"Angular constraints are just springs working only one way.. they keep points from coming too close, but don't restrict movement to the other way."
Only to a degree. If I want to connect to verlets and keep the angle between them from becoming less than 45 degrees, then yes, I can do that. But if I want to constrain the verlets to between 45 degrees and 90 degrees apart, then I need to do a little more than just make sure they don't come together. :-)
Also, there's more to doing springs than just "making them contract over several frames". You have to do it a certain way to keep the speed the same regardless of how many iterations you do, or whether those iterations take different lengths of time.
And yeah, making hinge joints and pin joints is easy. But what about a joint which is like a tube on a rod, with a rod sticking out of the tube? Slide up and down, and rotate around the axis, but can't pivot up and down. There's a lot of more difficult types of constraints to implememnt that you might not be able to make with simple verlet constructions. :-)
Only to a degree. If I want to connect to verlets and keep the angle between them from becoming less than 45 degrees, then yes, I can do that. But if I want to constrain the verlets to between 45 degrees and 90 degrees apart, then I need to do a little more than just make sure they don't come together. :-)
Also, there's more to doing springs than just "making them contract over several frames". You have to do it a certain way to keep the speed the same regardless of how many iterations you do, or whether those iterations take different lengths of time.
And yeah, making hinge joints and pin joints is easy. But what about a joint which is like a tube on a rod, with a rod sticking out of the tube? Slide up and down, and rotate around the axis, but can't pivot up and down. There's a lot of more difficult types of constraints to implememnt that you might not be able to make with simple verlet constructions. :-)