people want, with not demand it is just me doing things with not goal.

[JoeJ]

no, Early I focus on things that people want, with not demand it is just me doing things with not goal.

You want some requests? My personal list is still active:
* The powered 3 angle joint
* The small C interface demo for transform manager
* softbodies / cloth
* Allow scaling of bodies to interact correctly with other bodies (replicating hacky contact joint was not successful, custom joint works still best for me)
...

Why do you think something is dead?
Bullet forum has twice the number of average users online.
Personally i've had the impression you take a break for a while because you did not respond to some forum questions, maybe others thought the same.
I really hope you continue the development, i've invested a lot time in the walking ragdolls and i'm still sure this will not work satisfactionary with another engine.
I'm not John Carmack and can't promise to make Newton famous, but indie games become more and more popular and not anyone will jump on the 'Use AAA-Engine to make another clone of anything' train. And there will be Soma, the Occulus Rift which will make people more sensitive to physics, etc...
I'm still sure it's a matter of time until a broader audience will notice Newtons advantages.

[PJani]

Hi!

I am having a lot of work on faculty lately. I must say i haven't got much time to work on my project. As soon i finish with my diploma i will continue with my work.
But i will say this.
This is one of the best physics engine i was ever working with. Most people don't even notice what a potential this engine has.
I think Newton needs more publicity. Youtube videos of cool stuff!

I have requests too!
3D Paging of objects.
I need 3 angle powered joint, too.
I am not sure if you implemented fully vehicles(i had no time to check this).
and other stuff.

I don't think the engine is dying. Keep a good work its not a lost cause!

[Bird]

no, Early I focus on things that people want, with not demand it is just me doing things with not goal.

Hi Julio,

I'm still very much interested in the new stuff you've been working like destruction, soft bodes, cloth and the scripting language. I just haven't had time to post here much because I'm so busy getting ready to release a product based on Newton that I've been working on for more than 2 years.

http://hurleyworks.com/advanced-placement/

I put the Newton Logo in my plugin gui so hopefully Newton will stop being the best kept secret in the cg physics world and get some of the attention that it deserves.

But when that ships I'll be back bugging you for more features for sure:) I have several other physics based projects planned and I really hope I can continue to use Newton because I've used Bullet and PhysX and in my opinion Newton is by far the best and it's so much more than just a physics engine.

Please don't give up on Newton!

-Bird

[godlike]

I've been evaluating and searching for the right opensource physics engine for my project for quite some time. Eventually I went ahead and started using one of your competitors. Unfortunately the lack of documentation, the frequent bugs, the code quality and features like character controller forced me to resume the search for a physics engine. Newton seems like the best of the bunch and I should have seen that sooner.

Please don't give up

[manny]

Yup, and we're also using newton!

[pHySiQuE]

yes spammers seems to be the only thing that visit the forum in a long time.
I am keeping the forum open because I paid for the hosting but the reality is that the engine is dead.
the people making internet papers succeeded in marginalizing it.

I am having great results with Newton in Leadwerks. I've got your logo on my homepage here: http://www.leadwerks.com

Newton has unique advantages the other physics libraries can't compete with:

• Stability and accuracy.
• Cross-platform open source.
• Straightforward and easy to use API.

Newton powers one of the most popular physics-driven games of all time (Amnesia), and you've done basically nothing to take advantage of that. Your path to success will not be the same route Bullet and PhysX take. Newton is different and you need to take advantage of your own unique strengths and value proposition. You're never going to write more white papers than Nvidia, so stop thinking you need to do that. You're ignoring your own advantages and focusing on their stupid papers nobody reads. They will probably always have more useless peripheral features than you, but Newton does the basics much much better. The other APIs are stuck on feature creep mode and are built on top of a buggy unstable foundation.

I'd encourage you to present Newton on your own terms and not let critics define it. You've got a very enthusiastic fan base that will support you.

[zak]

I've been following your work for 10 years, i always thought that Newton is the best physics engine.
When my soccer game will be out i hope to write "powered by Newton".

There are still so many exciting things to add to make Newton even better, ad example few days ago i posted my request to have a before position integration callback as the best place to do post correction.

