Following the latest developments of Blender, it's almost impossible to keep up at pace if you slack off and wait for the official ones to bloom. Recently, we've been informed and blown away by Blender Cycles (Blender 2.5's realtime rendering engine). If you haven't been updated yet, check these links:
http://www.blendernation.com/stream/tag/blender-cycles/
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/Render/Cycles
http://www.blendernation.com/2011/05/02/cycles-render-demo-by-mike-pan/
OK, that's just the introduction. My coder/developer friend Goatman has recently written an addon for Blender to test the new object-oriented ctypes ODE wrappers and the results were mind-blowing! In a nutshell, you'll be experiencing realtime physics inside of Blender's Python API and interface without having to exit the default interface and activate game engine to achieve such.
Briefly on the list of features to add are the following:
- Kinect interface support
- ragdoll rigging support
- gamepad support
- Wiimote support
Quoted from Goatman: "the goal is digital puppetry and game engine export"
And for a proof of concept:
For more info and for the download links, check out his blog post here http://pyppet.blogspot.com/2011/05/ode-ctypes-in-blender.html
-Reyn