the cloth object reads the geo only on the creation frame,
this means animated attributes cannot be used,
this is a major limitation.

thexon
the cloth object reads the geo only on the creation frame

well … after an initial frame providing initial point-positions of a simulated object, a simulation is thought to simulate where those points go … if you wanted the geo to control where the points go, you wouldn't be simulating, would you.

this means animated attributes cannot be used,

that depends on what you mean by that. It is, of course, possible to introduce animation into a simulation. Say, you are morphing a ball into various shapes - those shapes you could always read in as target deformations and control the “blending” between simulated point positions and “source” point positions by the two target parameters.

this is a major limitation.

this, too, depends on what you mean by “this”. Since “animated attributes” (whatever you mean by it) probably *can* be used, that cannot be a limitation

Marc

you can animate any attributes on simulated geometry inside of DOPs either using Geometry VOP/Wrangle or SOP solver
so feel free to update attribs like stiffness etc. from original sop geo as you please