1).Moon Patrol: I feel that maybe someone could help us with a new way to detect collisions with the ground. Right now we are using glReadPixels() from a buffer. It works good on faster comps...but kinda misses a little on slow comps. ANY IDEAS???? 2). NeHe(Jeff's financial problems): I think that it sux that we can all sit here and watch a guy like Jeff go through such a hard time.I think that we should all help him out...maybe $1.00 maybe $5.00, what ever we can spare.I am broke as crap,but I am gonna send himsome money. I think he has givin so nuch to this website and to the openGL community that it wouldn't hurt to give back a little. [edited by - tylerbingham on October 2, 2002 3:53:58 AM] [edited by - tylerbingham on October 2, 2002 3:54:43 AM]

1. Maybe you can render the ground into the select buffer, though I don''t what happens with translucent textures.
How many glReadPixels do you call every frame ? You can group them to get a rectangle instead of quaerying each pixel individually. If the rectangle is small enough, it will be faster to query the rectangle.

2. NeHe once posted the idea to send money by paypal for ppl who don''t have a paypal account yet.
In fact, when you submit a new account at www.paypal.com it cost you $1.5 but they offer $5. That means that anyone who subscribes a new paypal account gets $3.5 that you can send to anyone (including NeHe of course). This way, those of you who are really broken still can give a few bucks to help him out.

1) Unfortunately, I have not run into the ground problem, but all of the cards I have tested on have been Nvidia cards. Even on the slow machines it doesn''t fall through the ground. I even ran a slowdown program to test it and it ran fine at a snails pace... as for the readpixels, it''s only 6 reads (one pixel under each tire), it''s determining the buggy movement that causes it to sink.

I test the tire to see if it''s on ground, if it is, it moves up a pixel. I test under the tire to see if there is space and it falls. But the ground changes quick and some machines may not keep up.

I also ran into a problem with the colors... it seems on different video cards and systems, the colors may be different... so in an attempt to fix the problem I draw the ground once, then store it''s color for future checks. Still not working in cetain color depths. Read about glDisable(GL_DITHER), etc... nothing working on the select few machines... maybe poor driver, who knows.

2) I would love the support, but I really don''t want to come out and beg... i try to post as much as I can, get more active when news is slow, but really, I don''t have alot of time with all the things going on right now... I have tuts on the way, and some contributor tuts, but with people wanting to start their own sites, an email saying "I''m sending you a tut in a day or two" usually turns into a news post stating "come visit my site for tuts". Understandable, but make me look bad when I''m expecting to post a tut and it never arrives.

What I will say... if you are broke, do not donate... do not stress about it. Help yourself first, then if at one point in life you have some spare change, consider a donation. No point in more people being stressed out.

And in summary... as I''ve always said, if anyone wants to get down and dirty about my requests for support, you are more than welcome to stop by, you can see my wonderful 2 bedroom home in the middle of nowhere, you can check my bank balance slips that say -$109 on a $100 overdraft. I will put you up for the time you''re here, and will even talk code with you if you want!