Yeah, the bots themselves' angular momentum needs to be added into the sim. I thought he meant the ties' angular momentum.
I meant bot angular momentum, from collisions and from tie moment forces, and also angular momentum of rigidly tied multbot structures. Just trying to make the physics more reaslistic.
The degree to which it actually makes sense to simulate real world physcis as a means towards evolving completely articifical dignital organisms is a separate topic. I sometimes wonder whether the environment in which bots evolve (or compete) should or need be anything like the physical world or whether it would be better for digitial organisms to reside in a world with less simulated physcis, physics more 'natural' to their digital natures. Sure, simulation of phycisal world physics makes it easier for our own physical world selves to appreciate and enjoy and it makes perfect sense from a purly gaming, competition perspecitve, but I sometimes wonder where we want to end up. What is DB 20 years from now? As Gflops get cheaper and the richness and complexity of the environment grow, do you hope as I do that the space of all possibile organisms grows to include the possibility of some truely complex, truely sophistcated organisms and that perhaps one day we witness the evolotion of bots whicn can eclispe the complexity, utility and robustness of traditionally programmed software? I do. But if every new degree of freedom in the organism space requires a compenserate investment in physics simulation, then the complexity that emerges will be suited, will be limited to that artificial environment. 20 years from now, we may well have digital tigers roaming a simulated forest, complete with stripes and stalking behavour and mating habits, each consisting of many thousands or millions of automously executing virtual cells cooperating to create an incredibly complex and effective artifical creature. But every selective force, from the benefit of having stripes to nautre of the forest that favors them and even the mechanims of sight and camoflage will have been embodied in the world physics. If we want tigers, we will create the physics that favor tigers, artifical tigers in an artifical world. Those tigers will be evolved and suited for a very specific and even more complex virutal environment defined within the context of the nth generation simulator. Is that what we want? I wonder. Will that tiger be any utility outside it's environment? Do we want it to? Hmmm...
I have no concrete proposals, no suggestions to make, but it strikes me that mechanisms like venom and posion and shell and mass and waste are in many ways articifical constructs when viewed from the perspective of a digital organism. I don't have alternative suggestions on the tip of my tounge and I full well understand that the world has to have complexity for complexity to evolve, but I do think about it sometimes...