I've always had my idea on how to get Newton the deserved success, and now it is time to tell it to you:

Let's see what is the situation now when a user searches for a physics engine.
First he tries on google: bullet, havok, ode and then newton in the first page, not bad for now.
He visits the sites and then goes on newtondynamics.com

And now negative things begin.
There is a brief description of the engine which is the same that I read ten years ago and is now outdated.
It is not clear that there is an exact and an iterative solver, which can be used in combination,
that can be developed easily every imaginable type of joint, that the entire engine is contact force based, (not impulse based)
and then it is much more physically accurate.
It is not explained that the engine takes full advantage of multithreading and SIMD,
it is not explained that the engine is also for Android and iPad.
It is not explained ecc. ecc.

Then visitor see "Download our demos and see for yourself" link, click and he sees
04/01/2011
SDK 2.33 is now ready, in google code.
This implement the first pass an a simpel destruction

No demo here.
Then he clicks on "download" link. The same page and (he thinks) Newton is not updated for three years.

At this point 90% of the users goes away.
They will not become Newton users and will never recommend it to school to work or to friends.

The other 10% goes on Google Code project and see that last version is 2.36 two years old.
There is also a 3.11 version but it is only alpha (he thinks).

At this point 98% of the user goes away.

The courageous two percent decide to try the 3.11 alpha version anyway. He looks at tutorial.
There are ten tutorial but they are for SDK 200 and so are not usefull for SDK 300 (he thinks)
He goes to SDK 300 and there is only one basic tutorial. He goes on wiki, only Newton1 e Newton 2.

At this point 99,99% of the user goes away.

So that Newton has the success it deserves, it is necessary:

An updated web site showing in detail all the advantages of Newton.
On main page something as this: 03/26/2014 Newton 3.12 released. Download it.
No more alpha for years. Always a final version to download and an alpha/beta in progress.
New final downloadable version every three months, even with a single bug correction and no new functionality, it is not important,
but a new version every three months (Chrome teaches).
So users see that Newton is very active and dishonest are forced to review the latest version.
Delete all newton1-2 stuff. Upgrade tutorials and wiki to newton3.

I know that doing this is not fun, and I would prefer you to do OnPositionIntegrationCallback()
but if we want Newton takeoffs it is absolutely necessary.

Do not develop for some time and do that.
When done, everyone will see and experience the power of Newtons.

[Sury]

I also work in a physics-driven game with Newton. I like it, because of it's C-style interface, speed, stability, portability and open source.
Julio, Newton death cannot be that simple. Newton is still widely used and is planned to be used in the future. If you don't care about us, take care of Frictional games and their incoming S.O.M.A game, Leadwerks and other popular Newton users. If you sum up the user base of these companies, you will end up with a huge number of Newton library installment across the globe. That doesn't sound "dead" to me at all.
I guess most people around write their own graphics and are occupied with other problems, use Newton that just works as it is, so no need to show forum activity.
Please Julio, make an official statement. Tell us what you think about Newtons future. The only way Newton is going to die is, if you intentionally kill it.
If you say officially it's dead and the forum is going to be put down, people would be forced to switch to other engines, one way or another in the long run.

[manny]

Yes, our company would also provide whatever support is necessary to keep this operation running. We could host your forum and migrate the repository to github or our own git server to allow for more activity as pull requests are much easier. I could even propose to our guys to redo your logo/website to reboot the whole proejct, but that might take some time.

[Julio Jerez]

relax people, I did not say I am killing the engine.
I said the engine is dead because the lack of activity.

I have to suspend registration because the only people visiting the furum are porns and duviuos abvertiser that only want to place at link.
This is reality tha I can not hide.

I know thare are people how use the library and have in high regard,
but the truth is that it is very diffcult to get any one to pick the engine as a first or secund choice when
9 out 10 10 comments on the internet and other forums are the opinion of selft appointed engine appraisal.

[perkins]

Would it help if you could get some community members to help manage the wiki and website? While I think many of us can use newton, we really don't know enough to help write the engine itself. But we certainly could help with documentation and maybe get a buildbot for linux and mac going so you don't have to worry about them breaking and not noticing it. I'm still working on a python wrapper for newton, and I'm having to write my own documentation as I go, since the wiki seems dead. I could easily make what I figure out available for others to use. Maybe get a freenode irc going for faster communication and a way to network with other active users of newton, I see #newtondynamics is registered to a board user for that purpose, mentioning it on the homepage might help. That's what I can think of doing to help anyway.