Hello

We've been trying to decide what RobotC license to get this year in FTC. first of all i just want to add, i'm extremely excited at the idea of a full blown physics simulator in RobotC, totally awesome idea! But, my question is, how useful is it really?
My experience with simulators is that they can range from invaluable resources that speed up development tremendously to really cool toys that don't really help with development that much. the main features this depends on is the ability to add your own robots, and adjust your environment. No matter what, it still sounds really cool.

But is it possible to take a Pro-E CAD design and put it in the simulator? or is there only a few preset robots you can use? if so, are any preset robots similar to FTC robots in size and weight?

Also, on another note, is it possible to use the perpetual license for FTC? and if you have the perpetual license, can you buy the Virtual Worlds on a perpetual license?

i know thats a lot of questions, but if anyone can answer some of these, it would be greatly appreciated

Hello Robot Programmer,

You wrote:

I is more cool than useful. There are lots of reasons that the physics may be off (sluggish computer performance, poorly done graphics, poorly optimized physics) but it is pretty cool.



Initially you will have to use the robots that we supply, but our goal is to have students be able to draw their own models and import them into the virtual world. Drawing the robots isn't the hard part, it is assigning sensors and motors as well as adjusting the physics.



A combination perpetual license is an option that is available to teams and classrooms.

Note - we got the models for the FTC game from FIRST, but didn't know how the game was to be played or how to score points. Now that we know more, we will be tweaking the placement of the robots (obviously we need four different placements) and will be adding a couple of robot configurations based on what teams feel would be best for the autonomous section of the game. We are not able to configure grippers etc. but we can configure placements of the sensors as well as wheel configurations for the robot chasis.

Regards, Robin