I think one of its main author was hired by Google AI when they (Google) realized that getting a big fat neural network to model the inverse problem of a physic

I think one of its main author was hired by Google AI when they (Google) realized that getting a big fat neural network to model the inverse problem of a physics engine (should call it a mechanics engine, really) had lots of very practical applications. In other news, bullet is alive and kicking. e.g. It's integration into blender lets you do amazing thing, especially wrt modeling natural environments fast.