Since the Bullet physics engine is distributed with OpenSimulator as a binary, I have to keep my library compatibility kind of old fashioned, That means I can’t use the latest-and-greatest Visual Studio nor the latest-and-greatest version of Linux. I’m building the Linux versions on Ubuntu 14.04 as that has been good with various shared library compatibilities. For Windows, I’m using Visual Studio 2012.

I have to build for both 32 bit and 64 bit Linux systems. Does anyone still use 32 bit?

The upgrade of the Bullet physics engine to v2.86 doesn’t seem to have any problems and I will start the OpenSimulator development branch (“BulletSim2017”) later today. There shouldn’t be any functional difference.

After thinking about the work to be done and talking to people, the major task list is getting longer:

• Upgrade the underlying Bullet physics engine to version 2.86;
• Fix the missing collision problem ;
• CPU performance improvements (people mention high CPU usage with physical objects);
• generate convex shapes if PhysicsShapeType is set to CONVEX;
• Raycasting is not done in the physics engine.

Once I’m happy with the upgrade, I’ll create some test cases for collisions and CPU usages to track progress.