the physics object is very useful, but sometimes it limits us, its fine for simulations of falling boxes, and balls, and things like that, but sometimes i notice little things which should be there
first off if you have used "phun" you'll know what im suggesting would be a great addition.
i think we should be able to place hinges, and the upcoming springs, on objects, in the layout editor., this would greatly reduce the complexity of making some systems, also "fixtates" would be a great addition, so that we can stick one pysical object to another one, and they'll recieve all the movement and angular force of the parent object
the way all this could work in the layout editor would be; you click on any object with the physics behaviour, then you press a little hyperlink like edit custom collision mask, but it says, "add springs fixtates and hinges" and when you press that you get a window where you can see all the objects with the physics behaviour, in which you could add delete, hinges, fixtates, and springs., maybe even set hinges to be motors, just like in phun
I also believe there should be an even faster collision detecting method, for use in dynamic fluid systems, my experience making them shows that in a fluid simulation, especially using quazi blobs, you dont care about the individual particles, but more about the mass. the collision masks can be a triangle, a square, a circle, but it all looks pretty much the same (circle is the best method, doesnt crash as much) that means that using the current lowest setting of friction finding and such is even too high! in a fluid, the thing which causes lag, is when lots of objects are colliding, but more importantly intersecting, and every tick, the engine has to move every things so tha any 2 balls that are colliding will try to force apart from each other, this is unacceptable, there should be a collision finding method, which only moves objects if there is a space too fill, and doesnt care 2 much about being overlapped with another object, it just waits and moves trying to fill spaces which it sees, instead of trying to make a space for itself constantly, that way, objects on the top will settle and then the layer below them will settle and so forth, which i believe would make a faster simulation, the only thing slowing down the system is objects trying to force every single thing around them out of the way, and this is happening for each one, causing lots of cpu drain.
only objects which can move, should move, this is usefull for anything that needs physics, but in large numbers, and the accuracy of each objects outcome doesnt matter as much as the outcome of all the objects as a system.
i know of course that all these features are not essential, but they would greatly enhance the things you can do with the engine, things you wouldnt normally do because they are too difficult, or just impossible to do via events. setting up some big systems using events would be a pain.