Physics engine for car racing

Oruchiku · Post by **Oruchiku** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 7:31 am

Which one to choose? Newton seems natural choice, mostly due to few wrappers available (IrrNewt, IPhysics) but lacks support for vehicles other than rear wheel drive - well, it might be worked around but I don't really feel like doing such hacks..

JP · Post by JP » Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:17 am

Check out Physx, i'm sure it would be up to the job. There's my IrrPhysx wrapper available but it won't be supporting vehicle stuff for a while i should think, though you could inspect my IrrPhysx code to see how i've integrated Physx with Irrlicht.

Havok might be good to look at too, they're both free now (at least for non commercial anyway, you might want to check that with Havok if you plan to release your game commercially).

Both Havok and Physx are good because they're of commercial quality and have large teams behind them!

maroxe · Post by **maroxe** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 7:12 pm

what about ode?

xsocom · Post by **xsocom** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:16 pm

Go for newton.

Brainsaw · Post by **Brainsaw** » Thu Dec 11, 2008 6:20 am

ODE can surely do it. I am trying to get some ODE code up and running (although my first Irrlicht game "Marbles" (http://dustbin-online.de/marbles.php) is using ODE I decided to completely redo the ODE stuff to get a better integration. I just don't find much time currently to work on it, but I will post it as soon as I have some result.

Check out the ODE demos on their homepage, there is a car demo. And in the package some car stuff is also included.

maroxe · Post by **maroxe** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 12:37 am

i don't know why both newton and ode use C programming style even if they are c++ libraries

Brainsaw · Post by **Brainsaw** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 6:22 am

ODE is internally done in C++ (at least that's what they say ... haven't taken a look at that, but you could), but it uses a C interface to make it more portable.

maroxe · Post by **maroxe** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 12:56 pm

Brainsaw wrote:ODE is internally done in C++ (at least that's what they say ... haven't taken a look at that, but you could), but it uses a C interface to make it more portable.

can we use C++ in a C program?

Brainsaw · Post by **Brainsaw** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 3:04 pm

I think so (haven't tried). Maybe you should take a look at the forums on http://opende.sourceforge.net, they might be able to help you there.

DeM0nFiRe · Post by **DeM0nFiRe** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 6:25 pm

This may sound like I'm being a jerk, but it's a serious question:

Could you not just make the rear wheel drive car drive backwards for front wheel drive? How much control do you have over weight distribution etc.?

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 7:46 pm

maroxe wrote:
Brainsaw wrote:ODE is internally done in C++ (at least that's what they say ... haven't taken a look at that, but you could), but it uses a C interface to make it more portable.
can we use C++ in a C program?

No, C++ is an extension of C. That is why it is sensible for C++ to support C programming. C is not a derivation of C++, therefore no support for C++, as there should be none. If C did support C++ compiling, than the language would simply be a C++ remake.

Dorth · Post by **Dorth** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 3:11 am

BUT c++ can be used with a c app by exporting the function names in c format and building a c compatible library. Browse a bit on the web how to do that.

maroxe · Post by **maroxe** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:05 pm

yeah, i used to use SDL wich is a C library in C++ program.
C can be warped in many other programming lagaguages, and it's one of its advantages.
by the way, there is a warpe of ode in C++ (take a look at odecpp.h & odecpp_include.h)
also, read this: http://groups.google.com/group/ode-user ... 30593d1840